Stanley Kauffman
There's a bizarre quote from Stanley Kauffman's recent review of Amazing Grace in The New Republic:
Even better, [director Michael] Apted--best-known here for the series of documentaries that began with Seven Up!, but who has also ranged through, among others, a James Bond film, Coal Miner's Daughter (about Loretta Lynn), and Gorillas in the Mist--handles this period material with no hint of acquired knowledgeability: he just seems at home.
Is Kauffman saying that the Up! series is better known in this country than The World is Not Enough or Gorillas in the Mist, or is he saying that Michael Apted is more associated with the Up series than he is Coal Miner's Daughters? Both are bizarre, though admittedly the latter less so, documentaries being more strongly associated with their maker than most action films or biopics.
There's another possible interpretation, though. Kauffman might be using "here" not to mean "in this country" but rather "in this column", or "to me". It'd be a weird and anachronistic writing quirk, apparently imbuing the column with some form of geographic existence, but everything about Kauffman's reviews are weird and anachronistic. He's been writing for The New Republic since 1958 (nearly 15 years longer than Martin Peretz and 25 years longer than Leon Wieseltier, who together have done the most to define the current magazine), and at some point he apparently just decided that he wasn't going to see any movies that weren't worth his time. Sure, he's devoted column space to the major Oscar nominees and similarly prestigious fare like The Good German, but he's avoided recent middlebrow fare like Pan's Labyrinth, Breach, Black Snake Moan, The Fountain, and Bobby. Instead, here are some of the movies that did catch his eye: Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams, Close to Home, The Decomposition of the Soul, The Secret Life of Words, Family Law, and Absolute Wilson. What do they have in common? It's not just that I've never heard of them. It's that I don't think they're playing near me, and I'm in Boston. You know, a major city. I sometimes wonder if Kauffmann ever just made up a movie, to see if he could; it seems like he'd have an easy time getting away with it. I understand the principle of only reviewing worthwhile movies, but what's the point of writing about about films that almost nobody can see?
The really infuriating part is that The New Republic also has a good movie critic. His name's Christopher Orr, and every two to three weeks he writes about a film recently released on DVD for TNR Online under the heading "Home Movies". Here's the last paragraph of his take on V For Vendetta:
The government has already been toppled and its villainous architects killed. And yet, Parliament must still be blown up, fulfilling Fawkes's 400-year-old dream but no other discernible purpose. Tchaikovsky's notes swell anew as orange flames shatter the tall windows of Westminster and hurl the clock faces from Big Ben. The only explanation we're offered is V's earlier admonition that "a building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it.... blowing up a building can change the world." This is inarguably true, as two separate al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Towers amply demonstrated. (It is a resonance to which V for Vendetta is either sadly oblivious or perversely attracted.) In detonating Westminster, the Wachowskis and McTeigue go at once too far and not far enough: too far, in expecting us to applaud the senseless destruction of one of the historic cathedrals of democracy; and not far enough, in hesitating to make their point by blowing up the White House or the Capitol dome, the true targets of their juvenile political ire. Their film is a bank shot against Bush, simultaneously radical and cowardly. In the end it's not clear which characteristic is the more embarrassing.
Also, almost every review ends with a top-five list of films somehow pertaining to the review (in this case, it was movies about revenge; for Dreamgirls it was movies hailed as the return of the musical), which thrills me and my latent listophilia. I've gotten more pleasure and insight out of reading Orr than I have from reading at least six times as much Kauffmann, and it's a shame the former is still forced to toil in the digital ghetto.
Even better, [director Michael] Apted--best-known here for the series of documentaries that began with Seven Up!, but who has also ranged through, among others, a James Bond film, Coal Miner's Daughter (about Loretta Lynn), and Gorillas in the Mist--handles this period material with no hint of acquired knowledgeability: he just seems at home.
Is Kauffman saying that the Up! series is better known in this country than The World is Not Enough or Gorillas in the Mist, or is he saying that Michael Apted is more associated with the Up series than he is Coal Miner's Daughters? Both are bizarre, though admittedly the latter less so, documentaries being more strongly associated with their maker than most action films or biopics.
There's another possible interpretation, though. Kauffman might be using "here" not to mean "in this country" but rather "in this column", or "to me". It'd be a weird and anachronistic writing quirk, apparently imbuing the column with some form of geographic existence, but everything about Kauffman's reviews are weird and anachronistic. He's been writing for The New Republic since 1958 (nearly 15 years longer than Martin Peretz and 25 years longer than Leon Wieseltier, who together have done the most to define the current magazine), and at some point he apparently just decided that he wasn't going to see any movies that weren't worth his time. Sure, he's devoted column space to the major Oscar nominees and similarly prestigious fare like The Good German, but he's avoided recent middlebrow fare like Pan's Labyrinth, Breach, Black Snake Moan, The Fountain, and Bobby. Instead, here are some of the movies that did catch his eye: Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams, Close to Home, The Decomposition of the Soul, The Secret Life of Words, Family Law, and Absolute Wilson. What do they have in common? It's not just that I've never heard of them. It's that I don't think they're playing near me, and I'm in Boston. You know, a major city. I sometimes wonder if Kauffmann ever just made up a movie, to see if he could; it seems like he'd have an easy time getting away with it. I understand the principle of only reviewing worthwhile movies, but what's the point of writing about about films that almost nobody can see?
The really infuriating part is that The New Republic also has a good movie critic. His name's Christopher Orr, and every two to three weeks he writes about a film recently released on DVD for TNR Online under the heading "Home Movies". Here's the last paragraph of his take on V For Vendetta:
The government has already been toppled and its villainous architects killed. And yet, Parliament must still be blown up, fulfilling Fawkes's 400-year-old dream but no other discernible purpose. Tchaikovsky's notes swell anew as orange flames shatter the tall windows of Westminster and hurl the clock faces from Big Ben. The only explanation we're offered is V's earlier admonition that "a building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it.... blowing up a building can change the world." This is inarguably true, as two separate al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Towers amply demonstrated. (It is a resonance to which V for Vendetta is either sadly oblivious or perversely attracted.) In detonating Westminster, the Wachowskis and McTeigue go at once too far and not far enough: too far, in expecting us to applaud the senseless destruction of one of the historic cathedrals of democracy; and not far enough, in hesitating to make their point by blowing up the White House or the Capitol dome, the true targets of their juvenile political ire. Their film is a bank shot against Bush, simultaneously radical and cowardly. In the end it's not clear which characteristic is the more embarrassing.
Also, almost every review ends with a top-five list of films somehow pertaining to the review (in this case, it was movies about revenge; for Dreamgirls it was movies hailed as the return of the musical), which thrills me and my latent listophilia. I've gotten more pleasure and insight out of reading Orr than I have from reading at least six times as much Kauffmann, and it's a shame the former is still forced to toil in the digital ghetto.