prominent critics and commentators you think you could do a better job than

• michiko kakutani
• terry gross
• nancy franklin
• david denby

krugman. fucker doesn't know a thing.

michiko kakutani

I dunno, man, you totally have the right name for book criticism, but did Graham Greene ever send a telegram reading "SAVE ME FROM MAX ****?" No, he didn't.

well no but norman mailer DID call me a female and an asiatic

jim derogatis/greg kot

For the record I think Kakutani is pretty impressive, even if the format of daily-newspaper book reviews no longer gives her many chances to do a ton of actual criticism -- there is a part of me that totally bows to the knowledge base of having read and written about that many books a year over that long of a time, and the idea of someone else thinking they could probably swing that is just ... I dunno, I love me some books and all, but no way would I be able to do a book a day for life, job or not.

i thought about dero but i dont know if hes 'prominent' in the same way kakutani is

nabisco one of the reasons kakutani bothers me so much is that sometimes she reads like she's barely read the book and all! i mean--ill admit that partly this is leftover resentment from various semi-negative reviews shes given of books i adored where im in the YOU JUST DONT GET IT place--and i cant ask her to be reading each book in the kind of in-depth way a weekly or monthly book critic would be, but--why not take a day off every once in a while and throw maslin a bone or something?

ALSO: the "review written by famous character of some kind" gimmick is a straight-to-hell thing afaic

Terry Gross (neither a critic nor a commentator, btw) is an annoying neurasthenic halfwit. That said, I could never be an interviewer.

For the record I think Kakutani is pretty impressive, even if the format of daily-newspaper book reviews no longer gives her many chances to do a ton of actual criticism -- there is a part of me that totally bows to the knowledge base of having read and written about that many books a year over that long of a time, and the idea of someone else thinking they could probably swing that is just ... I dunno, I love me some books and all, but no way would I be able to do a book a day for life, job or not.

Really? On the one hand, I am "impressed" that she reviews as much as she does, but on the other hand, she pulls totally hack shit like reviewing a "new" Truman Capote in the voice of Holly Go Lightly. And she reviewed that Ben Kunkel book, Indecision, in the voice of Holden Caulfield. I guess she was trying to make a point about male narrators in NYC, but if she wants to pull shit like that, she shouldn't do at The Times. I've probably ranted about this before.

Denby's a douche, but he's still worth reading.

thats how id describe anthony lane--david denby just has me rolling my eyes all the time.

denby is rubbish.

tony lives round my enz, so big up that crew i guess.

i disagree with lane a lot but he gets in good lines every once in a while:

"Character acting is, of course, one of the four things that the British still do supremely well, the others being soldiering, tailoring, and getting drunk in public, but you can have too much of a good thing, and there were points in “Valkyrie” when I felt that I was watching a slightly outré installment of the Harry Potter series."

yeah Lane's still great, most of the time. David "must make note of sexually attractive female actress" Denby can fuck right off.

I actually was (am?) a Nancy Franklin fan until that mystifying 30 Rock review.

shes been on a RONG roll for the last 6-12 months, im currently engaged in a campaign to replace her as chief nyer tv writer

I'm familiar with your well-advertised campaign.

thank you for your support

ITV football coverage: Urge To Kill Rising

anyone on ^^^

xpost - Ha, yeah, I'm going to spare you a long post about how much I admire people who have whatever set of subtle skills allows them to do good interviews -- it's complicated. I'm sure daily experience over long periods of time helps a lot, but I assume people who can host hours-long Brian Lehrer-type radio things have some natural talent for it that cannot be manufactured. Live TV people kinda blow my mind.

Haha maybe I would write more stuff if I were more convinced I could replace the job of existing critics -- I tend to be more of the "I have things to say too, but do not necessarily think I could replace the professional discipline of big working critics" camp. Seriously, reviewing loads of stuff, constantly, on deadline, whether you're super-interested or not, and having the thoughts and the writing both be good ... it's no small order, obviously!

Actually, wait, if I were doing it full-time I could probably handle that okay, though I'm sure I wouldn't be as amusing as NYer film dudes. (Hahaha I would also totally not write about film due to not always liking it that much.)

