Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

I HEARTILY recommend the movie "Il Mio Viaggio en Italia" directed by Scorcese. It is not of the "consumer guide" school of criticism, but rather "such and such makes me feel magical, and I want you to feel this way too". Magic!

Ebert's tastes:
* Usually thinks favorably of documentaries. He named Hoop Dreams the best film of the 90s, and he called Gates of Heaven (a *wonderful* doc about a pet cemetery) one of his all-time favorite movies.
* Usually overlooks flaws in favor of experimentation. He was very impressed with Natural Born Killers because of the risks it took, and didn't penalize it for being, uhm, self-indulgent.
* Likes sexy movies. The guy WROTE Beyond the Valley of the Dolls fer cryin' out loud.
* Doesn't buy into hype. He (or his paper) pays for all his own expenses at press junkets, instead of enjoying their freebies, I heard. Sometimes I think he actually penalizes hype. For example, he liked Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels but didn't like Snatch (which I thought was nearly as good).
* Usually likes philosophical movies.
* Likes Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell, and Angelina Jolie. This explains the positive reviews for Tomb Raider, Original Sin, Riding in Cars with Boys, Scream 2, etc.
* Reviews films within their genre. If I'm not mistaken, he caught a lot of flak for recommending some Benji movie and giving a thumbs-down to Full Metal Jacket the same week. I think his stance was that Benji, as a kids' movie, was good. Full Metal Jacket, being uneven and unsatisfying, was a Vietnam movie that didn't deliver.

The movie reviewers for the Onion's AV Club are usually pretty tough customers, so when they strongly recommend something, I usually take note.

Also recommended: Vern. See for yourself.

Removing the self-indulgence from "NBK" would remove 70% of the satire.

this is what s. zacharek said abt attack of the clones. it is just one of MANY reasons why she is grebt

and yes lucid and clear is redundant.

I agree completely. Well, make that 75%. The film *had* to be completely unrestrained. That said, watching Oliver Stone masturbate is not agreeable to everyone. Some care, some don't.

I do think that in general most film reviewers are cockfarmers. They seem to fall into two camps - either they are Empire-style chasers of whatever's popular, or else they are up their own arses pretentious film afficionados.

I don't think I've ever read a written movie review except to glance across it when browsing a (usually outdated) newspaper.

It wouldn't matter anyway because I like (almost) everything I see (I don't watch suspense movies, so I don't get a chance to not like them).

I do like analyses of movies though, no matter how the author has read the movie. Analyses rock!

I think I will go to bed now though. Thanks for reminding me of the ungodly o'clock that it is.

This guy consistenly blows me away with very short capsule reviews. And since there is a very high chance I fucked that link up here it is again: http://leonardo.spidernet.net/Artus/2386/

sound pretty good to me;

anyway, that critic can't talk: she has actual commercials splattered ludicrously through her text.

the best British newspaper film writer is Romney in the IoS, I think...

...but only because David Thomson now has an American passport.

David Thomson is the king of kings but he does suffer a bit from Meltzer's disease - ie modern cinema is rub. Bradshaw continues the great Guardian tradition of utterly shite film critics (Malcolm, Richard Williams etc.) Does Nigel Andrews still write for the FT? He wrote a fantastic slag job of 'Phantom Menace' (which I know = shooting fish in a barrel, but in this case his criticisms were utterly OTM and made w/ gd humour).

Antonia Quirke in the IOS is prob. the worst 'serious' newspaper critic that I know abt.

The shark fin canapes were nice afterwards and she had a nice pink top on.

Yeah, because that's her doing, not Salon's.

Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times is pretty solid, and deserves respect for having raised James Cameron's ire for panning Titanic when it first came out. Also, Paul Tatara used to do a good job reviewing movies for cnn.com, but it appears that he's not writing for them anymore.

Not really: he is always praising new films. His sense of the moral is one thing that sets him apart from many; so, as my editor once said re. Fast-Talking Dames, is his ability with ambivalence.

>>> Bradshaw continues the great Guardian tradition of utterly shite film critics (Malcolm, Richard Williams etc.)

I don't think I see what's so awful about Bradshaw. Certainly Malcolm became a slug, but I don't think Williams awful either.

