Recommended reading

No Comments

• ZS says:

  January 25, 2012 at 10:53 pm

  Thank you sir for the “Naughty” link. I needed a good laugh after being bummed over the death of Theo Angelopoulos.

• jbryant says:

  January 26, 2012 at 4:59 am

  I nev­er under­stand those who expend effort on the­or­iz­ing ways to ‘improve’ the Oscar cere­mony. In almost 60 years of tele­casts, has the show EVER been a tight, well-paced, con­sist­ently enter­tain­ing even­ing of tele­vi­sion? No, and it nev­er will be. Anyone for whom this is a prob­lem should forgo the show and check the win­ners online at their leisure.
  And OF COURSE the Motion Picture Academy should cel­eb­rate its his­tory dur­ing its one annu­al shot at attract­ing mil­lions of eye­balls. I would think that any­one who cares enough about movies to watch the Oscars would­n’t mind this. I guess I’m not tak­ing into account those who only watch to star-gaze and see “who” every­one is wear­ing – but surely the red car­pet pre-show is enough for such folks?
  Besides, half the fun of the Oscars is bitch­ing about it afterward.

• Joel says:

  January 26, 2012 at 9:52 am

  I stopped watch­ing after the Academy launched its worst “improve­ment”: hav­ing the below-the-line award win­ners give their speeches from a micro­phone in the aisle. Even though this only last one year, it so pissed me off that I haven’t watched the show since then. Did I miss any­thing good?

• Tom Block says:

  January 26, 2012 at 1:51 pm

  Who wrote that “Naughty” piece?

• Bettencourt says:

  January 26, 2012 at 3:18 pm

  Having fol­lowed the links, did Dan Kois really sug­gest a drink­ing game where one takes a shot every time Scorsese refers to his film as a “pic­ture” dur­ing the Oscar tele­cast? Did Kois not real­ize that A) Scorsese is only nom­in­ated for 2 Oscars, B) he’s likely to lose both Oscars to The Artist and C) this is about the lous­i­est idea for a drink­ing game ever?

• Glenn Kenny says:

  January 26, 2012 at 3:51 pm

  “Did Dan Kois really sug­gest a drink­ing game, [etc.]?”
  Yes, he did. You’d think an edit­or might dis­cour­age such crimes against com­mon sense, but in the best “the call is com­ing from inside the house” tra­di­tion, Kois IS the editor.

• ZS says:

  January 26, 2012 at 5:56 pm

  Wait Dan Kois is an edit­or for Slate now? Couldn’t they find any oth­er frat-boys?

• Flipyourface says:

  January 26, 2012 at 8:40 pm

  Hi, Tom. My name’s Jim Gabriel, and I’m the naughty one. I hope you were inquir­ing for pur­poses of praise. If not, that’s cool, too. I am obvi­ously not shy about dish­ing out kicks to the behind (and, er, oth­er places) and am a big enough boy to take a couple myself.
  Glenn – thanks for the too-kind link. I am, as you might have guessed, a long­time read­er, but clearly not a close one; I’ve been so busy: a) try­ing to fig­ure out a blog post of my own on Derek Jarman’s BLUE – no mys­tery what made me want to revis­it THAT; b) mak­ing nasty remarks on Twitter about – well, you know; and, c) spend­ing WAY too long run­ning through ZABRISKIE POINT (because I’m sure that *all* those stills from ZABRISKIE POINT) that I totally whiffed on noti­cing your post. I’m only half-kidding about the last one.
  Anyone who took the time to read that piece will notice (or should I say NOTICE) that it veers to the hyper­bol­ic, a tend­ency that I am embar­rassed to say that I kind of share with its sub­ject. Those who feel as I do will get a kick out of it. I would sug­gest, though, to any­one who loves the kind art that most read­ers of this site do but tem­pera­ment­ally shrink from the Too Much, Too Uncivil tone of dis­course on all things Koisian that, really, behind all the bon­homie and chum­mi­ness of *his* tone, HE DOES NOT WISH YOU WELL. I won’t judge people who shrink from a scrap, but any “crit­ic” who routinely and reflex­ively pisses on many things I hold dear (his HUGO and SHAME com­ment­ar­ies are merely unibrow; his Jarman stuff was a dis­grace) gets no quarter from me. Dan Kois is the up-and-coming Prince of Here and There; I’ll deal in my own way with the pro­spect of him being the King of Everywhere. To quote David Cronenberg, anoth­er artist who is appar­ently not snappy enough for that crowd, “It has a philo­sophy, and that’s what makes it dangerous.”
  Oh, dear, I did it again. Some people just can­’t be sat­is­fied with “Thanks for the link”…

• Flipyourface says:

  January 26, 2012 at 9:15 pm

  And, if I may, since I’ve been so long a lurker:
  Tom Block: we seem to have a mutu­al thing for Polish poster art; the examples on your blog may cause me to hunt and gath­er until I can no longer afford shelter.
  And, I gotta say, being linked next to the Siren gives me a zing that is only exceeded by the pos­sib­il­ity that we may have been sim­ul­tan­eously typ­ing the words, “Greer Garson.” Perhaps the steady tri­umph of the ahis­tor­ic­al is not yet com­plete, and it’s a pleas­ure to read those who don’t and won’t buy into it.

• Dan Coyle says:

  January 26, 2012 at 9:58 pm

  I feel very grate­ful I have nev­er tried to read a Dan Kois review in full.

• Flipyourface says:

  January 26, 2012 at 10:44 pm

  You *are* for­tu­nate, Dan Coyle. It’s like the grat­it­ude one feels at not being silly enough to peer at the sun too long. Or being lucky enough that a black hole sucked up the sun before you were per­man­ently blinded. Or something.