Tales from Cinematic Motions

[girl]

I miss Elvis Mitchell.

[auto-da-fey]

Yikes! I understand. Should you ever need them, though, I'll happily point you to the good and/or interesting critics out there.

Do you have opinions on Manohla Dargis, Scott Foundas, or Ella Taylor? I'm just curious. As you can see, I also really only know LA Weekly/big VV/NT conglomerate critics these days. I mean, I know lots of other ones, but only from ye olden days, really.

[auto-da-fey]

did Elvis Mitchell die? I could have sworn I heard rumors about him teaching somewhere, with gossipy allegations of old-school coed-skirt-chasing. Did I dream that?

[hannah]

Scott Foundas is going to be A.O. Scott when he grows up: serviceable, smart, sometimes insightful and funny, but often just pat. Ella Taylor kind of sucks, although I couldn't tell you why; she's Scott Foundas, but worse. I may have to revise that assessment. I'll read some of her stuff and check back. I love Manohla Dargis. I love her prose. I don't always agree with her, but I love reading her reviews. I love that she's funny and acerbic and political and sometimes incendiary.

Elvis Mitchell did not die. He left the New York Times in a huff after he was not made head critic, and I believe he sometimes does reviews for KCRW. I will refrain from mentioning that I dislike him. Whoops.

[girl]

No, he was replaced with Manohla Dargis. I don't think he's writing for anyone right now. He did teach a class, at Harvard, I think. Also, I disagree with hannah about both Elvis Mitchell and Manohla Dargis.

[hannah]

I have to go to bed. I fear I will get worked up about this, just because sometimes I obsess about film criticism and get really worked up in the process. Not angry, just hyper.

Generally speaking, though, there are those writers whose taste I trust or respect and those I love reading. Sometimes those two categories overlap, and sometimes they don't, and sometimes one of the two comes with many an asterisk attached (e.g., Jonathan Rosenbaum, who is such a fuddy-duddy these days).

[hannah]

Sorry for the cop out. Blah.

[jebreject]

IMDB discussion threads

Somewhere, IMDB forums and YouTube comments are battling it out for control of the internet. Somewhere else, Jeb Ebben kills himself upon realizing that people actually are this inane and obtuse.

[auto-da-fey]

What I love about IMDB threads are how 99.9999% of them are hideous reflections on humanity (though not, to be fair, as hideous as YouTube comments, which make me support some black-metal philosophies about eradicating the human race), but then every so often you'll come across something actually kinda neat or interesting, and it makes all the suffering worthwhile.

Also I agree with pretty much everything hannah's said on this page. Foundas interests me; I don't recall his presence in the Weekly through 2004, then I left L.A. for six months, returned in 2005, and he was there. I hated him at first, with his positive reviews for American Pie sequels and Brett Ratner movies (he wrote the recent Ratner cover story/verbal fellating), but over time I've warmed up to him a bit, maybe because every now and then he makes favorable comments about grindhouse movies (he was at the Dario Argento screening I went to last weekend, interviewing the writers, but we didn't stay past the first few questions; now that I think about it, though, I suspect he was less there as an Argento expert than as a USC grad).

[morgan]

I often find myself looking at IMDB threads after I see a movie, and most of the time they make me want to stab people in the eye.

[lastclearchance]

The only critic I read regularly is Dana Stevens (your thoughts, Hannah?); I otherwise don't really read reviews (exception: occasionally Dargis, whom I like, and Antony Lane, whom I'm indifferent to but I read anyway if I've got a New Yorker) unless sent/recommended a particularly good piece. I do read a few movie blogs (pullquote, faceknife, Dave Kehr's blog).

[hannah]

Dana Stevens seems to me like a neutered Manohla Dargis, or maybe a cross between Dargis and the previous Slate critic, David Edelstein. I hate Edelstein because he's a fucking prude who, like A.O. Scott and definitely Anthony Lane, strikes me as having no interest in movie history (except already canonized British and American films) or film technique or style or any such shit, and would probably better serve the world as a prudish, if sometimes witty, book critic. Stevens is nowhere near as bad as he is, but she sometimes will be really annoying (she wrote something pretty recently about not liking war movies, which really pissed me off) or otherwise super boring -- and then sometimes she'll be awesome, like when she said of Scarlett Johansson in The Black Dahlia, "in angora, she's like a sex toy manufactured by Gund." Man, that's great, I think.

I read Dave Kehr's blog and his columns but I have the same thing with him that I do with Rosenbaum. He knows and cares a whole damn lot about movie history, technique, etc., but he's similarly old-fashioned in a way that sometimes makes his taste suspect. Dude fucking wrote a defense of Forrest Gump. Fuck Zemeckis in the eyeball.

Told you I get worked up. Also I'm supposed to be revising a film paper, so...