>>> Antonia Quirke in the IOS is prob. the worst 'serious' newspaper critic that I know abt.

She's still in the IoS?? I thought she'd moved on. I heard her on Stuart Maconie's R2 show (!!), where she was irritating re. S&S Top Movies etc. Is she meant to be foxy? (I am going by comments above.)

Actually, AQ's worst flaw surely = too much casual swearing in print. Unforgivable.

Surprisingly, among the NYT crew, I've really been digging A.O. Scott's writing lately. I wish he'd write about music in the same earnest, bookish way. Seriously! He's great. Elvis hasn't been doing much for me these days. End of year best-of lists comparison!

A.O. Scott

1. Talk to Her
2. The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat)
3. Adaptation
4. Far From Heaven
5. The Pianist
6. Spirited Away
7. Storytelling
8. Gangs of New York
9. Lovely and Amazing
10. Punch Drunk Love

Elvis Mitchell

1. Bloody Sunday
2. Catch Me If You Can
3. Morvern Callar
4. Paid in Full
5. Personal Velocity
6. Spirited Away
7. Talk to Her
8. 24 Hour Party People
9. What Time is it There?
10. Y Tu Mama Mambien

I haven't read him in a while. But I was always of the opinion that he was a good writer and a terrible critic -- very impetuous and hotheaded, and his theories on race were either honest and incisive or paranoid and overreaching, depending on how willing I was to go along with him. The other regular New York Press film critic, Matt Zoller Seitz, is often very good (haven't read him in a while either -- I've kinda given up on the Press because the conservatism over there is getting really out of control).

For comedic value, I like these guys. Ever wonder what the 'moral rating' of the film you were watching was?

The others are far, far too pretentious... (I'm looking at you Michael Atkinson of the Village Voice, IM LOOKING AT YOU)

Ebert can be useful to me occasionally as a buying guide but I generally don't read him for his prose. And Roeper...good god, man, how did that guy get his job?

1. SPIRITED AWAY
2. ABOUT SCHMIDT
3. TALK TO HER
4. PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE
5. TME OUT
6. IN PRAISE OF LOVE
7. I'M GOING HOME
8. MAHAGONNY
9. WINDTALKERS
10. WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE

I'm realizing, though, that in some cases, I tend to trust publications more than I trust individual critics. When I'm looking for reviews on MRQE or Rotten Tomatoes, I'll click on any critic at the New York Times, Village Voice, New Yorker, Salon, or the Chicago Reader (which is mostly Rosenbaum but sometimes J.R. Jones). Beyond that, I also read Ebert and David Edelstein (Slate), both of whom are the only critics their publications employ.

In most cases, Ebert is the first critic I'll check. Last night, looking for reviews of The Company, I read (in order) Ebert, Charles Taylor, and Elvis Mitchell.

I like many internet pseudo-critics. And reading Armond White is usually a good time, though more so after seeing the movie. Actually, to my taste in criticism-reading, the best critics are the ones to be read after seeing the movie rather than before. Maybe this is why I don't like reading Ebert so much.

Agreed. I never read full-length reviews before I see a movie -- only capsules. This, of course, is what makes Rosenbaum such a compelling critic -- if a part of the movie that would ordinarily be considered a "spoiler" is worth discussing, he'll discuss it without apology.

I don't pay much attention to actual reviews until after I see a film. I'm more interested in seeing how my thoughts compared to Zacharek, the NY Times and VVoice people, the Washington Post, Chris Vognar of the Dallas Morning News (my professor one semester) and a few others (though not all of them for every film I see).

I like reviewers who are willing to judge movies on their own merits rather than against some perceived 'greatness' standard. Zacharek, especially, is good at this, and Ebert.

Rosenbaum, I feel mixed. The moralistic tone he takes on some films (Mystic River comes to mind) bothers me. It's too simplistic and black and white for me.

usually, the more I read of a critic's work, the less interesting I find them, eventually. even a lot of Pauline Kael's stuff doesn't hold up as well as I'd like it to - good as the writing is, a lot of her reactions to movies seem flaky and ill-thought-out.

(I think for the time being it should only be applied to food, at least until everyone straightens their heads out)

Peter Travers must be destroyed, along with the rest of the RS staff.

