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?

15 September 2004

A. O. Scott on the Toronto International Film Festival

As you may know, one of my peeves is the undue support that studios, media, and critics give to the notion that the world of film is relatively small and knowable in toto by a knowledgeable person. I like A. O. Scott's comments in his coverage of the TIFF in the New York Times:

When critics ask one another, "What have you seen?" what they really want to know is, "What have I missed?"

The honest answer — an admission that haunts dispatches like this one, whether or not the author acknowledges it — is "just about everything." This is not a matter of laziness or lack of will, but of simple mathematics. By the time this year's Toronto International Film Festival ends on Saturday, 328 films will have been screened. Spread over the 10 days of the festival, which began on Thursday, that comes to more than 30 movies a day, which means, according to my bleary-eyed calculations, that to see one movie is to miss about seven others, and that the statistical accuracy of any single critic's impressions of the festival as a whole will be roughly 12.5 percent.

What this suggests is that the Toronto festival, which has become, during the last decade or so, the most important such event in North America, is really 8 or 12 or 35 festivals gathered under one roof. (The numbers are wildly imprecise, and the roof is metaphorical, because the screenings are in shopping-mall multiplexes, college auditoriums and concert halls scattered across this city's sprawling downtown business and entertainment districts.)

As for me, I'm aiming for a statistical accuracy of, say, 9 percent, and doing pretty well so far, if I do say so myself. This assumes I'll be 100 percent accurate on any film that I do manage to see, naturally. How could it be anything less? What I haven't done is post any reactions. I will. But in the precious gaps between movies, I've mostly been trying to carve out moments of quiet. It's been a great festival so far, and most of my must-sees are still in the queue.

To be continued...

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