And Denby's not too hot either. The New Yorker should have just hired Mike D'Angelo, who combines some of the of the virtues of both Denby and Lane with less of their vices. That's some faint-ish, overly-qualified praise, huh?
Heh. Denby has actually improved considerably IMO. Or maybe it's that that little voice in the back of my head that was constantly saying "She's too good for him!" has given way to a pretty painful case of Schadenfreude.
I was quite fond of Anthony Lane until I made the mistake of buying his book (Nobody's Perfect). It made me realize two things.
1) Anthony Lane is capable of being an exceptional prose writer.
2) He has no positive vision, only criticisms. Part of what makes someone like Pauline Kael so compelling is that she clearly loved movies and took as much pleasure in promoting movies that she liked as criticizing schlock.
One could make a comparison to any number of commenters at unfogged.
Part of what makes someone like Pauline Kael so compelling is that she clearly loved movies and took as much pleasure in promoting movies that she liked as criticizing schlock.
It creeps me out to admit this, but I agree entirely.
Hmph. I was planning to leave that last comment and creep away quietly, but NickS beat me to it. Anyway, I'm going home.
Anthony Lane has positive things to say, he just says them about books (e.g. his appreciation of Wodehouse) or serious, often foreign, movies.
His send-ups of schlockfests have an "emperor has no clothes" appeal. After all, A. O. Scott will write a review of Sith in the NYT in which he says (I paraphrase slightly) "Apart from the writing and directing, which are terrible, it's great!" Lane will focus on the writing and directing, which are (I gather) terrible.
And I have to admit that "slaying mantis" made me laugh. The star wars review was pretty funny, all in.
Recent extremely positive Lane reviews: Best of Youth, Head On, the director Moddysoson (yep, all foreign). From the last
At that exact moment, we hear the last chorus from the St. Matthew Passion—"Wir setzen uns mit Tranen nieder." It roared from the speakers, and I felt eight hundred people or more rocked back, as if by a wave. From that there was no recovery. We stumbled out, and in the succeeding days I found myself playing the piece over and over, not in order to relive a noxious movie but because the Bach had regained its grave and devastating function. It has become, for too many of us, a concert piece, or something dignified to put on the CD player at the end of a fissile day. Suddenly, thanks to Lukas Moodysson, I heard it again as a Passion: the drama of Calvary, stern with lamentation.
I say Anthony Lane rocks.
Anthony Lane & the wages of snark. Is this a cautionary tale for unfogged?
cw.
A boojum's wages must needs be slithy.
I like Anthony Lane, but I don't necessarily consider FL's "main problem" to be a problem. Necessarily.
Lane didn't actually like the Moodysson movie whose review is excerpted there. But it is clear that he takes Moodysson seriously.
I think he also liked Rushmore and in fact that was where I found out about the movie? But liking Rushmore is too easy. He liked Speed.
Ordinarily I'd say that the "I only like foreign films" thing is really old, but I just read that Meet the Fockers is the highest-grossing comedy of all time, which makes me feel about the American movie-going public kind of the way I feel about red state voters.
something you wanna say to me, punk?
You are part of a group that collectively demonstrates fucking awful taste? Keep in mind that I'm about to move to Texas.
them's fightin werds in texas, son.
maybe if the north hadn't been robbing us all these many years, perhaps our education system might be better, and we wouldn't be so damn conservative. Bush is you northerners' fault.
Pls to indicate which parts are ironic so appropriate snark can be deployed.
none of it is serious. the only seriousness is between-the-lines, which is that the blue/red meme is a pet peeve of mine, if used in a non-sarcastic manner.
Ah good. Though I'll defend my use of 'red state' here, since 15 does pick out a legitimate difference. (I know here in Wisconsin I am hanging on by the skin of my teeth, but blue is blue. Of course I'm from PA where the worst thing we've done is elect Man-on-Dog Santorum. Which is pretty fucking bad.)
i'm not denying that the north robbed the south, either, though. I've heard some arguments, but I'm really too ignorant to have an opinion there. (but it's not exactly the reason our education system sucks. that's a priorities problem, mainly)
"group...demonstrates....taste." bothers me. We're only a group according to a single criterion - voting. But then how can you group those who voted against? After all, the group who decided that the majority winner gets all the votes is not "us," in any sense. You're including 40+% in a group to which they unwillingly belong, but supposedly based on a voluntary behavior (voting).
