Diverting from the Zizane thing:
The Kermode diatribe in the Guardian does raise some ideas about what is
cinematic. Inconvenient Truth is Powerpoint, The Queen is television, Zizane
is gallery video, Sin City is comic book (I suspect K might think Sin City
was cinematic), Michael Moore is whatever... and so on. Each of these films
may deserve or be worthy of criticism but hardly for sinning against the
magic category of the cinematic. Kermode seems to dislike documentary cinema
and wishes cinema was all Powell and Pressburger and Disney (Mary Poppins)
etc (he cites an indiosyncratic and small set of examples of the cinematic).
Godard (always a paragon of good sense) said somewhere something like a film
can contain anything. I like the idea of film inspired by or quoting
Powerpoint. (I wish 99% of Powerpoints were more cinematic). Why shouldn't a
film be televisual. (Just what is televisual?)
And just what is cinematic? This is a much abused term. Like narrative.
Kermode uses it as a kind unspecified touchstone. Bad thinking, bad
argument, bad journalism. Still, just as cinema can use the televisual, the
Powerpoint, the CCTV, the comic strip, etc, etc etc we can use this peculiar
concept of the cinematic. It has some currency, it does sort of refer to
something.
Ross
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