I am p curious to see what films these guys write about/prioritise. p4k more legitimately has a mandate to write domestically/insularly about American/w/e film, but a film site covering the same territory would be kinda disgustingly unambitious
― szarkasm (schlump), Monday, 8 July 2013 20:20 (ten years ago) link
american / w/e music, rather
― szarkasm (schlump), Monday, 8 July 2013 20:23 (ten years ago) link
the site's name reminds me of this
http://media.komonews.com/images/Chew_Cookbook.jpg
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Monday, 8 July 2013 20:27 (ten years ago) link
It's live: http://thedissolve.com/
― Gukbe, Wednesday, 10 July 2013 20:41 (ten years ago) link
"i loved the av club...but the font was so small and unrefined!"
― da croupier, Wednesday, 10 July 2013 20:54 (ten years ago) link
i wonder if they can track the amount of ppl who open this site and then close the page within 10 seconds
― i wanna be a gabbneb baby (Hungry4Ass), Wednesday, 10 July 2013 22:51 (ten years ago) link
http://alteredzones.com
― markers, Wednesday, 10 July 2013 23:02 (ten years ago) link
Rip
― Gukbe, Thursday, 11 July 2013 00:28 (ten years ago) link
oh my god richard you think joe swanberg is better than jafar panahi
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/07/who-are-the-twelve-greatest-living-narrative-filmmakers.html smdh
― szarkasm (schlump), Thursday, 25 July 2013 01:19 (ten years ago) link
classic brody
― Gukbe, Thursday, 25 July 2013 01:54 (ten years ago) link
film criticism's Variety obit
http://variety.com/2013/film/markets-festivals/the-last-critic-who-mattered-1200599333/
― Miss Arlington twirls for the Coal Heavers (Dr Morbius), Friday, 6 September 2013 16:13 (ten years ago) link
Tributes to the late Stanley Kauffmann by Wolcott, Thomson, Denby:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115090/tribute-stanley-kauffmann
― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 9 October 2013 16:43 (ten years ago) link
Never really connected to kauffmann's writing, especially, but I admired the fact that he continued to work into his 90s. Thanks for the link.
― Treeship, Wednesday, 9 October 2013 17:09 (ten years ago) link
Apparently his last review was Our Nixon in August. Here he is on Chereau's Son Frere:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/new-places-within
on Antonioni's breakthrough:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115093/stanley-kauffmann-lavventura
and the notorious Godfather pan (OTM on Brando):
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/film/101783/tnr-film-classics-the-godfather-april-1-1972
― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 9 October 2013 18:00 (ten years ago) link
OUR CRITICAL PRECEPTS
(1) It's primarily about language, using the precise word for Oshima's eroticism, having a push-pull relationship with both film experience and writing experience.
(2) Anonymity and coolness, which includes writing film-centered rather than self-centered criticism, distancing ourselves from the material and the people involved. With few exceptions, we don't like meeting the movie director or going to press screenings.
(3) Burrowing into the movie, which includes extending the piece, collaging a whole article with pace changes, multiple tones, getting different voices into it.
(4) Not being precious about writing. Paying strict heed to syntax and yeat playing around with words and grammar to get layers and continuation.
(5) Willingness to put in a great deal of time and discomfort: long drives to see films again and again, nonstop writing sessions.
(6) Getting the edge. For instance, using the people around you, a brain like Jean-Pierre Gorin's.
(7) Giving the audience some uplift.
Manny Farber & Patricia Patterson, Film Comment May/June 1977.
― moullet, Sunday, 27 October 2013 03:47 (ten years ago) link
^ too much work
J Hoberman taking over Dave Kehr's DVD column in the Sunday NY Times.
― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 12 November 2013 17:58 (ten years ago) link
Cool.
