The Black Feather Needs No Shadow

Black Swan

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Four Stars

By Rollan Schott

Here is what the movies are for. Here is what can be done in their world alone. What a grand and beautiful folly is Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan”, a film that casts aside expectations and conventions and sets off in wild search of the muse. Freed from restraint, unburdened with pretensions, and stripped of formality, here is a movie that loses itself thrillingly in a sustained act of psychological seduction. It is a brave and fearless film.

Yes, Keaton Was Great, But Keaton Didn't Make "The Circus"

Note: I sent this letter to Roger Ebert in response to his Great Movies essay about Charlie Chaplin's "The Circus" (1928). It has since been published in the "Letters" section of rogerebert.com. To see it on Ebert's own site is much more glorious, but here is the letter in full anyway.

From Rollan Schott in Lincoln, Neb. 

This is reactionary, vitriolic, and probably ill-advised. Please forgive me.

I was thrilled to find Chaplin’s “The Circus” added to your Great Movies canon. I think it’s one of his best (certainly better than “The Great Dictator”, but that’s an argument for another day). Having previously read your comprehensive column on “The Works of Buster Keaton”, I assumed that a similar piece on the works of his mustached rival master had not yet been written, and would not be written, because A) Chaplin’s films are more lovingly restored and much more readily available as independent works, and B) Every film Chaplin made between “The Kid” and “Modern Times” (as well as “Monsieur Verdoux”) is worthy of its own essay, an astonishing run that combined universal box office success and acclaim with enduring artistic achievement like nobody before or since. Most of Keaton’s works are also worthy if individual recognition, though I think we’d agree his are more of a whole.

The Pantheon (2010)

Jon's Picks
Rollie's Picks


1. The Third Man (-) Carol Reed, 1949
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (-) Stanley Kubrick, 1968
3. Citizen Kane (-) Orson Welles, 1944
4. City Lights (-) Charlie Chaplin, 1931
5. Taxi Driver (+2) Martin Scorsese, 1976
6. The Passion of Joan of Arc (+12) Carl Th. Dreyer, 1928
7. Apocalypse Now (-2) Francis Ford Coppola, 1979
8. Rear Window (+1) Alfred Hitchcock, 1954
9. Vertigo (-1) Alfred Hitchcock, 1958
10. Magnolia (+4) P.T. Anderson, 1999

The Geometry of the Grey Matter

 Inception

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Three Stars

What we find in Christopher Nolan's "Inception", when we burrow our way tangibly into the landscape of the human dream, is not dormant emotions or suppressed memories or any other nakedness of the soul, but rather places. Surfaces. The cold, drab exteriors of modern architecture. Our subconscious populates these empty streets with meaningless faces, and when reality shifts, it is entirely literal. Buildings shift or explode, time slows, but the chronology of events remains strictly linear. "Inception" suggests a sterile dreamscape indeed. I am reminded of Stanley Kubrick, who over the course of his illustrious career created a body of work that suggested that the human soul, our desires, our memories, our very nature, could be deconstructed in such a way as to reveal a being as mechanical and clinical as turning gears (Consider "A Clockwork Orange", "Full Metal Jacket", "Barry Lyndon", and of course "2001: A Space Odyssey" among the rest of his work). Nolan however, has constructed for himself and for his film a set of intellectual rules that map the human psyche like layers in an onion, not so much for the exploration of the mind but simply for the purpose of creating an action thriller, and where Kubrick's films made bold assertions, Nolan merely ponders.

It's That Time of Year

Me and Jon are circling the drain of the annual Pantheon Draft, wherein we utilize a highly advanced and complicated system of back-and-forths, averaging, compromising, and eliminating to create a hybrid list of elite "favorite" movies. Last year's list can be found here. The lists, after probably the first five, will be radically different. This is not because the movies have so fluctuated in quality over the course of a single year, but because the term "favorite" is abstract and fluid and impossible to approach consistently. I think of Ebert's definition - which movie do I want to see again right now, right this very moment (in preferential order from one to a hundred)? I think of Jonathan Rosenbaum's definition - which great film is freshest in my mind, right now, right this very minute? Even the slightest variation in approach to our "favorite" movies can alter the substance of our list radically. More than a collection of great movies (indeed the greatest), Ghost on Screen's Pantheon is more an illustration of the way that our personal tastes develop, change, evolve and, again, fluctuate. Expect the new list to materialize sometime by the end of the month.

The Tragic Debris of Maturity

Toy Story 3

Directed by Lee Unkrich

Four Stars

Toy Story 3 might be the first family film made with people in their early 20s specifically in mind. I was nine years old when the first Toy Story movie was released. Most of the current crop of children weren't even a lustful thought in their father's mind when the first two Toy Story films were made. How fitting it is that this sequel is, in part, about the painful transitory period from childhood to adulthood, a period in which we shed our dependence, our awkwardness, and -- most tragically of all -- our toys.

Huck Finn, D.W. Griffith, and the Re[Birth of a Nation]al Identity

Note: This is the project that more or less earned me my diploma earlier this month. It appeals to a more literature oriented audience, which accounts for "The Birth of a Nation" being summarized while a knowledge of the novel "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is assumed.

The evaluative debate over a distinctly “American style” in nineteenth century literature was largely reflected in the cinema at the dawn of the twentieth century. This essay will profile D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is commonly regarded as among the most prevalent literary works to carry the distinction of such a style, as suggested by its lengthy and secure presence in the canon of great American literature.

A Serious Man...Is That All There Is?

"Audaciously Funny, Original and Resonant!"

- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

"Defiantly Original!"

- Thelma Adams, US Weekly

These are the two critic blurbs on my new copy of Joel and Ethan Coens' "A Serious Man", one of the two or three best movies of last year, which I finally managed to sit down and watch again after seeing it in theaters several months ago.

I don't know. Maybe it's the exclamation points, almost certainly provided by the package distributor (As they always are - Critics don't use exclamation points), and suggesting some kind of superficial, giddy fanboy hyperbole that so thoroughly mis-characterizes the Coens' achievement. "Funny" and "Original"? Is that all there is to "A Serious Man"? Every comedy is "Funny". I know this because the critic blurbs told me so. Do critics think "A Serious Man" is merely "funny", or do the distributors only want us to think so? Why did critics regard as merely funny(!) a film I approach with quiet reverie? Are they not seeing everything there is to see, or am I seeing something that isn't there?

The Top Ten Films of 2009

As Drafted by Jon and Rollie

1. The Hurt Locker
Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq war thriller/action movie could well be, as James Cameron put it, the Platoon of the Iraq war. Chillingly objective and unflinching, The Hurt Locker cuts to the core of why humans need (and in a disturbing way, want) war. One of the most powerful experiences of the last few years.
-Jon

The Holiday Roundup Extravaganza

Greetings, ghosts.  I hope life finds you living.  Traveling and family events have kept me from posting recently, and as I gear up for my cruise in Mexico, said trend will likely continue through the next two weeks.  But it's not all bad.  Jon has recently unveiled his decidedly Australian top ten films of the year over at the Film Brief, which should keep you occupied for a bit, and the list of pieces on the horizon is far more exciting than the recent lack of action has been discouraging.  Me and Jon should be returning from our international adventures around the same time, and will commence articles and podcasts discussing the best films of the year and of the decade.  It should make for some thrilling debate.  Unfortunately for me, the list of films I'm still anxious to see seems more exciting the the list of the best films I've already seen.  Ergo, both lists will soon be made available.  As for now, I've raced through a handful of movies in the few days between Christmas and the cruise, so here's my holiday roundup in neatly packaged form.