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July 18, 2005
Janine [hearts] Michael: Basinger on Bay
In the Miami Herald, in a piece where the director refers with annoyance to "the death of cinema from Michael Bay", one of his teachers instructs, citing Ingmar Bergman in the Islander's defense: "Janine Basinger, chairwoman of Connecticut's Wesleyan University Film Studies Department, was the then-18-year-old Bay's first formal film professor. She is also an avid defender.... "I often joke that my tombstone will read `She taught Michael Bay.' ... But I don't think Michael Bay is the devil. I think he's a good filmmaker. He was an award-winning photographer as a high school student, a fully defined visual artist as a kid, and I don't think he approached the medium with the idea of pleasing other people necessarily. Ingmar Bergman said, `Every great filmmaker has to define film on his own terms,' and in a sense, that's right... For Michael, it's about pace and rapid movement. Michael is actually an abstract artist in the way he uses time, space, light and color. He's almost an experimental filmmaker in that regard. He uses the medium in the fastest, sharpest way that it can be used, and if you don't like it, tough luck.'' For a clip highlighting some of the more vigorous, um, Bayhem, click here; the clip's in QuickTime.
Posted by at July 18, 2005 12:00 AM
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