If you felt the film blog world shift a little on its axis this week, it’s probably because The House Next Door founder and proprietor Matt Zoller Seitz has departed for greener pastures. Of all things, Seitz has decided to concentrate on making his own films. Can you imagine? Why, if we all did that, there’d be no one left to snark about our work.
Seitz says goodbye with a lengthy interview with new House Next Door honcho Keith Uhlich, in which he discusses his plans as well as his lifelong love of movies. “There was this thing called The Scholastic Book Club, which I guess they still have because my daughter brings home the sheets for me to fill out. They had a book on the making of King Kong and I believe it was available before the movie had even come out. And I ordered it, along with some other things, and when it came I just read it from front to back. That was the first instance I can think of of my wanting to find out how movies were made. I don’t think I really knew anything about how movies were made. I just thought they were these things that kind of magically appeared on the screen when you went to the theater.”
Tributes to Seitz have been proliferating ever since his announcement. At Scanners, Jim Emerson has assembled his own personal “best of Seitz” retrospective, and shows the good taste to include this snippet from “McCabe and Mr. Milch”: “To some degree, nearly all of Altman’s films are anatomies of community. Ditto Deadwood, which week to week showcases a panoramic concentration that recalls Altman at the top of his game. Like Altman, Milch is not content to fixate on the plight of one individual -- a fundamental creative choice that puts both men temperamentally at odds with much of American popular culture. Both Altman and Milch prefer to see the big picture, the pointillist mural that takes shape when an artist asks the audience to take a few steps back from the canvas. They study human constellations comprised of distinct human beings who embrace different religions, inhabit different social strata, imbibe different substances, muse on their own pet obsessions and pursue their own strange agendas, all the while remaining largely oblivious to their impact on everyone else. Both Altman and Milch are not just storytellers. They are dramatic anthropologists, devising a collective organism in order to scrutinize it.”
At Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells offers his own, uh, “tribute,” I guess. Maybe it’s tongue in cheek. Who knows. “Seitz seems to think that a film critic's life doesn't provide enough in the way of cleansing ‘happiness moments,’ like what some people get from walking in the woods or watching basketball or going bowling or murdering a deer in the forest with a high-powered rifle. Well, it's not supposed to do that...hello? If you've been lucky enough to be called to the profession of film criticism (or any profession that most people are unable to do for lack of talent or persistence or both), then you do that thing until you die at your desk -- simple. And no moaning.” Be sure to read the comments if you’re up for a good old fashioned flame war.
Of course, when one door opens, another window closes, or something like that. In other words, Jonathan Rosenbaum, late of the Chicago Reader, has now joined our little club with the self-explanatory JonathanRosenbaum.com. “Here’s the basic plan: Although I’m hoping that this site will grow and sprout more features in the weeks and months ahead, including links and other items, for the time being it will consist of two weekly features: (1) a reprint of an older text of mine (in alternate weeks, this will consist of a piece of mine that may not otherwise be readily available, and a piece of mine formerly published in the Chicago Reader between 1987 and 2007), and (2) a brief list of recent publications and upcoming events.”
And finally, it wouldn’t be the week in blogs without another installment of List-o-Mania. In honor of Iron Head or whatever his name is, here are Ten Superheroes Who Deserve Their Own Movie from Film School Rejects. I think we can all agree, now more than ever, the time for She-Hulk has come. “Okay, I’ll admit that I never really read the comic, but what red-blooded American male could say no to the buff green beauty? The sexy Maxim cover shoot alone should be reason to make this film (and if The Incredible Hulk does well this summer, it could be a go).”