Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

Arrested Development has never made me laugh, so why would I want to watch a whole bunch of episodes of it...?

Why do people keep returning to ILX?

Because I just said, it's funnier when you get all the references and inside jokes. It's just not a show that's meant to be watched in a stand-alone fashion, which is part of the reason it got such lousy ratings.

Anyway, enough people whose judgments I trust said that the show was worth it, so I started from the very beginning. If the first disc of Season 1 isn't up your alley, then that's fair. And I totally understand not wanting to even expend the effort (life's too short), but know that your criticism is kind of unfounded.

Haha, that was an xpost, although there's some truth to that first sentence.

http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/film/2007/09/19/s-not-funny/

that guy hates fun

if he has such a problem with witty dialogue perhaps "Man Gets Hit With Football in the Groin" is more his style

WTF, MGHWFITG = LOL!

i don't want to get all morby esp. because i have liked some of his work, but the last thing i need to hear about is another apatow-related project. i will never get sick of tyra gifs, however.

Eric, the link's down.

here you go

Still works for me (not having cleared cache, et al). Essentially it says "Apatow doesn't make me laugh, Breillat is funny, wah wah wah."

has there really been a critical "canonization" of "everything Apatow touches"? Seems like a bit of strawman baiting, or are box office receipts what he's going by...

film comment and the new yorker and a shitload other publications have 'canonized' him, ie written nice things about him.

this happens all the time, it always has, it always will, and apatow deserves it more than most. i'm sorry if people are burned out on a guy who has directed two films and produced a few others and did some cancelled tv shows a long time ago, it must be hard for you.

I'm not burned out, tho Knocked Up is probably the first thing of his I've seen in its entirety.

wait the NY piece I saw was highly critical of Knocked Up and longed for the days of Katherine Hepburn and sassy girl heroines etc.

hmmm. i heard denby gave it guarded praise. the fuck would i read it for anyway -- but compared with, say, 'anchorman', 'knocked up' has had huge middlebrow praise.

he did give it guarded praise. the tone of his review was like, oh judd apatow if you just apply yourself you'll make a film as good as the philadelphia story! or something.

yeah that's true, it is guarded praise - more like backhanded compliments than being "highly critical"

to wit:
Apatow has a genius for candor that goes way beyond dirty talk—that’s why “Knocked Up” is a cultural event. But I wonder if Apatow, like his fumy youths, shouldn’t move on. It seems strange to complain of repetition when a director does something particularly well, and Apatow does the infantilism of the male bond better than anyone, but I’d be quite happy if I never saw another bong-gurgling slacker or male pack again.

I totally don't trust David Denby, btw.

fucking denby. go back to internet porn addiction or whatever it was.

lol people forgetting that Preston Sturges opened a restaurant and polishing scripts at the peak of his success. Who cares about "overexposure"?

i misread that as "bone-gurgling slacker" at first

well at least we can all agree that denby is a jackass

WHY DOES HE HAVE HIS JOB??? I WANT IT!!!

You haven't read the Great Books.

I WILL READ ALL THIS GREAT BOOKS!

Denby defended Ye Paul Haggis in this week's issue.

OF COURSE HE FUCKING DID!

I don’t know if anuone has already mentioned this, but the ILX Best Films of the 19XXs threads are truly marvellous. Far superior to any other lists I have come across.

http://www.nndb.com/people/975/000078741/demarest03.jpg
Overexposure? I'll give you overexposure!

FOOTBALL IN THE GROIN! FOOTBALL IN THE GROIN!

Denby is a dick and a bad critic, but his Great Books book is really pretty good.

I hate that book because of the running obsession with race that gets really weird. but he writes well about some of those books.

I think it's inherently fascinating to read about people's responses to books, though, so I'm not sure how much to credit him for the parts of the book I enjoyed.

http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/film/2007/09/19/s-not-funny/

-- Eric H., Wednesday, September 19, 2007 10:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

what's the deal with that "toto washlet" ad to the right of the article

Yeah, the Great Books survey is far from embarrassing; the Virginia Woolf essay is useful. The book only sucks when Old David tries to reconcile his new thoughts and beliefs with idealistic Young David.

I remember the Virginia Woolf chapter as being one of the best, yeah.

http://img.blogads.com/293104732/img.gif

Nice goatee.

its like twizzlers for butts

bone-gurgling slackers >>> bong-gurgling slackers

absolutely baffling.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2174814,00.html

film critics live on another planet.

but also get everything wrong.

"The Deal, it seems to me, is a perfect example of what television does best and the fact that its unofficial sequel, The Queen, ever found its way into cinemas remains a source of bafflement and irritation. Film and television are not the same thing and despite Helen Mirren's Oscar success, it's impossible to shake off the sense that The Queen, like The Deal, was tailormade for the small screen. Why? Because its guiding aesthetic is primarily televisual, full of intimate scenes of people talking in rooms which gain nothing from being projected on to the vast screen of a cinema auditorium. No matter how much you blow up the picture, The Queen still looks like a TV show."

millions of films are just people in rooms talking and whatnot. 'the queen' is no more or less 'cinematic' than 'high fidelity' or 'dirty pretty things'.

"There are even hints [in 'The West Wing'] of Rob Reiner's featherlight The American President, in which Michael Douglas played the eponymous dashing hero, breezily blending personal politics and romantic intrigue."

hmm, wonder that could be?

I think David Thomson is really great, because he can really open out the way you think of a film sometimes. His writing on acting is fantastic, just reading something by him can give you such beautiful flashes of insight on things. Even when he criticizes something you like, it can make you like it even more for the very he's attacking it!

"absolutely baffling."

OTM.

FWIW i'm totally in favour of people not having tv's, it can be a huge waste of time, but the notion that it's inferior to film, of all things, is fucking bizarre.

TVs

i don't watch much tv as in property shows and reality tv now, haven't for a long time rly and i don't mean to disparage people who do. but just thinking of a whole load of areas of modern film that i like -- there's so much traffic between them and television. kermode thinks it's silly to link actors' tv work to their film work but often their film roles are sort of weak versions of their tv stuff. i just saw a film where jeremy piven is basically doing ari gold.

but going beyond that i think for a lot of 'serious' directors (and probably crew too) feature films are something you do when it comes up. a lot of them do adverts but a fair number do films. hollywood cinema is not a round-the-clock production factory, but television is. and a lot of television is made in studios in hollywood...

kermode's idea of the cinematic comes precisely from the era of hollywood (post-'the robe') when hollywood had to go for wide formats and spectacularity (probably not a word) in order to compete with television.

the notion that it's inferior to film, of all things,

"of all things," *fart*. Imagine someone writing that about music here.

This always happens.

Which critics seem to be levitating in a realm of their own creation with their backs arched like serpents, and which seem the most plain-spoken and least pretentious?

wtf?