But it would be freaking hard!

yeah i imagine that being a full-time film critic is not particularly hard given that it takes you 3 hours at most to watch a film and twice or three times that to finish a book, plus if you are filled with the kind of sarcastic bile anthony lane has in droves it probably would help you to not like that many movies. but hes also a film professor so he must have a good work ethic

S=nabisco, someone should just do a PKD Time Out Of Joint on you tricking you into posting about various stuff here and then publishing it the Times, New Yorker, etc.

do you really think terry gross does good interviews tho? ill grant that she has a talent for filling up an hour but imo shes got a really talent for asking the least interesting questions possible

I like her partner Francis Davis's stuff a lot better.

S=typo

yeah i imagine that being a full-time film critic is not particularly hard given that it takes you 3 hours at most to watch a film and twice or three times that to finish a book, plus if you are filled with the kind of sarcastic bile anthony lane has in droves it probably would help you to not like that many movies. but hes also a film professor so he must have a good work ethic

― max, Wednesday, January 28, 2009 4:09 PM (11 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is he a prof too? more likely does bits of lecturing i'd have thought.

oh now i think about, you mean american professor.

i know a pro reviewer, and the thing is, the newspaper ones do have to watch about eight films a week. which is quite a lot to get through.

i dont know how slocki does it, between all the time he must spend thinking up puns and posting to ilx for advice about los angeles

If I had to watch 8 contemporary films a week, I'd switch to coal mining.

i would like to thank this thread for making me aware of michiko kakutani - hadn't heard of her but am enjoying myself v much right now reading some of her eviscerations. she's brilliant. how can you hate?!

oh jesus shut up

Max, I guess part of what I mean by "good interview" here is just "remotely professional-sounding non-awkward interview" -- I mean, even before you get to the substance of the questions, I am guessing that like 95% of everyone would have a hard enough time getting through an hour of running a conversation on the radio without sounding totally weird or creepy or dumb and incompetent. (And to be fair to Gross, I don't think it's really her role to do super-incisive interviews, though I totally understand the complaint that there's not always much there.) It's not a mechanically simple task, especially when you've got all sorts of different people and topics lobbed at you.

But I will totally stop posting about the professional mechanics of these things being hard, obviously everyone knows this.

Que it's "do better than" not "sputter at"

(E.g. I spent yesterday transcribing some interviews I'd done, and learned that most of my sentences consist of a jumble of adjectives, saying "like" a dozen times, and then trailing off into a mumble, and that my most common method of making something a question is saying "Well is it like [insert substance of question], or ..." and then just making an R sound for a a minute or two.)

gets in good lines every once in a while

is anthony lane's entire m.o.

also i just want to say that this:

is he a prof too? more likely does bits of lecturing i'd have thought.

oh now i think about, you mean american professor.

is some vintage snootiness, bravo

Lane's full-length essays on Matthew Arnold, Buñuel, Hitchcock, Bresson, etc should put to rest the nonsese that he's only capable of zingers.

Que it's "do better than" not "sputter at"

yes, just as an FYI i think i could probably write better book reviews than Kakutani. But that doesn't make me special, i think a lot of people could. not sure what you mean by sputtering though

your prior injunction to one of ILX's more illustrious professional critics to "shut up"

the illustrious lex

(E.g. I spent yesterday transcribing some interviews I'd done, and learned that most of my sentences consist of a jumble of adjectives, saying "like" a dozen times, and then trailing off into a mumble, and that my most common method of making something a question is saying "Well is it like [insert substance of question], or ..." and then just making an R sound for a a minute or two.)

― nabisco, Wednesday, January 28, 2009 10:26 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is true of me too but i imagine its not that hard to be conscious of saying "like" and "y'know" and weaning yourself off of those. plus, the kind of prep work you do for these types of interviews should eliminate questions of the "is it like this, or?" type (and yes/no questions, and particularly leading questions) right off the bat. not to mention the extensive editing the show goes through!

and for that matter the kind of interview terry gross does is different from the kind youd do for an article youre writing--its more open-ended, generally unconcerned with finding a hook or narrative, etc.

not that i dont think it would be very difficult! but i bet with a couple weeks of training and another couple weeks of experience youd be off to the races.

it takes longer than that.

it's also very very hard to wean yourself off y'know. the hardest though, is "um". christ almighty.

