It's also depressing to realize Lane has now been a New Yorker critic for five years longer than Kael was. They need to shake that up.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Saturday, 2 January 2021 20:03 (three years ago) link
ideally shaken upside-down from the Brooklyn Bridge
― is right unfortunately (silby), Saturday, 2 January 2021 20:12 (three years ago) link
I'm so old I remember when everybody liked Anthony Lane. (Including me! I remember him being authentically funny! Was I wrong? If I went back and read those columns now would I blanch?)
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, 2 January 2021 21:01 (three years ago) link
when was that, exactly
― is right unfortunately (silby), Saturday, 2 January 2021 21:05 (three years ago) link
At some point I liked Lane enough to buy his book *twice*, once in hardback and once in paperback when I moved to another country.
Now I just skip him entirely - the jokes are tired and everything is a variation on "i'd rather be watching preston sturges"
― Chuck_Tatum, Saturday, 2 January 2021 21:14 (three years ago) link
yeah, I used to like Lane and bought his book
that would require him to be in New York, rather than his actual home of Cambridge, England
here is a collection of Pearson, btw:
Good question @allisonpearson! What did they do in China and Wuhan that has allowed them to get back to normal? pic.twitter.com/oLOtKg1suG— Sam Bowman (@s8mb) January 1, 2021
― shivers me timber (sic), Saturday, 2 January 2021 21:18 (three years ago) link
Oh right he’s English that explains his lechery and his mawkish turns of phrase
― is right unfortunately (silby), Saturday, 2 January 2021 21:21 (three years ago) link
I used to like Lane too, I enjoyed his one-liners. He's a breezy writer. But I feel that shtick wore thin a long time ago, and there's not much beneath it. I've never thought he had very interesting ideas about film as a medium — or really, any particular ideas at all. You can like or dislike Brody, but at least he seems like a serious film guy to me, he has an aesthetic orientation steeped in knowledge of cinema. Lane has always seemed like a dilettante.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Saturday, 2 January 2021 21:22 (three years ago) link
can't be worse than denby
― mookieproof, Saturday, 2 January 2021 21:24 (three years ago) link
I remember really liking a piece where he picked some random year from the early 20th century and read every NYT #1 bestseller from that year and reviewed them all. Probably sometime in the 1990s.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, 3 January 2021 02:58 (three years ago) link
Pearson appears to be having a giant covid-denialism meltdown today because she doesn't want to have to spend any time with their kids?
― shivers me timber (sic), Monday, 4 January 2021 12:30 (three years ago) link
also having a giant freakout about the pervasive curse of media wokeness, including this assertion about a current TV programme that is part-funded by the BBC and which she is watching on the BBC
#Spiral, arguably one of the best TV cop dramas ever made, could not have come out of the current BBC. It is too truth-telling about tensions in French society, too unvarnished, too dirty, too damn incorrect. That’s what makes it so remarkable.— Allison Pearson (@allisonpearson) January 3, 2021
― shivers me timber (sic), Monday, 4 January 2021 12:34 (three years ago) link
Allison Pearson should accept this prompt deletion & public apology as enough to undo any damage to her reputation. Going further is bullying. https://t.co/UoaEolnp2I— Simon Cox (@SimonFRCox) January 4, 2021
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 4 January 2021 13:33 (three years ago) link
Quite a bit going on:
People today are accusing Allison Pearson of not caring about mental health. I think it is worth pointing out this column for the Daily Mail in April 2010, in which she wrote about her own depression: https://t.co/klwv8OInd8— Robert Hanks (@RobertHanks) January 4, 2021
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 4 January 2021 13:46 (three years ago) link
Back in the late 90s she was some mild arts commentator. Her journey into the utter monstrosity of today is something else, a lot to map out.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 4 January 2021 13:49 (three years ago) link
Denby was the worst. Didn't he write a book about porn addiction? Lane is fine with me, I think he's a good, witty writer, even if he doesn't always have anything special to say. Brody ... he reminds me of Rosenbaum or other quirky cineaste contrarians a lot, and because of that I've warned friends to tread carefully when they read a Brody rave.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 4 January 2021 14:05 (three years ago) link
yeah brody is one of those critics who doesnt really have value as a consumer guide, but is still a good read bc it can be fun and useful to follow along with the mental gymnastics he uses to get to his wacky opinions. as a bunch have pointed out before, even though hes nuts he seems to come by his bizarre opinions honestly. imo lane is fine but boring, i have less & less interest in his tasteful cocktail party wit thing. brody seems like a legit movie-obsessed weirdo which is way more fun for me.
― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Monday, 4 January 2021 15:07 (three years ago) link
Excellent post, OEO.
― Dog Heavy Manners (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 4 January 2021 15:21 (three years ago) link
one of those critics who doesnt really have value as a consumer guide, but is still a good read bc it can be fun and useful to follow along with the mental gymnastics he uses to get to his wacky opinions
This just kind of makes me want to waltz sideways into an alternate universe where Armond White is a beloved New Yorker movie critic for decades
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 4 January 2021 15:36 (three years ago) link
I wish the magazine would find room for Brody in print, apart from capsule reviews. It's a shame that all of his long reviews are online-only.
― jaymc, Monday, 4 January 2021 15:40 (three years ago) link
1 100 percent agree that Lane is better than Denby. Just kind of a low bar. They've done a good job bringing in younger, diverse writers in other arts/culture realms, it would be great to expand that to film.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, 4 January 2021 16:07 (three years ago) link
― jaymc, Monday, January 4, 2021 10:40 AM (one hour ago)
yeah it's maddening, he's really their only full-time film critic with anything interesting to say
― k3vin k., Monday, 4 January 2021 16:43 (three years ago) link
― Guayaquil (eephus!),
It's better than Vidal's, after whom he modeled it.
I also dug his essays on Matthew Arnold, Gide, Bunuel.
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 4 January 2021 16:45 (three years ago) link
I had no problem with Denby when he wrote for New York. I still on occasion look for reviews on '80s and '90s stuff of his on Google Books.
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 4 January 2021 16:46 (three years ago) link
It's kind of interesting, there are all sorts of well-known and respected young-ish (let's say, liberally, under 50) music writers, but to my knowledge no equivalent for film writing. For some reason I thought Manohla Dargis was young, but she's almost 60 (same as Lane). AO Scott is in his mid-50s. Brody, fwiw, is 72.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 4 January 2021 17:08 (three years ago) link
Get @filmcrithulk the New Yorker gig
― is right unfortunately (silby), Monday, 4 January 2021 17:29 (three years ago) link
I love Brody. He’s a reasonably good guide for me, tho has a higher tolerance for twee aesthetics than I do
― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Monday, 4 January 2021 17:39 (three years ago) link
Same. Our sensibilities align even when we disagree.
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 4 January 2021 17:47 (three years ago) link
A few youngish film writers working for top publications:
K. Austin Collins (Rolling Stone), Richard Lawson (Vanity Fair), Alissa Wilkinson (Vox), Angelica Jade Bastién (Vulture), Alison Willmore (BuzzFeed), Justin Chang (L.A. Times)
― jaymc, Monday, 4 January 2021 17:48 (three years ago) link
Also, Hunter Harris isn't a film critic, but she's a film writer with 100K Twitter followers and a Substack.
― jaymc, Monday, 4 January 2021 17:50 (three years ago) link
david sims at the atlantic
― na (NA), Monday, 4 January 2021 18:11 (three years ago) link
OEO OTM wrt Brody; i find him generally insufferable and tend to find his aesthetics incompatible with mine but at least he's working with an internal logic that mostly stands up even when i completely disagree with it.
i've been getting into old issues of cineaste lately
― the serious avant-garde universalist right now (forksclovetofu), Monday, 4 January 2021 18:14 (three years ago) link
I don't know how old Vern is, but he's the only film critic whose taste I trust implicitly.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Monday, 4 January 2021 18:53 (three years ago) link
dril has a good letterboxd account
― k3vin k., Monday, 4 January 2021 18:57 (three years ago) link
Vern has to have been born between 1971 and 1976.
― shivers me timber (sic), Monday, 4 January 2021 21:02 (three years ago) link
reïmpeached
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 13 January 2021 21:59 (three years ago) link
Löl
― alpaca lips now (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 13 January 2021 22:34 (three years ago) link
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/18/trolling-the-great-outdoors
― Joe Biden Stan Account (milo z), Sunday, 24 January 2021 16:51 (three years ago) link
hope the death threats get acted upon
― The return of our beloved potatoes (the table is the table), Sunday, 24 January 2021 17:07 (three years ago) link
i made it 4 or 5 grafs before tiring of the prospect that i would ever receive evidence pertaining as to why i should give a shit
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 24 January 2021 17:51 (three years ago) link
"Hey, remember Tucker Max? Well, now he's in the wilderness clothing business!"
