Pauline Kael

One of only two movies I saw twice in a 12-hour period. I hated it when I watched it in the morning, then my best friend and his girlfriend "conned" me into a second viewing.

AB, or CK?

i hated american beauty as well. cable dramas kinda took the pandering liberal fantasy world thing to new levels though. weeds, mad men, breaking bad, etc. even though i like those shows. liberals need violent wish-fulfillment too.

hence, V For Vendetta

by the time this came out the drudge sirens were going off whenever my film school cronies were breathlessly recommending the latest life-changing entry in the american film renaissance of the late 90s

That whole thing was really just Oscar season '99, right?

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/165416-the-critic-as-artful-gadfly-pauline-kael/

another myth semi-punctured

http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/actually-pauline-kael-did-sometimes-watch-movies-more-than-once

Yeah, I was pretty sure that one was BS from the get-go.

She said repeatedly in her reviews that such-and-such movie from the thirties played much better when she "last" saw it on TV.

Actually don't remember that--can you think off an example offhand?

I can't take all this myth dismantling. Secret Last Year at Marienbad lover, lifelong obsession with split infinitives, Hampton vacations with Andy and Molly, who knows what awaits.

The Hect-MacCarthur comedies, All About Eve, and other films whose worth is mostly literary.

*Hecht

A clueless reviewer quoted Kael's annoyance at the repetition in Hiroshima Mon Amour ("we get it already") to mirror his feeling at the apparent repetitions (not textual so much as visual) found in Haneke's Amour.

Got to read this woman..

I mean it must be laugh a page. I think I'm ready.

Hitchcock fans will fondly recall Kael’s dismissal of the Master’s 1958 thriller Vertigo, now widely considered the crowning achievement of his illustrious career and, oh yeah, the Greatest Film Ever Made, according to the 2012 Sight and Sound poll. She deemed the movie “stupid,” though she did love Kim Novak, who was “touching in the dreamy-floozy Marilyn Monroe-like role.”

i have never read this before! honestly kind of surprising to me.

not me

Nor I

Also: PK in Furtive Fassbinder Fanatic Shocka!

i know she wasn't keen on 'the birds' or the other later stuff but the depth of her de palma love makes it a bit bewildering to me that she didn't have any time for '50s hitch. did she hate 'rear window' too?

That I'm aware of she never wrote a line about Rear Window, although it's as easy to imagine her liking it as it is to imagine her loathing Vertigo.

I'm having a hard time figuring out where I read her on Vertigo--I just checked I Lost it at the Movies, 5001 Nights, Conversations with PK, and Afterglow, and it's nowhere. But I have. I know she didn't care for it, but I don't remember the word "stupid."

Kael's the Nixon of ILX--she cannot be killed.

i have never read this before! honestly kind of surprising to me.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, November 20, 2012 6:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

you never read it before because its misattributed - she was talking about Kiss Me, Stupid, not Vertigo

"...he used to be the master entertainer of the screen, because he could tease us so cleverly; we enjoyed being willfully manipulated to be tense and afraid and expectant...The plots were usually fantastic, and the "MacGuffin" was a mere pretext for the chases and excitations and thrills. He gave excitement to the world."

That's from her negative review of "Topaz". One can probably surmise (sorry, "we" can surmise) from that that "Rear Window" was one she liked.

Doing a Google search to see if she'd ever written anything about Gorky Park, I came across this:

http://www.listal.com/list/kael

Nothing you didn't already know (with the possible exception of the first film listed), but funny-obsessive nonetheless.

I'm waiting for someone to put her Cavett interviews on Youtube. The stock of Googleable Kael footage hasn't changed in years.

Yeah, I'd love to see that stuff. All you can get is Jerry Lewis on Cavett saying how good Kael and Rex Reed (!) are, and blasting what seems to be Judith Crist, and using the word "totality".

Did Kael ever write anything about My Bloody Valentine?

The movie or the band?

(in either case, I'm guessing no)

Kael was more a C86 lady than a Shoegazer.

I've been reading Kiss Kiss Bang Bang on the subway lately... her defense of Welles in one essay is quite stirring (Chimes at Midnight >>> Makiewicz's Julius Caesar), all the stranger that the double-edged sword of "Raising Kane" came about 5 years later.

Well, she never stopped tilting at the auteurist windmill.

It's been years and years since I've read "Raising Kane," and I don't remember it being a scathing takedown of Welles unless you thought the man was G-d or something.

as Boggie did

I guess it's no surprise that in the Gallo wine phase of his career the usually erudite and thoughtful Welles succumbed to self-pity.

Was she dismantling Welles, or his champions?

Boggie? Oh, I get it. Once saw him do a Barnes and Noble in-store promoting a new edition of his bio. His discussion of his relationship with him was kind of a masterpiece of rhetoric.

Is it time to post that SCTV clip with John Candy again?

well, PK seems to try hard to minimize Welles' contribution to Kane, which is pretty silly even if you think his collaborators deserve credit.

also i think she is just grossly unfactual about a few things.

Yeah, I remember hearing that, but I don't recall what they were.

Is it time to post that SCTV clip with John Candy again?

Is it ever not?

xp, she referred to G-d as "Welles." Big no-no.

Speaking of Kane, thinking about jumping on the train to see the 2:50 Power and the Glory.

PK seems to try hard to minimize Welles' contribution to Kane

At worst it's an immodest attempt at Herman Mankiewicz reappraisal, but she's clear about who the genius was.

otoh KKBB has "notes" on 280 movies, most of which are longer than those online blurbs, and some of them are wonderfully concentrated and astute (ie, winning the Oscar resulted in William Holden making "mostly clinkers" afterward, at least til his Wild Bunch resurrection).

(The Power and the Glory is wonderful, but I think I'll buy the DVD soon.)

Went looking but found this instead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOmYEssdXg8

the Gaslight blurb is classic; so are most of the Bette Davis ones, particularly The Letter.

Think this is what I want
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgH286eOni4

Gianni Pavarotti bonus:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&v=n1P9eI1kEK8&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&v=n1P9eI1kEK8
(got rid of NR=1 let's see)

Nope.