Scott Tobias has always been and always will be among my favorite on the internet. Up there with Steve Erickson.

I'd just like to recognise the great opening shot from N., which was exactly my reaction to the title.

Yeah and indeed .

Even if this were possible it would be a bad idea, but it isn't, so it is. SZ might well be the worst critic to have an international profile. I'm no Kael fan but SZ isn't fit to polish PK's glasses.

Kehr's often spot-on and to the point; he got The Ice Harvest, and I often consult the many Brief Reviews he has here:

http://onfilm.chicagoreader.com/search/briefs

(to wit)

Bullitt

Steve McQueen as a tres chic San Francisco cop, though the real star is his sports car. There isn't much here, and what there is is awfully easy. With Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Vaughn, Robert Duvall, and a chase sequence that achieved classic status mainly by going on too long; Peter Yates directed this 1968 feature. 113 min.

My list:

Jonathan Rosenbaum
Dave Kehr
J. Hoberman
Michael Atkinson
Dennis Lim
Adrian Martin
Kent Jones
Philip Lopate (not really a critic as such, though)
Steve Erickson
Stewart Klawans
WSWS guys
David Sterritt
Tony Rayns

x-p

Maybe J Hoberman.

(you're right though, his writing on acting is great.)

Except Wes Anderson, apparently!

Call it a hunch.

WHY?

You're a hard man, Alex.

I am here all afternoon to pepper your board with the obvious.

Of which there is basically like none.

Reading film criticism is about as fun as watching paint dry.

Alex quoting a Gene Hackman private-eye character pretending to be an Eric Rohmer critic! C'mon man, that's extreme -- there is no good MUSIC criticism...

It was hilarious.

xp

(multiple xpost)

(If I haven't ruined the joke for you by now, here's the stake-driver's confession: at the very start I thought the jaymcfox WAS the nabiscofox, causing the now-classic ILX-meme to flood my brain)

really don't like Zacharek anymore. don't get Thomson a-tall

xp

Actually, David Thomson would do a good job of that yes.

Yes well, I was exagerrating. I just haven't heard of David Thomsom and Kent Jones.

I guess what it comes down to is that film criticism is inadequate for making me want to go see a movie. It's better for explaining/discussing a film after I've seen it, but usually by the time I have seen it I don't want to read about it as much as I want to talk about it. Music criticism is the exact opposite though. Music criticism makes me want to hear (or not hear) music.

Zacharek, like Kael, I've liked for the writing more than the taste.

Like some have said, I read critics in detail to crystallize my feelings about a film after I've seen it. Just saw this rather baffling Claire Denis film The Intruder and I'm at sea given the absence of available discussion about it.

Cheshire was so good in NY Press; does he have another gig?

Can music criticism RUIN music like film criticism can? Has anyone ever heard a song and thought "that drum break would be way more fun and exciting and surprising if Lester Bangs hadn't told me it was coming"?

Adam, you should NEVER read a review in any depth before seeing the movie. Just skim very briefly to see whether it's worth checking out. Well, I guess some writers don't give away too many plot points, but better to err on the safe side. Like Morbius said, read after seeing.

xpost

http://worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/usstates/aaposter/allen.jpg

Met him at a party recently, I believe he's writing reviews for his hometown newspaper in North Carolina or Texas somewhere. Nice guy.

Can music criticism RUIN music like film criticism can?

ask gear

Armond White, Secret ILXor!

http://mollyhaskell.com/

Eric H well worth reading, too:

http://cansesclasseled.com

http://www.rockandrollbadboy.com/videos/celebrities/siskel-and-ebert-argue/

Dr. M: I hardly trust myself.

Filmbrain on Cinemarati on White.

dunno bout the opinions but I like the writing

-- gypsy mothra (meetm...), December 2nd, 2005.

OTM. the part where he winks after being regurgitated by the snake...my lord, it fills me with JOY just thinking about it.

Haha... thanks; not to sound corny, but I'm much more concerned with people liking my writing than I am with people being interested in my opinions. That was the main reason I decided to do away with star ratings, et al.

