Posted on 06/12/2010 5:57:36 PM PDT by maggief
Indeed, that’s the photo I recall seeing.
The man probably watches 100 movies for every book he reads. He is the perfect example of a post-literate writer. He thinks in simplistic (as opposed to clear) fashion, and when he writes things like this, he must be thinking of the dolts who follow him, and think "It's so easy to train the little sheep."
I imagine most of his readers/viewers watch a lot of Oprah, and are too dense to read a little in order to make their own choices about what movies to see. So of course they're Obama voters, and he is merely cheering for the home team.
A boring man, a boring thinker, a boring writer. I feel sorry for his medical situation and wish him well. I don't like what he's done to my country, though, as small a part of its media that he is.
Can you believe? Alinsky thinks he’s “stickin’ it to the man.” All he’s doing is siffing a couple proles.
It’s infuriating to think anyone would be proud of an anecdote like that. Worse that anyone would regard it as a model of behavior.
He’s a silly political commentator but...you do know that Roger Ebert was a Doctoral Candidate in English right? He’s extremely well read. And as a writer he’s won the Pulitzer Prize. He did a lot to teach the general public about filmmakers like Dreyer and Ozu.
Yes. That doesn't make his writing appealing to me--do you just automatically like any writer who was a Doctoral Candidate in English?
He’s extremely well read.
So are many writers I enjoy. So am I. That doesn't have anything to do with the quality of his thinking or his writing.
And as a writer he’s won the Pulitzer Prize.
Now you're just being funny, right? Of course he won the Pulitzer, as he and his bio notes (which he has a hand in, as all writers do in many situatinos) keep telling us. Who cares? If I look in your personal library will it contain every Pulitzer winner?
He did a lot to teach the general public about filmmakers like Dreyer and Ozu.
Yes, because the general public knows a lot about Dreyer and Ozu.
I'm a film fanatic--I'm in the middle of watching La Belle Noiseuse (which Ebert loved coincidentally)--and I could barely hold my own talking about Ozu or Dreyer; I hardly think the mass of "Thumbs up!" boobs who need teevee critics to tell them what to watch learned anything about those directors from Ebert, who has the most boring taste. I don't judge writers by what others say about them; I read and evaluate, and don't change my mind because 'They went to college!" or 'He won a Pulitzer!" I would bet you don't, either, so why even bring up this silly stuff? If you like him, fine, but he's a boring cardboard writer, and I can no longer even get trhough one of his boring-ass reviews. I'd sacrifice everything he's ever written for one paragraph of Pauline Kael' slash-and-burn job on Stanley Kramer, or David Thomson on La Belle Noiseuse.
You implied that he’s not well read. That’s simply untrue. As much as his work as a critic has taken a sharp turn downwards in the last decade and as bad an influence as the ‘Thumbs Up’ seems to have been, it has to be remembered that Siskel and Ebert brought fairly intelligent cinephile discussion to TV where it had never been before. Ebert was the cinephile btw. Siskel’s interest in cinema was strictly professional and he never wrote a single book about cinema. It’s questionable whether he ever read one either. A lot more people know about Dreyer and Ozu thanks to Ebert than before him. He speaks to a general audience not the readers of Cahiers Du Cinema. His columnn is just about the only place where his readers were likely to run into those names.
And btw, if you want to talk about a horrible influence on critical thought Pauline Kael has to be right up there. She taught an entire generation that ‘sexy’ and ‘trashy’ are the highest compliments one can pay and that films should only be seen once to get their full effect. It’s the same voice: mildly amused, a little condescending, seeing “trashy” and “sexy” as the highest praise you can give. There’s nothing too intimidating about it. It’s kind of sarcastic, hip and glib. I’ve never seen her dig any ideas out of a movie or dig into its structure beyond “I like this guy and I don’t like this guy.”
What's untrue is your accusation. I said he sees 100 movies for every book he reads, and that he's a critic for our post-literate world. Anyone who reads could understand that--you're so eager to blast me, you didn't read what I wrote for its meaning, btu for what you wanted it to mean.
