MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: HOLES (2003)

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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

HOLES (2003)

Andrew Davis, a frustratingly inconsistent director, never establishes the consistency of tone essential for this kid’s adventure to take off. It’s a tricky story about juvie jail, bullies’ comeuppance (adult & juvie), lost treasure & an absent-minded inventor dad, entwined with a parallel flashback tale of a magical onion patch, interracial woes, revenge robberies, & a tube of lipstick (before such an item existed) that solves everything. Films as varied as Mary Pickford ’s SPARROWS/’26, Disney ’s TREASURE ISLAND/’50 and THE WITCHES /’90 triumphed in this terrain, but just look at the ill-matched styles of HOLES’ three villains: there’s Sigourney Weaver ’s realism, Jon Voight ’s buffoonery, & Tim Blake Nelson ’s scarily reasonable unreasonableness. (He’s great, by the way.) So, while the production is impressive & the story pleasingly "rhymed," HOLES never lives up to its potential. The two sub-par kiddie leads don’t help, either.

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A last thought before we go.

Well, enough from me. But before we sign off, here's a great quote from Emile Zola's L'OEUVRE (THE MASTERPIECE), which is about painting rather than the yet to be invented medium of film, but which points a fine critical eye toward the whole idea of art criticism. It's a good, if chilly, thought to keep in mind, especially when you surf the net.

"Has it ever struck you that posterity may not be the fair, impartial judge we like to think it is?

"Suppose the artist's paradise turned out to be as nonexistent as the Catholics, and future generations prove just as misguided as the present one and persisted in liking pretty pretty dabbling better than honest to goodness painting. There are some accepted masterpieces for which I myself wouldn't give a twopenny damn.

"Classical training has given us a wrong view of everything and forces us to acclaim as geniuses a lot of fellows who are no more than well-balanced, facile painters, while what we might really prefer is the work of more emancipated but less even artists known only to an initiated few. Immortality at present depends entirely on the average, middle-class mind and is reserved only for the names that have been most forcibly impressed upon us while we were still unable to defend ourselves...

"Perhaps that's the sort of thing that's best left unsaid. It's certainly the sort of thing that gives me the shudders!"- Emile Zola

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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

HOLES (2003)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE