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

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!