Pauline Kael

some of her best writing and reviewing is in WtLGD

I like her bits on Angela Lansbury and Ingrid Bergman playing grand dames.

trying to read that adler article and holy shit, paul stanley or lou reed could sum up those first few paragraphs in like a sentence

was adler being paid by the comma?

There may well be some good points in here, but it's hard to dig through the accusations of Kael being a columnist whore

I just don't see the motivation. What led Adler to devote 7 million words to an attack on Pauline Kael? Did the world need one?

"Then she sank down to her knees, grasped the cutter by both handles, took a deep breath, and plunged the long blade through the middle of the package, through the masking tape, through the cardboard, through the cushioning and (thud) right through the center of Terence Malick's film, which split slightly and caused little rhythmic arcs of cineasm to pulsate gently in the morning sun"

it's a shame this didn't come out at a time where people could just post a hatersgonnahate.jpg and the cover of Billy Joel's Glass Houses in the comments section

Camron's "U Mad" also feels appropriate

Didion's "Oh, wow."

The simple truth—this is okay, this is not okay, this is vile, this resembles that, this is good indeed, this is unspeakable—is not a day’s work for a thinking adult.

Seriously this sounds like something Gene Simmons would say

To The Editors:

I am writing to protest in the strongest possible terms your decision to publish Renata Adler’s depressing, vengeful, ceaseless tirade against that brilliant critic Pauline Kael. Adler’s criticism in The New Yorker was mediocre, mushy. How dare she lash out at Kael for using masturbatory slang and “we” or “you” for “I”? Can’t the little viper see the beauty, poetry, hilarity, and straight-forwardness in Kael’s critiques? Oops. I’m using “Kaeline” rhetorical questions! What a crime! You’d think I or she killed Kennedy or something!

Oh—while R.A.’s at contradictions,…she berates Kael for demanding punishment and crying guilt of her unfavored movie folk when she herself acts as if Kael knifed Gary Coleman—oops! I used a “violent” and “sadistic” metaphor! Okay, heat up the electric chair! So “line for line, When the Lights Go Down is worthless,” eh? What about the titles of her critiques of Seven Beauties and Carrie? I cracked up just reading them. And how about her punchy opening and closing lines, especially her closing line of her critique of Satyajit Ray’s Distant Thunder?

Adler’s “review” is bathed in bitterness. The final irony is that about half as many people will read “Perils of Pauline” as will read “Master Spy, Master Seducer”—by Pauline Kael.

Please print this!

Matthew Wilder

A loyal P. Kael fan, age 13

Des Planes, Illinois

nobody's gonna break his stride. not even renata adler.

"Adler’s criticism in The New Yorker was mediocre, mushy" <-- love the classic comma-for-and, as deployed by a 13-yr-old!

Kael finding humor in 2001 only in the spaceship ballet is just weirdly dense. There's plenty of chuckle-worthy humor in it -- the guarded conversation of the bureaucrats in the space station, the posing for the monolith photo on the moon, HAL's bland cheerleading and (to a degree) his pleas for mercy, etc.

More on MW here The Anti-Rockist Protests Too Much

"those who stan for kael will eventually become adlers."

I just don't see the motivation. What led Adler to devote 7 million words to an attack on Pauline Kael? Did the world need one?

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, November 4, 2011 10:21 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark

im assuming some sort of oblique behind-the-scenes turf war between new york literary types

but also that's what adler does. everything i've ever read by her is a lengthy evisceration of a person or institution.

Worth reading.

God the Starr Report. I forgot about that piece of shit.

the Bork essay is awesome.

Lots of people who are smart about politics -- how it works, how to do it -- are pinheads about culture generally.

but also that's what adler does. everything i've ever read by her is a lengthy evisceration of a person or institution.

― horseshoe, Friday, November 4, 2011 11:10 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark

well i bet shes a blast to hang out with

http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1248098159p5/74331.jpg

i think i actually read speedboat because of lloyd cole.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4dszj4xkU1qa0rqvo1_500.png

we're coming to get you, pauline. (my favorite shelley winters/bette davis movie)

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4dszj4xkU1qa0rqvo1_500.png

Pair of fun gals prove movie pans aren't just for kaelites anymore! :-)

is that a Gumby doll sticking out of Didion's hair?

whatevs. didion looking totally i'd wear what she's wearing: style icons of our lives in that pic

adler reminds me of robin gibb

http://s11.allstarpics.net/images/orig/m/a/mahwjj1zgobdmdhg.jpg

didion looking pimp there, adler has a bit of

http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsS/15426-12196.gif

lol yeah

i was thinking emma thompson tbh

scheider's way better tho

she does look like thompson though! inexplicable hair; she'd probably stare disdainfully at me for that observation and i'd crumble to dust.

in the first pic she looks like a college professor, albeit a decent-looking one who will sleep with you (and then still give you a C+!)

she does look like thompson though! inexplicable hair; she'd probably stare disdainfully at me for that observation and i'd crumble to dust.

― horseshoe, Friday, November 4, 2011 12:10 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

it was probably a hot look in the 70s

she probably reeks of Parliament cigs.

First pic reminded a little bit of
http://www.thetruevinerecordshop.com/www/francoise%20hardy%20image%2025.jpg
but yeah with Roy Scheider thrown into the mix.

Joan didion is a babe and fuiud

i read the adler piece and then her wiki cuz i was wondering if the nyrb essay was in part due to intra-newyorker stuff and she has a son born in 86!!!!

loled @

Sometimes, the “you” seems the subject of a hypnotist: “You feel that you understand everything that’s going on.” “You don’t feel embarrassed by anything that Clint Eastwood does.”

I just don't see the motivation. What led Adler to devote 7 million words to an attack on Pauline Kael? Did the world need one?

i think the existence of articles like barra's retroactively justifies adler's piece.

i think this bit is priceless:

A more important, related stratagem recurs constantly in her work, and by no means in hers alone. I don’t know how to characterize it, except as the hack carom—taking, that is, something from within the film and, with an air of intellectual triumph, turning it pointlessly against the film or a performer. “Gere looks like Robert De Niro without the mole on his cheek,” for instance, “but there’s more than that missing.” More than the mole.

I think I've been clear about how highly I regard Kael; I've got Renata Adler's collection of movie reviews, and what I read of it didn't compel me to read more. Having said that, I don't see Adler's piece as any less justified than Kael's attack on Sarris and the auteur theory. Kael's writing upset her, so she wrote about it.

i figure kael could handle it well, right? even if she was shocked by it. a lot of that piece is lol and pretty spot-on.

my recollection is the the entirety of her public response was to say "i'm sorry ms adler doesn't like my work" and no more -- but maybe with the biog and all there's more to know

PK wasn't into feuds; as far as i know she only wrote about sarris in 'circles and squares,' and refused to respond to any of his subsequent attacks on her (which were generally vicious and personal in a way that her own piece was not).

Yeah, I was going to say: I think anybody has the capacity to have your feelings hurt when you feel you've been blindsided, but I can't imagine Kael reacting the way Sarris did to "Circles and Squares," letting it linger for years, up to and including his obituary for Kael (which, as I wrote upthread, I do understand, if I try to see the whole episode through his eyes). I'm sure she shrugged it off quickly.

there were a few interviews toward the end where she said something like "i think rennie a was pissy over the fact that i expanded the allowable amount of 'voice' in the ny'er" but that was about it.