Sarris on Old Hollywood is invaluable.
you guys would call her "morbsian."
I would call you "presumptuous."
― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 29 October 2011 22:12 (twelve years ago) link
yeah. i'd trust Kael to actually see the movies she trashes.
― encarta it (Gukbe), Saturday, 29 October 2011 22:13 (twelve years ago) link
i realize she would deservedly be insulted!
(if she lurked)
― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 29 October 2011 22:13 (twelve years ago) link
throw that meme in the garbage can, Guk
― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 29 October 2011 22:14 (twelve years ago) link
i'd loooove to read her pan of inglobius nasturds
― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 29 October 2011 22:15 (twelve years ago) link
deservedly feel insulted, i meant
― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 29 October 2011 22:19 (twelve years ago) link
That’s great! You tell me I’m wrong while denying you’re doing so, a very Kaelian tactic!
― Mayne of Fules (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 29 October 2011 23:39 (twelve years ago) link
― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius)
http://www.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs1/1884896_o.gif
― omar little, Sunday, 30 October 2011 00:03 (twelve years ago) link
lol, nasturds
― The sham nation of Israel should be destroyed. (Princess TamTam), Sunday, 30 October 2011 00:09 (twelve years ago) link
omar otm
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/27/pauline_kael_hero_or_hack/singleton/
― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Saturday, October 29, 2011 10:41 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark
outlaw vern shoutout in there! vern is the man
kael's never been just about the writing for me, though she was a great writer obv, but i think her insights were often really top notch and the reason i read her was because she saw angles i didnt
― The sham nation of Israel should be destroyed. (Princess TamTam), Sunday, 30 October 2011 00:34 (twelve years ago) link
lol @ omar busting out that gif
― call all destroyer, Sunday, 30 October 2011 00:35 (twelve years ago) link
Seitz is otm about the level of insight in this Kael paragraph:
“If having ‘the right stuff’ is set up as the society’s highest standard, and if a person proves that he has it by his eagerness to be locked in a can and shot into space, the only thing that distinguishes human heroes from chimps is that the heroes volunteer for the job. And if they volunteer, as they do in this film, out of personal ambition and for profit, are they different from the chimp who might jump into the can eagerly, too, if he saw a really big banana there?”
― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 30 October 2011 00:40 (twelve years ago) link
So back to the new bio, who's actually read it? Is it worth picking up?
― Darin, Sunday, 30 October 2011 05:19 (twelve years ago) link
re James Wolcott, I knew him first as the TV critic for the Voice in the early '80s, where he properly enthused about The Uncle Floyd Show.
― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 30 October 2011 05:24 (twelve years ago) link
the kael para alfred quotes above abt the right stuff - which i loved as both movie and book - makes me want to read much more of her work, even if i disagree with it
― The doctor smiled, realizing that he had made his point. (stevie), Sunday, 30 October 2011 09:01 (twelve years ago) link
Talked to Uncle Floyd's younger brother Jerry a few years ago at the 55 Bar, right before he and the other brother were going with Conan to LA to do the Tonight Show and he told me Floyd had some radio show out of Connecticut maybe playing old-time ethnic Italian music. Always amazed me that he was related to those two other guys.
― Mayne of Fules (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 30 October 2011 11:29 (twelve years ago) link
Sorry, New Rochelle.
From his Wikipedia page:
David Bowie, a big fan of the show, recorded the song "Slip Away" on his 2002 album, Heathen, as a tribute. The lyrics mention Uncle Floyd and his puppets "Oogie" and "Bones Boy". When asked how Bowie learned of The Uncle Floyd Show he replied, "John Lennon told me about it."
― Mayne of Fules (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 30 October 2011 11:38 (twelve years ago) link
Back to PK: sure her smart American vernacular prose reads easier than the as-if-translated-from-the-French style that some others might have lapsed into but if you give into the easy temptation of just adopting her tastes and prejudices lock, stock and barrel, as somebody more or less said about Nabokov on another thread, you'll end up missing a whole world of fun.
― Mayne of Fules (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 30 October 2011 11:50 (twelve years ago) link
Most people don't though (including the "Paulettes").
Also, the criticism that Kael defended her favorites too strenuously is simply wrong. For every Altman film she loved there was another he panned. She hated every De Palma film after Blow Out. Coppola could not get a break in the eighties. And so on.
― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 30 October 2011 12:03 (twelve years ago) link
I'm not disputing your basic point--she was all over the place with virtually everybody--but don't forget that she loved Casualties of War. And in one of the interview books, she said nice things about Mission to Mars and Snake Eyes.
― clemenza, Sunday, 30 October 2011 12:30 (twelve years ago) link
*there was another SHE panned, I should have written.
― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 30 October 2011 12:38 (twelve years ago) link
I should have attached a footnote re C of W.
― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 30 October 2011 12:39 (twelve years ago) link
Mission of Mars had some good stuff in it. Well at least one good scene of some zero-g choreography.
― Mayne of Fules (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 30 October 2011 12:46 (twelve years ago) link
iirc she actually found the Untouchables to be fun, if slight. certainly didnt hate it
― The sham nation of Israel should be destroyed. (Princess TamTam), Sunday, 30 October 2011 12:59 (twelve years ago) link
and mostly praised it based on de palma's contributions. and she let him off the hook for bonfire (probably rightfully, considering the level of studio interference)
― The sham nation of Israel should be destroyed. (Princess TamTam), Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:01 (twelve years ago) link
I'm not sure she lets De Palma off the hook with sentences like:
"The picture grates on your nerves: you sit there listening to Melanie Griffith's metallic whine and you watch Bruce Willis fail at the simple task of playing a comic drunk. These are talented people -- what's happened to them?"
or
"De Palma, who showed a genius for sophomoric comedy in his youth, has already made his Bonfire of the Vanities. It was the daring race-relations jamboree, Hi, Mom!."
― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:07 (twelve years ago) link
still, the damage had been done by then; she made him "imortant." Ye gods.
― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:12 (twelve years ago) link
"important"
(Sunday morning)
James: I watched Mission to Mars with one of my science classes last year. I didn't hate it, but it seemed to be about half pilfered from 2001, half from Close Encounters.
― clemenza, Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:24 (twelve years ago) link
i have to assume kael liked femme fatale. Can't imagine why she wouldn't have.
― da croupier, Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:29 (twelve years ago) link
lol, except i'm an idiot who forgot she died before its release. whoopsie!
― da croupier, Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:31 (twelve years ago) link
for some reason I though she died around 2005 rather than 2001
I just remembered how that Francis Davis book has a list of movies he likes to think she would have dug, with crazy no-way shit like Death To Smoochy on it.
― da croupier, Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:34 (twelve years ago) link
By the way, da croupier, I noticed that Frank Rich said virtually the same thing in his column that you took me to task for a few months ago:
A fierce skeptic of all dogmas (including religion, feminism and liberalism) who made her name in part by knocking Sarris for promoting the auteur theory, Kael didn’t recognize that she had morphed into a dogmatic auteurist in her own right — lauding her pet directors no matter what.
I think he overstates the case, but you questioned at the time whether I had even read "Circles and Squares." Do you suppose Rich has read it?
― clemenza, Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:35 (twelve years ago) link
He's misread it, at least. And as we've said, "lauding her pet directors no matter what" is straight up bullshit, so why should I be shocked he's wrong about the other half of the sentence?
― da croupier, Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:38 (twelve years ago) link
half of the sentence fragment, I meant.
Good, I've made progress--you're ready to concede that I've misread "Circles and Squares."
― clemenza, Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:39 (twelve years ago) link
That's some Maureen Dowd level "narrative"-humping Rich's pulling there.
― da croupier, Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:42 (twelve years ago) link
Just curious: do you have any criticisms of Kael?
― clemenza, Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:46 (twelve years ago) link
Forgot about that Francis Davis book. Also forgot about her only watching movies once thing which still seems crazy, but perhaps it is a mark of a vastly superior intelligence, like the one discovered by Don Cheadle on his Mission to Mars.
― Mayne of Fules (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:47 (twelve years ago) link
way too much second person. occasionally her euphoria for a film is a bit much, though that's usually just like a few paragraphs of an otherwise dense, worthwhile read. tastewise she's a little too in love with gunga din-ery.
― da croupier, Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:50 (twelve years ago) link
xpost
curious how many of you have read any Molly Haskell.
― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:51 (twelve years ago) link
I've noticed in this cycle of reevaluation that a couple of writers have taken her to task for having such ambivalence about mass taste, which is absurd: not only was she aware of it (and the ambivalence made her a better critic), but there's no way anyone as alert as Kael could NOT be ambivalent about mass taste.
― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:52 (twelve years ago) link
Vincent Canby with more vinegar?
(xxxpost) Fair enough. In some of your posts above, you seem to strike out aggressively at anyone who criticizes her for anything. She's one of two writers (the other Bill James) who's influenced me more than any other, yet there are a number of things about her writing (especially during her last few years, which is admittedly a little unfair) that bother me.
― clemenza, Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:54 (twelve years ago) link
i strike out aggressively, because I feel most critiques are pat, small-minded or misguided, and I usually say why.
― da croupier, Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:56 (twelve years ago) link
def not denying i'm a huuuuuge kael stan
― da croupier, Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:58 (twelve years ago) link
Even if you disagree with some of his points along the way, I think the Rich piece is fair, and anything but small-minded. And it leads to a final sentence that I think does justice to her: "If you want to understand what it was like to be in the audience during America’s thrilling, now vanished age of movies, you must begin with Kael."
― clemenza, Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:58 (twelve years ago) link