[hannah]

I haven't been up on criticism in a few months, though, because I'm not up on latest releases at all. Usually I see a movie then read what everyone else has to say, assuming I like 'em enough to tolerate reading whatever they wrote. I do try to check the Voice every week, even though I always feel guilty about it (in addition to Atkinson and Lim, the good Rob Nelson was recently fired); but they have Hoberman, Nathan Lee (who is another Dargis for me), and two people I'm more or less friends with. Anyway, when all this application stuff is done I'm getting back into reading and seeing regularly more stuff. Need to be able to formulate a decent top ten list, after all! Ha!

[auto-da-fey]

You guys forgot Bob Monell's blog, I'm in a Jess Franco State of Mind. Pretty interesting, articulate stuff here, honest, though it does wander afield from Uncle Jess and into other fertile pastures such as the Black Emmanuelle series.

Relatedly, today's movie (or perhaps first movie--if I make it past page 200 in a book I'm reading, there will be more!) was Franco's Macumba Sexual, another of his early-80s dreamstyle to-the-limits-of-softcore sex movies, and quite a good one at that. It's got an African goddess invading the dreams of a vacationing couple, seducing them both, then imprisoning them in some kind of oversexed perdition that I'd gladly sign up for (maybe minus the naked Will Ferrell-looking sex slave), and the Canary Islands visuals are not that far removed from Antonioni--nor, for that matter, is the ennui or general lack of dialogue. Hell, neither is the nakedness--I once more reaffirm, Mister Franco has not received the appreciation he is due!

[elpollodiablo]

For a really good, unpretentious weekly discussion of current releases, check out Filmspotting. One of my faves.

Other than that, I read Salon's movie reviews, which are pretty goddamn pretentious. They seem to hate about 75% of everything. I read Lane and Denby every week, though I'm not sure why. And I cruise Metacritic for interesting reviews.

[coldforge]

Given that 90% of everything is crud, sounds like Salon is 15% too generous

[elpollodiablo]

Nah. They don't even like the good stuff.

[elpollodiablo]

Before I left for work today, I set up a queue of movie downloads to keep me entertained now that school's out. So far I've got:
Glengarry Glenn Ross (which looks excellent; it's one of those classics I've just never gotten around to seeing. I like Mamet)
Rescue Dawn (really wanted to see this in the theater)
American Gangster (wouldn't have paid to see this anyway)
The Wild Bunch (After reading some McCarthy and seeing Unforgiven last winter, I'm ready to give the Western genre, one I've traditionally hated, another go. This is supposed to be Peckinpah's best, right?)

Also Whit I wanted to say that I share in your disappointment with the Host. I actually turned it off about 3/4 of the way through out of sheer lack of interest.

[lastclearchance]

I loved The Host, but I don't watch many horror movies, if that makes a difference.

[coldforge]

glrngatug;nross is amazonbf

[lastclearchance]

glrngatug;nross is amazonbf

This fucking statement is so fucking true and you are a fucking child if you disagree.

(not really it's cool if you don't agree but i felt i should write my response in mamet instead of just english)

[elpollodiablo]

What the fucking fuck

[auto-da-fey]

Speaking of critics, I want to issue a big coldforgish FUCK YOU (or FYUPCK YUOU?) to all the critics who sanctimoniously wring their uncallused little critic hands over the fabricated genre of "torture porn." I mean, yeah, most of these Saw-era horror flicks make one long for the relative glory days of Jason taking Manhattan, but drivel like High Tension is hardly the cinematic apocalypse, and I even like Rob Zombie's first two movies.

So I watched Captivity almost as an act of defiance against the cultural gatekeepers who would preemptively deem it dreck without even watching it: I'm going to judge this for myself, motherfuckers, just like I did The Passion of the Christ.

I'm glad I mentioned that movie, actually, because I didn't quite hate Captivity as much as I did it. But that's not to say I didn't hate every single frame of this worthless, insulting piece of shit, with the possible exception of the blowing away of a fashion-accessory poodle with a shotgun, which you gotta love. Otherwise, I mostly spent the opening-creditless movie nervously praying that Larry Cohen--whom I recall reading had been upset with the movie--had taken his name off it, but after 84 endless, insufferable minutes, there he was, with both story and co-writing credits, adding the insult of a hero tarnishing his own good name to the injury of having seen this sorry excuse for a film. Ugh.

[girl]

Thank you for sitting through Captivity so now I don't have to. Also, I read The Passion of the Christ, but somehow translated it in my head as The Last Temptation of Christ and was surprised that you hated it, because I only vaguely remember it and have been thinking about renting it again, but then I figured out that I had the wrong movie and I totally agree with you. Except for the few campy Pontius Pilate moments, I hated that movie.

[Andrew_TSKS]

The Wild Bunch (After reading some McCarthy and seeing Unforgiven last winter, I'm ready to give the Western genre, one I've traditionally hated, another go. This is supposed to be Peckinpah's best, right?)

dude, yes, you're gonna love this movie, at least i think so. i thought it was great.

have you seen any of leone's stuff? as far as i'm concerned, most of the pre-60s westerns suck, but leone's stuff is great.