Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

oh shit. RIP.

Great, familiar quote from Glenn Kenny's blog:

I had better say that the Guilty Pleasures feature [in Film Comment] seems to me an entirely deplorable institution. If one feels guilt at pleasure, isn't one bound to renounce either one or the other? Preferably, in most cases, the guilt, which is merely the product of that bourgeois elitism that continues to vitiate so much criticism. The attitude fostered is evasive (including self-evasive) and anti-critical: 'Isn't this muck—to which of course I'm really so superior—delicious?'

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2009/12/robin-wood-19312009.html

A bunch more links:

http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1345

and a piece that includes a long 2000 interview at the World Socialist Website:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/wood-d21.shtml

I enjoyed the Hamlet with Ethan Hawke very much. I thought he was terrific. He was the best screen Hamlet. Much better than Olivier and certainly than Kenneth Branagh. He was without the Olivier affectation and all of Branagh’s self-consciousness. Branagh always seems to be saying, “Now to help you get this line, I’m going to put on an expression. This is important. Watch this.”

....I think what’s been crucial to any work on Hitchcock has been the work of radical feminists in the late 1960s, early 1970s. First, they launched an attack on Hitchcock because of all the persecution of women in his films, and then to amend that...although women are constantly tormented, terrorized and murdered in his films, the women emerge as the most sympathetic characters and the ones with whom Hitchcock seems to most deeply identify. The whole thing is turned on its head, and the films become about male oppression, rather than about the terrorization of women. I think the best of Hitchcock films continue to fascinate me because he’s obviously right inside them, he understands so well the male drive to dominate, harass, control and at the same time he identifies strongly with the woman’s position. The struggle against that, his films are a kind of battleground between these two positions....

Hawks, no, I feel more or less the same about Hawks. Although Rio Bravo is possibly becoming my personal favorite film of all time. Ever since I came to the conclusion that the whole world situation was hopeless, and that nothing would arrest the horrors, and the only thing left was to maintain one’s self-respect, if one can. I don’t see what’s going to arrest the onslaught of global capitalism. I hope that I’m wrong.

http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1345

morbs is tht 'ugh, haneke' as in 'uhhh lemme think, haneke' or 'ugh, haneke' as in 'ew gross, haneke'

read 'hitchcock's films revisited' about a decade ago. read the third edn (or the new bits anyway) about half a decade ago. i'd recommend reading the most recent possible (which includes all the original material). there are many critics who reverse or retreat from their original position, but few who manage to do it as well as wood, andto talk about it -- and to relate the change to something bigger -- as incisively as wood did.

obviously one of the seminal british critics, and i'm very surprised this hasn't been reported in britain -- anywhere, so far as i can tell.

very sorry to hear about wood. his bfi book on "rio bravo" was one of the best in that series. rip.

morbs is tht 'ugh, haneke' as in 'uhhh lemme think, haneke' or 'ugh, haneke' as in 'ew gross, haneke'

― thurman merman (cozwn), Tuesday, 22 December 2009 22:27 (Yesterday) Bookmark

what? you didn't yet notice that Morbius asserts his hatred of haneke vehemently and at every opportunity (without ever actually saying anything else, of course)?

<3 vadim rizov <3

(without ever actually saying anything else, of course)

i fee bad about writing that, sorry morbs.

feel

yes cozwn, 'ew gross, haneke'.

In fairness, I rather like Code Unknown and Time of the Wolf.

nrq, I am encouraged by your respect for Wood. Can we try to be respectful nemeses in the new year? please?

another iterview:

http://www.yourfleshmag.com/artman/publish/article_773.shtml

I trust Dr. Morbius <3

thanks, but don't get carried away.

ugh morbs

; )

Define trust. Morbs is dependably cantankerous. Armond is reliably insane. So on.

Eric, I think you should read Robin Wood on Cronenberg vs Larry Cohen.

Some great discussion on two threads of Dave Kehr's blog, discussing RW in regard to Make Way For Tomorrow, Hawks and Ford (and homoeroticism in both), Before Sunrise, etc.

http://www.davekehr.com/?p=456#comment-35575

http://www.davekehr.com/?p=461#comments

dave kehr's blog is so ugly

The last link leads to excellent exchange between Joseph McBride and Brian Dauth on the crisscrossing relationships in the weirdness of Cary Grant's relationships with the women in Only Angels Have Wings.

ever the aesthete. xp

that's a great comment thread.

i should really read more robin wood.

I'm ashamed that I knew nothing, not even his Hitchcock book (which I put on reserve at the library a couple of days ago).

when I wrote a North by Northwest review recently, I looked at what Wood said about it just to make sure he hadn't come up with some counterintuitive insight that would make me want to rewrite the whole thing.

not even his Hitchcock book (which I put on reserve at the library a couple of days ago)
I've been meaning to read this for 25 years. Using my recently acquired expertise in using the new NYPL catalog, I managed to pick up a copy on my way home yesterday.

One film critic I just learned the existence of and do not trust is David Gilmour, author of The Film Club: A True Story of a Father and a Son.

Although one unintentionally amusing thing about his book was that the son's name is Jesse, so all the while reading it I kept expecting the punchline to be "and one day that boy grew up to be tipsy mothra."

RW's Final Top Ten

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=17784

FUCK YES, GO KARINA! http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2009/12/la_weekly_adds_film_edito.php

shit, I don't much care for Foundas @ Lincoln Center.

Why? Cause he wrote a positive review of Up in the Air?

only one recent mistake

so all the while reading it I kept expecting the punchline to be "and one day that boy grew up to be tipsy mothra."

arf arf. i remember reading about that gilmour book, it sounded o_0. (oddly enough, if yr looking for connections, my mother was for a time named rob1n w00ds.) but so in re robin wood, just ordered used copies of the hitchcock book and vietnam-to-reagan w/christmas amazon gift certificates. looking forward to them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7DQdi8uIec
A+

I checked out Sexual Politics and Narrative Film; I read the (excellent) Before Sunrise chapter over lunch. Lots of proselytizing in the introduction!

I also checked out that book, and first read the Mandingo chapter -- he calls it the best Hollywood film about race. (def see it then read)

Attention, Eric: there's a Leo McCarey chapter w/ emphasis on Make Way for Tomorrow.

(hence Wood featured in upcoming Criterion booklet)

Slant and the House Next Door blog, now one stop for big-time trust.

http://slantmagazine.com/film/

co-sign and co </shamless>

er, shameless

</shamwowless>

Really annoyed about the merger.

do ... tell?!

Well, I was annoyed when it started and wasn't working properly because I really didn't care for the old Slant site. This one is better, but as far as HND I still prefer the old blog style.

just looked nicer on my browser, really.

I'm mostly just excited to bring two reader bases I assume are somewhat separate together.

Or two readers, as the case were.

what merged with what?

Slant and The House Next Door (a blog started by Matthew Zoller Seitz but now edited by Keith Uhlich)

oh dear, did they need to put a redirect on the house next door? unless it's just temporary - or did you carry over all the old content? (i hate redirects..)

anyway, if this is where your trustworthy critics are, i'll be reading. decided to spend time catching up on a lot of cinema i've missed in the past few years.. in the first few of the 00s i watched everything i could (usually getting advice from village voice, some film comment), but not since.

They did port over all the old posts (and there were many). Some are still being reformatted for the new, um, house.

(And, in the interest of full disclosure, daria, Slant isn't necessarily where my "trustworthy critics are" so much as it is where Morbs and I contribute. Which isn't to say I don't trust a lot of their takes, et al.)