Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

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.

(Incidentally, I rented it on the basis of this review - http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/09/07/movies/07roma.html?ref=movies - so, re the thread title, Mr Holden can safely be scratched off the list.)

The only hoofin' I've seen by Walken is in Pennies From Heaven and the Fatboy Slim video.

(Actually I now realise that it was actually this pash-note in Salon that I read -http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/09/06/btm/index_np.html - so O'Hehir is for the chopping block too.)

Wait, is Morbs seriously saying That 70s Show > Arrested Development?

Based on my viewings, certainly, but I was valuing those 2 actors for other things to (tho I've yet to see Grace in a comic film part that's better than what he did on T70S).

You AD ppl are responsible for getting Jason Bateman back in films that actually get released; thanks.

xp

Disagreeing with a critic once -- or even 200 times -- is no reason to 'chop' them.

you're ignoring the comic nirvana in making a film with Jason Bateman, Topher, and Michael Cera.

It's kind of hard to compare That '70s Show with Arrested Development: they're doing such different things. Part of what a lot of people (including myself) think is so brilliant about the latter is how densely layered it is: there are jokes that call back to earlier episodes, there are blink-and-you-miss-'em visual gags, etc. Whereas That '70s Show is a fairly conventional sitcom. Nothing wrong with that, but the appeals are in the acting and the comforting familiarity of the structure rather than in the dizzying innovation.

I just saw dizzying unfunniness. But anyway, fuck TV.

It's kind of hard to compare That '70s Show with Arrested Development: they're doing such different things.

yeah respectively: sucking balls and being awesome.

hey, to all the sane guys on this thread, i take it "that 70's show" is fairly mundane, dated bullcrap, no?

But anyway, fuck TV.

dude you just invalidated your own opinion of AD

I hate the way this sounds, but I don't think you can judge Arrested Development based on a few scattered episodes: you really have to watch them in sequence, or else half the pleasure is lost.

Shh! You're ruining the surprise!

I don't like AD much, but no way is it less funny than 70s.

Yeah, I should've watched lots more of a show that made me chuckle twice in a half hour.

GUYS, CAN'T ARGUE ABOUT WHAT PPL FIND FUNNY

Paging me on screwball to thread!!!!!

"I don't like AD much, but no way is it less funny than 70s The Awful Trurh."