I saw quite a few movies last year that I highly enjoyed for one reason or another: movies that I thought were well crafted examples of cinema as art; movies that kept me thinking; and/or movies that I found entertaining.
The following (in alphabetical order) are my favorite movies of 2007, “of 2007” in this case meaning movies that I watched during 2007.
1. Blade Runner
One of my favorite science fiction movies of all time. For that matter, one of my favorite movies of all time. When I re-watched this movie this past year, it was probably about the 35th or so time I had watched it. (For the record, I’ve seen all the different versions, and like them all. Give it to me with or without the noir-ish narration.) The one thought I had about the film that I’d not had before is that there are a lot of individual elements of the film that if take out of context would be either banal or silly sci-fi-geek-babble (Roy Batty’s death speech is a prime example), but which in context of the film are both effective and poignant (Batty’s death speech again, after seeing which I do wonder how Rutger Hauer ended up playing in straight to video nonsense involving chasing Ice T through the woods).
2. The Born Losers
The original Billy Jack. Like many, I had assumed that Billy Jack (1971) had been the first appearance of Tom Laughlin’s Billy Jack character, until I happened upon this movie from 1967 showing on AMC. Tom Laughlin’s there, Billy Jack is a fully formed character doing what Billy Jack did, fighting for those who are innocent and weak against The Man and against outlaw thugs. If you’re a fan of Billy Jack, you should see this (especially if you stuck around for Billy Jack goes to Washington). If not, or if you don’t know who Billy Jack is, don’t bother.
3. Children of Men
One of the better examples of near future science fiction dystopia.
4. Dersu Uzala
One of Akira Kurosawa’s lesser known films, and one of the few set outside of Japan. The title character is a woodsman and guide in Eastern Siberia. This is a sad film, akin in some ways to some Westerns, where modern society ultimately tames a wild land, with the character of Dersu Uzala unable to fit in, and ultimately being tragically victimized by “progress.”
5. Donnie Darko
I was prepared to dislike this movie. I do often dislike “art movies” or “indie movies,” because although a few are quite good, many more are ridiculously pretentious, overly snarky, overly ironic, or otherwise annoying and not half so smart as they aim to be. This movie was none of those things, and was instead entertaining and thought-engaging.
6. Downfall
There was controversy when this German film came out about whether or not it humanized Hitler and those around him in their last days. It did, but only I think in the sense that Hitler, Goebbels, et al. are presented as multi-faceted human beings rather than one dimensional bogey men. If anything, I found myself feeling an even greater sense of revulsion toward the Nazi leadership after viewing the film, though that could just be my reaction.
7. The Fountain
I wasn’t as moved by this film as by Darren Aronofsky’s two earlier movies Pi and Requiem for a Dream, but this is a beautiful and poignant movie (even if at moments a bit draggy, something that often accompanies beautiful and poignant movies).
8. Hiroshima Mon Amour
I’m not quite sure why I had not previously seen this 1959 film by Alain Resnais. It manages to explore the personal and generic horror of war and its effects on individuals without ever feeling exploitative (something difficult to pull off when pulling out footage of Hiroshima after the nuclear attack).
9. Hustle & Flow
Another movie I was prepared to dislike more than to like, in this case because it had been so heavily hyped by so many critics and media outlets. I tend to find that few movies can come close to living up to such hype. I don’t think this is a great movie, but it’s one of my favorites of the year because I thoroughly enjoyed watching just about every minute of it, perhaps especially the acting of Ludacris (his acting was one of the few things I found bearable about the similarly hyped Crash).
10. Kinsey
One of the few biopics that managed to avoid the tedious formula of telling a life through key episodes. Also, probably the only movie I’ve ever seen to convey a sense of social science research method for a popular audience through the clever technique of revealing much biographical detail through footage of Kinsey training research assistants in interview technique with himself as practice subject.
Showing posts with label Kinsey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kinsey. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Research, Teaching, and Music Performance
The other day I had a very nice conversation with a graduate student I work with. This particular student is just beginning field research for his thesis, a thesis which, in a nutshell, will address issues of booth rental and wage labor in hair salons, a topic that taps into debates in political economy going back at least to Ricardo and also rich with interesting ethnographic detail. This student, like a lot of, probably most, ethnographers is using a combination of participant observation and flexible, open-ended interviews.
He noted that he was pleased by how his first interviews had gone, also noting the highly flexible quality of the interviews, with interviewees often taking the conversation in interesting and unanticipated directions, but also that he felt confident in working in this highly flexible and even improvisatory setting because of a significant amount of preparation for his field work that he had engaged in along with me and other members of the committee.