That whole Bonnie & Clyde musical epilogue to Stuck is sorta Jerrylike-indulgent, in fact.

i like the adrian martin/j-ro axis, but i suppose i less and less stay in the loop, foerign-langauge films wise. i don't really get a lot of the love going to, in recent years, taiwanese or chinese cinema, i don't get the 'metaphysical' aesthetic used in their support. so i don't feel that much trust for anyone.

a lot of this has to do with her having just filed 6,000 perfect words, on time, to my exact specs. but hey. like i say, i'm biased.

"The New World" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). There is some intense, bloodless violence and the beautiful underage lead actress may cause cardiac arrest among some viewers.

yup, the critics write those lines. they are sometimes pretty funny.

"directed between naps by Rob Reiner"

But still.

Yeah, I recall a damned fine piece on Polanski's MacBeth and a great history of the Hollywood Roman Epic.

I cannot stand Catherine Tate. Shrill and witless. Gaahhh!

Damien Love has good taste by and large. He stuck his neck out for Catterick and wrote very well on the Scorcese Dylan documentary. And he always points out interesting 70s US indie films and weirdo horror flicks that are on at 2 in the morning. Only thing he loved I wasn't so keen on was the Chris Isaak show, which was trying to be Larry Sanders with surreal asides but didn't really work.

I've never missed Gene Siskel so much.

"I think it’s a major cultural disaster for the English-speaking left-wing that Cahiers du cinéma caught the fashion when it did – first with the Nouvelle Vague and then again in May 1968 – and that Positif didn’t. [...] Now I come to think of it, Positif throughout the ‘60s was fed by a double stream, of anarcho-Surrealism and of Marxism, that combined aspects of two alternative extremes — the hippie years as a kind of neo-anarcho-Surrealism, and the rebirth of Marxism. But English-speaking film criticism has been spinning between a right-bank aestheticism and a sort of bourgeois radicalism."

"Moreover, one reads against one’s own opinions, doesn’t one? Sometimes one only realises a movie is not being understood or needs defining or attacking by what one’s colleagues say. And then again some disagreements are very affectionate, you know. Grateful, like a friend whom one meets to have arguments with."

http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com/2006/04/cinema-dead-and-alive-interview-with.html

"The success of films like 'Crash' and 'Syriana' represent the creeping erosion of cinematic values by television values. [Judging by the Oscars,] the filmmaking community considers those films artistic. But to me, 'Crash' is the opposite of artistic. Somebody on the news pointed out that on the Village Voice Critics Poll it was #66. It was so far down. It’s not like the Hollywood community said, “Look, the critics have embraced this film!” A lot of critics cried bullshit on it. Nonetheless, that kind of value is overtaking traditional cinematic values just in terms of very basic entertainment terms Hollywood is used to dealing with. That is a terrible phenomenon, too, but it is not a matter of a fluke this year. It’s an ongoing process and the more you see this validated in forums like the Oscars, the more that will become the definition of film art."

But yr skepticism isn't always sound; opera, Broadway and jazz have gone to hell.

Has no one ever linked to Cheshire's "Death of Film / Decay of Cinema" essay from '99?

http://www.nypress.com/print.cfm?content_id=243

“Film refers to the old, celluloid-based technology; movies refer to motion pictures as entertainment; and cinema refers to motion pictures as art.”

People sure read that Cheshire interview (and his linked reviews and essays) fast...

"TV, from which (big surprise) Gaghan emerged, is all about the unintended atomization of meaning: momentary effects, big, empty gestures and the glinting impression of substance where there actually is none. As TV continues to erode cinema aesthetics, I'm afraid we'll see lots more movies like Crash and Syriana, facile mini-series crammed into two hours and pumped up on steroids of self-regard."

Hahaha ok fair enough. Who is that Buffy the Vampire Slayer dude? He's another Joel Surnow. Or Joel Surnow is another him. Whatever. Tho I have to say, you must admit that Kiefer Sutherland has the most exciting life of any man who ever lived.

xpost has Keifer had plastic surgery? Every time I look at him now his lips seem blubbery.

momentary effects, big, empty gestures and the glinting impression of substance where there actually is none.

