Pauline Kael

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.

the piece is not actually that good fwiw but the details about JD and PK are fun

Enjoy the writing of hers I've read (the essay on Kane, that was years ago now).

The notion (upthread) that you hould read a writer for solely writing can only go so far -- do want a writer to have some overlap w/tastes but I like to see the mind working through the writing, and if it gets too cranky (as seems to be implied here) then its not going to work.

well, i didn't mean you should read every writer just cuz they have a great style or have a great way with words. its certainly helpful if there is personality or a point of view that you can latch on to. or it makes a writer more enjoyable to read for a lot of people. probably a good reason why a lot of people don't read henry james! cuz they can't find anything to grab hold of. or something to identify with. despite the fact that he certainly had a way with words. and pauline kael wouldn't have been so inspirational to me if i hadn't wanted to go along on her ride with her. on the other hand, i've been reading christgau for decades and i admire his language and sentences and i don't agree with him pretty much 99% of the time about anything. its not a dealbreaker for me. to not agree with someone. if i think they are good at what they do. you can learn a lot from someone like pauline kael even if you violently disagree with her. is all i meant.

people want to agree with people, basically. in order for a lot of people to love a writer or artist, they like to agree with them in some way. i think. this isn't really a requirement for me. kael's hated oliver stone is a good example. i've found his images/imagery really compelling and exciting in a visceral way over the years and i don't care at all about his message/politics/ideas/writing. maybe being a metal fan helps.

just checked her bibliography on wikipedia and realised there may not be anything of hers collected in book form that i haven't read -- though i read the last two books-worth as it came out in the new yorker, and haven't traded up (the new yorkers are all lined up on a high shelf, and it's pretty much impossible to find anything in them)

louis menand wrote a pretty good piece on her in the new york review of books -- it made a bit too much, too glibly, of her link with postmodernism, but was good on her sceptical approach to any pre-coded theory of "what cinema is" (actually this is totally from memory: i'd have to dig it out to be more exact)

richard cook -- my main mentor as a writer and editor -- was a fan, which i guess is where i picked it up from: he always had a copy of "when the lights go down" in the office at the wire (he was still reviewing a lot of films in the 80s) (he was also imo one of the best british film critics of his time, totally forgotten now, and uncollected....)

My copy of the bio was in the mailbox when I got home today. Don't know if I've been happier to see something in the mail since I got my APBA tabletop baseball game in the late '70s.

i still have that great book of interviews. red cover. don't know how hard that is to find these days. it has to be out of print. i would think.

i'm not a huge fan of wolcott, tbh, but i think i have to read this

i was wrong. just looked. they still have it on amazon and elsewhere.

which great book of interviews, scott?

yeah i feel the same way. kinda got my fill of wolcott/kael with his vanity fair piece but now i think i do actually want to read it. i was also a really big fan of nyc in the 70's. kinda my favorite place to be in the 70's.

http://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Pauline-Kael-Literary/dp/0878058990

this one.

though amazon u.k. might be more your speeeeeed.

oh, never read that -- i see there's a francis davis "last conversation" also, think i have a kael binge coming on

I thought for sure I had that interview book, but I don't see it on the shelf, just Afterglow. I'll have to order that. I've got the Stanley Kauffmann book in the same series (probably why I confused them):

http://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Stanley-Kaufmann-Literary/dp/1578065666/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1320269083&sr=8-8

I highly recommend the Davis book. For reasons that baffle me, Greil Marcus hated it.

intra-paulette envy :)

where does davis write these days? he was a contributor when i edited wire but i lost touch with him when i left

Dunno. I did sit in front of him and TG at the Film Forum a while ago. He was still writing about jazz at the Voice last time I checked.