From an Indian Lodge

Inside my head

The Film Snob's Dictionary by David Kamp with Lawrence Levi

I'll get back to posting about the old movies I saw in 2005 (there is also a top 10 list of books and new movies also in production); the holdup was technical in nature (the old version of VLC is crap, and the Mac DVD Player app is defeated by the 1920s avant-gardists). But now, The Film Snob's Dictionary. This is funny reading, but also a little uncomfortable, since I share quite a few of the likes of the Film Snob Kamp and Levi are dissecting. There are entries on Doc Films, Greencine, and Shaw Brothers. Raj Kapoor is name-checked in the Bollywood entry. There were moments in reading this, I felt like I was reading my biography as chronicled accurately by someone I never met. What really put this feeling over was finding an entry on Seijun Suzuki. Had there been an entry on Sergei Paradjanov, I would have closed this blog down and just said read this for my thoughts. The strangest part of all is at one point, Kamp and Levi list Ten Worthwhile Snob Causes Celebres and Ten Fraudulent Snob Cause Celebres. I agree with them on the worthwhileness of 9 of their worthys and two of the film snobbisms I find most fraudulent, L'Atalante and Peter Greenaway, are on their list. That I'm to the side of the Film Snob and in line with an outside assessment is just too weird.

posted by Erik Gregersen @ 2/24/2006