Pauline Kael

i mean yeah people who still get interviewed are more likely to get to give their two cents about a critic who didn't like them, but I don't think the degree of their desire to not just dismiss but disqualify her opinion of them is any less ironic for it. I've read a lot of anecdotes about Pauline Kael positive and negative and theirs really stand out.

I don't think it's a coincidence that these are two people who haven't really had to deal with a lot of slings and arrows

clem i repped for barefoot in the park above sorta. never saw legal eagles, daryl hannah repelled more than debra winger could attract me. HUGE sneakers fan but man talk about more talented, fun costars. i probably am underrating him (may be working out something, butch and sundance is my dad's favorite movie)(redford's a better actor than katharine ross fwiw), he's better than gregory peck not as good as say brad pitt. i'd put him slightly over cruise but no way in hell am i watching that iraq war movie they made to test my ranking.

xpost

i always thought redford had more going for him than PK let on. not an all-time great but the guy's likable

I could be wrong but Kael was the only critic who consistently held her nose while watching Streep's Oscar nom-affirmed eighties work (A Cry in the Dark the exception). And tbh Roger Ebert fell for most of Streep perfs without thinking twice.

surprise!

If Redford has a role as fun as Gregory Peck's in Duel In The Sun I haven't seen it.

Always liked PK's "radio performance" dis of Streep's Sophie.

what about Redford as Death on The Twilight Zone?

he was good on twilight zone but yknow not shatner good

Daryl Hannah as performance artist in LE really needs to be seen

what about Hannah as artist below?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knVbfhmME1g

Redford's way stiff for my tastes but he's never really hurt or helped a movie that I've seen

Was wondering when the Twilight Zone card was gonna get played.

tbh when I think Eighties Film "Meryl Streep" is the first name to knock me to sleep.

Kael retired just before Defending Your Life, I think. I wonder if she would have come around some there--I think Streep's really sweet and funny in that.

I liked her in the Carrie Fisher movie, Postcards From the Edge.

never got the feeling she thought Streep lacked talent, but that those films were constructed as deadly Great Acting Vehicles for her. And she was right about A Cry in the Dark.

She left the scenery chewing to the sister of PK's onetime best friend.

no doubt Streep loved reading how her weaknesses were precisely what made her A Cry in the Dark so effective.

i have more time for 80s streep than soto and kael but postcards from the edge and esp defending yr life represent a turn for her toward her much better work in adaptation, devil wears prada, etc

this is my fav Twilight Zone performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY2OE6vBxQM

lol is that what prompted this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgOWNQgeAuE

HUGE sneakers fan but man talk about more talented, fun costars.

Totally. One of the few movies I ever saw twice in the theaters, but the thing I remember most about him is how wooden his reading of "you're the one who's going to have to pull the trigger" was at the end.

hell I loved Streep playing lovelorn pastafazoola The Bridges of Madison County.

the success of Sneakers coincided with the period in pop music when old people (i.e. fortysomethings) scored top five hits.

haha im p sure it is balls

(just as it crested too)

I think Redford suffered from his post 70s work being a lot less interesting than his contemps, like Nicholson, deniro, pacino. Maybe even Hoffman. He's not a dude who has a lot of onscreen fire, pretty slow burn kinda guy.

I forgot about Spy Games! He wasn't at all bad in that one.

man, my mom LOVED the electric horseman

and basically anything with robert redford in it

Postcards from the Edge is kinda fun, but has any movie about addiction ever made addiction look LESS horrifying?

Spy game! I've heard that's kind of awesome.

well yeah she fucks Dennis Quaid.

xpost

He's not a dude who has a lot of onscreen fire, pretty slow burn kinda guy.

like Alain Delon? who gets credit for being French and nonblond.

Delon is better at though. Although yeah he is both of those things

OMG is that John Williams as Shakespeare in that Burt Reynolds Twilight Zone?

redford's pretty great in a lot of movies though don't get me wrong.

In retrospect are all those Meryl Streep perhaps really so bad. I mean they are a little more theatrical than one normally expects from screen acting but they are still affecting. You might as well accuse Sir Larry of the same thing.

they're stiff as hell and constricted by notions of what Good Acting looks like. On the other hand, what else was a young actress like Streep to do? These parts are what young actresses auditioned for. I'm sure she bumped into Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, and Debra Winger at a lot of auditions, although those three plus Diane Keaton gave more performances during the period that have held up better and I'd watch twice.

Perhaps I should watch a few to confirm my speculation but on second thought maybe not. You've called my bluff.

There was so much hushed 'buzz' about Streep just after her supporting trifecta of Deer Hunter-Manhattan-Seduction of Joe Tynan(!) that I suspect she was first choice for everything she made for the next 5-6 years.

A.O. Scott's article, cited here often, on Streep and the peculiar somnolence of eighties films.

I think the only one of her Great Actress films I saw was Out of Africa, from which I remember absolutely nothing. She's excellent in The Deer Hunter.

and sexy!

"'80s films" used there as a lazy cliche like "'80s music." I'll take Housekeeping, Cutter's Way and The Replacements over Out of Africa and A Flock of Seagulls, Alex.

She's got some funny small-talk that's always trailing off into nothing, and an excellent crying scene as she prices stuff in the supermarket. (xpost)

Just realized I wasn't counting Kramer as a Great Actress film. She's still in a supporting role there. I think she's quite good in Kramer.

when IS Housekeeping getting a DVD release?

I can understand why critics nestled onto Aldomovar's lap when the Ameri-indie alternative resembled lo-fi respect-o-cinema.

Vastly prefer Housekeeping the film to the book it is based on but think I'm in the minority.

I do too. Gilead is a better novel.

Nowadays “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “A Cry in the Dark” would be scruffy little Sundance movies. “Out of Africa” would be in French. “Silkwood” would be “The Blind Side.”

yup.