Nossiter's "Liquid Memory"

[Sharon Bowman]

originally posted by Brad L i l j e q u i s t:
... and leftover Roman types.

Nice turn of phrase.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by Brad L i l j e q u i s t:

originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:

originally posted by Brad L i l j e q u i s t:
OK, people, watch Mondovino again with the director's commentary onJust watched it again.

I just don't get the antagonism toward Nossiter and Mondovino. Are you guys just jealous you didn't film it yourself?

No, no, no. It's Nossiter's success I'm jealous of. Please.

I'll try watching it with the director's comments when the semester is over. I just watched Supersize Me the other day and, for now, I think it beats Mondovino.

I was just being hyperbolic. Still, don't quite understand the antagonism towards him from quarters with almost the same outlook. You can't say he hasn't been responsible for a significant part of the decline in Parker's power.

I don't think he's had any noticeable effect on Parker's power. And being uncomfortable with people who share your position but do it badly isn't that unclear to me. I hate Keith Olbermann and I assume one could find conservatives embarrassed by Rush Limbaugh if one looked hard enough.

 

[Yule Kim]

originally posted by nigel groundwater:

originally posted by Brad L i l j e q u i s t:

originally posted by Ken Schramm:

originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
And Scottish people.

Not so much like 'when Harry met Sally' but more like when Harold the Saxon King marched his army North to the battle of Stamford Bridge to kill his traitorous brother Tostig and the invading Norwegian King, Harald Hardrada and his Beserkers and then marched them South within days for his final showdown with William and his Norman invaders. And he might have won that too, despite the gruelling marches with a major battle intervening that had cost him many of his best professional soldiers, had not his left flank got carried away with their success on the high ground and broken ranks to chase the retreating Normans.

Don't forget, that is where Mel Gibson flashes his buttocks, swings around a big sword, gets nailed on a cross, and screams some anti-semitic slurs.

 

[Ian Fitzsimmons]

I was just being hyperbolic. Still, don't quite understand the antagonism towards him from quarters with almost the same outlook. You can't say he hasn't been responsible for a significant part of the decline in Parker's power.

I was kidding too, of course.

I can't understand a lot of the emotional intensity associated with wine personalities. You don't see this kind of debate rage about Siskel and Ebert.

Has Parker's power declined? If so, I'd say it's because he's stopped writing most of his own reviews.

 

[MLipton]

originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:

I can't understand a lot of the emotional intensity associated with wine personalities. You don't see this kind of debate rage about Siskel and Ebert.

You know what they say about academics: the arguments are so intense because the stakes are so low.

Has Parker's power declined? If so, I'd say it's because he's stopped writing most of his own reviews.

There is a widespread perception that the influence of TBPG is on the wane. If true, outsourcing of his reviews is only one of several factors IMO; equally important is the cronyism evident in his outsourcing as well as the rise of alternate sources of criticism on Web. Finally, there is some sentiment that the tastes of the American public, at least, have begun to shift away from the high alcohol, steroidal wines promoted in recent years by TWA.

Mark Lipton

 

[SFJoe]

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

The English in the main are mongrels but in a healthy and affirmative sense of the word.

Interesting recent article in Nature about how one set of invaders basically exterminated the male line of the previous gang in Britain. Will try to dig it up.

If you'd like to negotiate the matter yourself, play the game. (I have. It's long but interesting.)

Anglo-Saxon apartheid?

I should note that this sort of thing is controversial and likely subject to revision. But clearly the Y chromosomes of most modern Brits have Continental origins.

 

[SFJoe]

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

The English in the main are mongrels but in a healthy and affirmative sense of the word. Interesting recent article in Nature about how one set of invaders basically exterminated the male line of the previous gang in Britain. Will try to dig it up.

If you'd like to negotiate the matter yourself, play the game. (I have. It's long but interesting.)

Anglo-Saxon apartheid?

I should note that this sort of thing is controversial and likely subject to revision. But clearly the Y chromosomes of many modern Brits have Continental origins.