As much as his work as a critic has taken a sharp turn downwards in the last decade and as bad an influence as the ‘Thumbs Up’ seems to have been, it has to be remembered that Siskel and Ebert brought fairly intelligent cinephile discussion to TV where it had never been before. Ebert was the cinephile btw.
That's your opinion, not fact. A 'cinephile' is a fancy word for someone who likes movies--there are millions of those, all with different opinions. Just because one is a cinephile doesn't mean one has tastes which could educate and grow the appreciation for a more diverse selection of movies than the guy who picked "Dark City" as the best movie of the year.
Siskel’s interest in cinema was strictly professional and he never wrote a single book about cinema.
Neither did Orson welles. I guess he didn't know anything about movies, either.
It’s questionable whether he ever read one either. A lot more people know about Dreyer and Ozu thanks to Ebert than before him.
LOL You keep saying that--where is your evidence of this?
He speaks to a general audience not the readers of Cahiers Du Cinema. His columnn is just about the only place where his readers were likely to run into those names.
I've seen those names in a thousand places. I still don't see their DVDs flying off the shelves. The idea that Ebert made them anymore popular than they would be without him has no evidence to back it up.
Absolutely not true. Sad to see you resorting to the cliched line about her because I don't like your favorite critic.
and that films should only be seen once to get their full effect.
Nope--that was her personal choice, and she had a good reason for it.
It’s the same voice: mildly amused, a little condescending, seeing “trashy” and “sexy” as the highest praise you can give.
That cliche, man, you gotta sctually READ her and come up with your own line.
There’s nothing too intimidating about it. It’s kind of sarcastic, hip and glib. I’ve never seen her dig any ideas out of a movie or dig into its structure beyond “I like this guy and I don’t like this guy.”
I have had great respect for you, up until this post. You've just parrotted back the party line of Kael-bashers, and shown no evidence you've actually read her. Whether it was on Dances with Wolves, The Earrings of madame de..., The Golden Couch, Shoeshine, Sam Peckinpah, Godard, or a thousand others I cuold name, Kael is nothing like the caricature you've created.
And if she was so awful, doesn't it strike you odd that her most famous follower was...Roger Ebert?
Writing and speaking, Pauline Kael commanded the American idiom. Her paragraphs announced their author. Like George Bernard Shaw, she wrote reviews that will be read for their style, humor and energy long after some of their subjects have been forgotten. Her work pointed up the disconnect between the immediate sensual experience of moviegoing and the abstract theory-mongering of many film critics. She was there, she sat in the theater, it was happening to her, and here was what she felt about it. Critics aren't supposed to talk during screenings, but I can still hear her Oh! Oh! Oh! during scenes she thought were dreadful. She loved the movies so much that bad ones were a personal affront. And when she loved one, her ecstasy came racing through her prose. (Roger Ebert is the film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times and host of "Ebert & Roeper and the Movies.")
Post-literate criticism, right there.
Game, set, match.
A critic should be informed about the history of the medium and share it with others. It’s an academic job and if you don’t write than you aren’t really all that important. Where in the mainstream (on TV!!) were Dreyer and Ozu discussed other than Siskel and Ebert and later Ebert’s column? Especially in the 1980s? Ebert has many readers...that’s a fact...it stands to reason that many of those readers learned about those figures from him.
I knew Ebert liked Kael. But he has more respect for the medium than she did. And his influence was generally positive. What serious film discussions on TV were there before Siskel and Ebert? It was all promotional junk masquerading as criticism.
YOu can keep droning on about "He talked about Dreyer and Ozu! He talked about Dreyer and Ozu!" but I'm still not buying it. You have no evidence, you just keep repeating it because you got all excited because Ebert name-dropped a couple of directors most people don't know, and STILL don't know. "It stands to reason" nothing--you don't have the facts, so you just keep insisting on them.
Ebert name-drops a couple of directors--that's all. The bulk of his boring writing is on the latest Jennifer Anniston vehicles. In the course of 40 years he mentioned "Dreyer and Ozu!" once--THAT's all you've got, and it's meaningless.
How many times has he mentioned crap action movies, and the same accepted wisdom about Spielberg and whoever?
