Defend the Indefensible: David Denby

Mystic River wasn't that good, either.

He's not fit sit at Anthony Lane's desk, let alone sit at Pauline Kael's.

sorry, best I can do

Man, that's your own fault. Any praise based on "Mystic River was teh bomb" should be ignored.

I maintain that Denby's miniscule personality really comes through in his review-writing, but I first began hating him when I read that book he wrote about Columbia's Great Books curriculum. Early on in the book, Take Back the Night happens and Denby makes all these disapproving noises about contemporary feminism's victim complex when it's clear he's just freaked out. THEN, later in the book he gets mugged and spends the rest of the book obsessing about his mugging experience (which is understandable, of course, but IRONIC, considering how dismissive he was of the TBTN rally.) And if I recall correctly, whenever issues of race come up in students' discussions about the Lit Hum curriculum, as they're bound to, Denby trots out the fact that his muggers were black men, which is relevant how? That's just anecdotal proof of his assholery, though, it really just comes across in the tone of his writing. HATE.

= horseshoe otm: Denby's miniscule personality really comes through in his review-writing

Whereas, pace Stencil and gabbneb, the joy of Anthony Lane is that while he's a bit of a wit and that can grate his associations are usually both funny and either erudite or at least surprising and delightful. The world as he writes it seems endlessly fascinating. Plus for me he's a pretty reliable predictor of whether or not I'll enjoy a movie.

Has been known to sling some amazingly pretentious pick-up lines, but that's in his private life and doesn't bother me none.

Gangs of New York is great! But probably not for the reasons Denby said (I don't remember his review). It's Mad Max in Manhattan. Incoherent and ridiculous, of course. But man, I had a good time.

s1ocki SO FUCKING OTM, i hate that shit.

blandness = luminosity, then?

something i love about ebert: when he hates a movie, he's short and to the point. nothing makes me want to throw up more than one of those 6-page salon reviews that explains exactly why every single element in a movie somehow "feels wrong."

Ebert is a great JOURNALIST, which not all critics are.

"Crash" was kind of incoherent but it still worked for me, possibly because it was talking about things I wanted to hear (largely along the lines of "there is virulent, blatant racism in places that aren't Alabama and Mississippi")

"Ivy's tattoo, miniskirt and black fuck-me pumps are the fetishes of a naive, neurotically insecure girl." -- Poison Ivy

"With Russo, sexy, scrappy and touching as an intelligent woman tired of wearing tank tops and fuck-me pumps to scream at movie monsters -- he is all romantic longing." -- Get Shorty

also, i mean, come on:

I suspect “The Social Network” got made only because Aaron Sorkin wrote the script

Really? Because Sorkin's such a draw with the kids? Because anyone cares who wrote the script? Or maybe, just hear me out here, maybe because all the kids are talking about this facebook thing and we need a scenario?

there's the FB factor sure, but a trophy-bait 'adult' movie like that also needs a prestige factor, and the combo of Sorkin and Fincher gets all the over-30 Quality Mainstream fans to absorb the making-of promos and feature articles and put it on their must-see lists. That's how you get to $97 million US gross.

That's how you get to $97 million US gross.

That's one way. Going prestige turned out to be a good move, but they could have just as easily brought in the Weitz brothers.

we have a subscription to the ny'er, so i end up reading denby and anthony lane every week. this has been happening for 5–6 years. and yet, i could scarcely describe the sensibility or writing style of either of them. they are not idiots, they are reasonably literate, and yet they have no particular perspective or expertise that would make their reviews the slightest bit memorable.

that's a real achievement in grayness/mediocrity, i suppose.

i know one's more glib than the other

Whenever Lane reviews books or writes an at-large piece, I wonder why he wastes time on filmcrit.

lane is so much more funny than denby i kind of cant imagine finding them indistinguishable

plus: Lane was pretty hot as a young man whereas Denby looks like he was 13 and already a greybearded crank.

lane is great, denby is terrible.

also, (vague generalization coming) many adults generally don't have the time or inclination to go to movies like teenagers do. whenever we want to see a flick there are generally enough grown-up options (Moonrise Kingdom, the Master, docs at the local Ritz, whatever) that we rarely have to pass. but we don't go every weekend bc it's hard to get a babysitter and when we can, sometimes we're just exhausted and want to grab something to eat instead etc. teenagers (at least when i was one) have much more endurance and also buy those super super sized sodas + popcorns + chocolate nacho gummies whatever.

right. denby's point is, adults would flock to the plexes again if only there were more movies like Michael Clayton.

i was gonna say, lane is legit funny and denby tries and faceplants. even if their judgment on which movies are good or bad may be indistinguishable.

but they're totally distinguishable! Lane likes to go to the movies and be entertained. Denby likes UP IN THE AIR and FUNNY PEOPLE.

i honestly cannot tell the difference.