 

[SFJoe]

originally posted by MLipton:

originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:

I can't understand a lot of the emotional intensity associated with wine personalities. You don't see this kind of debate rage about Siskel and Ebert.

You know what they say about academics: the arguments are so intense because the stakes are so low.

Has Parker's power declined? If so, I'd say it's because he's stopped writing most of his own reviews.

There is a widespread perception that the influence of TBPG is on the wane. If true, outsourcing of his reviews is only one of several factors IMO; equally important is the cronyism evident in his outsourcing as well as the rise of alternate sources of criticism on Web. Finally, there is some sentiment that the tastes of the American public, at least, have begun to shift away from the high alcohol, steroidal wines promoted in recent years by TWA.

Mark Lipton

I think it's easier to have your own views these days. Support groups like this one help, but there are many sources of information other than TBPG. His ex cathedra pronouncements are lost in the noise in a way they weren't years ago.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by SFJoe:

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

The English in the main are mongrels but in a healthy and affirmative sense of the word.

Interesting recent article in Nature about how one set of invaders basically exterminated the male line of the previous gang in Britain. Will try to dig it up.

If you'd like to negotiate the matter yourself, play the game. (I have. It's long but interesting.)

Anglo-Saxon apartheid?

I should note that this sort of thing is controversial and likely subject to revision. But clearly the Y chromosomes of most modern Brits have Continental origins.

Given the Romans and 1066, just for mild starters, it would be amazing if this were not the case. But what Brits would not have Continental origins ultimately, unless we are guessing a separate human evolution on the British isles. For different reasons, the French and the English would both support such a belief, but it seems unlikely.

 

[BJ]

I guess the bottom line for me with Mondovino is that I think he did a great job getting people to be comfortable and talk off message and more truthfully. He is clearly a charming and erudite guy and I think people let their guard down with him quite a bit. I know I would. He used a very small camera and the whole thing carries a very chummy air. Yeah, there's some Moorian (Moore-ish?) editing, but ultimately what is so fascinating and telling is what people actually just say in the movie. I don't think he manipulated anyone into saying anything they didn't believe; if anything, he put them at enough ease that they actually said it. Everyone gets very long unedited sequences. And it's media 101 that you say what you want to say and nothing more when you're being interviewed, esp. with the camera on. To me what we get is what people are. Every interview was set up well in advance, and in Parker's case was the 2nd time he'd done such an interview. Noone should have been deceived.

For things like the FBI hat, the Reagan letters, etc...well, they were there, weren't they? What if he'd chosen not to show them? We also get to see they drank Haut Brion blanc with Parker, lots of interesting tidbits that give us insight into these people.

I look forward to the book, though honestly what I am reading about it makes me dubious in this case. What I'm really looking forward to is the 10 part Mondovino footage which drops later this month. I am curious if it will be as edited as the film or more in the documentary vein of the one part shown on the DVD.

 

[SFJoe]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

Given the Romans and 1066, just for mild starters, it would be amazing if this were not the case. But what Brits would not have Continental origins ultimately, unless we are guessing a separate human evolution on the British isles. For different reasons, the French and the English would both support such a belief, but it seems unlikely.

It's a different claim than that. People from those islands mostly rode out the ice age in a FSWCE, sure. But there was a big displacement of the male line in particular. Have a glance at the article.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by SFJoe:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

Given the Romans and 1066, just for mild starters, it would be amazing if this were not the case. But what Brits would not have Continental origins ultimately, unless we are guessing a separate human evolution on the British isles. For different reasons, the French and the English would both support such a belief, but it seems unlikely.

It's a different claim than that. People from those islands mostly rode out the ice age in a FSWCE, sure. But there was a big displacement of the male line in particular. Have a glance at the article.

As I understand the article, it's point is that the traditional view of a Saxon invasion in the 5th century infusing the UK gene pool (I don't know why the article refers to this as an Anglo-Saxon invasion as the Angles are a different group) won't explain the number of Saxon genes in the current gene pool and they thus explain this by a notion of reproductive apartheid that, given the economic success of Saxons would have led to greater reproductive success. I have no basis for arguing for this one way or another. It hardly leads to a larger claim that the UK gene pool was ever in any way seriously reproductively isolated. Does anyone really believe that?

