Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

Haha, for that reference, I can thank the Food Network.

Eric, you could so get laid with that Evil Disney Misogyny stuff... if only...

Keep that sort of talk on the gay thread, dude.

Dennis Lim's eye-popper, new content on Thursdays:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/

AV Club...which means that i'm going to see the Strangers

I'm reading Howard Hampton's book and realizing that he's probably better in small doses. This thing is mildly infuriating so far.

^^^OTM. I had the exact same experience with that book. The dude is a poor man's Greil Marcus.

So...do I give up? I paid real money for this thing, but I only have so much time and so many books to read!

I love writing short things, since most of the time I don't have that much to say about anything.

In which case, you might try publishing that post!

(!)

That probably won't happen, but I wouldn't mind getting back into writing 50-word reviews of pop singles. Not sure who'd publish that, though.

I also like the short format because it allows me to refine my prose.

So...do I give up? I paid real money for this thing, but I only have so much time and so many books to read!

Ha, I don't know. I never finished it.

I haven't read any film books recently. I thought I was just burned out, but it's been long enough that I think I may have lost my appetite entirely.

Oh, I heard that Hollis Frampton's Circles of Confusion is going to be reissued soon. I love some of his films, but most of the pieces I've read from that book have been semi-mystical garbage.

I don't know. I have a long-ish flight and I just wanted something kind of fun that isn't total garbage. Maybe I'll stick with it and give it to my friend when I arrive. He might enjoy it more than I do.

Hi Adam. How's Valencia?

Hi John! It's not bad. I'm on summer break now, so I see little of Valencia, which is a good thing. I'm a full-time Angeleno right now.

Yes, when I visited Valencia, it seemed a little ... secluded.

It is secluded, but do not underestimate how that can also be an advantage.

I have a long-ish flight and I just wanted something kind of fun that isn't total garbage

http://www.amazon.com/Films-Jacques-Tati-Picas-40/dp/155071175X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213732140&sr=8-1

Thanks! I think I've read something by Michel Chion, something on sound in Persona, maybe? It was really good. Have you read that Serge Daney anthology and if so can you recommend it?

either of Simon Callow's Welles volumes kill time...

I didn't realize the Daney thing was published. I've heard nothing but good things about him. I wasn't super impressed with the articles Steve Erickson translated, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

That Persona piece is definitely Chion, from here. I've enjoyed everything of his I've read, he's really the only film theorist I've read from the last, say, 30 years who has anything new to say. The other books are a little heavier than the Tati one, which is sort of loose and organized around general themes. It's also much better than the fucking David Bellos bio.

Adam: this is one of my favorite books o' film, and one of the smartest.

either of Simon Callow's Welles volumes kill time...

I prefer Thomson's, actually.

Thanks, guys!

I also like the short format because it allows me to refine my prose.

lso lk srt frmt b/c cn rfn prz

the chion book isn't very good, the better one is the bellos (sp?)

from new york post
August 14, 2008 --

FORMER New York Times movie critic Elvis Mitchell better come up with a good explanation for what he was doing with $12,000 in cash in a cigar box - or he won't get the money back.

On Friday, the US government filed an application to keep the cash that border guards found on Mitchell last April 27, when his taxi crossed into his hometown of Detroit as he returned from a documentary film festival in Toronto. "A search of Mitchell's belongings uncovered the box full of money along with [15] Cuban cigars," Canada's Windsor Star reports.

"He gave us a declaration for $80 and they found $12,000 US and the cigars," said border patrol chief Ron Smith.

Mitchell - who's now busy promoting "The Black List," the HBO documentary about race he co-produced with Timothy Greenfield-Sanders - told authorities the money was an accumulation of ATM withdrawals over the past year.

But he told Page Six yesterday he "grabbed the wrong box" from his apartment. "I have a fear of banks, so I keep cash in my house and I grabbed the wrong box," Mitchell said. "I took it into the country and out. The cigars, well I should have smoked them before I left," he laughed.