This is why I like doing e-mail interviews. (And the most recent batch I've done have all turned out very well, I think.)

i dont think it's nearly as hard as that, tracer, but ill grant it varies from person to person. and even so: terri gross is reading 1/2 the questions anyway--only 50% at most are off-the-cuff id wager

a few years ago i got to be around some radio scotland people while they were working and i saw a guy deliver a little 3-minute (already written) commentary into a microphone that would be used on the newscast coming up like 20 minutes from then. he sat down, spent about 5 seconds getting "in the zone" - i can't describe it, it was like his whole posture changed and he focused very hard - he pressed record, and did the whole thing, perfectly, in one take. he pressed stop and walked out of the room to deliver the tape to his producer. it was very, very impressive. i can't go for more than a minute without fluffing something. there is something not quite human about professional broadcasters.

but max - as anodyne as terri gross is - being able to read something and have it sound like a question that's just naturally occurred in a conversation is very very difficult, both to write and to perform. but i admire your optimism. i don't want to discourage it!

I try to dissuade reporters from using email unless the source can't be reached any other way. Email allows the source to control the story; he or she can ignore or choose to misunderstand a question; and it discourages the "color" provided by live/phone exchanges without which interviews are dull.

I'd have to disagree there to an extent, Alfred -- each of the interviews I've done this way recently have all clearly varied in terms of the tone of each subject, ranging from hyped-up exuberance to 'yeah dude' relaxation to long, fairly involved and serious answers, so color is where you find it. (And I've often found in the past that it's easy to do follow-ups as well, just by focusing in on a word or phrase and playing out the implications after a bit of thought.) Also, in a number of cases these were fairly rushed deadline situations, and e-mail frankly helped avoid the hell of transcribing...

i'd much rather do a phoner/in person than email, its often the questions prompted by an answer - following further leads, or clarifying what's been said - that lead to the most satusfying revelations and answers

also harder to flirt via email

nabisco i'm thinking of your robyn interview here..

I won't disagree, Ned, but you're old enough to know better. Students are more apt to use technology as a crutch.

i like in-person because if youre really hard-up for an opening or you need to squeeze an extra 60 words or whatever you can describe the person or their manner of speech or wv

haha - true

Ultimately it might be down to a combination of preferences and sensing what an interviewee might prefer -- that may sound unduly charitable! But I tend to balance out the positives of phone/in person chats as noted, and they are considerable, with knowing more about the general grind of PR in the first place and how something taken away from the 'you have fifteen minutes, start now!' process might lead to something more. Also, as should probably not surprise anyone here, some people are just more expressive in written form than in speaking anyway!

I'd link the Ilyas Ahmed interview I did if I could (it's in print form only via Dream magazine) as an example of how I think an e-mail interview can be done well, as it was edited to flow as one continuous piece even though it was constructed from a variety of back and forth exchanges. I'd like to think anyone reading it would assume it was just a straight transcript of a conversation without knowing otherwise.

"Malkmus flicked the hair out of his deep, limpid eyes and ordered another Rob Roy - old-fashioned, ramshackle, with a hint of hidden danger, much like his band's underappreciated fourth studio LP, Brighten the Corners."

btw no one besides goole has answered the question posed by this thread

Everyone on this thread > Thomas Friedman

all this talk about interview techniques is a red herring, though - terri gross isn't a "commentator" or "critic"

from a reader's perspective, 9 times out of 10, i'd much rather have the back and forth of a transcribed interview (and just the interview, with maybe a small introduction) instead of one reporter's opinion coloring the proceedings.

xpost -- She is an "ARTIST"

- josh marshall
- bob herbert
- maureen dowd
- george monbiot
- hadley freeman

oh whatever i should have just said "media figures"

cathy horn at the nyt is pretty lacklustre imo
nancy franklin is nearly incomprehensible
everyone on the wsj editorial board

tbh i was *this* close to including:

• the entire ny times op-ed roster
• 90% of "prominent" "bloggers"

David Broder
Ruth Marcus
Fred Hiatt
Clarence Page
Joe Klein

OH HAI have been repeatedly told my work is much better than x, y or z's but not in a form I can spend, grr. Could I do a better job? Probably, but that's only 1/4 of most editors' considerations.

email interview: only useful for things under about 750 words *unless* your subject is tech-happy and you can go question by question like an actual conversation. Back in '92/'93 LOLstylemag ran a Future Sound of London interview and it was coverline-noteworthy purely because OMG WE SWAPPED QUESTIONS ON THIS NEW INTERTUBES THING USUALLY FOR PORN.

phoner: OK unless you've been assured F2F and the PR switches it.

Face to face: always preferred unless the piece is going to be really small.

