New Yorker magazine alert thread

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/1/4/1357312724592/Gerard-Depardieu-009.jpg

That tank top is definitely more of a Depardon't

real lols.

Depardon't should enter the pop culture pun vernacular.

Purell piece was a long time coming, but I wanted more!

Catching up on a bunch of issues, I thought Rachel Aviv's Netherland, about homeless LGBT teens, was extraordinary.

Nussbaum's consistently good. She's a real fan, whereas many highbrow critics operate on the basis that TV is generally beneath them except the occasional quality documentary. She's making SFJ look even drier. His Atoms for Peace review was like a scientist's description of something on a microscope slide.

It's totally a matter of style, but I generally don't like Nussbaum, at least not in the mag. I've liked some of her blog posts, where the style works for her, but her essays have rarely offered me much in the way of insight. Like I've posted above, they're often just long lists of other shows she likes or liked, though she has shown glimmers of potential. (I should say I don't really like SFJ's writing in the mag that much, either; he is pretty dry but similarly unilluminating.) I've always been a fan of Lane (am I in the minority here?) because he's witty and funny yet informed and sometimes perceptive. I wish they had a TV person like that.

Love the Lane, hate the Denby.

maybe a more interesting question than why does nussbaum suck is

why does tv criticism suck, its all onion av club level shit abt like show runners and callbacks and character arcs and other meager depressing ways of being

why does film crit suck? why does music crit suck? does art crit suck? why does crit suck? everyone hates the denby. its what brings us together as a people. i like the lane okay. you take what you can get.

clone the menand. that's what i say. have the clones write the whole mag.

otm

if someone paid me a good salary to write about t.v. for a living i would close my record store tomorrow and devote my life to it and be the greatest television critic in history. but it ain't gonna happen, so i'll just keep cleaning the mold off of dan fogelberg records.

scott! tv crit is worse than the other crits

i liked that t.v. guide critic when i was a kid. i can still see his hirshfeld drawing in my head. he had to be kinda nice though.

lane is not even good, but better than denby, maybe.

love lane, such a good writer

that piece on the hipster chef has sooooooooooooo many choice lines. don't even know where to begin:

a tender piece of lamb half-buried under snippets of cat grass, periwinkle-blue borage blossoms, yellow-foot mushrooms, and “cocoa soil.” One side of the plate was devoted to a splat of beet-rhubarb verjus, darkly clotting. He called it Spring Slaughter.

Over a long dining table hung a mobile that Thornton fashioned from deer ribs and a jawbone he found in Oregon, and some lichen-covered pieces of apple wood he once used to make ice cream.

Thornton is thirty and skinny, five feet nine, with a lean, carved face and the playful, semi-wild bearing of a stray animal that half-remembers life at the hearth. People of an older generation adopt him. Three women consider themselves to be his mother; two men—neither one his father—call him son. Lost boys flock to him; at any given time, there are a couple of them camping on his floor, in tents and on bedrolls.

He remembers that one time when a social worker made her regular visit to the trailer Elesa was naked on the couch repeating the sentence “I cut up and chop the hamburger meat”—the only thing she said for several weeks—while he watched “Dennis the Menace” on a TV set with the back torn off to expose the wires, in case they housed surveillance equipment.

tents indoors? molecular camping

“He never makes the same fucking flavors twice,” he said. “They’re rainbows. You can’t catch them.”

love lane, such a good writer

― lag∞n, Sunday, March 3, 2013 6:46 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

no lol at u SEE

I think Lane is great and don't get why some people don't like him.

Same here. I can see why his opinions might annoy you and some of his jokes fall flat but to say that he's a bad writer - nah.

I think Lane is great and don't get why some people don't like him.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, March 3, 2013 9:04 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This might explain a lil of it - http://urbanhonking.com/isawthat/2011/05/17/remember-the-ladies-2/

Ah yes, Adam Gopnik my old pal–whose writing I genuinely enjoy and who seems like a great dude

...

:)

I always found Lane oddly sex-obsessed, but sexist? Never noticed it. Is this a pervasive opinion? Still a good writer, and funny, and says good things about film, sometimes.

A little googling found this essay, that asserts Lane's "Dark Knight Rises" review was sexist ... against men!

Lane and Denby are both great y'all are mad

Lane's fun to read, and when he's really enthusiastic about something, it can be worth a look. But mostly he doesn't seem very interested in film, which is kind of a problem. Denby's just middlebrow nothingness. They shoulda grabbed Hoberman as soon as the Voice dumped him.

I don't get the impression Lane is uninterested in film at all. He does tend to lead with the less interesting film, or more Hollywood/commercial film, and then follow-up with a shorter review of a film that he likes more. But I may be misrepresenting his patterns. But he reads passionate to me, just not overly solemn or serious.

i think lane loves movies. hes a great writer too. dont know why they havent swapped out denby for brody

I occasionally agree with Denby's muddle-headed challops but he's such a damn Old Testament scold.

I like Brody, but I think I like him most as this (literally) hidden gem of the magazine. He's free to write about more esoteric stuff, but he's relegated to a tiny corner of the front of book. And the web.

brody's blog is usually pretty interesting

brody has hilarious taste in movies for a stern looking middle age man w/a huge beard

i like this cryptobragging links to uninteresting news articles in many languages

i actually like lane when he's not writing about movies. denby is horrible. a horrible film critic. they should have thrown him out the door and hired hoberman. that would have been great.

i skip denby but theres no way his reviews can compare in awfulness to how bad his books one abt getting divorced and jerking to internet porn and the other complaining abt mean blogs sound

My favorite pretentious film critic brag was when Jonathan Rosenbaum was writing about Dryer and referred to a new Dryer bio, but couldn't resist noting that the book was better in the original Dutch. I thought dude, there is no way you are fluent in Dutch, let alone fluent enough to read a biography in Dutch.

The book was better in the original google translated Dutch.

the book is better if you split it w yr date

Sorry posting from afar. Obv. I meant Dreyer, and I think the bio was in Danish. I blame google translate.

røsenbaum

A hint as to what Hersh is up to

http://m.democracynow.org/stories/11912

Did we somehow never discuss the article about the lady who shot her bro and a roomful of fellow professors?

I just read the whole thing, and holy shit

yeah i had read the wired article about her but that was def incredibly interesting too

by the time the transgender teens piece had gotten around to talking about YouTube I had already been sucked away from the article and down a 2-hour k-hole of trans teen vlogging