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Thanks for your interest and the positive feedback. I hope you'll come around and like movie criticism better in time.
The date of Winged Migration is probably due to its being made by Frenchmen. Their movies usually don't get distibuted in the USA for a year or so. Maybe Oscar can give you its history.
www.chrisknipp.com
Originally posted by cinemabon
Oscar... fyi... Winged Migration will be on DVD next month. I still haven't seen it, but I see where the release date is 2001.
Glad to hear it's being released on dvd. I hope you are not disappointed, tv screens can't do justice to its majestic vistas. You are correct about its world release date: 12/12/2001 in France and Belgium. I had the honor to attend the American premiere at the Miami Film Festival in late February.
Like Chris said, French and other foreign language films are released here one or two years after being released in the country of provenance. Maybe it's provincial to do so, but I list my favorite films according to their North American release date. I remain undecided about listing films I watch the year before-at festivals or on imported dvd- their official US release(if the film is released here at all).
I still don't like most of the bums... I'll make an exception with you and Oscar.
At least in our country, most "critics" are really entertainment writers and gossip columnists who lack knowledge of the language and history of cinema. Fine Arts and Literature critics are much better prepared to do their jobs. Thanks for excluding this amateur-in-love-with-film from the "bum" designation.
You just wrote:
At least in our country, most "critics" are really entertainment writers and gossip columnists who lack knowledge of the language and history of cinema. Fine Arts and Literature critics are much better prepared to do their jobs.
Overstated, in my opinion. You don't have to read the gossip/entertainment writers. Other print movie reviewers who deal critically with current movies usually have an good knowledge of movies and their history. Maybe not "history of cinema," whatever that may mean, but they know what influences have fed into whatever film they're reviewing and they've seen a lot of movies. Movies are popular art. We don't need writing about them, especially not the new ones, to be in the control of academics, which seems to be what you are implying, Oscar. There is a place for academic, learned film critics, but it's not in reviewing the movies that come out every week. Your generalization about fine arts and literature critics (why the caps? Is this a university department you're talking about?) are not as superior as you imply, either. They simply are dealing with a less popular art.
www.chrisknipp.com
Originally posted by Chris Knipp "history of cinema," whatever that may mean.
It means just that. There is a history of the medium, over 100 years of history, and a language that is specific to cinema. Anybody can have an opinion. The good critic must have specific expertise to do anything other than summarize plot and express likes and dislikes. There are all kinds of literature, but a person who lacks a knowledge of lit history, grammar and composition would never get hired as a book critic. Too many so-called film critics have little of interest to say and nothing to teach. Why should the seventh art and its followers be condemned to such poor treatment.
I was trying to assert the difference between the academic and the general. You don't seem to see the difference. Many subjects get academicized and professionalized and become dry and fussy. Pauline Kael certainly had a profound knowledge of the "history of film" but she wasn't academic.
It's not correct to say that book reviewers must know the history of literature or to have studied "grammar and composition" to write good English. There are lots of things to review besides "literature" books. All you have to know is how to read and how to write, and that you can teach yourself.
Often it's only when a person forgets all he has been taught that he begins to be able to write anything interesting.
I used to think that film critics should be "filmic" but now I'm not so sure. As I've said before, this is a popular art.
You don't have to read the bad movie critics. The truth is that most of them are bad, and it doesn't matter whether they know the "history of film" or not, they're still bad.
You don't have to bring the whole "history of cinema" to bear in writing about Meg Ryan. One or two old movies will do.
The idea that if hack weekly movie critics were "properly trained" and fed the "history of film" they would write better stuff is naive. But perhaps you have a more European point of view.
Cool. I'd certainly rather read Film Comment than the reviews on The Miami Herald or the New Yorker. But to show that sometimes things do get better, our most populist and popular critic expertly deconstructs and analyzes Citizen Kane and Casablanca scene-by-scene on the dvds' commentary track. I learned a ton from Mr. Ebert, no matter how different our tastes. Ms. Kael had no such expertise. But she sure was an amusing provocateur.
Your comment is revealing.
I'm glad that you were able to get something out of Ebert's remarks about Casablanca, but in saying so, you sound somewhat condescending.
I've said this before: having tried my hand at movie criticism over the past year or two, I've acquired a great deal of respect for Mr. Ebert. He has an evenness and fairness, a comprehensiveness and ability to speak to everyone in his criticism that few can match today. He's also deeply knowledgeble about "film history."
The "populist" and "popular" Ebert in fact has turned out to be a very positive force for good, in my opinion. As the most visible figure in film criticism in this country, he has the authority to champion inde films, as he often does. He also is an academic. He gives courses in film. He speaks to the average viewer and yet his command of the medium is pretty comprehensive. He is important, because he has everyone's attention and trust, and he doesn't betray that trust.
I don't see what you mean when you say Kael lacked the expertise Ebert showed in recording his commentary. What gives you that idea? You are saying that Ebert, for all his limitations, performed a useful function for you. Do you think that Kael could do no more than this little thing? You vastly underestimate her knowledge and abilities.