Could I do a better job? Probably, but that's only 1/4 of most editors' considerations.

this is key here, ability to crank out a readable 500 wds/day is way higher in an editors estimation than skill or insight

you can go question by question like an actual conversation

But that's the thing, that's what I try and do! Time and circumstance doesn't always allow for it but it's very easy to do. I have to say I'm a bit surprised at the resistance and excessive qualifications I'm seeing here from a lot of folks to the idea -- I realize there's something of the 'we actually TALKED' mystique that has an effect (on both writer and reader) but we live in 2009 and all, and I see it as just another tool in the toolbox, not something new/strange/artificial.

(Also I realize we're talking about different situations here -- Suzy talking to someone else also in London is a little different from me trying to get a hold of a band on tour three thousand miles away on a two day deadline, say...)

haha ned no one's getting all walter benjamin here about f2f interviews, i think the argument is that - in general - they produce more interesting material

email is only ever going to be ok if the subject is tech-friendly, articulate in writing and as interested in your questions as you are - if they're not you get vague, nothing answers, "i don't know"s and ellipses. as i don't trust any subject to be any of the above, i'd only ever want to use email as a follow-up, ie when you already have some sort of material to use. i guess if all the stars align it's a useful tool for digging deeper into a subject which perhaps requires more thought than an off-the-cuff conversation - still, things like body language and tone of voice are so impt to colour the final piece.

like everything else it's wholly dependent on the subject and the kind of piece you've been asked to produce though.

Lane's full-length essays on Matthew Arnold, Buñuel, Hitchcock, Bresson, etc should put to rest the nonsese that he's only capable of zingers.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 28 January 2009 15:28 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

His essay on WG Sebald is the best thing I've read on that author.

email is only ever going to be ok if the subject is tech-friendly, articulate in writing and as interested in your questions as you are - if they're not you get vague, nothing answers, "i don't know"s and ellipses.

Haha, Lex, surely you're not saying that these are situations *only* limited to e-mail interviews. I've been through enough in-person interviews to know otherwise, and you must have as well!

For 'ellipses' in an in-person context substitute 'looking off into the distance while shrugging a bit'

yeah that's right, but even if the subject says nothing interesting in person, you can sense why most of the time - like, if the qn goes over their head completely, you know to pursue a different path and not waste any more time probing deeply. or if they look as if they do have an answer and just don't want to say, you can try poking at the subject again. and as i said body language and tone of voice can tell you as much as the words sometimes.

if someone responded to a qn - esp an emotional one - by looking off into the distance and shrugging a bit, that would be exactly the kind of anser i could use!! and i'd never get that from email.

*answer

YES you get the glorious opportunity to tell the world that media training the record company paid for was a waste of fucking money when you get moody shrugging. Don't forget to put the bit about the publicist sucking on coffee at the next table, pretending not to listen.

I would probably never e-interview someone who I thought might reply using curt responses filled with txt-speak. Last week I had to interview [supermodel redacted] who was engaging in conversation and *asked* me to send her interweb followup questions. I hate to route them through the PR when that happens because it feels micromanaged.

Also, though I know I mentioned it already, 'tone' is something that I think comes through in a different but equally clear way via e-mail interviews as much as phoner/face to face. Also, I've honestly been surprised at the number of responses I get where people talk about how or why they arrived at the answer that they did, and it often provides an amount of context about themselves that they might not have otherwise offered -- and this in terms of first questions, not follow-ups.

This all said I'll agree that an interviewee does need to be comfortable with it to start with. If I'm asked 'phoner or e-mail?' I always say 'whatever works best,' though if I'm especially crunched for time e-mail will be handier on that front as noted.

I'm admittedly beginning to think this is all boiling down to 'interviewing random psych/drone/metal guys who are all on computers anyway' vs. 'interviewing random pop stars who are bored with the idea of interviews not showcasing their fashion sense.' Though I might be wrong. :-D

It is, I was going to name examples but thought better of it!

Peace is achieved. We just need to find someone we can all interview in our own ways and compare results. (Would Mikhail work? I'll take him over Antony any day, then again I am cruel and hate beautiful things.)

tracer as u well kno i'm a long time fan of josh marshall but i'm coming around, lately, to your opinion. the whole tpm comintern is indespensible and crucial, imo, still, but the man himself has gone into this gnomic 'deep thoughts' mode of late and it's crap

re: new yorker critics, nancy franklin has my job and it is not right.

i hate denby and i will always be fond of lane even though i never agree with him because he can write.

i'm tempted to name all the centrist wapo types like sebastian mallaby, but i don't think i'd do a better job than them, they just suck.

i mean that i'm fond of him because he can write, not that i never agree with him because he can write. actually reading lane is the opposite experience of reading denby; i always think lane would be fun to hang out with and denby just comes off odious.