OH WAIT WHO DOES THAT SOUND LIKE

The idea that art and entertainment are two wholly separate entities and not two circles with a central overlap kind of freaks me out, but I guess it's akin to "TV Values" and "Liberal Media."

xpost oh the Sopranos is just ok. I tried to watch it because one of my best buds was all about it bout it and I just really kind of was a little bored off and on. Sometimes interesting but definitely overrated in my opinion--though of course if I wasn't expecting it to be greatest thing ever coming into it I might've been more receptive.

This and the comment about how acclaimed show viewing isn't necessary meaning for shit are the best things said in the current discussion.

Replace "TV" with "Film" and it's just as meaningless.

In any case, it's not as if I haven't seen my share of "cinema" as being defined by Cheshire here, but like Ally, the idea that "cinema" and "movies" don't have some major Venn diagram shit going on is absolutely mind-boggling to me. And you can't seriously insist that "television values" is not a coded way of saying "LOL @ teh stupid proles."

the best films>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>the best tv shows

to answer the thread question, J Hoberman is great

"No, you're supposed to say movies don't matter, that's what you're arguing."

phil (I don't remotely think you're a dummy), it's possible that the makers of (mainstream) (network) TV assume the 'proles' are dumber than they are, which results in the LCDness.

And if we don't make some kind of distinction between "cinema" and "movies," people will almost always assume you're talking about the Queen Latifah-The Rock spectrum rather than the Nicole Holofcener-Tsai ming-Liang one. (see every ILE film thread ever)

There's some question-begging going on here.

x-post EW was iffy on "Friends With Money" because of teh Aniston. Anyone seen it? Opinions?

OTM. most overrated show ever!

This is totally true (as is yr best movies greater than best tv equation), but with the caveat that I would say "these days at least" indicates an increase in quality of television (thanks to cable and its reduction of restrictions on the form) and not a decrease in the quality of movies over time.

Keep doin that strawman workout, gabb -- "genius" was never raised. I mights as well have said Haneke or Paul Weitz, anybody who's not a barrelscraper.

No one is addressing the specifics of inherent TV vs cinema aesthetics Cheshire is talking about, what a surprise.

Well, see phil, I utterly disagree with your point, given the ADHD butchery of Chicago.

What IS very interesting in the interview is his discussion of film criticism as a dying breed, and a highly unfortunate casualty of the internet age that is indeed.

I admit to having to struggle to continue reading after the laughable Eisenstein/Godard line, I mean that could've been written into a Linklater "comedy". Probably spoken by Ethan Hawke.

i think the main function of tv is familiarity. seeing the same faces and personalities every week or day.

What are cinematic values?

not sure...

Take that crap back to the kitchen, it's underdone.

anyway, film much less important to me than music, but if i want to get a sense of what's good, i'll mostly look to rosenbaum for the gut-check, with the understanding that his sensibility isn't precisely the same. i'll go to arguably closer-in-sensibility ebert for a clearer sense of what the experience of the movie is like, and what it is 'about', with the belief that there are certain kinds of films he just doesn't get.

i wonder if there's an alternate reality movie-oriented ilx out there somewhere where all the music discussions suck

You could probably strike "film" from that sentence and still be OTM.

New Times hates intelligent crit. And paying writers.

That's pretty vague and maybe not very useful until it's qualified more specifically (which I'm not up to at the moment and might have a hard time articulating). It's also a pretty complicated issue and has a lot to do with the the equally complicated issues of watching films on DVD or video and speaking about them as film.

This is such an ancient claim.

Gear totally OTM there.

That said, Hawks is a major blind spot for me. Of the handful I've seen, only Gentlemen Prefer Blondes does anything for me.

Either of them could crank out hour-long vignettes that don't really go anywhere but pack a punch all the same. This would neither confirm nor dispute the point of the thread.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, produced by Jim Henson (New Line) [four monocles]
Walter Monheit says: “Terrapinrific! A snapping good yarn! Dontello is the thinking man’s Stallone!"

-- Dr Morbius (wjwe...), April 12th, 2006.

it's YOU who's on the kool-aid, man. fuck a t m-l.

Matthew Zoller Seitz: "TV has not produced an Antonioni or Wong Kar-Wai, but there are little Howard Hawkses running around all over the place."

this is really quite amusing because WONG KAR WAI STARTED OUT IN TV, MAKING SOAPS, MKAY?

Walter Monheit. (He would have had something good to say about Like Mike, geeta!)