You show an unbecoming condescension when you call Kael "an amusing provocateur." She was much, much more than that. Because she was passionate and racy, you make the error of thinking her superficial.
When you say you'd rather read Film Comment than The New Yorker, you show that you prefer a more academic, film-buff approach to writing about the movies. The ideal critic, to my mind, is somewhere in between the overly entertaining and really emotionless writing of Anthony Lane of The New Yorker, and the excessively solemn and academic writing of some of the magazine writers about movies -- and of academics, who are in some cases quite incapable of speaking to the general audience. They can talk "filmic," but they can't talk "movie" talk.
I once had a teacher of Arabic who was not an Arab. He could tell you where to look up every word in a medieval text in the famous dictionaries, but when I brought in a newspaper article from Al Ahram that I was translating he was of no use. He understood nothing. He had never read an Arabic newspaper. He could barely read modern Arabic. You see what I'm getting at. Movies, like Arabic, are a living language.
I am not familiar with the Miami Herald but I somewhat doubt that it's altogether fair to lump The New Yorker with it, certainly not The New Yorker film reviews of Penelope Gilliatt's and Pauline Kael's time, probaby not now either. However, I find the New York Times's and Village Voice's and sometimes the Baltimore Sun's and the Los Angeles Times', reviews, to name a few, very often perceptive and worth reading.
I don't think any film writer is universally reliable or universally perceptive. Everyone is human and has lacunae in his or her range of sympathy and understanding in the arts. It's admirable to strive for comprehensiveness, but to do so too slavishly is to cease to have value as a critic. Ebert sometimes errs in this direction.
I'm not interested just in studying accepted "classics" of the movies, but, like you -- because I know you do too -- I care very much about following the new movies that come out every week, every day, and deciding for myself about their merits.
I'm an artist, mainly a printmaker and painter. When I look at a painting or print, I accept the visceral experience it gives me and base my judgment on that. I am not interested at that point in whether the artist used oil or acrylic or encaustic, aquatint or photogravure, because technique is a secondary consideration in judging the overall merits and human significance of a work of art. I'm not saying you shouldn't know anything about these things, just that they aren't of ultimate concern.
There is a difference between having expertise and flaunting it. I respect most those who carry their learning lightly -- particularly in dealing with a popular medium like the movies.
www.chrisknipp.com
Oliver Stone said something interesting about Kael.
"She did more harm than good. She's an elitist bag lady".
Heavy, huh?
No, not heavy: crappy. Oliver Stone, man, is no role model. He has a beef; that's all. She made some enemies. When you're passionate, and have a big mouth, you do. Means nothing.
But you, Johann, I don't hold this against you.
Thanks.
Do you mean I have a big mouth?
I'll always remember Oliver Stone for bringing Conan into my life.
I meant that Pauline Kael had a big mouth, not you, Johann.
Roger EBERT! This is, of course, the man who penned the screenplay for "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" and to this day defends it. I can take Ebert or leave him. I respected Siskel to a greater degree more than his opposite because I empathized with his taste in films more than I did with Ebert ( "... a bachelor, and likely to remain so!). I also read the Tribune more than the Sun Times.
Chris... Chris... Chris! Must everything be a challenge to your wit! We know you are an artist, par excellence! But this thing about defending certain esoteric critics... it demeans your overall artistic stance. You cringe as well as the next man when a critic calls your art, CRAP! You know it isn't. We know it isn't. You know you spent hours pouring over it, developing it, pruning it, babying it... until you create a hard earned effort. You put it out there on display. Then someone walks up, takes one look and declares "CRAP!" I say, to hell with that.
The only reason I preferred Kael to others is because I enjoyed the cartoons in the New Yorker. Doesn't everybody? At least I'm honest.
By the way... I like political art... (just joking)
cinemabon,
I happen to enjoy reading criticism of lots of things, even art. I'm not lucky to have had a lot of criticism written about my own art, but I know what you mean. However, I am not a filmmaker, so I don't take movie reivews personally as a director or perhaps actor might. I always enjoyed the lively and really good critics. I don't care if Ebert wrote a bad script. He's not a filmmaker. I tell you truly, that since I started writing a lot of my own somewhat amateurish reviews, I have come to admire Ebert. I also like the way he champions certain new filmmakers at Sundance, like the makers of Charlotte, Sometimes and Better Luck Tomorrow. Sure, he likes too many things. And I am not a huge Altman fan, nor did I love a lot of the movies that Pauline Kael loved. But Pauline Kael was important for what she represented as much as for any writing she did.
I don'tt know what you mean by "must everything be a challenge to your wit[?]" I am who I am. You are who you are. I am not defending "esoteric" critics. I would say that Oscar Jubis is doing that a bit. Not I. I am defending the mainstream ones.
You've got the wrong guy.
I must concur in that Monsieur Ebert has championed many great films that would otherwise not see the light of day. There is no question of the man's intellect. And his knowledge of film is vast.
To a dullard from Indiana like myself... everything about S.F. is esoteric (regardless of having lived in L.A. for many years). All you need is a John Deer hat to fit in around here. Mine says, "Star Trek". You have no idea how isolated that makes me feel when the other "guys" just stare at my head!