xpost

I'm admittedly beginning to think this is all boiling down to 'interviewing random psych/drone/metal guys who are all on computers anyway' vs. 'interviewing random pop stars who are bored with the idea of interviews not showcasing their fashion sense.' Though I might be wrong. :-D

no, you're right, though there are more variables, like if the artist wants to answer the questions you want answered, if the relationship between title/subject is fraught, etc... you have more 'control' (HA!) in person, or on the phone, i guess (tho i'm probably fibbing to myself there). the subject is more vulnerable, whereas by email it seems you are more vulnerable (to evasion, at least)

i kind of like terry gross. i think she pretends to be kind of slow because it forces her interviewees to break stuff down more than they naturally would.

youll have to get in line for nancy franklins job my friend

no you don't understand i've been hating nancy franklin from the very first time i read her and i watch so much tv that job is mine

by email it seems you are more vulnerable (to evasion, at least)

Eh, again, surely it matters whether or not you as interviewer follow up. If an answer is vague, etc., then respond something like "You mentioned x,y,z, could you clarify?" I mean, that's standard no matter the format!

i cannot believe youd stab me in the back like that

i kind of like terry gross. i think she pretends to be kind of slow because it forces her interviewees to break stuff down more than they naturally would.

i'm not fond of her, but i try to give her the benfit of the doubt and assume this is probably otm.

i don't like all the new yorker critics (markedly not fond of hilton als) but she really stands out as how the fuck did you get this job?

xpost about franklin

lol yeah i dont like als very much either but i dont think id be better than him

max you're like five years old you don't need a job

I think Stevie may be referring to the practice of either a) the question gets snipped by the PR forwarding it or b) the subject blows off the question completely whereas in a non-written situation the evasion is provable and debatable and/or solvable.

xpost i believe the only way to solve this (nyer tv critic problem) is via poll

everyone's going to vote for max that is not fair

we'll use false names. you will each submit a sample review

i dont understand why horseshoe and i cant be a double team like denby/lane or als/lahr

oh okay that works--poll cancelled

that sounds good to me

every once in a while i will write witty talk of the town blurbs about funny rich people and the quirky parties they throw

haha and i will punch caitlin flanagan in the face and take over her occasional columns

terry gross is not interested in getting someone to talk about what they do, and why and how they do it, but returning every interview to some trauma moment, "when you were nine, your father..." fucking can't stand it.

Eh, again, surely it matters whether or not you as interviewer follow up. If an answer is vague, etc., then respond something like "You mentioned x,y,z, could you clarify?" I mean, that's standard no matter the format!

eh, then you have to wait for them to get back to you at their leisure, whereas calling someone out re: vagueness or evasion is much easier in person cuz they can't get away from you. (i hate internet arguing for much the same reason.)

In that case it's more down to deadlines, I figure. At least that's been my experience!

what lex and suzy said. and also, deadlines. your emailing subjects usually don't operate to a journalist's 'strict' (HA!) schedule, i don't like relying upon the iterviewee bothering to write their reply (again, tho, this is mostly from interviewing too many flakes, the best experiences trump the nightmares pretty comprehensively)

xp to ned, are you reading my mind??

It's an odd mind in there. I am mostly finding images from Peanuts and Achewood, plus scratchy Sonic Youth and James Brown bootlegs.

also, i'm interviewing a lot of peeps at the moment who do not have prs, and are getting back to me as it suits them, and have no real reason - beyond kindness and interest - to get in touch with me. god bless em, but i'm owed a sheaf of interview answers that i would have, if we'd just hooked up a phoner. its ulcer-inducing stuff, as my deadline approaches, skids past, and is replaced by another, similarly approaching deadline.

xp you pretty much have it there ned

whenever i wonder about whether to write or call i wonder what the detectives of the 88th precinct would do

they'd drive over and pound on the door

ok guys stop derailing my thread now

I am sort of with Nabisco on this -- even with critics I don't always like or agree with, I'm so awed at their ability to write fluid prose on a regular basis that I can't imagine being able to do a better job.

thanks for the compliment.

slightly related, RIP WaPo Book World

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/washington-post-to-end-book-world-as-stand-alone-section/

Ben Lyons of At The Movies.

xxp Haha, it's true.

Ben Lyons of At The Movies.

