Post by Salzmank on Nov 9, 2021 19:59:58 GMT
Any movie critics you like? I thought of the subject because I was reading Andrew Sarris’s review of Billy Wilder’s The Front Page and was reminded of how much I love Sarris’s writing just as writing. He was a witty, intelligent, rapid-fire writer who just happened to write about film. (“Just happened” is a bit strong for what I mean—like his bête noire Pauline Kael, he loved, loved the movies.) Example, from that review:That’s far from Sarris’s best writing, but it’s an example of the kind of writer he was. So many phrases and terms from The American Cinema are forever stuck in my mind and have inspired my writing, both regarding film and otherwise: “the far side of paradise,” “expressive esoterica,” “strained seriousness,” “ad infinitum, ad gloriam,” “he made his movies both move and be moving,” “Art with a serving of espresso in the lobby,” “counterpoint between sadness and gaiety,” “corn into caviar,” “the difference between dance and sculpture,” “too cynical to believe even his own cynicism,” ad infinitum, ad gloriam.
He was also funny, especially at his bitchiest. His review of The Blair Witch Project has this immortal line: “I didn’t catch what exactly the two guys did in the way of technical functions, but they never seemed too impressed with Heather’s capabilities, which makes one wonder why they trusted her to lead them into an unknown forest, all three of them carrying backpacks so heavy and bulky that Hannibal would have hesitated loading them on his elephants when he was crossing the Alps toward Rome.”
As for other critics, when I was a kid my grandfather gave me William K. Everson’s Laurel and Hardy book, which I still have and love and which introduced me to Everson’s other books. Everson’s prose, like Sarris’s, drifts frequently into my mind. I greatly enjoy Kael’s writing and insights, especially in her rare positive reviews (anything she wrote on Brian De Palma, a favorite director of hers and mine, is worth reading), but I can never shake this feeling that she thought she was condescending to the movies—a strange feeling about a critic who wrote I Lost It at the Movies, but there it is.
The late Ken Hanke, who reviewed movies for Asheville, N.C.’s Mountain Xpress and wrote some great books on Charlie Chan and Tim Burton, is probably the last film critic whose work I really loved even when I didn’t agree with him. And Matt Zoller Seitz, the editor-in-chief of rogerebert.com, is pretty good; he’s probably the only contemporary critic whose opinion I’m even half-interested in. (Most of rogerbert.com’s writers… Oof.)
Anyway, this post has turned into a lot of words. What say you? Which critics, if any, do you like reading?
[…] Still, those of us
who have been busy reappraising
Wilder’s career in the ’60s and ’70s
must acknowledge “The Front
Page” with gratitude. For one thing,
it is refreshing to find a director who
is still making talkies instead of
gawkies, and who thus still believes
in the spoken word as a vehicle of
expression. For another, Wilder’s
unique blend of cynicism and passion
seems much more profound than it
once did. More profound and more
contemporary. What Wilder seems
to be mourning is the end of Hol-
lywood and the dispersal of its once
homogenous audience into indi-
vidualistic enclaves in which everyone
yells and no one really listens.
Wilder’s career in the ’60s and ’70s
must acknowledge “The Front
Page” with gratitude. For one thing,
it is refreshing to find a director who
is still making talkies instead of
gawkies, and who thus still believes
in the spoken word as a vehicle of
expression. For another, Wilder’s
unique blend of cynicism and passion
seems much more profound than it
once did. More profound and more
contemporary. What Wilder seems
to be mourning is the end of Hol-
lywood and the dispersal of its once
homogenous audience into indi-
vidualistic enclaves in which everyone
yells and no one really listens.
He was also funny, especially at his bitchiest. His review of The Blair Witch Project has this immortal line: “I didn’t catch what exactly the two guys did in the way of technical functions, but they never seemed too impressed with Heather’s capabilities, which makes one wonder why they trusted her to lead them into an unknown forest, all three of them carrying backpacks so heavy and bulky that Hannibal would have hesitated loading them on his elephants when he was crossing the Alps toward Rome.”
As for other critics, when I was a kid my grandfather gave me William K. Everson’s Laurel and Hardy book, which I still have and love and which introduced me to Everson’s other books. Everson’s prose, like Sarris’s, drifts frequently into my mind. I greatly enjoy Kael’s writing and insights, especially in her rare positive reviews (anything she wrote on Brian De Palma, a favorite director of hers and mine, is worth reading), but I can never shake this feeling that she thought she was condescending to the movies—a strange feeling about a critic who wrote I Lost It at the Movies, but there it is.
The late Ken Hanke, who reviewed movies for Asheville, N.C.’s Mountain Xpress and wrote some great books on Charlie Chan and Tim Burton, is probably the last film critic whose work I really loved even when I didn’t agree with him. And Matt Zoller Seitz, the editor-in-chief of rogerebert.com, is pretty good; he’s probably the only contemporary critic whose opinion I’m even half-interested in. (Most of rogerbert.com’s writers… Oof.)
Anyway, this post has turned into a lot of words. What say you? Which critics, if any, do you like reading?
