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Against all odds the video's excruciating slowness is somehow enjoyable. Watching a woman or man hold a syrupy Guinness aloft becomes achingly charged with the physical strain of holding aloft the drink still. It's physically uncomfortable to watch, and unnerving how much we have come to expect these stock images to deliver a certain thing, a closure, and when that thing is denied how unbelievably irritating it is. In Ten Seconds or Greater the cinematographer drunk precession away from even the very lame action of chopping vegetables - aggravated by the generic characters doing so without looking at their precarious fingers - is almost nauseatingly annoying, and this endless denial our expectations from what should be recognizable is sort of embarrassingly enjoyable. Why am I enjoying being denied pleasure, this masochistic viewing experience, entering into a sort of bondage contract with the viewing experience, where at any moment one can utter the safe word, look away, and be done with it, but doesn't. And why are stock images pleasure.