OK, this.^^

i think ben lyons is so universally hated that he doesnt count as 'prominent'

I'm not one to shoot for the stars.

these days, andrew sarris and rex reed

but how many critics can claim to have starred in Myra Breckinridge?

http://www.stopbenlyons.com/

haha and i will punch caitlin flanagan in the face

YES

I'm also going to say Jan Wahl, although maybe she isn't prominent on the national/international level apart from that Quentin Tarantino video.

i kind of like terry gross. i think she pretends to be kind of slow because it forces her interviewees to break stuff down more than they naturally would.

This! Shortly after I started having to do recorded interviews, I had this moment of epiphany where I felt like I really, really understood Charlie Rose: it's not that he's sort of a doofus, it's that he understands how to be a bit of a doofus in order to improve the interview for us viewers!

Also everything Tracer said. I probably feel this more because I'm not naturally suited to such stuff in the first place, but I think when you're getting up to NPR quality, even a natural is going to take years of effort to really get good at it.

This is probably obvious, with all the talk of professionalism, but what surprises me here isn't the idea that ILXors would have better stuff to say than loads of working critics; it's the totally commendable confidence ILXors have that they'd be able to say that great stuff on demand, in the right style/voice for the publication in question, do edits and re-writes to match constant space issues, etc. -- the whole pro-writer aspect.

(But mostly this thread is suggesting that ILX could improve the entire back half of the New Yorker -- maybe we could all try this on spec one week, then print out copies and go around slipping them into actual New Yorkers on newsstands?)

(But mostly this thread is suggesting that ILX could improve the entire back half of the New Yorker -- maybe we could all try this on spec one week, then print out copies and go around slipping them into actual New Yorkers on newsstands?)

― nabisco, Wednesday, January 28, 2009 2:03 PM (35 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is a GREAT idea, i nominate morbs to write all the captions for the cartoon caption contest

Sorry, my brevity medication isn't working yet, lemme get into the proper spirit of this thread:

- I don't even like movies that much, but I think Peter Travers belongs at a newspaper, not at a magazine, so Rolling Stone might be better off with me

- I don't think I'm better than Jody Rosen, but I think I could put better pop-music writing on Slate than their current editorial agenda seems to go for

- I would happily volunteer for the position of "bullshit editor" throughout the Village Voice arts sections, with the job assignment of re-writing anything that seems a tad up its own ass (but then I guess it might lose its remaining readership of people who are into that)

- I think Heffernan's "The Medium" thing in the NYT Magazine is kinda pointless, and will accept $2 a month to not write it and save them the page -- I would also make a more ethical -- if less cheeky -- ethicist than Randy Cohen

- I want to say I could improve a lot of Entertainment Weekly but to be honest I think they know their audience, and I suck at funny sidebars

Haha screw it, let's just say my fascinating outsider's perspective on film would be a DELIGHT to all who would read it

i realize i sound like an asshole wrt nancy franklin and i'm sure i would suck at her job, too. but she SUCKS.

Emmit Smith
Joe Morgan
Rick Reilly
Peter King

her name is full of AAAA sounds, so I will stan for yr replacement

I think Heffernan's "The Medium" thing in the NYT Magazine is kinda pointless

i think heffernan was an a+ at writing tv reviews/crit and wish she would go back to that or the v. least her "screens" blog

xpost srsly nancy franklin seems like a nice lady but even in her nyer podcast she admists she kind of fell into writing about tv and has no real skill at it - she sticks out really badly at the mag imo

I can't help but feel like I'd do a better job (both thinking + writing) than SFJ. But that's probably cause I'm an arrogant asshole?

i'd be a better restaurant reviewer than NY magazine's @d@m pl@tt. it's not a question of taste though I don't share his love of pork fat and celebrity chefs. he's a lazy writer, recycling stock phrases and cookie-cutter descriptions week after week. either he doesn't get edited or his copy get run through a cuisinart but either way it's BORING and reading about food shouldn't be that. and he doesn't seem to know much of anything about cooking or the origins of various cuisine. like so many bad critics, it's all about his opinions.

im not a huge fan but ill ride for sfj, who i think is quite good at what he does

he's certainly a good writer

MARK TAYLOR

But luckily the scene is soon over. “Tara” isn’t—yay!—clogged with self-consciousness

not to overdo it or anything but ^^ is from n. franklin's review of the new toni collette show. i think she gets the show flatly wrong - the scene she describes is crazy self-conscious - but the teenage girl interjection is pretty typical of her stlye which is so different from the other critics. not saying she needs to write about the mentalist like schjeldahl writes about art but the tone and style is jarring in her work

yeah i always get the "one of these things is not like the other" song from sesame street in my head when i read her reviews.

i like both terry gross and charlie rose because yeah they might seem like egotistical know-nothings but they always get interesting responses (sort of like the polar opposite of huell howser, who acts like a completely ego-free know-nothing and gets the same kind of replies).

i think i could school 95% of sportswriters except for neyer/law/prospectus types. i would say that i could beat bill simmons at his game but i don't want to play a game involving 53 references to 'cheers' and boston homerism.

