"We have a contract," I said. "Of course he's going to pay me." "No he isn't. He's pretty sure you won't sue him. The fee is too small and you'd have to fly to Los Angeles to file for damages. Apparently this is how he does things." "Tell me this is a bad joke." "Sorry Cliff," said my agent. "Welcome to Hollywood."

"Ingmar Bergman, one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of cinema and an artist who changed the way the world perceived the movies, died Monday, local media reported. He was 89 years old."

In 1977, I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarchi), issued under the less flamboyant title Day of the Woman (and also known as I Hate Your Guts and The Rape and Revenge of Jennifer Hill), was condemned across continents for being a film that, according to Roger Ebert in “Why Movie Audiences Aren’t Safe Anymore,” fostered in the audience rape and violence towards women (Ebert 54). Initially, the film was banned in the United Kingdom, Finland, Australia, and Germany. Upon its release in theaters, it was picketed by various groups (including women’s organizations) and panned by critics; and still, thirty years later, it remains a subject of controversy. That a low budget B-film can generate an inordinate amount of storm and stress is illustrated by Ebert’s assessment of the film as "a vile bag of garbage” that is “so sick, reprehensible, and contemptible that I can hardly believe it’s playing in respectable theaters” (Ebert 61). Gene Siskel, in a concurrent review, labeled it as “easily the most offensive film I have seen in my 11 years on the movie beat” (Siskel 3). Ten years later, in the 1987 Video Movie Guide, film critics Mick Martin and Marsha Porter called I Spit on Your Grave

What happened to the idea of art films? Great question, and since it's got me thinking, let me dare a full post instead of a comment. I'll argue that, first, film became accepted as art, including mainstream film. Second, an outsider venue for art films became less crucial, thanks to video. But could those assumptions be changing as money centralizes yet again? NOTE ADDED: You'll see that I embellished this, because I wasn't satisfied with how it ended.

On the dvd commentary track to Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger, recently released on Sony Picture Classics, both Jack Nicholson and writer Mark Peploe refer to the movie as an “art film”. I’m wondering when that term disappeared. I first saw The Passenger at the Kentucky Theater in downtown Lexington sometime around 1976. The Kentucky Theater was the prototypical “art house”. It was too big, too cold (or hot), with thick mildewed curtains. But it was cheap, and it had the films that any deep-thinking college kid who lacked the drive to change the world, but wanted to understand it better wanted to see. I pretty much went every weekend. Herzog, Fassbinder, and Wertmuller; Waters, Cassavettes, and Altman. Most of the films lived fondly in my memory for years. Many have turned up on dvd and have stayed in my top ten verified by repeated viewings. Stroczeck, Woman Under the Influence, The Last Detail, Days of Heaven. Some weren’t as good as I remembered. The Passenger was one of those films I would tell people about, but it remained elusive. When Nicholson finally took it off the shelf, allowing a transfer to dvd, I couldn’t wait to buy it, but I was nervous that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations and memories. All I remembered was that it had Maria Schneider and what I vaguely remembered as my favorite ending ever.

Replay: from time to time we bring back a piece which we feel warrants further attention. This is one such piece. -ed.

Stephen Gaghan, Oscar winner and Louisville, Kentucky native, is a man with more talent and more life experiences than most of the rest of us could ever hope to understand. Louisville has sent forth some fine artists (My Morning Jacket are burning up the pop charts as I write) but only one of them has won an Oscar. The single fact of his success as a storyteller (which is essentially what he is) is that his ability to write and to move people emotionally was forged in the crisis of his drug addiction. And his ability was not destroyed by that addiction. The specter of DOPE and dependency in general hangs heavily over his best works ("Traffic," "Syriana") and his best works are as good as anything American cinema has seen since the glory days of the Ashby-Hopper-Coppola-Altman-Scorsese 1970's. An ex-dope addict, he has suffered for his art in the righteous and classic sense. The Easy Riders and the Raging Bulls have a clear heir in Gaghan. And yet Gaghan himself is less ambitious than he is eager. Eager to write better screenplays, eager to make better films, but with seemingly no ambition to add his name to any sort of pantheon, especially when there is more work to do and more stories to tell.

Inside Man
4 stars

An incipient Sidney Lumet revival continues to bubble up from the underbelly of the American film community. The resurgence of films about police corruption, along with the recent rereleases of "Network" and "Dog Day Afternoon" herald a renewed appreciation for the 1970's master's works. Like "16 Blocks," Spike Lee's "Inside Man" draws heavily from a Lumet piece; in this case it's "Dog Day Afternoon" with a significant twist.

A Meditation On The Enduring Importance of "Nashville"upon the Occasion of Robert Altman's Lifetime Achievment Oscar (part I)

My friend Tim Welch (one of the best American drummers of the last 20 years) makes the claim that Robert Altman's "Nashville" is the finest American movie ever made. I believe he is correct. When he first expressed this opinion I admit I considered it another blustery partial truth typical of a percussionist. "Better than "Citizen Kane?" I asked, better than "The Godfather" or "Bonnie and Clyde" or "North by Northwest" or "The Bride of Frankenstein"?

A snappy little snapshot of local history, Genevieve Coleman's charming first feature, Monday Night at the Rock 'N Bowl chronicles about the punk rock bowlathon-drinkathon at the Diversey River Bowl in Chicago. It's out on DVD now, and we check in with first-time feature filmmaker Genevieve Coleman about its process and progress of a story told over the course of several months of Mondays around the turn-of-the-century with borrowed video cameras.