I drew an analogy to certain aspects of teaching. Specifically, there is a performative quality to research methods like participant observation and flexible, open-ended interviewing that has something in common with the performative quality of some teaching, e.g. leading an effective class discussion. Effectively leading discussions requires preparation and organization – you have to know your stuff, but I find that the most effective discussions are true conversations that can often lead in unexpected directions. There is improvisation, but based on sufficient organization and preparation that I’m confident enough to set aside preset plans and follow an interesting lead. (This doesn’t mean that anything goes in class discussion – or open-ended interviewing – some comments are outside the domain of relevancy, are too tangential, and require reigning in, though it can sometimes be difficult to tell in the moment what is too tangential and what not.) Not all teaching works this way, though. Sometimes a thoroughly preplanned lecture is the best and most efficient way to communicate information to a class – there can always be room for questions and clarifications, but within a plan.
Then, another analogy struck me. Some research (in this case, participant observation and flexible interviewing strategies) and some teaching (e.g. leading class discussion) is analogous to jazz performance, while other research (e.g. more controlled interviewing or survey research) and other teaching (e.g. delivering a preplanned lecture) is more analogous to classical performance.
Jazz performance is highly improvisatory. When performed well, though, jazz is not chaos or noise, but based on thorough preparation and practice that allow a skilled musician to dispense with rigid adherence to formulae to play freely. The same is true with skillful performance of certain research and teaching strategies.
With some exceptions (typically highly delimited and occurring either in music from the baroque period or earlier or from very recent classical composition), classical performance is highly scripted rather than improvisatory. The musicians follow a definite score. Something like survey research tends to work similarly, with attention paid to following a scripted questionnaire and attempting to control as much about the research environment as possible so as to limit as far as possible the number of variables that might contribute to the production of the different question responses.
In both cases here, classical performance and survey research, though, even within the highly scripted context, there is nuance and interpretation to performance. Different performances of the same classical works can sound quite different based on subtle differences in interpretation and performance of the music’s details, producing highly different results. With something like survey research, there is an art to getting people to respond to questions, and doing so without either inhibiting or overly influencing respondents’ replies through the details of posture, facial expression, or a wide variety of vocal qualities. (As an aside, the film Kinsey presents several examples of such things to be avoided by interviewers in a formal research setting. In the film, we learn about Alfred Kinsey as a person via several scenes in which he trains students in interview techniques by having them interview him. It’s an innovative way of delivering exposition about the subject’s life in a biographical film without slipping into the clichés of biopics. Along the way, it’s the only movie I’ve ever encountered that seriously explores social science research methods.)
He noted that he was pleased by how his first interviews had gone, also noting the highly flexible quality of the interviews, with interviewees often taking the conversation in interesting and unanticipated directions, but also that he felt confident in working in this highly flexible and even improvisatory setting because of a significant amount of preparation for his field work that he had engaged in along with me and other members of the committee.
I drew an analogy to certain aspects of teaching. Specifically, there is a performative quality to research methods like participant observation and flexible, open-ended interviewing that has something in common with the performative quality of some teaching, e.g. leading an effective class discussion. Effectively leading discussions requires preparation and organization – you have to know your stuff, but I find that the most effective discussions are true conversations that can often lead in unexpected directions. There is improvisation, but based on sufficient organization and preparation that I’m confident enough to set aside preset plans and follow an interesting lead. (This doesn’t mean that anything goes in class discussion – or open-ended interviewing – some comments are outside the domain of relevancy, are too tangential, and require reigning in, though it can sometimes be difficult to tell in the moment what is too tangential and what not.) Not all teaching works this way, though. Sometimes a thoroughly preplanned lecture is the best and most efficient way to communicate information to a class – there can always be room for questions and clarifications, but within a plan.
Then, another analogy struck me. Some research (in this case, participant observation and flexible interviewing strategies) and some teaching (e.g. leading class discussion) is analogous to jazz performance, while other research (e.g. more controlled interviewing or survey research) and other teaching (e.g. delivering a preplanned lecture) is more analogous to classical performance.
Jazz performance is highly improvisatory. When performed well, though, jazz is not chaos or noise, but based on thorough preparation and practice that allow a skilled musician to dispense with rigid adherence to formulae to play freely. The same is true with skillful performance of certain research and teaching strategies.
With some exceptions (typically highly delimited and occurring either in music from the baroque period or earlier or from very recent classical composition), classical performance is highly scripted rather than improvisatory. The musicians follow a definite score. Something like survey research tends to work similarly, with attention paid to following a scripted questionnaire and attempting to control as much about the research environment as possible so as to limit as far as possible the number of variables that might contribute to the production of the different question responses.
In both cases here, classical performance and survey research, though, even within the highly scripted context, there is nuance and interpretation to performance. Different performances of the same classical works can sound quite different based on subtle differences in interpretation and performance of the music’s details, producing highly different results. With something like survey research, there is an art to getting people to respond to questions, and doing so without either inhibiting or overly influencing respondents’ replies through the details of posture, facial expression, or a wide variety of vocal qualities. (As an aside, the film Kinsey presents several examples of such things to be avoided by interviewers in a formal research setting. In the film, we learn about Alfred Kinsey as a person via several scenes in which he trains students in interview techniques by having them interview him. It’s an innovative way of delivering exposition about the subject’s life in a biographical film without slipping into the clichés of biopics. Along the way, it’s the only movie I’ve ever encountered that seriously explores social science research methods.)
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