Scattered Gleanings

I should do this more often...

Girish points to an interview with Chris Fujiwara and Mark Roberts on crime films: a wealth of material to digest there...

David Bordwell, meanwhile, takes on one of those questions that circle the internet - do sequels suck? He's too dignified to phrase it so, but I have no dignity. His answer? A roundtable discussion of sequels, historical, aesthetic - praise the lord!

Do I want to dip into politics? or social criticism or some such a thing - Garance Franke-Ruta digging in deeper in defending an extraordinarily bad idea about how to control shit-bag pornographers of the Joe Francis ilk: raise the age of consent for participating in erotic imagery. The reasons this is a bad idea are legion, from what it says about the agency of young women, to the ease with which Ms. Franke-Ruta slides from "participating in the making of erotic imagery" to "participating in pornography" - how old was Margo Stilley when Nine Songs was shot? Such distinctions matter to the cinephiles among us. Instead of addressing the many arguments raised against her proposal, she calls her distractors "leering louts" and rants against Joe Francis (not that there's anything wrong with that). Lance Mannion, singled out for his "lechery", responds.

And finally - Eszter Hargittai's post at Crooked Timber about her blogging history sends us down memory lane. And - looking at her 2002 blog, I see an interesting link on the side: "blogathon03" - the link is dead, but through the miracle of google we find - blogathon 2003 - an odd reminder that the word has been around a while. Outside the film blogiverse, it's used more like the "real world" of marathons and walkathons and telethons and such - in this case: staying up blogging for 24 hours for charity. I remembered that, in fact, in the back of my mind - and if I'd clicked on all the links in Filmsquish's excellent history of the blog-a-thon, I'd have been reminded sooner... but still... somewhere out there is a project to trace through all the various organizations of blogs and such: blogathons, carnivals, etc...

And speaking of blog-a-thons (filmsquish aside, there is no way I am typing the damned hyphens every time) - the Misunderstood Blogathon has wrapped up - a nice collection of posts there... coming up fast, May 25 - Edwards Copeland's Star Wars Blogathon in honor of the 30th annivesary of the release of the film. After that, they come thick and fast in June - Simpsons (June 4-8) - Studio Ghibli (June 4-8) - Action Heroines (I feel a Bridgit Lin post coming on) (June 12) - Film Music (June 21-25) - John Ford (June 29-July 9)... It's a blog-a-thonathon!

Anyway - I must hit post. Again, unfortunately - I posted this accidentally half-written. Clever work!