Alternative Film Guide

A couple of good ones from Mick LaSalle, one of the best film critics around, in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Answering a question about what will be considered the early 21st century’s "best political allegories" on film:

"It depends on who wins the future. That’s the hardest thing to predict because we tend to imagine the future’s relationship with us to be like the present’s relationship with the past, and that’s usually not the case. For example, in 1961 a film critic in Films in Review predicted that 1961 would be remembered as the low point in film decadence. That critic was assuming that, in the future, people would look back on 1961 the way he looked back on the pre-Code days of the early ’30s, as an era of primitive lewdness. Instead, we look back on 1961 as so prim that you have to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s 12 times before you can figure out Holly Golightly is a call girl. So you really never know. I have absolutely no idea, for example, how last year’s Iraq war films will be regarded in 30 years. I could argue it either way."

[Of course, one argument -- and I know that that's not what LaSalle meant -- is that there won't be anyone around to "regard" those Iraq war films one way or the other. Okay, so I'm being a little pessimistic here...]

Answering a question about the morality (or lack thereof) of Juno, which made a conservative woman go ballistic:

"Yes, there were consequences [faced by the 15-year-old Ellen Page character], but she wasn’t burned at the stake, and it takes a lot to satisfy some people. The funny thing is that Juno incenses people on the other side of the divide, too, who see any movie in which an unmarried woman brings a pregnancy to term as evidence of a pro-life conspiracy. Your friend should get together with some of these people. They’d make each other feel a lot better."

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