In any of these discussions, we need to remember that labels like "Saxon," "Celt," "Frank" etc., while they can usefully label a gene pool (in the sense that black squirrels currently inhabiting the Georgetown campus and those inhabiting the AU campus mark two different gene pools), taken as race names give the illusion of far more genetic stability, even tribal stability, than was the case.

 

[Ian Fitzsimmons]

originally posted by MLipton:

originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:

I can't understand a lot of the emotional intensity associated with wine personalities. You don't see this kind of debate rage about Siskel and Ebert.

You know what they say about academics: the arguments are so intense because the stakes are so low.

Has Parker's power declined? If so, I'd say it's because he's stopped writing most of his own reviews.

There is a widespread perception that the influence of TBPG is on the wane. If true, outsourcing of his reviews is only one of several factors IMO; equally important is the cronyism evident in his outsourcing as well as the rise of alternate sources of criticism on Web. Finally, there is some sentiment that the tastes of the American public, at least, have begun to shift away from the high alcohol, steroidal wines promoted in recent years by TWA.

Mark Lipton

I don't know if you can call David Schildknecht a crony; I wouldn't. I can think of at least one other who might meet the criteria, though.

It seems to me that he shot his brand in the foot over and over again with the caustic editorial tone of his associated discussion forum. To his credit, I think this tone has been substantially amended for several months now, but, on the other hand, I've wondered if critics are just being 'disappeared.'

Well, we're not supposed to take up space here with other boards' business.

 

[Ian Fitzsimmons]

originally posted by Brad L i l j e q u i s t:
I guess the bottom line for me with Mondovino is that I think he did a great job getting people to be comfortable and talk off message and more truthfully. ....

Seriously, I learned a lot from the movie detail and interviews, while pondering the political-economic analysis on the side. How would Noam Chomsky size this up?, I ask myself now. I liked the ending quite a lot.

One of the reasons the handheld footage is so choppy, as I understand it, is that Nossiter often was shooting without the knowledge of his interlocutors. One thing I think some antagonists object to is Nossitor's own lack of candor in filming this way and, allegedly, lack of balance in his editing of the footage.

Myself, I don't have a dog in this fight, as they say.

 

[Keith Levenberg]

Brad--
I agree with pretty much all that. (Back to Nossiter, not Thai cuisine or the Anglo-Saxons.) I just watched the movie again and I think it's a wonderful piece of work. Wonderful that it could be made in the first place, even -- a documentary about all this wine-world arcana. And it also had some beautiful shots and knit all the stories together nicely.

It would have been better without some of the political cheap shots. For example, Nossiter focused on the Reagan photo in Parker's office, but Parker claims there was a photo of Clinton there too that was not shown in the movie. Focusing on the Reagan photo was a juvenile argument ("Republicans are evil, Parker likes Republicans, therefore Parker is evil") whose premises might not even be true (if you get a letter from the President of the United States, you hang it up, duh, even if you voted for the other guy). But some things that were criticized as cheap shots I thought were totally in bounds. Michel Rolland can complain that the film deliberately portrayed him as an asshole and maker of lookalike Parkerized wines, but Rolland certainly volunteered all the ammunition Nossiter needed on that front. I also think Nossiter did a good job of portraying even his "heroes" as flawed personalities with human quirks.

 

[nigel groundwater]

originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Brad--
I agree with pretty much all that. (Back to Nossiter, not Thai cuisine or the Anglo-Saxons.) I just watched the movie again and I think it's a wonderful piece of work. Wonderful that it could be made in the first place, even -- a documentary about all this wine-world arcana. And it also had some beautiful shots and knit all the stories together nicely.

