Screen Machine

Uncategorized: Jake Wilson VerbosityWatch: WATCHMEN

Ah, Jake Wilson the rookie film reviewer of The Age, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways: (1) You actually care about the politics of cinema even though you have a tendency to hate on films that don’t share your particular viewpoint. (2) You co-edited Senses of Cinema? You obviously have an educated background. That’s pretty cool with us. (3) You love words. You love words so unconditionally that you’ll add in flowery sentences into reviews regardless of whether those words ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE.

I gave you a hard time for this once for your Gran Torino review, perhaps suggesting that your use of simile was the result of a drunken stupor, but I’ve since discovered that this is just the way you roll and you’re not gonna change your ways just because the man is getting you down. Here is our favourite part of your review of Watchmen:

By imitating the conventions of another medium, he not only dramatises the idea of belatedness but opens up another kind of gap, between the page and the screen. Still, unlike Moore and Gibbons he seems only half aware that every adaptation must be some kind of betrayal – or remain a shadow of its source, like a pattern sketched in the dust of a dead planet.

Just what is the “idea of belatedness”? How is the difference between an adaptation and its source akin to a “pattern sketched in the dust of a dead planet”? I don’t know and I don’t care because your words are so damn BEAUTIFUL! Thank you Jake Wilson.

Brad Nguyen is a co-editor of Screen Machine. He studied Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne, was the film reviewer for Triple R Breakfasters and has written for Senses of Cinema.

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