― but also fuck you (unperson), Sunday, 24 January 2021 17:54 (three years ago) link
i feel like i need to rinse my eyes with bleach after reading about that dude
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Sunday, 24 January 2021 17:55 (three years ago) link
I really don't know why they bothered publishing that article, I actually read the whole thing and it was a total waste of time.
― toby, Monday, 25 January 2021 09:29 (three years ago) link
Yeah, I kept waiting for a turn in the article or some other revelation, but it was just nope, "this dude sucks". Which is true, but it was kind of a pointless read.
― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, 25 January 2021 14:46 (three years ago) link
Mail delivery is so slow these days that I've been routinely getting the magazine a couple of weeks late. The last one I got was the Jan. 4-11 issue with the long Lawrence Wright feature about COVID. There were also a couple of issues in October and November that I just didn't get at all. Of course, I can read it all online, but I prefer print.
― jaymc, Monday, 25 January 2021 15:52 (three years ago) link
Lane, of all people, did, fairly recently, come up with a nuanced, even fairly deep-focus view of John Berryman's life and works---both quite the handful, but/and got me to check out some of his books (so far, so good). Somebody else provided intriguing glimpses of Martin Amis's 20th Century books (looks like he might be one who gets better the further back you go?), before cutting a path to steady, measured (devastatingly described and quoted) demolition of the latest novel.Also appealing presentations of Paul Celan and Alice Oswald. Casey Cep (whose eventually really good book about an abandoned Harper Lee project got initially carried away with tangential riches of research) came up with a multi-d profile of Marilynne Robinson that's gotten me way in the Gilead cycle, with other works to come. Good 'un on Adrienne Rich too.Really like that all of these pieces *do* deal with life *times* works, not just getting into Behind The Music drama or lecturing us and the author, with backstory as boilerplate (as Judith Thurman did in her stern takedown of Ferrante's latest, also all her post-Neapolitan Novels work---she might be right, for all I know, but seemed more like thunderous stop-the-presses flash than honest frustration with somebody whose best is well worth the time, as many of us found it to be).
― dow, Monday, 25 January 2021 17:43 (three years ago) link
People are still trying to get the public to care about a racist alcoholic and mediocre poet like Berryman? Jfc. I really want to punch most mainstream literary critics in the face.
― The return of our beloved potatoes (the table is the table), Monday, 25 January 2021 18:58 (three years ago) link
Berryman is accessible and popular -- I'm not an expert on his body of work but I like the hits, and it seems weird to say critics are "trying to get the public to care," it's like saying critics are trying to get the public to care about Frank O'Hara, these are the writers doing big friendly poems that people enjoy without training!
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 25 January 2021 20:07 (three years ago) link
Booze is def. presented as a prob here, and “The Dream Songs” is a hubbub, and some of it is spoken in blackface—or, to be accurate, in what might be described as blackvoice. It deals in unembarrassed minstrelsy, complete with a caricature of verbal tics, all too pointedly transcribed: “Now there you exaggerate, Sah. We hafta die.” To say that Berryman was airing the prejudices of his era is hardly to exonerate him; in any case, he seems to be evoking, in purposeful anachronism, an all but vanished age of vaudeville. Kevin Young, who is Black, prefaces his choice of Berryman’s poetry by arguing, “Much of the force of The Dream Songs comes from its use of race and blackface to express a (white) self unraveling.” Some readers will share Young’s generously inquiring attitude; others will veer away from Berryman and never go back.
For anyone willing to stick around, there’s a new book on the block. “The Selected Letters of John Berryman” weighs in at more than seven hundred pages... Probably too much for me, esp. given JB's range of moods etc., but from the subsequent description, can imagine getting hooked. I'll stick to the Kevin Young-chosen poems for now.
― dow, Monday, 25 January 2021 22:37 (three years ago) link
Not that I like them all, but anyway, this is the kind of unexpected opp that The New Yorker can provide these days.
― dow, Monday, 25 January 2021 22:39 (three years ago) link