dialectic of enlightenment for kids

So Ken Jacobs' Razzle Dazzle and Andrew Stanton's Wall-E open on the same weekend: two all-digital take-downs of virtual reality (even digital) culture; of those who mistake shiny spectacles for nature and fresh air (found in neither movie) of real life; of an industrialized world that decontaminates and processes its consumers, like the products they consume, like the pre-determined movies they watch and the pre-determined days they lead, free from any autonomy and much individuality; of a society wrecked, a mess, and rotten in a constant, hypocritical, and completely understandable quest for sleek, antiseptic, escapist entertainment. And for both Jacobs and Stanton, it's all anyone can do to shore consumerist fragments of a ruinous past--quite literally for both--to get art. For sledge hammers, these are pretty great movies; both, though, are best as spectacles. It's the double feature of the year.

Razzle Dazzle and Wall-E are also kids movies, in different ways, and if you're a kid, and see Wall-E in theaters, you can get a piece of junk watch. "Ooo! I want one!" said my mother (whom I invited to come with me), quite taken, after I was offered one. "I'm sorry," said the lady at the counter, just outside a mall food court that looked like a more plastic edition of Wall-E's lido deck. "We're only supposed to offer them to kids."

The issue of conflating virtual reality and reality has been mainstream since at least The Truman Show and The Matrix (or Feuillade's Fantômas--or Don Quixote), and handled most topically in Southland Tales last year; at least three more movies this year look to make it their premise: Full Battle Rattle, Tropic Thunder, and Bolt. All of which have nearly identical trailers.

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Some other recent pieces up at The Auteurs' Notebook:

-- On Céline and Julie Go Boating
-- On Mizoguchi's Chikamatsu Monogatari (Crucified Lovers) and Yôkihi (The Empress Yang Kwei Fei)
-- On Allen Baron's Blast of Silence

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Moving Image Source, a site I spent a good part of last summer working on, is online and great. As is Triple Canopy, a site I've spent no time working on, but some friends of mine have.

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In his short article for Moving Image Source on Eyes Wide Shut, my old boss David Schwartz sums up Kubrick like this: "If Kubrick's career can be reduced to one preoccupation, it is the conflict between man's base, primal desires and the game- and role-playing that define social behavior: civilization and its discontents." Which makes Kubrick sound a lot like Rivette. Working on Eyes Wide Shut for the first half of this year, the connection was unavoidable: two directors obsessed with life as a game and hallucination and conspiracy, to be put in order in order to find meaning, even while order and power, once attained, petrify everything; the danger, for both, is in becoming accustomed to and dulled by routine. The difference is something like that Kubrick sees the stultifying potential of order, while Rivette sees the liberating potential of chaos; like any good New Waver, Rivette finds Kubrick lacking spontaneity and naturalism, mistaking him for the machines they probably both hate.

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For my own sake, inventory of stuff I've done to do with Rivette:

-- On Céline and Julie Go Boating
-- On The Duchess of Langeais
-- On Feuillade, Judex and Rivette
-- Some pictures of people lost in their own worlds
-- Fritz Lang's While the City Sleeps as a Rivette film
-- Impressions of Out 1
-- Some translations of stuff Rivette said and wrote