Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

Edelstein and Zacharek of the glossy critics; Rosenbaum, Thomson, Taubin, Kenny, and the Slant crew elsewhere.

david bordwell's blog is gd

usually enjoy jonathan romney's contributions to sight and sound

yeah ive been reading bordwell's blog lately. that guy knows his shit!

Bordwell is great for a specific thing. It's funny how much academics hate him though.

what specific thing is that

afaik academics partic hate the classroom popularity of bordwell's Film Art: An introduction bk, and esp the 'formalist'/historical approach to film reading offered therein (as opposed to the more politically engaged/textualist wing of robin wood, andrew britton etc). for me, film art is a p valuable introductory text to certain questions that are worth raising and thinking abt in relation to film, but obv its not the whole story, doesn't pretend to be, tho' it is polemical in intent, i guess (it also has some v well chosen images/examples that have, along w/ the relatively accessible content/style, made it a popular film studies 'tool'.) i really like bordwell's bk on ozu, and in the 80s i attended a personally revealatory ozu season at the nft that he curated and introduced. so yay.

oh and tim lucas usually writes abt interesting films on his blog:

http://www.vwpro.blogspot.co.uk/

David Hudson, keeper of the Mubi Notebook, will now be giving you essential daily news (ie, Sl4nt links) here:

http://www.fandor.com/blog/welcome-to-keyframe-daily/

Stephanie Zacharek deep6'd at Movieline

Found out yesterday – it sucks.

also, Jim Emerson slaps around this David Carr person who I'm glad I've generally ignored up til now:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2012/06/ao_scott_on_criticism_this_is_.html

Carr is the primary subject of that Page One doc about the NYT, IIRC.

He's also awesome in that scene where she smacks down the Vice assholes.

well now we know he likes to say ridiculous things about film criticism.

yeah. Carr is worth reading though.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/scottharris/100064232/lets-drag-film-criticism-out-of-the-snark-ages-2/

One email even linked to its author’s “takedown of Paul Blart: Mall Cop”, a piece that had been posted about three months after that movie was released, which is to say about two months after it was forgotten.

Way to avoid open-mike-night stylings.

Should he even be calling it criticism since he is mostly referring to internet flash mob? Also, lol at someone writing in Britishes newspaper complaining about snark.

post in here in case people missed the other thread: RIP Andrew Sarris

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/movies/andrew-sarris-film-critic-dies-at-83.html?pagewanted=all

I admired AS's unapologetic Francophilia. In '96-97 he even did top-10 French lists for the year.

http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~ejohnson/critics/sarris.html

Also, he helped me learn to love silents, screwball, and Fassbinder.

Andrew Sarris RIP

Didn't realize Hoberman has a new collection coming out:

http://www.versobooks.com/books/1042-film-after-film

(Big photo.) He's going to be in Toronto for a signing on the 9th, so, even though I hate getting mixed up with that whole film-festival crowd, I will make an effort to get out to that.

First Andrew Sarris, then Judith Crist also died this summer.

podcast with extensive interviews with film critics/bloggers. i've listened to the Keith Uhlich one and it was enjoyable. http://www.thecinephiliacs.net/

He's a bro and super gay.

he goes hard after A Single Man. it was funny.

we all should

where does Hoberman write now? (after being dismissed from Village Voice?)

Rosenbaum @ Reddit right now:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/znx0q/iam_jonathan_rosenbaum_writer_film_critic_ama/

the hoberman is just a collection of previously-published essays.

nowadays he writes for various online and offline sources, e.g. art forum, the guarian....

Rosenbaum @ Reddit right now:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/znx0q/iam_jonathan_rosenbaum_writer_film_critic_ama/

― Sandy Denny Real Estate (jaymc), Monday, September 10, 2012 3:23 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

[–]thetrustymule -4 points 1 day ago
Has your fame ever gotten you laid? Level it up to anal?
permalink

rosenbaum didnt respond

Love how he's such a caricature of himself.

He's always refusing to answer questions about anal.

omg, I could poll each and every one of these blurbs: https://twitter.com/FakeShalit

g news here:

The Circle also announced three new members in Bilge Ebiri (New York Magazine), Nick Pinkerton (Village Voice) and Keith Uhlich (Time Out New York).

http://www.indiewire.com/article/new-york-film-critics-circle-move-awards-vote-to-december-3rd-add-new-members

I trust all three. De Palma's best director award is all but certain now!

bet he would trade it for functioning software at the NYFF.

Ebiri did an episode of the Cinephiliacs and talked about Barry Lyndon. I liked him.

J.Ro on the late Elliott Stein

And his monumental essay “My Life with Kong,” which appeared years later in the February 24, 1977 issue of Rolling Stone, had impressed me so much that I wanted to include it in my first book, a personal memoir...

!

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=32473

http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/republican-election-woes-blamed-on-pauline-kaelism

At Politico, Jonathan Martin has a long essay on the reasons for Republicans' poor showing at the 2012 elections. While older GOPers are wallowing in shock and denial, younger Republicans are looking inward, and accusing their own party of cocooning itself inside a bubble of its own hype and manufactured outrage. "The party," Martin says, "is suffering from Pauline Kaelism."

Think they might have a bit of a John Simon problem too--a little out of step with this newfangled world. (Not necessarily a bad thing in a critic.)

The problem is the reference is wrong. Every fool who cites Kael omits the rest of her quote.

clem, i can't believe someone who gives Iranian and Asian films from the '90s no cred would take such a stance.

I didn't even get the bollixed reference, having swatted it aside here

Pauline Kael

I have nothing against Iranian or Asian films of the '90s--I'm working my way through these things, lots of time. (I assume you're extrapolating from the '90s list I posted yesterday.) Anyway, if it seems I'm agreeing with the Kael-Republican analogy, I wasn't--just wanted to make the Simon comparison.

When I first looked at the Politico quote yesterday, I thought it meant cocooned in the sense of Kael surrounding herself with like-minded Paulettes (exaggerated or not). But you're right, it's in reference to the alleged Nixon quote.

Best Elliott Stein obit I've seen (I went to a number of those BAM Cinemachats):

"After the chat for Exorcist II, someone stood and said how much they didn't like the film when they saw it on first release, how they didn't like it years later when they saw it on TV, and how they still didn't like it. I think the guy was half-expecting a defense, but at that point Elliott just said 'So, why are you here?'"

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/11/post_36.php

Almost put this in a Greil Marcus thread, but I suppose it more properly belongs here--long interview with David Thomson:

http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?type=&id=1162&fulltext=1&media=#article-text-cutpoint

Great anecdote from Marcus about the '78 Invasion of the Body Snatchers and his daughter Emily.

I never knew John Simon had another life as an editor. Here are his recollections of editing Lionel Trilling, W.H. Auden, and Jacques Barzun. (This surprised me enough that I first clicked around to confirm it was the same John Simon.)

http://magazine.columbia.edu/features/winter-2012-13/unedited-man