Anthony Lane

I think the above attests that Anthony Lane isn't always thinking. Though he's as easy to read as Godard is difficult. Easy reading is often k-difficult writing.

I agree about Schjeldahl; he's good.

Movie critics (those who I bother reading) seem evenly split on Spielberg and sad to say the "populists" (or at least those a little less wedded to academic film studies) are probably more right than the "elites" (i.e. Jonathan Rosenbaum, etc.) with whom I have more affinities otherwise.

My feelings on the man are very very mixed.

haha what slutsky said, exactly.

I'd like to able to say J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum but nothing in their last few years' worth of columns has really had the spark of inspiration. I think Hoberman is confined by the Voice's word allotment, and Rosenbaum's recent work seems formless, like notes toward a review rather than an actual review. (Perhaps time will be kind to it.)

I like reading the "amateur" critics on the Web. There's a lot of received wisdom masquerading as revelation there, but often there's also a genuine enthusiasm for contemporary cinema (and by contemporary I don't mean Kiarostami and Hou and Wong etc. but stuff that's coming out right now by relative unknowns) and the medium's possibilities. Shelly Kraicer's Chinese Cinema Page is a perfect example.

I actually have fond more such enthusiasm in the academy than in daily newspapers--I don't know whether that says more about academia or the state of American journalism. David Bordwell remains something of a ideal figure here; he constantly refines his view of cinema past in light of the present (his new book on the staging of Feuillade, Mizoguchi, Angelopoulos, and Hou sounds incredible) and bringing his profound understanding of cinema past to current developments without exhibiting any cynicism or crankiness.

More later maybe.

I do read Ebert rather compulsively, although he seems especially resigned lately. I think he's fine at appreciations--and I do think he is very sincere, and I respect that he's aware of the chance he has to communicate with very many people, and often chooses to champion good movie-related causes (preservation etc). Have you ever read that fascinating interview with him & Siskel in a book I unfortunately can't remember the name of? Oy. It's late. I must continue this later.

i think one problem is that the film studies/cirticism field is so crowded and so titled toward academia--and the canon so entrenched--that people don't want to go out on a limb lest they not receive an opportunity for tenure or a position at a solvent paper. academic film criticism is sort of going in circles like most humanities departments. and daily criticism doesn't afford the opportunity to go out on a limb--neither the space nor the editorial policy begs for it. i guess cahiers--a journal founded by "amateurs" after all--isn't really all that far from those online magazines, only no one's buying the latter so people have to make a living in other ways (now we're back at the academic problem).

where are the filmmakers who are also poeticists of the cinema? kiarostami apparently publishes some stuff in farsi (but aside from his poetry what's available in english or french translation) and we have that crazee von trier and then there's the wonderful guy maddin (not so much a grand theorist as a ranconteur) .... who else?

...haha cosspost: slutsky i typed some blanket insult covering the salon critics but deleted it for fear i'd open up a flame war. but i see you've got my back.

Glieberman I have no love for myself, nor any of the EW critics. Like so many others they seem to be writing towards the boring mean of wide-circulation movie criticism. However they bother me less than most of the smug Film Comment types though.

2002 roundup

Double-Bills

John Cazale

Pop music soundtracks (one of my three or four favourite movie pieces)

Scorsese

(There are other good ones listed on his home page as well.)

It's good, but she's not at her best: it feels to me a little knocked off while a blueberry pie was baking or a fridge defrosting. Some of the claims feel arbitrary - the especial glory of a teen girl's amorous valour, for instance: why? And she pays far too scant attention to the obvious centre of the picture: the matched and glowing beauty of the leads, which critics at the time denied or failed to see, and without which the film really would be off-putting, as it isn't.

Amateurist, let me take a look at some old Comments and get back to you; right now I don't remember anyone's name. I'll admit that they do publish some good stuff, but a lot of the time the writing comes off as smirky. Love Guy Maddin's columns tho.

Taylor's pretty spotty, agreed, and too much of a Kael disciple -- but I actually have a soft spot for Stephanie Zacharek.

I'm an "Erik H." but that's not me either.

charles taylor is fucking awful

he lets slip some of the contempt his dry little bon mots usually conceal = damn I wish I had some dry little bon mots to conceal my contempt

Dry little bon mots are awesome with tea.

Would like some dry little bon mots myself, but failing that I'd just like a relaxing little shave at the Bon Ton Tonsorial Parlor.

i dont really see how that comment could have been fact-checked.

also charles taylor is terrible.

taylor is a pretty terrible critic, but he's terrible in such a specific, weird way that i used to like reading his stuff the way you 'like' poking at a sore tooth. he always sounds antagonistic and smug at the same time, like a less well-read ron rosenbaum.

i dont really feel like anthony lane's contempt is usually concealed? i mean he's pretty out in the open abt it

Taylor's early Salon reviews (1996-1998) aped Pauline Kael -- in style and ethos -- so unabashedly that I couldn't help but like them; but the allusions to smart aleck buddies and insiderism gradually disappeared from her work.

anthony lane seems p. nice to me? not a george sanders type at all. he is condescending, but whatevs.

seems like a pretty weak example for his big go at anthony lane tbh.