-- rosemary (rosemarygilber...), September 4th, 2002. (rosemary)

Eric, you really found Enrique smart at some point?

morbius, what's good about tsai m-l? it would be ok if you explained why you like these overhyped auteurs, but you never do, it's just assumed that because adrian martin or whoever reps for them they must be great. so, 20 words on why he's worth it, plz.

I don't ever remember saying that, nor rescinding it. Is he a film critic?

passantino, trife, blount, buttez -- the place is chocka with characters. and i hardly know who jaymc is.

xpost

Eric, if Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is yr best Hawks so far, maybe Monkey Business. I prefer the wry testosterone fests myself (tho Angie Dickinson is the yeast of Rio Bravo).

Zwan, if you read through to Cheshire's 1999 piece, he dates it all the way back to Jaws in 1975, but even then I think he's late by a decade or more.

This is also OTM re: lateness, though I still am unconvinced even by Cheshire that quite a lot of the "tv values" didn't exist in movies all along (not just mostly forgotten or hope-to-forget stuff, either).

Yeah, I didn't really like Twentieth Century or Monkey Business much. (Only Angels is yet to be viewed and I have high hopes.) I accept the Hawks situation as my loss, as of yet.

Still too busy trying to snare Vlada Petric in Bright Leaves.

it was just a joke, jesus is sad when people really do imitate Dark Shadows.

xpost what the hell are "DVD values" now? I'm going to claim it's "Pop Up Video Values" that are ruining movies and stick with that, see how many people I can convince.

it's plain as day that there is no essence of the apparatus 'cinema' -- it's motion picture technology put to this or that purpose, and even the 90 minute feature form changes, has changed radically, and always has.

x-post re: "DVD values"

this literaly landed in my inbox from another list:

"April 13, 2006
Re: Scatology
From: David Sterritt

Has anyone mentioned "La Grande bouffe," the 1973 Marco Ferreri film? Higher up the artistic scale is Godard's intricate "Numero Deux," which uses conspitation as a central metaphor and signals its multivalent concerns with same right from the title.

David Sterritt, Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor of Language, Literature and Culture
Maryland Institute College of Art
Chairman, National Society of Film Critics
Programming Associate, Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd Street Y
Special Correspondent, The Christian Science Monitor
Professor Emeritus of Theater and Film, Long Island University"

And yeah, the proles are dumber than they've ever been.

k. does that mean you'll cite actual examples?

The Sopranos, Sex in the City, Six Feet Under, Queer as Folk...

"every theme and plot point being presented explicitly (thru dialogue or action)"

cos without dialogue or action, you have something like an empty screen.

Poor, rural, uneducated Depression-era audiences to thread.

I work at a video store, and believe me they do. A LOT more than shows that are off the air.

xpost Wow!!

cos without dialogue or action, you have something like an empty screen.

this sounds like the best movie ever!

cos without dialogue or action, you have something like an empty screen.

...

I can't imagine just renting the show for the show itself. Weird.

Now plz to continue blatantly ignoring everything I say and making snarky comments elsewhere, it silently entertains several people and quite frakly me at this point.

-- Dr Morbius (wjwe...), April 13th, 2006.

oh! the pwnage!

how to come back, i just don't know...

Is it really that weird? The only TV I watch is music videos (or stations I wish were playing music videos), so if I do bother to watch a show, it's through DVD. Admittedly I get to see them for free, but it's a lot more enjoyable than waiting once a week to catch a show with ads. People also get to see another episode immediately on the same disc. I assume it's more popular to watch shows on DVD than on TiVo.

x-post Family Guy is kind of the classic example (Though adult swim helped too)

and while we are at it, go read Ebert on BI:2

Nicole Kidman is great in The Portrait of a Lady.

See the Seitz blog link comments for multiple angles on TV, film, distribution.

http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com/2006/04/cinema-dead-and-alive-interview-with_15.html

"...The rise of documentaries is related to the decline of European auteurs, and the failure of significant American auteurs to arise from and remain in the independent world in very significant numbers. If you look at the whole Sundance phenomenon, there was such promise there, but while you’ve got a few interesting directors coming up, most of them just go on to the majors or whatever. In the past, people would go to the independent theaters and art theaters for foreign films, and specifically the great tradition of European films. That has dried up."

