Sunday, October 07, 2007

Please release me

Well, I'm playing with the big blogs now. Cultural Snow has received its first proper press release. Of course, I get press releases all the blimmin' while, most of them a throwback to my previous existence a music hack. I think I'd feel a bit left out if I didn't get dozens of reminders about a weekender of Slovenian twuntcore being held at a disused greengrocer's in Shoreditch, or a debut album of lame Sonic Youth covers by three bisexual Mormons from San Diego.

But this is the first one that's specifically asking for inclusion in Cultural Snow. It's about a film called Redirecting Eddie, which stars the one who played the totty in orange knickers in Slaughterhouse-Five and the wife of that strange-looking shock jock who said nasty things about some basketball players. Oh, and Drew Barrymore's mum. Drew Barrymore's mum's in it, I mean, that strange-looking shock jock didn't say anything untoward about Drew Barrymore's mum. Moreover, the director, one Laurence N Kaldor, has one leg, one eye and a law doctorate, which is something you can't say about Tarantino, can you?

But uh-oh... he's made another blimmin' film about making a film. Now there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but when Kaldor himself namechecks four different antecedents in his "DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT" (puh-lease) doesn't that suggest it's a somewhat crowded arena? Maybe someone should make a film about making a film about making a film...

A legend in his own lifetime once told me that you shouldn't mention press releases when you're writing reviews or the like, because it reinforces the them-and-us barrier between the critic and the general punter who's not in the PR loop. So forget I mentioned that release. Just imagine I'm being tiresomely postmodern (not a tremendously taxing metaphysical leap), and that I'm writing about writing about a film.

3 comments:

Jun Okumura said...

So here I am, writing about writing about writing about…

Oh my God are those Drew Barrymores mom and you know what Im talking about

Tim F said...

Note: the picture is actually of Valerie Perrine, who appeared in Slaughterhouse-Five and several other oddball classics in the 1970s. This is Drew Barrymore's mum. (Not suitable for work.)

Dick Headley said...

I like a postmodern review/press release myself. Adds an extra dimension. Feel free to quote me.