Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

9 September 2003

Leni Riefenstahl Dies

Leni Riefenstahl, a German director best known for making Nazi propaganda films in the 30s, died Monday night near Munich. All of the obituaries struggle to separate her artistry from her ideology as they summarize her tainted legacy.

It's not easy to subdivide a person, but it may be necessary if we want to take cinematic lessons from movies with putrid messages. Take a look at how Roger Ebert dealt with Birth of a Nation in his Great Movies series. Omitting it from his canon would be criminal, but so would be downplaying its embarrassing, racist distortions of history. He tackles them individually in part 1 and part 2.

When Bryan Curtis reviewed a Griffith DVD collection for Slate he essentially concluded that Griffith had no political aims of his own and was easily swayed by those around him. While it's not an apology for Griffith, this observation may be useful. Maybe it's easier to embrace a great director if we see him or her as wedded more to the cinema than to any particular ideology.

Michael Moore is a contemporary filmmaker who presents the same problems. It's becoming increasingly difficult for a film critic to discuss Moore's work without acknowledging his manipulative distortions. But celebrities shape their public personas via multiple media now more than they did in the days of Griffith and Riefenstahl, so we may be too close to the issues at hand to know how to characterize Moore's legacy. We'll probably have to leave that to someone farther down the road.

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