Also, Seitz quotes Dave Kehr in the Comments: "In other words, ‘straight-to-video’ once meant ‘not good enough to be shown in theaters.’ Now it means ‘too good to be shown in theaters.’ That’s the reality.”

this is only wrong insofar as the studio/star system that made grahame/lombard possible died 45 years ago; but kidman is certainly 'as good'.

the studios were quite happy to let them make lots of basically quite similar films though, cos that's how genres work. there's something to be said for it, i guess, but not that much.

Ignoring for a moment that 'straight-to-video' still pretty much means the former -- it's still largely a ghetto for no- to mid-budget genre stuff by nobodies and for stuff that didn't get picked up by distributors -- what he's leaving out is the potential it has to increase the audience for this stuff. Twenty five years ago, people who didn't have access to indie/arthouse/repertory/etc. theaters would never, ever, ever get to see these movies. Now they might be able to get it off of Netflix or at Hollywood Video or what have you, if the movies are properly advertised, marketed, reviewed, etc. (The potential for reviews by key critics increases, too, if they don't have to wait for a screening that might never happen but can review from wherever they happen to be via DVD.)

All that, too, is eliding the fact that a lot of these movies are far, far, far from "too good" for theaters or anyplace else. Sturgeon's Law, etc.

that's interesting. in the uk lots of films get a nominal theatre release just so the film will get reviewed: my hunch is no-one bothers to review dtv stuff unless the marketing dept gets their act together.

The studio system would definitely have made a film in which AIDS is barely mentioned and the lesbianism is "tasteful" (see The Children's Hour)

This looks like a terrific fite, I wish I had got in earlier. On the TV / Cinema ?Mobile Phone debate, I think that certain media tend towards certain shot choices (TV is almost by nature more close up friendly) but this does not apropos lead to firm TV / Cinema / Mobile Phone / Play aesthetic choices when it comes to storytelling. Nevertheless, the play - cinema/TV dynamic does lead to certain ways of telling a story which cannot be done easily on stage (time lapse, multiple viewpoints, close-up) which can influence the semantic language of the presentation.

xpost

But those aren't the ones he's talking about. That Assayas' Clean -- an English language film, with 2 different types of 'names' in Maggie Cheung and Nick Nolte -- took THREE YEARS to get distributed here is a scandal.

what the fuck?

I'm not sure how the syndication model works for New Times - I can read most of next week's Dallas Observer reviews today on the Voice site. If I don't need to pick up their paper, how's that going to effect their hooker-ad sales?

http://armonddangerous.blogspot.com/

And we'll never know -- unless he chooses to elaborate on it elsewhere or at some late date -- what exactly Armond means when he describes Children of Men's aesthetic as "resembling the surreally distanced, uninterrupted viewpoint of a videogame." Which videogames? Certainly not first-person shooter videogames (which Elephant mimics at one moment in order to make a connection to the fps games the teenage killers play at home) because the film's celebrated long takes are not pov shots. The long takes' panoptical surveys -- with action occurring on multiple planes and often disappearing beyond the scope of the lens -- would only resemble videogame aesthetics for the most unsophisticated and -- dare we say -- cynical viewer. For one thing, the moviegoer cannot interact with the image in the same way a videogame player can -- an obvious point that White conveniently ignores. For another, the film maintains spatial integrity in presenting and exploring its realistic environments, an integrity that stands in sharp contrast to the comic book nonsense of V for Vendetta, the film that Armond White compares to Children of Men without properly explaining thier distinctions.

seems like this guy makes the leap that "resembling a videogame" automatically = "shitty movie"

I thought parts of CoM were gamelike in a good way

btw i really like that blog!

Anonymous said...
Rivette is a bore.

January 10, 2007 12:19 PM

C'mon Morbius at least sign your name to it! besides doesn't it bore you to say how boring he is all the time?

hahah the accidental truth revealed!

Alfred, what were Stanley Kramer's politics, aside from decent mainstream liberalism of his era?

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/features/article2160412.ece

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/01/the_great_unseen_films_of_2006.html

Good lord that's a wrong sentence.