If I could figure out what it means for Pennsylvania to have done something, I'm sure it has done something worse than elect an egregiously bad Senator.
they invented modern pie. that's something.
Point 1--eh, if you look at the donor states and the anti-donor states to the Federal government, it's the northeast and west coast that are giving up the most money (I think this antedates Rove's deliberate policy of screwing over people who don't vote for him). Though I think maybe the West gets more money in than the South. (Looking at the map, Texas is actually a donor state--and Max Sawicky thinks those studies are no good anyway, via Alex Knapp.
Second point, absolutely. I actually thought of collectively blaming all Americans--but really, I don't think we all need hang our head in shame because Meet the Fockers is the highest-grossing comedy of all time. Well, just a little.
Pie is great! I don't know what you mean by "modern pie", it's true (dessert pie, as opposed to savory pies? Fruit pies, that kind of thing?) but if they invented a new form of pie, that's firmly on the good side.
The only Presidament from Pennsylvania, James Buchanan, always comes up in "Worst President Ever" discussions. I would actually reserve "Pennsylvania did X" for actions by the PA govt. or the people of PA as a whole, like electing Senators. Given that PA was a free state, there's probably still something pretty bad in there, but Santorum is really goddamn embarrassing.
Ma Weiner, you'll probably run into argument 1 in Texas. Government money is one thing, but the complaint has been about the profitable industries, mostly. Like, pre-Civil War, easily the majority of entrenched capital in the US was in the South, in the form of slaves, whose dollar-value heavily outweighed anything the North could come up with. Yet, factories were in the North, and they got rich off of it, while the South stayed poor. Then, post-CW, the claim is that this trend of bleed the South for its resources while keeping the profits continued. (NB, i'm just laying out in simple fashion some of the arguments I've heard.)
Ben, I do mean dessert pies. It is my understanding that pre-pennsyvania dutch, pies were meat pies, usually made from leftovers.
I wonder if I can show off my Northern Pride by putting up the flag of the Grand Army of the Republic.... I mean, people actually make the argument "The North was ripping us off because with our slaves we should have been richer?" Goddamn. I'm not doubting you, either.
In that case more power to PA! I've got nothing against meat pies, but the dessert pie is surely one of mankind's highest achievements.
FYI. Is Unfogged the Unseen Driver of the Dem blogosphere?
I wonder if I can show off my Northern Pride by putting up the flag of the Grand Army of the Republic
Is there such a flag? After a quick Google, the Grand Army of the Republic seems to have been a fraternal organization for Union vets, and not the actual Union Army. If there was a battle flag distinct from the US flag, I'd probably put one on my car--what a great way to say "fuck you" to all the rednecks with stars and bars!
Well, I Googled "union army flag" and got this page (warning: tripod popups)--the Texas Division Sons of Confederate Veterans Historic Flags Page. So my guess is they wouldn't get the joke.
Is Unfogged the Unseen Driver of the Dem blogosphere?
I'd like to think so, but I have to admit that some people probably read the New Yorker even when we don't link to it.
I was actually thinking of both the Anthony Lane thing and the Chet thing.
The capitalization was meant to allude to the "Unmoved Mover". You dick.
You know what would have made it a better allusion than some orthographic hooha? Parallelism.
Unfogged is the Underwear Derwearer.
Speaking of lines from movie reviews that are prepared in advance but still funny I appreciated this from Roger Ebert
"'Monster-in-Law' fails the Gene Siskel Test: 'Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?'"
MW, yeah, the funny thing is that it's such a marxist complaint, too. We controlled the means of production; you capitalists exploited our labor-power!
But, to be fair, the argument has been made by people with a considerably better grasp on history than myself, and they will put up a fight to defend it. The civil war was never about slavery, doncha know.
Is this a good time to mention that "The civil war was never about slavery" is about as well-grounded as Holocaust revisionism and, in terms of impact, a lot more pernicious?
I understand that these aren't your arguments but damn it pisses me off that people would think this these days. If only we would teach facts as American History, all over the country.