Tom Watson

Reminder: It's Movie Night

Don't forget tonight's kick-off edition of Lance Mannion's Wednesday Night at the Movies, Lance's virtual film fest over at newcritics tonight. We kick off at 10 pm EDT in the comments section of Lance's upcoming post on the first of five Oscar-nominated films from 1967, The Graduate. Watch the flick - or some portions on YouTube (the Cliff Notes of virtual film fests) or just plumb the depths of your movie-going memory. And ask yourself that age-old question: who's the older-looking "college student," Dustin Hoffman or Leo Gorcey in Hold That Line?  Rack up the Simon & Garfunkel platters on the turntable and check on the your plastics futures - but by all means, be there.

Huge News on the Culture Front

While I've been finishing this book of mine and obsessing here about the presidential race, my favorite blogging stepchild - newcritics.com - has been quietly percolating away thanks to some fine posts by great bloggers on film, books, television and lots of music. This is a new feature alert of major proportions, the announcement of a virtual film festival to be led by none other than the amazingly prolific Lance Mannion. Here's how Lance announced it:

Starting next Wednesday, June 11, and for the four Wednesdays after that I’ll be hosting an open thread right here at newcritics devoted to each one of the five Oscar nominees for Best Picture for 1967: The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and Doctor Dolittle.  I was going to leave that last one off my list, but our favorite film blogger the Siren insisted I include it.  She swears it holds up a lot better than you’d think.  We’ll see.

I loved the idea from the start and I'm calling on everyone here - all you Clinton obsessives, Obama lovers, and even you Republicans to throw aside your political armor and set the popcorn a-poppin'. Here's the festival schedule:

June 11:  The Graduate.

June 18:  In the Heat of the Night.

June 25.  Doctor Dolittle.

July 2.  Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

July 9.  Bonnie and Clyde.

Quite the lineup. And you know the crowd over a newcritics will be ready.  So here's to you, Mrs. Robinson - get those videos ready and meet up with Lance next week. And speaking of newcritics, I'm very hopeful of a return to Mad Men blogging later this summer, if the fabulous Ms. Peel is up for it.

A Pity Beyond all Telling

This harsh race for the Democratic nomination has boiled well beyond the melting point of igneous rock, and today's meltdown - by the erstwhile king of the netroots bloggers, no less - is no cooler. Indeed, the intemperate screed launched by Markos Moulitsas, founder of the DailyKos, singed every Democrat who read it and had to give those of us who battle it out online a reason to pause (or in one case, to purr at a pat on the head). Put on your asbestos suits and read what Kos said about the campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton:

She is willing -- nay, eager to split the party apart in her mad pursuit of power.

This sad embarassment has me eager, nay, desperate for another path. I'm sick of fighting nasty Democrats 'round here. Besides, it's St. Patrick's Day and as MA Peel reminds me, "something in the Celtic soul that has a natural affinity for the complex and the poetic."

So we need a third way, and I don't mean Al Gore at the convention (though, for the first time I might welcome a compromise candidate in this mess) - I'm talking culture. The fab Ms. Peel, good Irish lass that she is, has a great up over at newcritics titled Irish Altered States. She plumbs the film Kings from Tom Collins, and the play The Seafarer, by Conor McPherson. Here's a taste, but head over and leave your thoughts:

Can all these Irish souls be in such constant pain that they need to be continously anesthetized? I don’t know if that’s how McPherson and Collins see it. Some of the characters dance around stereotypes, but then become more dimensional. As for the cosmic root of the drinking–the centuries of oppression idea is not so far-fetched. It’s certainly part of what created the Irish epithet: “their wars are happy and all their songs are sad.”

To someone on the outside, it’s hard not to see an underlying sadness in these daily lives, yet you admire them for getting on with it all, as best they can.

To those on the outside of this political blogging whirl, those of us engaged in the warfare of words must also feel some of that underlying sadness - the Irish of it. I do. Hence, the salve of skippy - the moral equivalent of a pint of Guinness on this fine evening.

The Cut of Tim Gunn's Jib

Quick programming note: tonight is the final installment of our liveblogging series of Project Runway - that fab fashion realityfest -  so be sure to join Claire and Jennifer over at newcritics for the big soiree. It's Posh Spice night, but our crowd is a lot friendlier than Mrs. Beckham. That's 10 eastern, 9 central on your television dial.

The Real Marilyn

New York Magazine has become a sad shadow of its former self, and this week's issue - call it Maxim for upscale shoppers - sensationalizes the body of 21-year-old Lindsay Lohan in a raft of nude photos that used roughly half of the all Internet bandwidth over the last few days. Pure exploitation of a young woman clearly in personal turmoil, and all under the guise of low-brow art - a paean to the final photo shoot of Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, we get it: nudity before accidental death at a young age. Oh, how clever and ironic. In any case, one of our bloggers over at newcritics knew the real Monroe. Go read Bob Stein's terrific post and leave your comments.

Newcritics at the Paley Center

newcritics at Paley Center, originally uploaded by Tom Watson.

A wonderful night on Thursday, thanks mainly to the folks at the Paley Center for Media - newcritics celebrated its first year with a gathering of bloggers and a fine program that included two classic pieces from the center's collection: the rolicking appearance of Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal on the Dick Cavett Show and a stylish episode of Miami Vice from the mid-80s, complete with a killer soundtrack featuring the Who and Dire Straits. That's me at the podium. About 50 people turned out for the program, and a few more dropped by for the after-party at Black Finn for further discussion over a few beverages.