You've got nuthin'.
You're still doing the ignorant trashing of her, and you don't know what you're talking about, your bullshit "standards were damaging to film aesthetics" line aside. (Name concrete examples of this--hell, name ONE example where her writing style "damaged film aesthetics".)
I knew Ebert liked Kael. But he has more respect for the medium than she did. And his influence was generally positive.
How do you know this? ONE example.
What serious film discussions on TV were there before Siskel and Ebert? It was all promotional junk masquerading as criticism.
Are you serious? What serious film discussions on TV were there AFTER Siskel and Ebert--"Thumbs up! A winner!" LOL
You crack me up. But your defense of Ebert's staid, boring championing of Hollywood bilge is rather sad. If anything Kael wrote for people who actually MADE films, and her lack of respect for the boring Accepted Art is what made her or ANY critic valuable. What good is a critic who, like Ebert, merely praises the plain old boring ways?
The fact that you claim she didn't care for Hitchcock's "genuine Art" (where do you and Ebert go to get the lowdown on what's Genuine Art? Who died and left you two and those who agree with you to decide?) shows, once again, you don't know what you're talking about--if anything, she trashed Hitchcock after he descended into post-Truffault idolatry foolishness.
Ebert is a salesman for crap, and he always has been. His hiding behind his awards and "credentials" can't cover up his lack of insight, and his turning film criticism into a matter of "You should see this" or "You shouldn't see this" damns him forever in the eyes of anyone with any knowledge of what true criticism is about. Kael, on the other hand, could write a review that wasn't about "So in the end, see it!" or "Don't see it"--she could write soaring tributes to individual aspects of a movie while trashing the story, or pick out great individual elements--leaving the reader to decide if he or she should see the movie ON HIS/HER OWN. As with any great writing, Kael's left you with an impression--YOU had to decide what to do based on YOUR ideas of her prejudices, likes/dislikes.
What's Ebert do? "Two thumbs up, WAAAY up!"
But he mentioned Dreyer once--on TV, that Seal of Approval for the ignorant--so he's awesome.
No sale.
No evidence for what? You can do a search of his archives and see how many times he talked about them. Hence everyone who reads him would have seen them mentioned and a certain percentage of those would have sought them out.
He writes for a metropolitan daily newspaper not a posh weekly magazine like Kael did. Hence he reviews most everything that comes out (at least he used to). The Thumbs up stuff is strictly for TV. In his print reviews he gives stars and even those under force of journalistic convention. He wouldn’t give ratings at all if he didn’t have to. What accepted wisdom are you talking about? Pauline Kale loved Spielberg’s brilliant films.
Film criticsm had been about “You shold see this...” for decades before Ebert. He was one of the first critics to get a byline so readers got a sense of a personality and an individual’s taste. Again he HAS to give star ratings. Editorial rule. And TV movie talk has been dumbed down but that’s been in spite of what Ebert tried to do. He’s one of the leading critics of what its become.
I’ve already listed the manner in which Pauline Kael’s ‘hipper than thou’ free wheeling trash aesthetic damaged film aesthetics.
When exactly did Hitchcock enter his ‘post-idolatry foolishness’? His late 50s and early 60s films are his absolute best.
Kael didn’t display much of a curiosity about the medium. She was, as John Simon once called her, a talented low brow. Boston University Literature Prof. Ray Carney called her an ‘utter fraud’.
One of my favorite Kael reviews is the print orgasm she had over ‘Last Tango in Paris’ which she thought was going to have a revolutionary effect on the medium. Hear anyone talk about LTIP lately?
Hear is my idea of a great (and short) review by the American critic with one of the best grasps of visual style. Kael never did stuff like this...