― Pazz & Jop 1280 (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 12 November 2013 18:07 (ten years ago) link
David Bordwell on the Founding Fathers of modern film criticism:
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2014/01/26/the-rhapsodes-agee-farber-tyler-and-us/
― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 29 January 2014 17:30 (ten years ago) link
linked in celebration of quitting this nonjob
http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/film-criticism-state-of-the-art
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 25 February 2014 16:55 (ten years ago) link
Kent Jones is a good listen: http://www.thecinephiliacs.net/2014/02/episode-33-kent-jones-spawn-of-north.html
― Insane Prince of False Binaries (Gukbe), Tuesday, 25 February 2014 17:44 (ten years ago) link
KJ (who I sat behind at a Hitchcock silent the other night) on how Bazin and Farber would not be at home in the field today, and also other things about Sarris and Robin Wood:
I think that Farber’s passionate involvement in the actual practice of criticism precluded any genuine investment in partisanship or polemics, and that’s doubly true of Bazin. Paradoxically, this means that the cinema’s two greatest critics are outliers in what we now call film culture, a by-product of the Politique des Auteurs, streamlined for American use into the Auteur Theory, and finally trodden down and flattened over the decades into plain old auteurism. Their names are constantly mentioned and their most famous pieces are frequently cited and invoked, but rarely in terms of their relevance to contemporary affairs, least of all the lucid objections they raised to the auteurist idea at its inception.
http://www.filmcomment.com/article/auteur-theory-auteurism
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 6 March 2014 18:17 (ten years ago) link
btw is there a compilation of the '50s Cahiers gang's writings in English, or of JLG's in particular?
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 6 March 2014 19:00 (ten years ago) link
http://www.amazon.com/Cahiers-Cin%C3%A9ma-Neo-Realism-Hollywood-Harvard/dp/0674090616
― Number None, Thursday, 6 March 2014 19:08 (ten years ago) link
thanks NN
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 6 March 2014 19:20 (ten years ago) link
quitting this nonjob
how come?
― curmudgeon, Thursday, 6 March 2014 19:37 (ten years ago) link
there's a line in The Great Beauty (which I sort of hated otherwise) to the effect of "I'm too old to do things I don't want to do."
also
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."- Samuel Johnson
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 6 March 2014 19:43 (ten years ago) link
Yeah, well Samuel Johnson was a well known junket whore.
― Eric H., Thursday, 6 March 2014 19:51 (ten years ago) link
Read on Alfred's blog that EW's Owen Gleiberman just got canned after having been with the magazine since its inception. I haven't read that mag in years, but my family had a subscription years ago and I always enjoyed his criticism. His minority-opinion reviews of The Last Boy Scout and Groundhog Day were particularly memorable. Would love if Rolling Stone could somehow lose the never non-hacky Peter Travers and pick up Gleiberman.
― Inside Lewellyn Sinclair (cryptosicko), Friday, 4 April 2014 00:32 (ten years ago) link
c'mon man Peter Travers electrifying as the bruised heart of the rolling stone empire.
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Friday, 4 April 2014 00:34 (ten years ago) link
MZS on the sacking: http://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/for-the-love-of-it-notes-on-the-decline-of-entertainment-weekly-the-firing-of-owen-gleiberman-and-the-ongoing-end-of-an-era
― Insane Prince of False Binaries (Gukbe), Friday, 4 April 2014 00:56 (ten years ago) link
Bordwell's last entry on those '40s critics:
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2014/04/20/the-rhapsodes-afterlives/
Seitz's advice to young critics:
http://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/advice-to-young-critics
(I was conscientious, as an old neophyte, on about 8/10, but never had any illusion I'd make a living at it, so I just ran out of time and motivation)
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 30 April 2014 21:07 (ten years ago) link
https://media.vocativ.com/photos/2014/04/Movie-Critics-Graphic-Full2.jpeg
http://www.vocativ.com/culture/media/screening-hacks-americas-movie-critics-rated/
― jaymc, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 22:18 (ten years ago) link
odious
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 1 May 2014 00:45 (ten years ago) link
that doesn't seem to allow for the possibility that maybe "200 of the highest-grossing movies of the decade" were mostly shit
― you poll a lot, but you're not saying anything (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 1 May 2014 07:49 (ten years ago) link
thou daren't deviate from the norm
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 1 May 2014 09:55 (ten years ago) link
consensus = truth
― you poll a lot, but you're not saying anything (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 1 May 2014 10:27 (ten years ago) link
Kael, Kauffmann, and Simon would have been off the chart for the duration of their careers; Sarris the same for his heyday, though he really softened the last decade or so. Farber would have been in another county (though he was only a regular reviewer for a short while).
