sondheim-1 Reviews

NBC News Overnight (1982– )

Brilliant

[10/10 · 22 June 2007]

This show held me together; I'm a videomaker/writer with leftist leanings - and for me this was ground-breaking, one of those moments when everything comes together. It was my peak experience in television - I wish there were reporters and shows like this today. We were all saddened to see it end.

One of the elements I liked so much - the apparent neutrality of the imaging - there were segments without voice-over at all. You'd end up crying watching some sort of truth emerge from the screen. We knew it wouldn't last of course...

I wish she'd return...

Birth (2004)

Strange responses

[10/10 · 29 October 2005]

Having worked in film for years, I have no idea why Birth would receive nothing less than a 10. I don't think American viewers are used to long takes, vis-a-vis Antonioni for example. The plot doesn't resolve; either does life. To hold on a character for, say, 30 seconds, can be brilliant if the intensity is there; in Birth it never lets up. There's no resolution even when there is resolution, i.e. when the affair apparently comes to light. The mechanism of film is revealed in the 'Contains spoiler' warning - even though most great films don't live or die by plot, but by their relationship to the condition of the world.

Meanwhile people get caught up on so-called pedophilia (which is ridiculous in the context of this film) - another symptom as the United States hysterically attempts to hold onto the failure of the nuclear family and its children who are presented - unlike in Birth - as completely and utterly innocent little angels.

• Alan