Vertigo - Dave Kehr
“One of the landmarks—not merely of the movies, but of 20th-century art. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film extends the theme of Rear Window—the relationship of creator and creation—into the realm of love and sexuality, focusing on an isolated, inspired romantic (James Stewart) who pursues the spirit of a woman (the powerfully carnal Kim Novak). The film’s dynamics of chase, capture, and escape parallel the artist’s struggle with his work; the enraptured gaze of the Stewart character before the phantom he has created parallels the spectator’s position in front of the movie screen. The famous motif of the fall is presented in horizontal rather than vertical space, so that it becomes not a satanic fall from grace, but a modernist fall into the image, into the artwork—a total absorption of the creator by his creation, which in the end is shown as synonymous with death. But a thematic analysis can only scratch the surface of this extraordinarily dense and commanding film, perhaps the most intensely personal movie to emerge from the Hollywood cinema.”
Film criticsm had been about “You shold see this...” for decades before Ebert. He was one of the first critics to get a byline so readers got a sense of a personality and an individual’s taste. Again he HAS to give star ratings. Editorial rule. And TV movie talk has been dumbed down but that’s been in spite of what Ebert tried to do. He’s one of the leading critics of what its become.
I’ve already listed the manner in which Pauline Kael’s ‘hipper than thou’ free wheeling trash aesthetic damaged film aesthetics.
When exactly did Hitchcock enter his ‘post-idolatry foolishness’? His late 50s and early 60s films are his absolute best.
Kael didn’t display much of a curiosity about the medium. She was, as John Simon once called her, a talented low brow. Boston University Literature Prof. Ray Carney called her an ‘utter fraud’.
One of my favorite Kael reviews is the print orgasm she had over ‘Last Tango in Paris’ which she thought was going to have a revolutionary effect on the medium. Hear anyone talk about LTIP lately?
Hear is my idea of a great (and short) review by the American critic with one of the best grasps of visual style. Kael never did stuff like this...
Vertigo - Dave Kehr
“One of the landmarks—not merely of the movies, but of 20th-century art. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film extends the theme of Rear Window—the relationship of creator and creation—into the realm of love and sexuality, focusing on an isolated, inspired romantic (James Stewart) who pursues the spirit of a woman (the powerfully carnal Kim Novak). The film’s dynamics of chase, capture, and escape parallel the artist’s struggle with his work; the enraptured gaze of the Stewart character before the phantom he has created parallels the spectator’s position in front of the movie screen. The famous motif of the fall is presented in horizontal rather than vertical space, so that it becomes not a satanic fall from grace, but a modernist fall into the image, into the artwork—a total absorption of the creator by his creation, which in the end is shown as synonymous with death. But a thematic analysis can only scratch the surface of this extraordinarily dense and commanding film, perhaps the most intensely personal movie to emerge from the Hollywood cinema.”
That his name-dropping Dreyer and Ozu once or twice on television had ANY impact AT ALL on their popularity among the general public--are you paying any attention to your own claims?
You can do a search of his archives and see how many times he talked about them. Hence everyone who reads him would have seen them mentioned and a certain percentage of those would have sought them out.
LOL! That's a joke, right? He wrote about them, thus, they are now more popular than ever, and the evidence of his success in doing this is that...he wrote about them. What kind of logic is that?
He writes for a metropolitan daily newspaper not a posh weekly magazine like Kael did. Hence he reviews most everything that comes out (at least he used to). The Thumbs up stuff is strictly for TV.
But your original point was he talked about Dreyer and Ozu ON TELEVISION! You can't even keep your own story straight, dude!
In his print reviews he gives stars and even those under force of journalistic convention.
What bull, there is no such "journalistic convention" that one must adhere to. I thought this guy was this Pulitzer-winning master of criticism, now he's this guy who has to go along to get along. Funny--Kael didn't use such a system.
He wouldn’t give ratings at all if he didn’t have to.
How do you know this?
What accepted wisdom are you talking about? Pauline Kale loved Spielberg’s brilliant films.
You've just proven how full of it you are--Kael liked a few of Spielberg's movies and trashed most of them post-E.T.
You keep changing your position in order to "win" an argument, and you keep avoiding the points you can't argue.
You like the reviews of a hack, and dismiss those of a thoughtful critic who doesn't have boring, whitebread standards, but examines her reactions to a movie and doesn't say crap like Dark City is the "best movie of the year" (another "journalistic convention, the Top Ten list--yet Kael didn't abide by those, either). Why don't you just admit it, and stop trying to enshrine the guy you like as some kind of genius, when he's as much responsible for the state of movies as any critic (still can't seem to explain how Kael did all this damage, as you asserted).
