From today's Grauniad:

[zotz]

Greenaway, of course, makes art films; Parker makes movies for Hollywood studios. I'm agnostic regarding the Greenaway films I've seen. They were beautifully photographed and designed, but it wasn't clear to me what they were about. Parker's work, on the other hand, is straightforwardly detestable: dishonest, propagandistic, authority-loving crap of the ilk of Mississippi Burning.

The wonderful Alex Cox, of course, in a brief article from Friday's paper. Parker, of course, saw Greenaway's first film, The Draughsman's Contract, and said on TV that if Greenaway was allowed to make any more films he'd have his children educated abroad. As usual in these cases, I'd love to know whether he subsequently did, as Mr G has made a number of films since - including my own favourite film, the very excellent The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

Cox, of course, makes films also - including Repo Man and, recently, A Revenger's Tragedy.

Comments

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Interesting article.

I loved The Draughtsman's Contract, personally; but it has good frock-coats, and as you know I'm a dreadful style-over-substance merchant.

I'm not sure I've seen any of Parker's films.

Cox is a good critic, and I loved Repo Man, but his Sex Pistols movie was exploitative tripe.

Greenaway's theory (or was it Cox's?) seems related to machinima, as seen on the web in the form of Red versus Blue and written of in some detail in this week's New Scientist. Machinima exploits the fact that it's cheaper, easier and just plain better for some purposes to make a movie by using a game engine than by using actors and cameras. Red versus Blue is definitely worth a look if you've not seen it.