David Edelstein's baby has a new mommy. The Slate Movie Club has been a perrennial favorite of mine, especially when living in Uganda and short of a couple NYT reviews didn't know most of the big buzz movies of 04 and 05 from Adam. Edelstein always did a good job of getting a group of critics together that were serious in their own right, were civil, but didn't agree on a lot of stuff.
This year's list of critics seemed competent. There wasn't a lot of crackle in their dialogue. Nor were they as illustrious (no one from the NYT?), but they got the job done. War movies were a good topic. I liked the Borat discussion. And in general discussion was limited to movies that at least saw a reasonable limited release (I still remember getting annoyed about the ruckus everyone was raising about Wong Kar-Wai and 2046, a movie that like 5 cities in America had any opportunity to view.
Tangentially, this movie club had a puzzling quote by Wesley Morris.
Obviously, the valences of the war movie are many. And it seems you've singled out a particular subset of the genre that relies, more or less, on a formula that when exploited well, as it is in Saving Private Ryan and in Children of Men (a relatable war picture in New Age, sci-fi fatigues), is powerfully cinematic.
The term valences is what I can't move past. The only meaning I have for valences is a type of electron that appears on the outer ring of an atom. What other meaning is there for this word? Someone help me.
Posted by matt at January 7, 2007 11:26 PM | TrackBack