Argento, Heidegger

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• partisan says:

  May 10, 2009 at 3:14 am

  As it hap­pens, this has noth­ing to do with “Three Days of the Condor.” In the latest Weekly Standard John Podheretz com­ments on the decline of news­pa­per film cri­ti­cism at http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000%5C000%5C016%5C493gurnm.asp Here is the money quote:
  “Movie cri­ti­cism has been a fea­ture of American news­pa­pers for a cen­tury, and sadly, one can count the standout crit­ics through­out that time on maybe two hands. Many of these jobs were filled by report­ers or edit­ors who did­n’t get anoth­er plum assign­ment and were thrown a bone by a gruff but kindly man­aging edit­or. Nothing much good was going to come of that.
  This depro­fes­sion­al­iz­a­tion is prob­ably the best thing that could have happened to the field. Film cri­ti­cism requires noth­ing but an inter­est­ing sens­ib­il­ity. The more self-consciously edu­cated one is in the field–by which I mean the more obscure the store­house of cine­mat­ic know­ledge a crit­ic has–the less likely it is that one will have any­thing inter­est­ing to say to an ordin­ary per­son who isn’t all that inter­ested in the con­di­tion of Finnish cinema. Amateurism in the best sense will lead to some very inter­est­ing work by people whose primary motiv­a­tion is simply to express them­selves in rela­tion to the work they’re seeing–a purer crit­ic­al impulse than the one that comes with col­lect­ing a paycheck along the way.”
  A whole host of snarky com­ments come mind, such as the fact that without Rupert Murdoch’s pat­ron­age, there would­n’t be a Weekly Standard, and Podhoretz prob­ably woudln’t have inher­ited the edit­or­ship. And it’s not as if his fel­low film crit­ics were burst­ing with admir­a­tion over his work, or that he was burst­ing with a pro­found know­ledge of the medi­um (“Cinderella Man” one of the greatest films of all time?)

• Ryan Kelly says:

  May 10, 2009 at 11:01 am

  I’ve always had a fond­ness for that film, I think Redford is among the more dynam­ic star per­son­al­it­ies in recent film his­tory. I got into an argu­ment with my fath­er when TCM last braod­cast All the President’s Men because I said, to me, Redford encap­su­lates good screen act­ing; that is, there’s a nat­ur­al­ism and ease to Redford, while you’re con­stantly aware that you’re watch­ing a per­former when you’re watch­ing Hoffman. And the Redford in Jeremiah Johnson (my favor­ite of his films with Pollack, and one that proves to me that Pollack had ser­i­ous chops as a visu­al artist) is not the Redford in The Candidate is not the Redford in Condor etc…

• Glenn Kenny says:

  May 10, 2009 at 11:31 am

  @Partisan: Yes, John’s cer­tainly on a roll with this one. It’s not enough for him to have plum gigs such as those of the Standard and Commentary handed to him on a sil­ver platter—in fact, I think that’s part of the whole prob­lem. No mat­ter where he lands, very few, aside from the usu­al sus­pects, have ever taken him ter­ribly ser­i­ously, although it was pretty impress­ive, what he did on “Jeopardy.”
  And here, now, he gets back at all those mean, and now- unem­ployed film crit­ics, who nev­er used to let him join in any reindeer games. I actu­ally think he should be angri­er at the pub­li­cists and the mar­keters who nev­er, ever, ever used a blurb of his in an ad—that “Cinderella Man” quote was, if any­thing, tailor-made for advert­ising. Because for all his ful­min­at­ing, John always had less cred­ib­il­ity as a film crit­ic than David Manning, who did­n’t even EXIST. Think about it—that must hurt.
  The sheer lazi­ness of the art­icle is hil­ari­ous. I love the way he falls back on that vaguest of putat­ive bon­afides, the “inter­est­ing sens­ib­il­ity.” I mean, Adolph Hitler had an “inter­est­ing” sens­ib­il­ity, as did Charles Manson. Esquivel had an inter­est­ing sens­ib­il­ity, too. Max Ernst? Packed with “interest,” his sens­ib­il­ity was. My buddy Sasha Grey—“interesting” sens­ib­il­ity. I could do this for hours, but you get the idea. Surely John must have some­thing spe­cif­ic in mind. Then the gra­tu­it­ous slam at Finnish cinema—ha! Stupid fuckin’ Finns with their fuckin’ stu­pid movies! I fuckin’ hate snow! Hey, look at me every­one, I still get paid to write about movies, not like those assholes who give a shit about stu­pid fuckin’ Finnish films! Hahahahahahaha! And so on.
  But best of all is his bold pre­dic­tion: “Amateurism in the best sense will lead to some very inter­est­ing work by people whose primary motiv­a­tion is simply to express them­selves in rela­tion to the work they’re see­ing…” Yeah, duh, John; it already has “led” to some “inter­est­ing” (there’s that word again!) work, and has been lead­ing to such for years. Much of said work can be accessed, for example, via my own blogroll—that list of blogs and web­sites over to the right. Funny thing, though, a lot of said work is even more niche-oriented than the pub­lished film cri­ti­cism that Podhoretz has such a bug up his ass about. But whatever.
  Whaddya want from the guy, though? He hates both Ingmar Bergman and “The Searchers” in equal meas­ure, and once con­fid­ently pre­dicted to me (and here’s the pro forma par­en­thet­ic­al inform­ing the read­er that Podhoretz is a nice enough guy in per­son, there, who­ever cares, are you happy now?) that “Down With Love” was gonna make a for­tune because today’s teen­age girls really dig retro par­od­ies of Rock Hudson/Doris Day pictures.

