Doing the pretentious thing and keeping the original Danish, for the sort-of-Dogme production Brothers. It’s a very well-meaning, very (very) well-acted melodrama in the Coming Home or Deer Hunter vein, where experiences in war (this time Afghanistan) bleed back into life at home. Which seems timely, except (given the fairly-obvious storyline and its unmissable echoes of such earlier films) it also seems kind of un- or out-of-timely. I liked it well enough, but I kept wondering… well, okay, and?
And on another note, the always-enlightening year-end discussion of movies is ongoing at Slate.
well-meaning and well-acted??? That sounds like a ringing endorsement! I’ll take ill-meaning and badly-acted any time.
one another note: so I’m at the MLA now, right? and I look through the program trying to find interesting panels to go to. Does the MLA know that there is something called “film studies?” Or television, or popular music, etc.? I think I saw 3 panels and each was devoted to something obscure, one on “Austrian cinema.” hello, MLA, you are so like early twentieth century! overheard a women on the cell phone talking about a colleague who received 16 interviews—apparently she is a Renaissance scholar and she also sings opera and plays the harp. would it be ok to say that this job search thing reeks of class privilege?
I don’t know how appropriate this is for this blog, nor do I know anything about the employment status of other bloggers (so feel free to delete this Arnab) but… the Cinema Studies Program at Oberlin College should be advertising soon for a two-year temporary visiting professor (2006-08) specializing in the “technological and social history of cinema, with a secondary expertize in a cinema center other than Hollywood, such as Japan, Cairo, Bombay or Hong Kong.”
Perhaps the actual ad copy will correct Bombay to Mumbai, but who knows.
Acknowledging one’s class privilege will certainly be a qualification for the job.
only class privilege would allow someone to take such a tenuous position in the first place; it’s nice that so many schools build in an automatic unemployment aspect to their “offerings.” two years later they don’t need this person? so much for Japan, Bombay, etc.!
I agree that schools use temporary positions far too much, even those that should know better. There are situations in which the temporary position is designed to replace someone on leave, and ensure some coverage of an area.
In this case, the program has made a request for a permanent position in this area, and the temporary position is to offer coverage until the permanent position is granted.
But, as I say, the trend towards more and more adjuncts is a very bad thing, and in some cases is nothing more than a cost-cutting measure. To return to movies… there is actually a pretty good documentary on temporary labor in the academy that I use in class — it is a play on the classic ‘Harvest of Shame’ called ‘Degrees of Shame.’
I can put in a small nod to Oberlin’s attempts at fair practice, though–I had a temporary position there, and they had the same goals in mind (trying to secure it as permanent). It was a pretty good place to be.
I am going to have to check out that doc; does it deal with the dismantling of tenure, too?
This has little to do with Brothers any more, but… well, that’s probably a fair comment on the film.
Yeah, sorry to piggy back on your post. Degrees of Shame is only 30 minutes long, and doesn’t have much by the way of analysis. It’s just depressing; it made me thankful I didn’t choose English for doctoral work as the film follows a guy teaching huge intro English courses at three different colleges in LA. He seemed to live in his car.
Teaching English in L.A.! We probably know the guy.