It would have been better without some of the political cheap shots. For example, Nossiter focused on the Reagan photo in Parker's office, but Parker claims there was a photo of Clinton there too that was not shown in the movie. Focusing on the Reagan photo was a juvenile argument ("Republicans are evil, Parker likes Republicans, therefore Parker is evil") whose premises might not even be true (if you get a letter from the President of the United States, you hang it up, duh, even if you voted for the other guy). But some things that were criticized as cheap shots I thought were totally in bounds. Michel Rolland can complain that the film deliberately portrayed him as an asshole and maker of lookalike Parkerized wines, but Rolland certainly volunteered all the ammunition Nossiter needed on that front. I also think Nossiter did a good job of portraying even his "heroes" as flawed personalities with human quirks.

And I in turn agree with all of your post other than the first possible 'interpretation' of the rationale for showing Reagan [and Chirac] photographs rather than those of Clinton - or Mitterand who was also there although Nossiter says he didn't notice him.

Nossiter says in a very long post elsewhere that he could have shown both US Presidents as well as Chirac [and might then have simply received a different set of rationalised accusations] but simply sought to juxtapose the possible contradiction inherent in someone with Parker's Nader-like philosophy who would also proudly display a photograph of President Reagan. As you say "if you get a letter from the President of the United States, you hang it up, duh, even if you voted for the other guy" which is the human [and therefore, in his view, sympathetic] point that Nossiter claims he was trying to make. I certainly didn't [and still don't] see it as a cheap shot. And the contradictions that exist in all people were on display for all the real characters in the film.

Speaking personally I had no feeling of anything negative about the use of Reagan and Chirac [after all he presented the Legion dHonneur to RP] when watching the film but got the simple vibe that most if not all people would have the President [any President/Head of State] on show in their home if so honoured. Surely most Americans have no reason to regard Reagan as evil even if they supported the other party. I thought Parker came across well in the film.

I think your comments re Rolland are fair too and Nossiter claims that Rolland set his own scene and chose what to do in the half day he gave to Nossiter. He is also emphatic that Rolland, a very practised media-savvy individual, controlled what was said on camera by simply excluding Nossiter and his camera when he wanted to - "leaving him in the car with the chauffeur". At no point was anything that was filmed 'off the record' as was claimed later.

 

[SFJoe]

originally posted by nigel groundwater, Keith Levenberg:
...

I don't think this is the place to go into it, but I'd rather be my own judge of my views on Reagan and also of hanging letters from the famous on my walls. Please, folks, don't presume to speak for everyone.

Some of us, for instance, have strongly held views on interior decor.

 

[nigel groundwater]

originally posted by SFJoe:

originally posted by nigel groundwater, Keith Levenberg:
...

I don't think this is the place to go into it, but I'd rather be my own judge of my views on Reagan and also of hanging letters from the famous on my walls. Please, folks, don't presume to speak for everyone.

Some of us, for instance, have strongly held views on interior decor.

SFJoe, I will clearly have to use designations like 'I' and 'speaking personally' even more often to ensure it doesn't appear I am speaking for everyone, particularly you - although I doubt from your earlier posts that anyone might have thought so :)

In addition I confess I didn't use 'IMO' as I usually do. Must try harder!

I like your 'interior decor' protest though.

 

[VLM]

originally posted by SFJoe:

originally posted by nigel groundwater, Keith Levenberg:
...

I don't think this is the place to go into it, but I'd rather be my own judge of my views on Reagan and also of hanging letters from the famous on my walls. Please, folks, don't presume to speak for everyone.

Some of us, for instance, have strongly held views on interior decor.

Oh yeah, a fucking leftist banker are we...

Does Nossiter know how right wing de Montille is?

 

[Bruce G.]

originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
One of the reasons the handheld footage is so choppy, as I understand it, is that Nossiter often was shooting without the knowledge of his interlocutors. One thing I think some antagonists object to is Nossitor's own lack of candor in filming this way and, allegedly, lack of balance in his editing of the footage.

Ian:

What is the source of these claims? It's the first I've heard that Nossiter used a hidden camera, and I'd think that quite unfair.... given the controversial nature of some of the matters being discussed, the distinction between "off record" and "for the record" would be of great importance.
I have a hard time believing that Nossiter would behave in such a fashion, so would appreciate any input on this.

Cheers,