FRIDAY SCREEN TEST: Ted Pigeon

Like the title of his blog, The Cinematic Art: Transcending Space and Time, Ted Pigeon is never short on words. Ted spreads these words over a wide variety of cinematic topics, usually delving deep beneath the surface on subjects such as visuality, technology or blogging itself. Contained in this latter category is a post I think every blogger should read: Why Blogging Is Essential. Ted asks a lot of tough questions in this post, his media background adds a great angle to it, and it's even inspired me to do a similar writing in the near future. While Ted ponders the role of blogs in that post, The Cinematic Art is proof itself of the medium, since he's clearly not content with the usual avenues of film media and often dips into subjects that are far from ordinary.

BLOW UP YOUR CANONS: 'Somewhere along the line, we formed these cultural conventions which inform us that certain kinds of stories are more ridiculous than others, which I don't like. If a film garners a response, then it's done something right. And no genre and set of stylistic techniques are good or bad in my mind. Ultimately, it all comes down to what Ebert says: a film is not about what it is about, but how it is about it.'

KISS KISS BANG BANG: 'The Kissing Montage from Cinema Paradiso is the epitome of movie magic. It's pure feeling, the kind of emotion that I can't quite identify, the kind that is synonomous with cinema. It's the uncertainty, the ambiguity that I love most about cinema. Sometimes, a certain film can evoke and reveal so much emotion that you can't even process in the rational, easily categorized manner we've all been trained to do. Cinema has the power to transcend the easily defined borders of the world of languages and social institutions. Storytelling as manifested in moving images represents a magic that, as Kubrick says, no other art form can hope to tackle.'

TRAVELING WITHOUT MOVING: 'Raiders of the Lost Ark. A big area of my current studies focuses on the idea of visual literacy and how the term itself is problematic. In short, I would argue that while one needs to possess some form of language to interpret moving images in a narrative context, images are not a language. [Raiders is] all about energy through motion. It creates a world and an atmosphere and rushes you through it like a roller-coaster ride. The dialogue and plot are almost besides the point.

WORDS TO LIVE BY: 'In Adaptation, when Donald tells Andy Kaufman: "You are what you love, not what loves you." I cannot tell you how this scene affected me so deeply at the end of the film, but it did. I had just seen one of the most absurd, weird, and profoundly moving films of my life and that mantra has always such with me as an inspiration and a bittersweet proclamation of loneliness. [Also,] Roy's speech at the end of Blade Runner: "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain." Both this and the Adaptation scene represent speeches that are culminations of amazing cinematic experiences for me. These two films mean very much to me. In their own ways, they ask questions central to human experience and existence, and they both resonate so strongly.'

BUT WHAT A JOB IT IS: 'Andy Horbal recently wrote that he considers film study less and less a relexation or hobby, but more like a job. That's essentially how I feel. I keep a log of everything I see and hold a list of films I'd like to see in the future. I try to keep a rigiorous schedule but I don't always stick to it. Right now, I'd guess I see on average about three movies a week. I do, however, see movies in pieces more now, which has been a really interesting way of seeing films. I try never to watch a movie in pieces the first time I see it, but I think it is essential to see movies you're familiar with broken down. It's a great way of getting into the mechanics of the film and to understand how it's doing what it's doing.'

THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN: 'I guess I'm predictable, but I always watch Halloween on Halloween. If I have time, I'll double bill it with another horror film such as A Nightmare on Elm Street or perhaps an Argento or Carpenter film. David Cronenberg's films for some reason strike a chord with me in the colder times or year, with the exception of A History of Violence, which for some reason I associate with the dying heat of late summer, which is when I first saw it.'

BAD THINGS, MAN: 'As many have said before, seeing a movie deemed "bad" by most can actually be a very interesting experience. I don't subscribe to mainstream critical thought in that certain genres are bad or certain kinds of stories are poor, that there can be too much sex or violence or any other potentially offensive concept.'

RUSTY CAGE: 'When I was working at a video store through high school and some of college, I used to watch movies constantly. My world had been opened. Growing up in a conservative Christian-Catholic house, my choices for film viewing were very limited. But when I hit my teen years and beyond, I watched movies constantly, whenever I could through high school and college. It's slowed down recently due to my being in grad school and having a great deal more responsibility, but I make it a point to do it.'

IN THE YEAR 2000 . . . : 'It may seem unimportant, but in 2000, I made the decision for the first time to see a movie by myself at the movies. Any young person who has ever made such a decision well knows that this is much more difficult than it seems. You are standing up and saying, "I respect cinema as an artistic form and not a social endeavor or economic enterprise." I applaud anyone brave enough to do it. It's a scary experience, but like anything else that's new and different, you learn that stepping outside of such pre-determined ways of living is enriching and essential to experiencing life for one's self. I had encouragement from a teacher of mine to do it, and I couldn't be more gracious for him pushing me to make that step. Because it has an instrumental point in my life that helped shape who I am now and allowed me the opportunity not just to have so many wonderful cinematic experiences in the years to follow with so many different kinds of films, but it gave me a unique perspective in all areas of my life as I headed into college from a social and educational perspective.'

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