Pauline Kael

The famous first meeting between Kael and Sarris over a drink:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wu6Z_RmeXD4/SyvfEcQmPmI/AAAAAAAAAeE/Jbet5NAS3xk/s320/robinson.jpg

"The far side of what? Oh, please."

It's been said before here -- Sarris took their "feud" way too fuckin seriously.

speaking of auteurs (this is for strongo)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_ehxdlAlHQ

I may have posted this another thread, I'm not sure. But if you skip ahead to the last minute, this brings Kael and SCTV together:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDdfD8nHbok

itt renata adler outed as a jealous dude

That Linehan guy who interviews Kael was parodied by Martin Short on SCTV, too.

boy he loves his consonants and sybillants doesn't he

Linehan is beyond legendary here. Short nailed him, especially the five-minute preface to every question.

anyway i finished james wolcott's memoir today. still digesting but there's a lot about pauline kael, sounds like wolcott was her screening sidekick for a good chunk of the 70s. i don't know, wolcott has some perspective on kael but the fairy dust still clouds his vision. for all his un-sentimentality about the 70s clearly wolcott never took the message of "kill yr idols" to heart

he's never been a Sonic Youth fan.

he name-checked lydia lunch and said he liked new wave, though

wolcott's portrait of pauline whet my appetite for the bio; guess i was surprised by how enamored - verging on gushy - he was. but hey, if martin amis took me under his wing when I was 23...

per the Frank Rich review, Kael making loud wisecracks and snorts during screenings should've elicited a "Cool it, auntie" imho.

don't most of us do that though???

hahaha - she does that multiple times in wolcott's book, including at a 42nd street porno

"we" don't do that

"we" just watch The Dark Nought without a thought.

don't most of us do that though???

not unless we want a clout on the head from me, no.

we'd be like the sinners trapped in ice chewing each other's heads, right

per the Frank Rich review, Kael making loud wisecracks and snorts during screenings should've elicited a "Cool it, auntie" imho.

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Sunday, October 30, 2011 10:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

yeah that would be maddening if it was happening in a movie you were enjoying

Morbs: they do! She broke the news of her quitting there on the air without apparently warning anyone in advance (following her Lawrence of Arabia review). She had some pretty choice words for the 'liberals' there.

well, that's a trove that needs to be made available.

also, what megalomaniacal film kingpin named a villain in one of his late '80s productions after her?

lucas! in Willow iirc

in the digital remaster he's changed it to armond white

Armond actually said a few nice things about the Star Wars prequels tho.

haha, naturally!

of course PK's swooning over Newman and Olivier fits neatly with her Kinsey-scale track record...

well, who wouldn't swoon?

her finding Absence of Malice > The Verdict is bothersome.

Not really. He's much sexier playing a stock character in the former.

and she's right about that late seventies/early eighties streak of Newman's >>> the fifties and sixties

Older actors are generally better. Olivier didn't become a really good film actor til he was almost 50.

Too bad she retired before PN's crowning achievement, Nobody's Fool.

God, I just saw Rebecca again two weeks ago and was surprised anew by the absence of a character. He's jumpy, erratic, and irritable, like a man without a script, which makes sense -- Maxim isn't the killer that he is in the novel.

Older actors are generally better

Not hotter, tho, which is what I thought Alfred was referring to.

1998 interview in Modern Maturity:

Jim Carrey has practically kept movies alive the past few years. But most comedians lose it after a while. They go on trying to be funny and it becomes ghastly. If Carrey can sustain it, it would be amazing.

http://www.paulrossen.com/paulinekael/modernmaturity.html

posted this re: wolcott's book in the didion thread and no one seemed to care

http://www.theawl.com/2011/10/the-cordial-enmity-of-joan-didion-and-pauline-kael

kael seems like she'd be more fun to watch a movie with than didion.

The "suffering little girl-woman" as Evan Hughes calls it in max's link is a type that Kael attacked relentlessly over and over again. See her review of The Piano. Kael probably thought Didion was one herself.

it's not that i wasn't interested in that article, max, i just kind of don't want to read it because i love them both. i do think pauline kael would be more fun to go to a movie with. they seem to share a view of woody allen fwiw.

per the Frank Rich review, Kael making loud wisecracks and snorts during screenings should've elicited a "Cool it, auntie" imho.

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Sunday, October 30, 2011 10:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

the WGA screening room in LA was awful for this reason. nobody would snort or wisecrack, but a certain 10% of the audience would editorialize with sighs and coughs and pointed, sharp, exhalations of breath, and irritate another 10% who would op/ed with the same tactics.

I wonder if Kael thought highly of Campion's The Portrait of a Lady, easily JC's best imho.

i just don't understand you dr. morbs. but <3

In a long New Yorker interview published in the summer of '94 (I remember the date because I'd just discovered Kael), Kael wrinkled her nose at The Piano; she disliked the sentimentality and the Holly Hunter character writing "New Age trills" on the piano.

yeah, I hated it too, which is why I'm wondering about TPoaL. (Yes, we know, 'unfaithful' to James etc.)

There's some movie where Matthew Modine keeps referring to that one as "Il Piano" by the guy who did Johnny Suede

it is a terrible adaptation of James but it's also just terrible. isn't it? don't make me watch it again.

i had a picture of joan didion up on my wall when i was 19 too. as well as pauline kael. i was pathetic. and frank o'hara! what was he doing there? and a scary picture of edvard munch. and a picture of winnie cooper from the wonder years. ah, youth...

I'm with morbs on portrait. Good, weird adaption.

Adaptation

it's not that i wasn't interested in that article, max, i just kind of don't want to read it because i love them both. i do think pauline kael would be more fun to go to a movie with. they seem to share a view of woody allen fwiw.

― horseshoe, Wednesday, November 2, 2011 12:36 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i dont like hearing about them fight. i think i would choose JD in the end though.