Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

Rob Nelson latest casualty of Village Voice Media bloodbath

Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton

Good if long Edelstein interview (thanks to Scott Woods). Revelations: Dustin Hoffman's overrated, Josh Hartnett isn't used enough, and this:

probably shouldn’t say this, but I really appreciated Jackie Brown, really appreciated its beauty and magnificence when I saw it high. I hadn’t seen it high the first time and I loved it. When I saw it high I never wanted it to end. It was the ultimate stoner movie. The violence in the movie was for the most part off-camera, for the most part pretty upsetting in its implications. In no way are you supposed to get off on the violence in that movie. [The violence] is absurd, it’s sudden, it’s horrific. Even Samuel L. Jackson’s death is presented as a betrayal. And the death of Robert De Niro is disgusting. And obviously the death of Bridget Fonda is hauntingly absurd. Poor Chris Tucker is the other one. I’m mystified by the level of hostility to Tarantino among serious film writers as well as mainstream film critics.

morbius is gonna love that

He's pretty OTM on Brokeback Mt.

also, I liked Jackie Brown, straight.

what cinema needs is more josh hartnett

Even I'm starting to get a little tired of the "omg why don't more people give Jackie Brown respect" thing, and I still think it's his best one.

i wasn't aware ppl didn't give it respect!

Precisely.

I miss Edelstein in Slate.

He's right about Boys Don't Cry too.

on BBM: I remember your comment about the sex scene in Brokeback Mountain: Where are all the bodily fluids?

That was sex as sanctification. I don’t buy that. It was done on an entirely Platonic level.

It struck me as a gay sex scene written by a woman. It had no understanding of male animal desire.

That’s why my wife loved it. It’s a chick flick. Well the movie didn’t take place on that plane. It was the apotheosis of gay sex. It was gay sex as set against purple mountain majesties. It was set in this phony Americana, this exultation of the cowboy. It might have been the only way Americans would see a gay movie. These things happen in stages. I wrote a book with the gay producer Christine Vachon. She had a hit with Go Fish. She was trying to figure out why nothing she did had any chance of breaking through in the mainstream with anything that was gay. Not even Boys Don’t Cry was a real hit.

Hey, Jackie Brown is the only tarantino one I like more than saying "yeah, it was ok"-- I wouldn't go as far as to say I 'loved' it (saved for only my top 20 flix OAT) but it was definitely my fave of the bunch.

Christopher Tookey in the Daily Mail is the most enjoyable to read. He just doesn't like films at all.

If gives a page full of one-star reviews, it's because he's in a generous mood. Normally he gives everything a little turkey symbol.

filmbiz friend finds Edelstein secretly gay

Is that why he admits to squirming during homosex?

like John Simon?

Edelstein != Ehrenstein

I know they are diff

I had to read that whole interview just to make sure Soto was misreading the thing about Josh Hartnett as being more positive than I think it was meant. I love the worst biopic lines contest references in the intro to that article, had never seen it before:
http://www.slate.com/id/2111080/

great interview - I'm perplexed that he doesn't apply the same rules to Natural Born Killers as he does to Tarantino's Kill Bill or Grindhoues. Very weird. The violence in NKB is totally cartoony and stylized and an obvious hyperactive joke/commentary on America's love affair with celebrity and violence.

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut was a great musical. It delivers all the pleasures of a conventional dumb Broadway musical, and yet it’s obscene and satirical and silly and rude. It’s the best of both worlds for a Broadway musical queen like me.

that's EDELSTEIN

Don't know/care if he is straight or claims to be or what, but a straight guy who likes musicals joking about it and calling himself a "Broadway musical queen" isn't exactly some kind of Freudian gotcha moment.

also why is he not aware of rock n roll musicals (there were/are plenty - admittedly most of them are subpar and pale in comparison to the pre-rock n roll era but STILL)

It LOOKS like I'm misreading the bit about Hartnett, but he contradicts himself: "Here are people I want to see more of. Like Topher Grace or Josh Hartnett, or whose that guy married to Demi Moore -- I don’t know these people that well. I haven’t seen them. I know they get a lot of parts. I can’t remember them."

Love the bit about Cruise not being "open about his instrument.'

Apparently he sees something in C. Thomas Howell's vanilla face than I ever dreamed.

he wants to see more of ashton kutcher, josh hartnett, and topher grace.

for the love of christ.

Yeah, but that's after he namedrops Hartnett as an example of "bland American juvenile actors" and concedes that "Maybe he hasn’t been tested," so I took him to mean that he'd have to see more of guys like him and Ashton Kutcher before denouncing them as "so bad you wonder why anyone hires them." The way you boiled it down to "Josh Hartnett isn't used enough" makes it sound like a ringing endorsement of the guy to casting directors everywhere. (xpost)

I don't see enough of Topher Grace either.

He repeats Kael's contention that Christopher Walken could have been the Gene Kelly of our time.

(xpost)

He IS being ambivalent, I'll concede. If he admits he can't remember them in movies, that's probably their fault.

Grace would be good in a Woody Allen movie

(certainly better than Jason Biggs)

it's not biggs's fault that allen sucks.

Also the point of the C. Thomas Howell anecdote seemed pretty clear to me to be more like "actors are such a special breed than some lameo 80's comedy dude that noone respects as an actor has an 'it factor' that the camera loves" than that C. Thomas Howell is secretly brilliant. Get one reading comprehension.

Grace and Kutcher have actual comedic talent, but perhaps not perceptible to Arrested Development fans.

oh BURN

thanks for the advice, Alex. I hope to receive your SAT scores shortly.

oh BURN

I see what you did there.

Chris Walken gets to display a lot of his dancing talent surreptitiously through the body language of bizarre characters in SNL sketches, such as the Dead Zone office worker or the sympathetic Jenny Jones audience member.

walken lacks the charm and populist appeal of gene kelly. oh wait maybe that was kael's point!1!!?1!!? clever.

I had the misfortune to watch Walken in 'Romance and Cigarettes' the other day - judging by that, it's a small mercy he hasn't done more musicals.