Rob Nelson latest casualty of Village Voice Media bloodbath

Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton

Good if long Edelstein interview (thanks to Scott Woods). Revelations: Dustin Hoffman's overrated, Josh Hartnett isn't used enough, and this:

probably shouldn’t say this, but I really appreciated Jackie Brown, really appreciated its beauty and magnificence when I saw it high. I hadn’t seen it high the first time and I loved it. When I saw it high I never wanted it to end. It was the ultimate stoner movie. The violence in the movie was for the most part off-camera, for the most part pretty upsetting in its implications. In no way are you supposed to get off on the violence in that movie. [The violence] is absurd, it’s sudden, it’s horrific. Even Samuel L. Jackson’s death is presented as a betrayal. And the death of Robert De Niro is disgusting. And obviously the death of Bridget Fonda is hauntingly absurd. Poor Chris Tucker is the other one. I’m mystified by the level of hostility to Tarantino among serious film writers as well as mainstream film critics.

morbius is gonna love that

He's pretty OTM on Brokeback Mt.

also, I liked Jackie Brown, straight.

what cinema needs is more josh hartnett

Even I'm starting to get a little tired of the "omg why don't more people give Jackie Brown respect" thing, and I still think it's his best one.

i wasn't aware ppl didn't give it respect!

Precisely.

I miss Edelstein in Slate.

He's right about Boys Don't Cry too.

on BBM: I remember your comment about the sex scene in Brokeback Mountain: Where are all the bodily fluids?

That was sex as sanctification. I don’t buy that. It was done on an entirely Platonic level.

It struck me as a gay sex scene written by a woman. It had no understanding of male animal desire.

That’s why my wife loved it. It’s a chick flick. Well the movie didn’t take place on that plane. It was the apotheosis of gay sex. It was gay sex as set against purple mountain majesties. It was set in this phony Americana, this exultation of the cowboy. It might have been the only way Americans would see a gay movie. These things happen in stages. I wrote a book with the gay producer Christine Vachon. She had a hit with Go Fish. She was trying to figure out why nothing she did had any chance of breaking through in the mainstream with anything that was gay. Not even Boys Don’t Cry was a real hit.

Hey, Jackie Brown is the only tarantino one I like more than saying "yeah, it was ok"-- I wouldn't go as far as to say I 'loved' it (saved for only my top 20 flix OAT) but it was definitely my fave of the bunch.

Christopher Tookey in the Daily Mail is the most enjoyable to read. He just doesn't like films at all.

If gives a page full of one-star reviews, it's because he's in a generous mood. Normally he gives everything a little turkey symbol.

filmbiz friend finds Edelstein secretly gay

Is that why he admits to squirming during homosex?

like John Simon?

Edelstein != Ehrenstein

I know they are diff

I had to read that whole interview just to make sure Soto was misreading the thing about Josh Hartnett as being more positive than I think it was meant. I love the worst biopic lines contest references in the intro to that article, had never seen it before:
http://www.slate.com/id/2111080/

great interview - I'm perplexed that he doesn't apply the same rules to Natural Born Killers as he does to Tarantino's Kill Bill or Grindhoues. Very weird. The violence in NKB is totally cartoony and stylized and an obvious hyperactive joke/commentary on America's love affair with celebrity and violence.

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut was a great musical. It delivers all the pleasures of a conventional dumb Broadway musical, and yet it’s obscene and satirical and silly and rude. It’s the best of both worlds for a Broadway musical queen like me.

that's EDELSTEIN

Don't know/care if he is straight or claims to be or what, but a straight guy who likes musicals joking about it and calling himself a "Broadway musical queen" isn't exactly some kind of Freudian gotcha moment.

also why is he not aware of rock n roll musicals (there were/are plenty - admittedly most of them are subpar and pale in comparison to the pre-rock n roll era but STILL)

It LOOKS like I'm misreading the bit about Hartnett, but he contradicts himself: "Here are people I want to see more of. Like Topher Grace or Josh Hartnett, or whose that guy married to Demi Moore -- I don’t know these people that well. I haven’t seen them. I know they get a lot of parts. I can’t remember them."

Love the bit about Cruise not being "open about his instrument.'

Apparently he sees something in C. Thomas Howell's vanilla face than I ever dreamed.