5 result(s) tagged “Jim Emerson”

Brevity is the soul of wit, that motherfucker Shakespeare once wrote, and even though he’s wrong, I’ll keep this short.

RogerEbert.com editor Jim Emerson has created the Contrarianism Blog-a-thon. (He chooses to capitalize the last “T” for some reason; I shall not.)

Emerson’s get-together is fun enough, but it doesn’t provide much practical guidance. Being contrary these days is hard work. In this Web-democratized age when every possible opinion already has its champion, how the hell can one be a contrarian? On the other hand, how can one not be a contrarian? After all, whatever you think, you’re fighting against all those who have a different perspective.

I will enlighten you on how to be a conventional contrarian.

In a review full of great lines, here is perhaps the best from Jim Emerson’s pan of the Great and Powerful and Self-Absorbed M. Night’s The Lady in the Water:

“They live in water and are desperate to communicate warnings to Man, but Man has forgotten how to listen. They are sort of like amphibious Al Gores.”

At Scanners, Jim Emerson is running a series on the opening shots of movies. In his introduction, Emerson writes:

“Any good movie — heck, even the occasional bad one — teaches you how to watch it. And that lesson usually starts with the very first image. ...The opening shot (or opening sequence) is the most important part of the movie ... at least until you get to the final shot. (And in good movies, the two are often related.)”

So far, the project includes two quizzes along with commentaries on the opening shots of everything from His Girl Friday to Miller’s Crossing to The Crying Game to Halloween (below).

While these short essays (some by Emerson, but mostly submitted by readers and other critics) are about individual movies, they collectively represent a short course in watching film seriously.

Jim Emerson, whose blog has been given a space separate from Roger Ebert’s, twice recently has addressed our cultural tendency to be lazy with language, particularly in marketing movies. First, he parses the MPAA’s explanatory descriptions of its ratings:

“Bad Santa (R): ‘pervasive language, strong sexual content, and some violence.’ (Language is pervasive in Bad Santa.)”

“Read it slowly, one word at a time. It says almost precisely nothing at all — and could be said (with conviction!) even by someone who has not seen the movie.”

Jim Emerson, the editor of Roger Ebert’s new Web site, here offers an intriguing psychosexual reading of Donnie Darko. You see, Donnie has feelings for his sister. Ahhhh, that explains everything!