i just saw funny people. man, that is a long movie. like a wim wenders bromedy.

is that the one where Adam Sandler is not funny

i finally saw spanglish too. that was long too but i enjoyed it more. david denby probably liked that one a bunch.

spanglish had actual funny moments.

funny people is just long.

denby treats movies as an excuse to construct clever reasons for liking or disliking things that even he doesn't really seem totally persuaded by.

lane treats movies as an excuse to display his impression of what he imagines 'new yorker' humor was like back in the day.

after reading Kael in her last 15 years, much as she drove me nuts sometimes, hard to read NYer filmcrit since.

i can't think of anyone writing about film now that i enjoy reading. but i don't read everything.

since I have been retired for 2 weeks I won't object

Response to Denby's similar piece in TNR: http://vrizov.blogspot.com/2012/10/denby-david-doomsday-something.html

i kinda think that criticism in all the arts is at an all time low. not that i read a ton of art crit or dance crit or opera crit, but when i do catch things i'm never impressed/invigorated/envious/in awe. people are too dumb these days to write good criticism of anything. they don't know enough. i could be wrong, i guess. maybe their are tons of young brilliant minds out there that i just haven't run across. in some ways i don't think people ever recovered from the pOm0 80's. 10,000 wrong turns.

wait, i just had lunch. i've changed my mind. people are cool.

or people never recovered from the death of Mary McCarthy.

EXHUMING MCCARTHY

James Wolcott, with no patience for Denby.

yay!

http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/david-denby-is-out-at-the-new-yorker-20141213

I'll deliver a mild defense. When I watch an eighties film I'll consult this nine-volume set at the library, one for each year, collecting every major review of a film, local or foreign. Denby's New York clips are in there, and I don't mind them at all in a Kael Lite sort of fway.

oh goddammit

Denby will remain as a staff writer with an office at the magazine's new location, focusing, as he said in an email, on "longer pieces on movies and other things," and "contributing to the web when I have something juicy to say."

i would read this guy in early high school, when i would also read klosterman. i liked movies and reading the new yorker seemed like something i should do, as a pretentious teen sophisticate. didn't mind him then and have a sort of mild affection for him now, even though i never seek out his opinions. my sense of him now is that he is like kael, in that he wants to riff on culture using films as a starting point but he lacks the talent to pull this off effectively

dude has always been a drag. i like richard brody a lot at the NYer though.

So does Lane have twice as much work? I'm surprised they aren't using the opportunity to anoint a new critic. I thought the New Yorker post was a big deal.

tom carson posted about this on facebook and then glenn kenny chimed in so i put in my vote on there for tom carson and glenn kenny to write about movies for the new yorker.

haha this guy is such a turd. no one better for an occasional hate-read though.

let's all email the new yorker about this young new proto-denby they really must hire goes by the name "amateurist"

The Greil Marcus site had a nasty takedown of Denby from 2004 posted the other day (#3 on the list):

http://greilmarcus.net/2014/12/09/real-life-rock-top-10-021104/

I used to read him semi-regularly, basically just skim occasionally now. He strikes me as basically okay--I prefer him to Anthony Lane, anyway.

Lane and Denby are equally horrible. Denby is a pathetic moralizer, and I can't get through a sentence of Lane without picturing him laughing at his own jokes. Except for that profile of Scarlett Johansson he wrote recently—in that case, I could picture him typing with one hand the whole time.

contributing to the web when I have something juicy to say

haha "juicy" isn't the first word that comes to mind w/r/t denby's pronouncements. guess he wont be blogging much

would love to read tom carson in the new yorker but could definitely live w/o his sidekick

though i'd bet that tom has aimed a few shots at the new yorker's bow over the years that would prevent him from ever working there

My own choice would be David Edelstein. I think he may have already had a stint there, though, when they moved a few people in and out after Kael left. I haven't read much of Carson's film stuff--I remember a long dismissal of Nashville he wrote--but I always liked his music writing.

only film pieces i read there are Brody's.

lol hire a new one? you guys do know what year it is, right?

there's no richard brody thread but i needed somewhere to c&p this -

His most personal work, “Norbit,” a psychodramatic outpouring of bile, pain, conflict, and sheer comedic invention, which Murphy starred in and wrote, deserved to be hailed as a masterwork.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/why-is-eddie-murphy-in-cinematic-exile

i revived the eddie murphy thread to talk about it. that article is bonkers.

why is there no brody thread. i just read this

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/jared-hesss-spiritual-gross-out-comedy-in-masterminds

Brody is def off the deep end. In his Rogue One pan he praised the prequels as the best the Star Wars movies.

#wow #starwars

Someone start the thread!!!!!

I have my issues with Brody but he knows a ton about movies (unlike Lane or Denby) and I don't think he should necessarily faulted for having unorthodox views, which he comes by honestly afaict

kidding aside, intheblanks p much otm tbh

but he's been getting weird lately