Thumbs down, waaaay down! LOL
Never said it wasn't--it's a hallmark of bad critism.
He was one of the first critics to get a byline so readers got a sense of a personality and an individual’s taste.
And here you reveal your total lack of knowledge.
I guess James Agee (or, um, PAULINE KAEL) didn't get bylines before Ebert showed up?
Again he HAS to give star ratings. Editorial rule.
Bull.
And TV movie talk has been dumbed down but that’s been in spite of what Ebert tried to do. He’s one of the leading critics of what its become.
LOL This is so sad. Where do you get this baloney?
You've revealed how uninformed you are, dude. Case closed.
,i>I’ve already listed the manner in which Pauline Kael’s ‘hipper than thou’ free wheeling trash aesthetic damaged film aesthetics.
Where was this? You made that statement--asserting something doesn't prove it!
When exactly did Hitchcock enter his ‘post-idolatry foolishness’? His late 50s and early 60s films are his absolute best.
Uh, you obviously aren't even aware of Hitchock/Truffault, just the single most famous book of film analysis from the Cahiers crowd (or otherwise) in which Hitchcock bought all the worship given to him, after which his self-consciousness destroyed his talent...this was in the post-Psycho period.
It's one of the most basic pieces of information about understanding Hitchcock.
But you didn't know that.
Kael didn’t display much of a curiosity about the medium.
You mean, when she went out and actually worked for a studio for six months, or when she RAN a movie theater in the 50's-60's?
She was, as John Simon once called her, a talented low brow.
Oh I get it--she's not a film SNOB, so she's nothing. What stuck-up drivel. Simon, btw, is brilliant on books and dance, but utterly lost when discussing film.
Boston University Literature Prof. Ray Carney called her an ‘utter fraud’.
That's how far you have to go--I quote Ebert's commemoration of her death and could have quoted many others), while you quote a BU professor? LOL
One of my favorite Kael reviews is the print orgasm she had over ‘Last Tango in Paris’ which she thought was going to have a revolutionary effect on the medium. Hear anyone talk about LTIP lately?
Here's where the destruction of criticism Ebert helped along is in full flower. Who the heck wants a critic who only goes with the crowd? (Ebert fans, obviously.) Wow, she liked something, and overpraised something--holy cow, how embarassing! That's called taking a risk, doing your own thing, speaking from your passion for film, not jsut sticking your nose up and checking out what "everyone" likes. I disagree with Kael MOST of the time--so what? It's about the love of the cinema coming from an original perspective unlike my own, not boring, bland middle of the road boredom.
Hear is my idea of a great (and short) review by the American critic with one of the best grasps of visual style. Kael never did stuff like this... Vertigo - Dave Kehr “One of the landmarks—not merely of the movies, but of 20th-century art.
He starts out with a cliche.
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film extends the theme of Rear Window—the relationship of creator and creation—into the realm of love and sexuality, focusing on an isolated, inspired romantic (James Stewart) who pursues the spirit of a woman (the powerfully carnal Kim Novak). The film’s dynamics of chase, capture, and escape parallel the artist’s struggle with his work; the enraptured gaze of the Stewart character before the phantom he has created parallels the spectator’s position in front of the movie screen. The famous motif of the fall is presented in horizontal rather than vertical space, so that it becomes not a satanic fall from grace, but a modernist fall into the image, into the artwork—a total absorption of the creator by his creation, which in the end is shown as synonymous with death. But a thematic analysis can only scratch the surface of this extraordinarily dense and commanding film, perhaps the most intensely personal movie to emerge from the Hollywood cinema.”
Vertigo--the most overrated "hip" movie among "hip" critics--how many average fans prefer this self-conscious arty curiosity? (Oh, well, The Critics like it, so of course Ebert will.
Kehr is a bore. Ebert is a bore. Predictable herd-mentality nothignness dressed up in chic academic blather.
Fail!
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