Pauline Kael

my ex and i wanted to open a movie theater/restaurant establishment similar to nitehawk in brooklyn and one of our menu items was going to be the "Pauline Kale salad." this plan never really got off the ground.

ramp it up again haha

i remain agnostic on kael but ugh @ that esquire article, repellent example of sycophantic interviewer sucking up to celebrity subject

So why the animus toward Streep? (I was generally down with it)

http://vidiocy.com/post/74848476123/meryl-streep-vs-pauline-kael

haha is calling meryl streep performances artificial really the kind of aberrant crime that requires this much psychological speculation, she wasn't a serial killer

Ultimately, her criticisms of Streep could conceivably be about a lot of things, but particularly in hindsight, they hardly seem to have anything to do with Meryl Streep. Here, as was so often the case, Pauline Kael’s true subject may have been Pauline Kael.

like this seems rly insulting to me

Not understanding the critical fuss over Streep's early performances is one of the few things on which Kael and I agree thee days. Streep's acting started to loosen with The Bridges of Madison County, which is still one of her best perfs.

I mean, her line about Streep – "She's made a career out of being miscast" – was otm

I'd put it at A Cry in the Dark xp

that one's good too because her tics merged with the character she was playing (a fussy, shadowy woman whose motives are suspect).

Just glanced at it very quickly and this jumped out:

Kael first noticed Streep in The Deer Hunter, and actually singled the actress out for praise (calling her “a real beauty...(who) doesn’t do anything standard; everything seems fresh”) in what was otherwise an incensed pan of Michael Cimino’s Vietnam War film.

I'm at work and can't check her full review, but from memory, I'm sure that's wrong. A line from the online blurb:

And because the director, Michael Cimino, plays them out on such a vast canvas, the film has an inchoate, stirring quality. It has no more moral intelligence than the Clint Eastwood action pictures, yet it's an astonishing piece of work, an uneasy mixture of violent pulp and grandiosity, with an enraptured view of common life-poetry of the commonplace.

She thought it was nuts, and it is, but clearly she thought it was a sometimes stunning piece of filmmaking. And it is.

good work; can't say i'm suprised, cuz it's Karina Longworth.

Kael first noticed Streep in The Deer Hunter, and actually singled the actress out for praise (calling her “a real beauty...(who) doesn’t do anything standard; everything seems fresh”) in what was otherwise an incensed pan of Michael Cimino’s Vietnam War film

That's really in there. Also, "it's a testament to Meryl Streep's heroic resources as a mime that she makes herself felt - she has practically no lines."

I just finished it. I'm not taken with critical writing that speculates on motives, but that's my peculiarity.

in another words, the entire Armond White thread? (critical writing about critics' motives, that is.)

Too bad Kael retired before Death Becomes Her came out. Can't think of a Streep performance that would've been more up her alley.

good work; can't say i'm suprised, cuz it's Karina Longworth.

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Thursday, January 30, 2014 12:24 PM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark

who

she does some great stuff then she says 'trash humpers' is the best movie of the year so idk

For a second I thought above post was re: Kael, which confused me on several levels.

this essay was weird. she acknowledges that streep's comments about kael were gross (streep basically accused her of reverse racism, and only after kael wasn't around to respond - would love to be a fly on the wall if kael came up at a lunch between streep and andrew sarris), but then basically suggests in the closing paragraph that streep was right, at least in that kael's critique was not worth taking seriously. only she never explains what exactly kael failed to grasp about streep's work in the '80s. I do think Kael would have liked some of Streep's later work - at her best (usually in comedies), she reminds me of a professor who finally relaxed after getting tenure.

and yeah, "an incensed pan" is a shockingly reductive way to describe a review that contains lines like "The Deer Hunter is a small-minded film with greatness in it - Cimino's technique has pushed him further than he has been able to think out."

I can't place in which essay Kael wondered aloud how awesome Streep would be if she starred in more comedies.

I do think Kael would have liked some of Streep's later work - at her best (usually in comedies), she reminds me of a professor who finally relaxed after getting tenure.

One performance I think she would have liked--maybe even loved--was Streep in Albert Brooks' Defending Your LIfe. She's so flaky and funny in that film. Kael's last review was L.A. Story, which came out, according to IMDB, Feb. 8, 1991; Defending Your LIfe was March 22, 1991, so she just missed it.

She's become an actor only capable of greatness -- great theatricality or great awfulness -- which I think she would've responded to.

So winning that third Oscar was akin to Streep becoming university president.

Yes, the Academy of the Overrated.

The third Oscar was more an emeritus thing. She should have got it for Julie and Julia, between that and the memo getting out she hadn't actually won in like twenty years, she was officially Overdue An Oscar and got one as soon as the competition waned, almost irrespective to the winning role's quality.

No doubt. The "she MUST have a third Oscar" campaign began in 2002 and got more and more absurd (I prefer TDWP though). Those two consecutive late nineties nods look ridiculous in retrospect as I don't remember enthusiasm for either movie and she had no buzz.

great theatricality or great awfulness

http://monstergirl.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/zee-and-stella.jpg

Exactly!

She should have got it for Julie and Julia

she was good in this otherwise terrible movie

she loved Taylor in that one, X Y & Zee xp

certainly not what Streep seemed to be aiming for 30 years ago, is it? She's very funny in Demme's Manchurian Candidate, maybe Kael would've liked that.

can we agree she's awful when she tries to be "light"? In It's Complicated every other sound is a giggle, every line a roll of the eyes. It's like ugggggh choke on your Oscar, lady

Ranking the "Streep's overdue" string:

The Devil Wears Prada
Julie v. Julia
Doubt
The Iron Lady

Adaptation is probably better than any of them tho, excepting maybe Prada.

She should have got it for Julie and Julia

devil wears prada

Ranking the "Streep's overdue" string:

The Devil Wears Prada
Julie v. Julia
Doubt
The Iron Lady

tom except The Iron Lady is rank, not deserving of rank.

Too bad Kael retired before Death Becomes Her came out. Can't think of a Streep performance that would've been more up her alley.

― Alfre, Lord Woodard (Eric H.), Thursday, January 30, 2014 1:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This. The movie, too--just the right blend of light playfulness and giddy tastelessness that I could see Kael responding to.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e1/SmithsRank.jpg

prada too, yeah, though that would have been a supporting award - i just think that losing after one of her rare truly loved performances to sandra bullock's corn tipped the scales for an "ok, next time WE PROMISE" Scent of A Woman trophy. I wouldn't be surprised if McConaughey's getting his this year, with DiCaprio then "seriously overdue" after that.

tom except The Iron Lady is rank, not deserving of rank.

Granted.

Agree that The Devil Wears Prada is the best performance of the "Streep's overdue" run, but the movie lets her down by being more about Anne Hathaway's dullard of a character than about Streep's.

The Iron Lady still the strangest bad movie I've seen in years; why make a film about so contentious a figure and then have the whole thing be her stumbling around her house talking to her dead husband?

you prefer a movie about Thatcher stumbling around the White House talking to a dead Reagan?

Might be an improvement.

would've preferred a movie of her eating babies

poor, card-carrying union member babies

The Devil Wears Prada and The Iron Lady are on my never-watch list

(Pauline Kael's too, I hear)

like Julie and Julia, DWP features a decent Streep perf in an otherwise abominable movie

The Devil Wears Prada is an easy watch! Fast forward thru the Hathaway parts (Tucci's good too).

Yes! DWP so needs a Phantom Menace-style fan edit!