I would make a lousy critic and a mediocre commentator. I have a mind that embraces the trite, the obvious and the literal.

you should call the times, bill kristol just left

i see what you did there xp

charlie rose answers for his interviewee half the time. he cuts ppl off mid sentence every other answer!! srsly both he & gross are both awful, they get good guests based on the baffling reputation they both have and that's the only value.

moyers4lyfe

Johnny Miller
William C. Rhoden
Mike Lupica
Anyone not named Bob Ryan who has ever appeared, or who has ever even thought of appearing, on espn's "Around the Horn"

I'm not sure SFJ is even done becoming SFJ -- there was this funny lurch when he arrived at the NYer where he had to jettison all the Important Critic style he was previously allowed to have and pare back to this NYer general-audience level of clarity, and I honestly think he's been pretty great at that. And I'm not sure he's done sorting out how to do it, even.

hes great at the level of clarity & great at bringing his technical knowledge to the table w/out letting it kill the rest of the pieces. plus i appreciate that he spends time writing about lyrics, which i feel like i dont see very often elsewhere.

nah i feel both gross and rose, i can't agree. i don't find their interruptions bothersome, it's ok w/me for the most part. they're not the greatest and maybe it has a lot to do with the quality of their guests but whatever imo.

NB this is also obvious but I think a lot of how "bad critics" happen is the disconnect between having the professional abilities and actually having good ideas about the subject -- I mean, maybe the appeal of Franklin is that she's totally low-maintenance, grabbing the obvious angles and churning out readable copy on deadline that barely needs editing.

xpost - The Rose doofus moments I get into are the ones where he says something like "you've been described as a modernist" and the interviewee makes an unpleasant face and doesn't want to answer and Rose is totally willing to make a doofus face and go "but you have! you've been described a modernist!" until they articulate a response to the issue. He gets people to explain themselves the way a seldom-seen uncle makes you talk about your college major when you're home for Thanksgiving or something.

(that reads wrong -- I don't know if Franklin is low-maintenance or not, just saying maybe that's what endears her to the editor in ways some difficult writer with good ideas can't match)

maybe shes the only new yorker staffer with a tv

We talked about Kelefa's dip into TV!

maybe he was over her house...?

I don't know if Franklin is low-maintenance or not, just saying maybe that's what endears her to the editor in ways some difficult writer with good ideas can't match

haha i mentioned this upthreads but the nyer does these podcasts w/their contributors and in her's she talks about working as an editor and occasionally writing theatre pieces and when they axed her position they basically let her write about tv to avoid firing her

obv i think part of it was 10 years ago tv wasn't something the nyer thought mattered - snr editors had someone they liked writing copy and presumably as a former editor was pretty low-maintenance. now that subscribers might care about tv crit they're kind of stuck with her

or they could hire me!

but the teenage girl interjection is pretty typical of her stlye which is so different from the other critics.

Yeah, I think this hits it.

I used to not mind her slangy style (I mean, people bitched about Pauline Kael for the same reason), but this digression from her 2007 review of Damages sort of tipped me into the hater camp:

Agghh! I tried. I really tried. I really wanted to see if it was possible to write about TV without mentioning that HBO show which ended last month. Just. Could. Not. Do it.

^ that use of periods for emphasis is an ever-growing plague in all corners

man she's nothing like pauline kael (rip)

Perhaps the question should be, can you write a Paul Blart piece better than this?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/27/AR2009012703554.html?hpid=topnews

Anyone not named Bob Ryan who has ever appeared, or who has ever even thought of appearing, on espn's "Around the Horn"

I like JA Adande quite a bit.

And what did the movie earn last weekend, once the list of Oscar nominees was out (sans Blart, which wasn't released in time to qualify)?

that explains it!!

btw i think i could do a better job than any "analyst" who has ever been on espn ever

This thread is incredibly American.

i invite you to make it more british pinefox

Or we could have a separate "things I could do better than people who have been knighted for doing those things" thread!