• markj says:

  May 10, 2009 at 12:35 pm

  All people who hate Ingmar Bergman should be shot. It’s essen­tial to our sur­viv­al as a species.

• Christian says:

  May 10, 2009 at 1:46 pm

  Podhoretz cer­tainly knows all about Amateurism, his wrong­headed ana­lys­is over the past dec­ades speaks for itself.
  I think the DOWN WITH LOVE pre­dic­tion was some ser­i­ous pro­jec­tion: “Wouldn’t it be won­der­ful if those Hollywood sod­om­ites had to turn out a new series of chaste Doris Day comedies?”

• Campaspe says:

  May 10, 2009 at 9:18 pm

  Ryan, nice take on Redford. I also think he’s a real star pres­ence, much bet­ter than he gets cred­it for being.
  Glenn, wait – Podhoretz hates The Searchers? I thought that movie was one that lib­er­als and con­ser­vat­ives could hold hands and praise togeth­er. I feel bereft.

• Ryan Kelly says:

  May 10, 2009 at 9:37 pm

  Camp, he’s so nat­ur­al on screen that I think some people think he isn’t act­ing! He nev­er over does it, there’s always an ease to his per­form­ances and he’s just incred­ibly grace­ful on screen. I don’t know how great he’d be on stage, but he was really born to be a movie star.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  May 10, 2009 at 9:46 pm

  Campaspe: Sorry to bereft you there. Here’s J‑Pod him­self, singing his hal­le­lu­jah at the thor­oughly pig-ignorant “Slate” anti-Searchers piece by sniv­el­ling pig-fucker Stephen Metcalf:
  “There is a pur­pose to Slate’s contrarian-ness. Stephen Metcalf blows the whistle on the bizarre enthu­si­asm by cine­astes for the 1956 John Wayne movie The Searchers, often chosen as the best movie ever made in polls of crit­ics and cited as such by film­makers. In my view, ‘The Searchers’ is a tur­gid, wooden, bor­ing and weird movie, which I have now seen three times in a des­per­ate effort to have my eyes opened to its great­ness. Truth is, as Metcalf says, it stinks, no mat­ter what the film snobs say.”
  Note the canny use of the phrase “film snobs;” John’s man­ner here is not unlike that of “Sunrise” hater Tom O’Neil.
  Of course if he had stopped writ­ing after input­ting the words “Stephen Metcalf blows,” he would have been spot-on…

• Ben says:

  May 11, 2009 at 2:30 am

  Hey GK–
  Off top­ic here, but have you heard any insid­er­ish info w/r/t Criterion tak­ing the CONTEMPT blu ray of its sched­ule? I remem­ber you rav­ing about the new HD trans­fer and was really look­ing for­ward to revis­it­ing it on BD. Sigh.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  May 11, 2009 at 8:15 am

  @Brian: I don’t ever recall it being on a sched­ule, officially—was it? I know it was some­thing they had looked for­ward to but not nailed down a release date for. But I’ll look into it.

• Ben says:

  May 11, 2009 at 11:05 am

  You’re right– no release date, no specs had been announced. However, in the ini­tial press blast(s) announ­cing Criterion’s decision to move to blu ray, CONTEMPT was a title they hyped.

• Campaspe says:

  May 11, 2009 at 2:14 pm

  Glenn – Wow. The Sunrise com­par­is­on is apt. I can under­stand someone not get­ting the act­ing styles of anoth­er era but if you can­’t at least admire The Searchers’ visu­als then I have to won­der what you think a great movie IS. And it’s noth­ing if not access­ible; it isn’t as though we film snobs got togeth­er and forced the guy to watch (AHEM) Aki Kaurismaki three dif­fer­ent times.
  In addi­tion to the “snobs” red her­ring I am start­ing to be very wary of the word “tur­gid” in reviews–it often seems to sig­nal noth­ing more than the writer­’s desire to take a film­maker and his admirers down a peg. If Podhoretz is using it to mean “excess­ively ornate” then I won­der what the hell word he has left for Peter Greenaway. If Pod’s using it to mean “bloated” then he’s still wrong–it runs 119 minutes and each scene devel­ops the themes.
  To get back to your screen shot – the “Argento” on the top slot is com­pletely delicious.

• bill says:

  May 12, 2009 at 3:49 pm

  “If Podhoretz is using it to mean ‘excess­ively ornate’ then I won­der what the hell word he has left for Peter Greenaway.”
  That made me laugh…

• Glenn Kenny says:

  May 12, 2009 at 9:24 pm

  @Bill—Campaspe is a woman of ready wit, for sure. If you’re ever trav­el­lin’ to the tri-state area, spe­cific­ally the realms of Kings’ County, look us up. There are no bet­ter dinner/drinks com­pan­ions in the vicin­ity, cinephile or not…

• bill says:

  May 13, 2009 at 8:18 am

  Glenn, I would love to, and if I ever am, I def­in­itely will.

• bill says:

  May 13, 2009 at 8:36 am

  Oh, and also, if either of you are ever in the Virginia Beach/Hampton Roads area…which seems unlikely, but still.