Hey Max,

I'm up watching your film. Turn to the part where Ezekiel is talking
about his mother going to the grave and praying. Right after the
joke about Sadaam Hussein, listen to the Coltrane riff in the
background.

Now go here:
http://rhizome.org/artbase/2115/tokyo/figures/
click on the far left link – "alliteration," and wait for the audio loop.

I did that project in 2000.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

critique:

I think your genius is as a film maker, and it may just be
subcionscious and intuitive. To me, the interview questions and the
project and the dialogue are merely a trojan horse giving you
entrance and excuse to explore your real genius of: cinematography,
editing, visual metonomy (your mother is a blueberry waffle), and
lo-fi ambient background noise as meme hybridization. Even you as
the main character are less of a "star" and more a mere vehicle for
plot advancement – a trojan horse within a trojan horse. The only
person in the entire film taken seriously by the camera is the guy in
the striped shirt. The rest of the time the camera is more
interested in audio/visual incidentals (as tracked from an
intriguingly RainMan-esque perspective). The film's treatment and
accentuation of these incidentals turns out to be much more
interesting than any single bit of dialogue.

So it's not the objective documentary aspect of the film that gets me
going (indeed, I find it sometimes pedantically distracting); it's
the abstract cinematagraphic subtextual "dialogue" of the film, and
the way said subtextual dialogue interacts with and often derides the
ostensible "topic" of the film that I find cool. It's like you are
making one documentary (as interviewer/interviewee), and the camera
is making its own very different documentary on your documentary,
from an entirely other (and more enlightened) perspective. Whether
you split yourself in two like this intentionally or subconsciously
or both doesn't really matter to me as a critic.

If you took the transcript of the film and printed it out in text, it
would be largely banal, pseudo-intellectual, and trite. Just like so
far your online asking of the project's questions is yielding nothing
very interesting in the way of response (last time I checked).

The genius of this film, then, is its subliminal angle (literally and
metaphorically).

I hope that's not too much of a dis. I mean it as a compliment.

Narratively, I think the film drags from the violence section on
(except for the essential dec. 22 and 24 footage and a few choice
bits). More rigorous editing would "show your hand" less and better
maintain the film's kooky omniscient "other" perspective throughout.

Much as you fancy yourself a wordsmith, I don't think that denotative
words are your strongest suit. I think your cracked-vessel
"pespective" is your most genius aspect. And I must say, this aspect
comes out better in film than it does on the web. Mere still images
and text are too fragmentary to sustain it.

To totally change the subject, what restaurant were you in where they
played dee-lite and metallica back to back?


The film reminds me of:

1. Errol Morris's "Vernon, Florida" (the biology professor is treated
like Morris's turkey hunter)
2. Mogwai's "Come On Die Young" CD
3. http://www.altsense.net/projects/albums/dr.coFFice/

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


And that's my public critique of Genius 2000 (the film).

peace,
curt
_
_
_