Sure. I could try. I just found it striking that

michiko kakutani
terry gross
nancy franklin
david denby

at the top are all so US that I've only ever even heard of the first of them.

I could do better than some people in the media, but not better than some others.

Actually you know who is bad? Alexis Petridis. Yes, that old and oft-whipped carthorse. I realized this all over again when I reread his utterly crap review of Dylan's Modern Times the other day.

i think you could do better than laura barton.

I don't actually think I *could* do a knight's activity better than the knight can do it. That is a big ask.

Sir Trevor Brooking - I can't play footy or administrate better
Sir Alex Ferguson - I couldn't be a better footy manager
Sir David Hare - I couldn't write better plays (even if his aren't really that good)

oh, Sir Salman Rushdie though -- I think I *could* write better novels than him, even though I will probably never write one: that's how bad, how deep into negative numbers he is.

jim derogatis/greg kot

― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, January 28, 2009 8:34 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

(xpost to j0rdan)
i would take half of ilnflers over the cream of espn's crop, save maybe jaws and his eagles standom

most of you can't even do a better job than the ilx's most prominent critics and commentators

ILNFL is waaaay better than MST3K.

what does that sentence mean?

oh good god, your username reminds me: suzyn waldman

Cozen means most of you can't even do better than the critics who post here. Suzy means "I Love the National Football League" is far superior to "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

xxpost -- it means something wrong, and yet I forgive Suzy (I'd be willing to accept they are on equal levels).

P.S. Everyone on here who thinks they'd make a better television critic than someone else has been NOTABLY SILENT on this thread:

This is the thread where we briefly describe and review every show on American television.

I am jaded on MST3K but I can totally get with football commentary led by mocking women.

ooh ill write something for desperate housewives xp

u already reviewed my favorite show in ur first post on that thread nabsco

Max, you don't get to be Nancy Franklin by just reviewing your favorites, you get to be Nancy Franklin by writing about whatever anyone asks you to write about

i can't be the only person who gets an amazing randy vibe whenever that show pops up on my cable menu

that is my favorite show on tv right now

i have theories about that show

I have never been more disappointed than when they did a segment on guitar strings. Get this: apparently they start with a metal wire, and sometimes a machine wraps it with another wire. (The machine works exactly how you'd think it would.)

Terry Gross (neither a critic nor a commentator, btw) is an annoying neurasthenic halfwit.

You don't see a lot of neurasthenia anymore. Fascinating.

I agree with everything upthread about her asking questions so uninsightful and un-probing as to seem willfully opaque. What's even more annoying is when she includes the answer she wants in the question, often at length. "So, would you say that this is another example of women being oppressed by a microculture that expects little of them and offers little in return, and doesn't this reflect society as a whole?" Uh... that's not a question, Terry. But thanks for throwing your two cents in.

But I listen to the podcast. The best interviews are not interviews at all, they're product pitches by smart people who came with a script ready.

(xpost - They also did one on pineapples, and it didn't involve closeups of God's hands)

i wrote a blog about how its made btw: http://maxread.net/mindgrapes/tv-shows/34/

also,

jim derogatis/greg kot

― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, January 28, 2009 8:34 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

I don't mind Kot too much, really. I'd do a radio show with Kot. DeRo is just kind of an idiot.

Kot seems like a Nice Guy to me. Like, not just a nice guy, but one of that personality type. I'm sure his wife and children are just charming, his home is tastefully decorated, and he throws fine laid-back dinner parties where the conversation is engaging but not challenging.

i don't hate kot as a person, he's just a very very boring critic and i could do his job better than he can

Actually, now that I think about it, I'd rather hang out with DeRo. At least he's infuriating. Keeps you on your toes.

And personally, DeRo is actually a very nice guy, no capital letters. He's affable, eager, and almost... jolly. I can imagine being buds with him, and making fun of him all the time. "Whatssa matter Jim? Does this not ROCK enough for you?"

Hey everybody, meet my imaginary friends, Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis.

I can truly thank some of you for the commentary, and will get in touch individually if needed.

more like rimdick

barbara walters

nancy franklin ends her most recent television piece by half-recommending that people stop watching tv

television critics who are above their own beat, part 2,213,948,422

nancy franklin's little aside about how she ffwded through all the tracy morgan scenes in her 30 rock review practically counts as professional malpractice imo

if youd like to donate to my campaign to be the tv writer for the nyer please paypal me

i can contribute some gifts on facebook

i want to know why horseshoe doesn't like hilton als!