Razzle Dazzle: The Lost World.

"Pixilated, magnified, morphed, torn, stretched, slowed, strobed, smeared and smashed, a 1903 Edison actuality of a fairground ride becomes celluloid putty in the hands of cine-magician and avant-garde legend Ken Jacobs, whose phantasmagoric reconfiguration of turn-of-the-century artifacts finds new and exhilarating expression in Razzle Dazzle: The Lost World, a Tom, Tom the Piper's Son for the digital age." Then Michael Joshua Rowin takes a deep breath and carries on in the L Magazine.

Updated through 6/30.

"An eye-popper and brain-boggler, Razzle Dazzle is also, remarkably, a thing to stir the soul, delivering in its final stretch an astonishing, unexpected political jolt that elevates what appeared to be a mere (if marvelous) formal triumph into a shattering confrontation," writes Nathan Lee in the New York Times. "Arriving at this magic moment makes for one of the most striking imaginative and perceptual adventures since the advent of digital video cinema."

"In a sense, Razzle Dazzle is a continuous loop," writes J Hoberman in the Voice. "The amusement park merges with the film machine; these long-vanished children are riding the celluloid ribbon through the projector. Despite its defined ending, the piece projects an eternal Now as the artist ponders the infinite possibilities that photography (and re-photography) afford to reconstitute the moment. Razzle Dazzle feels endless - not a criticism - because it is."

Earlier: Amy Taubin in Artforum and Daniel Kasman.

At the Anthology Film Archives, today through July 3.

Update: "It looks like a screensaver from hell," writes David Phelps in the Auteurs' Notebook. "I think Jacobs thinks somewhat like I do, that very early silent film was a point of innocence - in content and form alike - to which we can never properly return." Razzle Dazzle "is bitter lament without a bit of celebration."

Update, 6/29: David at videoarcadia argues that Razzle Dazzle and WALL•E make for "the double feature of the year."

Update, 6/30: "Created under the auspices of a pro-imperialist patriotism," writes Andrew Schenker, "Razzle Dazzle shows the domestic flipside of the coin: the mindless leisure that Americans are free to enjoy at home and the attitude of effortless entitlement that constitutes the tainted legacy with which the United States hoped to stamp the rest of the world. Any resemblance to the country's current international situation is, needless to say, wholly intentional."

Posted by dwhudson at June 27, 2008 1:38 AM