― clemenza, Thursday, 1 May 2014 11:29 (ten years ago) link
i'm FPing any score-related posts in future
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 1 May 2014 11:37 (ten years ago) link
Reunion in Vienna (1933, Franklin) 7/10*Inside Llewyn Davis (2013, Coen, Coen) 8/10Adam & Yves (1974, de Rome) 5/10*Manhattan Melodrama (1934, Van Dyke) 6/10Slap the Monster on Page One (1972, Bellocchio) 7/10Love Is Strange (2014, Sachs) 6/10Devil in the Flesh (1986, Bellocchio) 5/10The Eyes, the Mouth (1982, Bellocchio) 6/10Manakamana (2013, Spray, Velez) 7/10*An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (2012, Nance) 8/10The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976, Ross) 7/10The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970, Wilder) 6/10
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Etc., etc., etc.
I don't think ratings are a problem in and of themselves, least of all on a message board where there's no review attached.
― clemenza, Thursday, 1 May 2014 11:44 (ten years ago) link
well, we're not critics. Glossing over substantive stuff on critical chops in favor of another mass-market barometer is for shit.
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 1 May 2014 12:11 (ten years ago) link
no one's making a scoresheet of our ratings, yr comparison is specious
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 1 May 2014 12:21 (ten years ago) link
jaymc might be
― wins, Thursday, 1 May 2014 12:26 (ten years ago) link
and the NSA.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 1 May 2014 12:36 (ten years ago) link
I don't know, I just don't see ratings as a problem when accompanied by good writing. Christgau rated records for 40+ years. If you mean that ratings are usually accompanied by poor writing, that's probably true. But they don't cause the poor writing.
― clemenza, Thursday, 1 May 2014 12:50 (ten years ago) link
i'm talking about RATINGS IN ISOLATION, goddammit
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 1 May 2014 13:04 (ten years ago) link
Okay...My mahy talents notwithstanding, I'm not a mind-reader.
― clemenza, Thursday, 1 May 2014 13:09 (ten years ago) link
"many"...typing not one of them, not anymore.
― clemenza, Thursday, 1 May 2014 13:10 (ten years ago) link
new site
Critics Round Up is the first movie review aggregator to select reviews based on the quality of writing moreso than popularity. That doesn’t mean CRU will pick up on all of the worthy film writing online. Good writing has and will continue to fall through the cracks, which is inevitable since the internet is so big and constantly expanding. But unlike Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, CRU will not fail in bringing your attention to new writing by esteemed critics like Adrian Martin and Kent Jones or reputable film journals like Senses of Cinema and La Furia Umana, people and sites that absolutely shouldn’t be overlooked.
http://criticsroundup.com/about-critics-round-up/
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 13 May 2014 21:40 (ten years ago) link
http://criticsroundup.com/which-critics-are-included/
― Cronk's Not Cronk (Eric H.), Tuesday, 13 May 2014 21:55 (ten years ago) link
100% in favor--notice, though, they are converting to a score ("CRU Rating").
Find this combination confusing on the "Which Critics Are Included" page:
The New Yorker: Richard BrodyThe Nation: James Agee, Manny FarberThe New Republic: Manny FarberTime: James Agee, Manny Farber
― clemenza, Tuesday, 13 May 2014 21:59 (ten years ago) link