US law requires any traveler carrying more than $10,000 in cash to report it to authorities. Mitchell said his lawyer is trying to get the dough back. "He's filed papers and within the next few weeks I'll probably get it back," he said, adding he was "embarrassed" by the situation.

"Apparently a black man with dreads can't carry that much cash, but I think there are a few worse things to be embarrassed about. I haven't cheated on my wife like some in the news," Mitchell said.

RIP Manny Farber

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/006525.html

Hoberman on Farber:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-08-19/film/manny-farber-1917-2008/

and Paul Scrader:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/manny-farber-1917-2008-20080819

The first thing they would do in a Manny Farber School of Film Criticism is shut down!

One thing he said to me early on which seemed to have really informed a lot of his thinking—because he was first and foremost a painter and he was a great admirer of Jackson Pollock—he said the insight of seeing Jackson Pollock's work is the insight of seeing something designed on the vertical presented on the horizontal. Before Pollock, painting was seen horizontally and made horizontally and I think he liked that idea, that you would do something vertically and view it horizontally.

My point being that that kind of perception difference, to try to see things in a different way, at a different angle, that was underneath everything he wrote about films. He was not in the great American critical mainstream. His job was to take that odd approach, find that unexpected insight. He couldn't imagine himself writing the way a professional film critic does, like David Denby works—Manny simply couldn't do that.

Yes, you're talking about just immediately proceeding Sarris, before Andy weighed in with his bible.
!

The American Cinema, right?

wtf Elvis get off A-Rod's back and watch yr goddamn money!

from his NYT obit:

Mr. Farber, a quirky prose stylist with a barbed lance, responded to film viscerally. He despised what he called the “art-infected” films of cinematic greats like Welles and Alfred Hitchcock — “the water-buffaloes of film art,” he once called them — preferring the work of genre directors like Anthony Mann, Raoul Walsh and William A. Wellman, who transformed pulp material and genre conventions into “private runways to the truth.”

Well, I can see why he said that "whether you liked it" is the last thing he wanted to know from a critic. It was his weak point.

I've been really liking Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York.

bradshaw has made a tit of himself with the 'benjamin button' review tbh. awards season pushes people into Making A Stand: if i could be fucked i'd seek out obviously worse films he's given more than one star. obviously i disagree with the result, but there are matters of competence:

"He also has a Zelig-type habit of showing up at important events: while he's sailing in Florida, you can see Apollo 11 taking off in the distance."

it's not apollo 11; but this is pretty much the only instance of this kind. all of the gump comparisons are true, but the big difference is ccbb is pretty much silent on american history. (that and, you know, the reverse ageing.) there is no zelig-type habit at all.

can't be bothered to fisk this bollocks any further.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Butthurt.

Benjemima Buttuninteresting

it's a solid zing

xp

Although Peter Bradshaw's right about 'The Reader'

nrq i fully expected you to have revived this with the one-word answer "me"

i don't want to see that film tbh so can't judge. i felt david hare's comment that "oh, well, obviously if these hatin' film critics had been around in 1933, the nazis would never have won" had the ring of sarcastic truth.

xpost

lol, not even.

Even if only one or two of the gump comparisons are true its enough to say it would be a waste of a ticket, tbh.

i like little white lies magazine - the writing isnt always great but i like the enthusiasm/passion.

i wish they had a contents page. is that too square for words?

also u should only do "the XXX issue" if XXX has some kind of zeitgeisty cultural heft. "the 'man on wire' issue" not so much.

yeah they do too many theme issues. since i started buying it its all been centered around just one film. maybe theyre strapped for content or trying to please PR/distributors. the east asian cinema special was good though. gave me lots of tips of what to watch.

The Last 117 Employed Film Critics in America

http://moviecitynews.com/voices/2009/090302_critics.html

There are many other full-time movie critics, but they're working freelance. Maybe they should change the word to "salaried."