His screed reads like he's still miffed that Lane brought whiskey instead of bourbon to the filmcrit xmas party last December.

*~drops dishes~*

more like he's mad that anthony lane didn't recognize him

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/resources/2007/07/charles%20taylor.jpg

lane made fun of his shirt

i'll get you anthony

I don't remember Charles Taylor being terrible.

for evidence, see his writing.

Quote specific examples.

What a couple, huh.
http://www.tinyepiphanies.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/stephanie-zacharek.jpg

In terms of shirt prints, that is.

I like Zacharek well enough but Taylor really comes off as more pissy than his supposedly pissy target in that thing.

I agree with l'homme moderne.

That's exactly the kind of thing that someone who wants to be considered a 'serious' critic should never publish.

He's overstating his case, and he's half the critic Lane is, but I do find the tart "dear" an incredibly aggravating and sexist mannerism.

And I'll give Charles Taylor some leeway for being, iirc, the only major critic to give Million Dollar Baby the battering it deserved:

"At least when Burgess Meredith did this stuff in the "Rocky" movies he had the good hammy sense to treat it like the hokum it was. "Million Dollar Baby" is a piece of ham intended for those who keep kosher. Its dried-out, humorless achieved grubbiness is meant to purify it, to lift it above its melodramatic roots. Eastwood's performance is one long wince, and he directs as if it would hurt him to throw in a little lightness, a little color, one scene that didn't look like it was shot in a gas station bathroom."

WHY DO PEOPLE EVEN READ ANTHONY LANE

I take back what I said about him being funny. I have no idea what I was talking about!!

:( i think he's funny

=(

He's not as funny anymore but still funny.

that's true; also i don't read him regularly anymore.

i think anthony lane is funny even though hes wrong a lot of the time! but at least he has sort of interesting taste. and god he looks like the greatest critic in the world when hes alternating with david denby

by "interesting" i just mean "unpredictable" i guess which can be nice

i probably already mentioned this in this thread, but in his nobody's perfect collection there's an article he published on the the new york times fiction bestseller list that's soooo funny.

i always get pretty disappointed when i flip to the back of a certain weeks issue and denbys name is there, i usually take longer to read those issues than others, knowing that hes involved

i probably already mentioned this in this thread, but in his nobody's perfect collection there's an article he published on the the new york times fiction bestseller list that's soooo funny.

It's better than Gore Vidal's, which says a lot.

He's often more incisive on literature: Matthew Arnold, Waugh, Connolly, Ruskin.

i probably already mentioned this in this thread, but in his nobody's perfect collection there's an article he published on the the new york times fiction bestseller list that's soooo funny.

ditto for the one where he tackles the huge, stodgy, tedious bestsellers of 1945

yeah, totally

This is an old thread; I guess Lane was still relatively new when it was started. I'll skim-read the beginnings of reviews at newsstands to see whether or not he likes something. If there's a voice there that I might connect to, I'm either reading too fast or reading the wrong parts. He seems to me to be so inconsequential in the shadow of Kael.

He's excellent when analyzing, with a mix of camp and seriousness, the arc of a director's career: Bunuel, Bresson (I discovered him thanks to Lane), Hitchcock, Sturges, Kieslowski.

A friend whose opinion I respect a lot says he's very good. What I've read just goes right past me; the writing seems very precious, as far away from Kael as possible (which is not in and of itself a bad thing--I know she drives some people crazy), and the humour is evident but not in line with my own sense of humour. I have his collection and skipped around in there a bit, but again, I lost interest quickly. I undoubtedly have a huge blind spot where I expect him to fashion his writing after Kael's, and am not able to get past that. My problem, not his.

I'm not sure what to say. Kael has her blind spots. I prefer to regard her as one of the great essayists of the last fifty years than a film critic.

his recent eurovision article was kinda dumb, but made me lol a lot

also, max otm about denby

this guy is basically rex reed but good. nobody's perfect is one of the best toilet books i've ever owned.

most of my respect for pauline kael comes from 5001 nights at the movies being the same in the latter case, but i lost my copy of that long ago.

Funny this just got revived, as I was just thinking this morning how little of Lane's writing lately I've actually enjoyed, reviews as well as that pointless Pixar piece.

i enjoyed the pixar piece if only because i was surprised to learn what weirdos the pixar people are.

From his Chef review:

The action begins on a day made anxious by the fact that—Oh my God—a critic is coming. I love this idea. The next time a Superman film comes out, I’m definitely going to call the cinema beforehand and make sure that Clark Kent tries extra hard to save even more of the world than usual.

p sure this the worst joke anthony lane has ever made