I'd urge readers to take a look at what the Paley Center (formerly the Museum of Television & Radio) has to offer - from lecture series to research, it's an important bulwark of both scholarly preservation and criticism, and assisting a thoughtful public. The center maintains an international collection of more than 140,000 programs covering almost 100 years of television and radio history, including news, public affairs programs and documentaries, performing arts programs, children's programming, sports, comedy and variety shows, and commercial advertising. Programming from some seventy countries is represented in the collection. And I can attest personally to the quality of its staff, which really outdid itself welcoming a crowd of bloggers to West 52nd Street this week. And take a look at membership - I'm joining, it's well worth it.

Special thanks to the fab M.A. Peel, whose organizational skills and eye for the moment know no parallel, and the amazing Blue Girl - that's her logo up on the screen.

Other bloggers who made the scene (and I know I'll forget a few, so feel free to smack me around) included Lance Mannion, Trickster, Jon Swift, Tony Alva, Brendan, Jackson, Grasshopper and her pal Manny, the Self-Styled Siren, Jim Wolcott, Tattered Coat Matt, Dennis Perrin, FLiPsters Trish, Lyndsay and Will, media's Eduardo, Levi Asher, and Susie from onPhilanthropy, along with newcritics' regulars Kelly, Anthony and Steve-o, and even regular commenters OutOfContext, Tom K. and Bruce (they were suspiciously agreeable, those two), Chris W. and the artist. Even a lurker or two.

The Cultural Yearling

Tonight, a bunch of newcritics bloggers are getting together at the Paley Center for Media to celebrate our little experiment, which is a year old. I have an anniversary post up - so hop over and read it, if you'd like. Here's an excerpt:

You know, newcritics is non-influential. It is non-profitable. Indeed, by any standards of the day it is non-successful. And yet a year on, we gather to revel (some in person, some virtually) in the minor media glory - but sweet karmic profit - of this little blog. Why? Because we like each other. That’s obvious in the courteous style of our site, and in the ongoing conversation each week. But we’re also genuinely interested in what each of us has to say about media - about film, television, music, theater, and books. And in our careers, our disparate lives, a place to turn for some polite middlebrow conversation over a glass of wine or a cup of coffee is a very nice thing indeed.

Some of the greatest bloggers in the world will make the scene tonight, including our host, the fabulous M.A. Peel, but we're also marking the anniversary with a series of posts about how a single bit of media moved each of them over the last year. Some great thoughts in these posts:

Pretty in P!nk
Lost Lust
Once in a Lifetime
Shrunken Heads Revisited
R.I.P. The Wall Street Journal
A Bit O’ Media…
What Is The Question?
A Reason to Go On Living: The Poor Boy’s on the Line
The Reblog Button

Do You, Mr. Jones?

My review of I'm Not There, the new Dylan film, is up over at newcritics; here's the lead:

A lengthy and elegant mess of a film, Todd Haynes’ not-so-experimental I’m Not There is nonetheless a beauty of a wreck, a “non-biopic” about Bob Dylan that mainly ignores that facet of Dylan that always hides in plain site when analysts look for meaning in the minstrel poet’s own life - his music.

Jason counters with his (more positive) review here.

Runway Bravo Newcritics

When I head to the office, I never know what to wear on any given weekday. In winter, the blue suit or the gray suit? The pinstripes or the, er, pinstripes. In summer, the navy or the olive green. Tie for clients, no tie for no clients. Weekends, which sweatshirt with those jeans? Hmm...what's the color this season? So okay, my personal fashion sense is somewhat limited - but that doesn't mean I don't admit fashion's role in popular culture, its thousands of years of history and vital importance, the strange, coltish nature of those darned models, and that weird cross-toe runway walk. So who was I to object when newcritics bloggers Jennifer and Claire teamed up to go all live-bloggy on Bravo's popular Project Runway reality series, which began its fourth season last week? Why pass up the chance to caper "with cameo appearances by some of the nicest bloggers ever to caper in a catsuit in homage to Honey West," as Jim Wolcott put it. I'm up for vicious fashionista snark and the low, low necklines of pret a porter putdowns as much as the next guy! And what better way to follow on our Mad Men Thursday night blogfests - now in hiatus - then with Wednesday night fashionfests. So I'm on board, right there in the front row, looking up the ... I mean ... at the skirts, and dresses, and blouses and lingerie (yes, Lance, lingerie!) of the newcritics Project Runway live-blogging party. 1o EST, Bravo and newcritics.com.

Another Political Rivalry on the Left

From my review of The Deal, HBO's  portrayal of the political rivarly of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, over at newcritics:

The best scenes are filmed in claustrophic spaces - the tiny shared office of newly-elected MPs Brown and Blair, the stifling and smokey train coaches to Scotland, the middle class kitchens and sitting rooms of the English, and the angular pubs and wine bars of London. This isn’t soaring politics; Frear only shows that in clever video clips. This is deal-making or, more accurately, a fine portrayal of the kind of personal compromise that is a necessary ingredient to attaining political power.

Jim Wolcott has his take - and some commentary on British politics - here.