Category: Critics

Critic Signing Off

Kyle

Final columns by long-time writers are a fascinating genre all their own. I like the way NYT restaurant critic Frank Bruni handled it yesterday: by collecting a list of “questions that [he] was often asked or that [he] wished [he]’d been asked, along with responses.” Here’s my favorite:

IS THERE ANY BEST, SAFEST WAY TO NAVIGATE A MENU?

Scratch off the appetizers and entrees that are most like dishes you’ve seen in many other restaurants, because they represent this one at its most dutiful, conservative and profit-minded. The chef’s heart isn’t in them.

Scratch off the dishes that look the most aggressively fanciful. The chef’s vanity — possibly too much of it — spawned these.

Then scratch off anything that mentions truffle oil.

Choose among the remaining dishes.

You Don’t Mess With A.O.

Kyle 2 Comments

A couple of friends and I have been engaged in a little conversation (and email follow-up) about the New York Times movie critics. It’s funny, I see very few movies, but I’m a voracious review reader, especially from the Times and The Onion (though not the latter so much lately because I get sucked into reading the whole thing, which, sadly–summer be damned–I just don’t have the time for). While I, like my friend, prefer A.O. Scott, I’ve really been digging Manohla Dargis lately. (Incidentally, I went to write out my “Dargis thesis” this morning and realized I already had.)

Anyway, this is just a brief PSA: You should check out A.O. Scott’s hilarious review of You Don’t Mess With the Zohan (aka “the finest post-Zionist action-hairdressing sex comedy [A.O. Scott has] ever seen”). But my sources tell me you shouldn’t actually go see it, his advice notwithstanding. I was beginning to think A.O. seemed a little vulnerable to the crazy sex comedies lately, but then he skewered The Love Guru, or (as The Onion cover called it this week, the “Latest Austin Powers Movie”).

If you want to watch something, I’d recommend the Zohan Movie Minutes (halfway down the review, at left). The conclusion:

“All in all, it offers a kind of … a utopian picture of what would happen if people stopped blowing each other up and started just concentrating on the things that really matter, which are money, sex, nice haircuts, and hummus.”

Strange Indeed

Kyle

One of the very, very few reasons I regret not having a car is that getting to Madison’s east or west sides for movies hardly seems worth the investment in bus-riding time (we miss you University Square, you of the $4.75 student admission and reasonably priced beer).

This week I’m doubly bummed due to this weird convergence:

“If you are in the mood for a movie about the rejuvenation of an aging, widowed college professor — and don’t pretend you aren’t — then this is a weekend of rare and unexpected abundance. By some miracle of film industry serendipity, two such movies are opening today in limited release. Even more bizarre: each is pretty good.”

Of course, The Visitor isn’t even playing here, and Smart People is at the slightly-easier-to-get-to-(though-astronomically-priced) Sundance Cinemas, so I may very well get a chance to catch it. I miss seeing movies easily, is the general point here. Would someone please open another student-oriented theater downtown?

Thanks, A.O.: Smart People, The Visitor

“Hey Jesus, You Want Pizza or What?”

Kyle

Part of our Lenten discipline at St. Francis House this year has been a weekly Movies with Meaning series. Admittedly, eating free food and watching movies on Monday nights hasn’t felt like much of a sacrifice compared to the usual “oh shoot, I didn’t do enough homework this weekend” tone of a typical Monday night. Still, we’ve had the struggling and contemplating part down the last two weeks as we’ve tackled Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, based on the book of same name by Nikos Kazantzakis (which latter was apparently a big reason why a friend of mine went to seminary).

After finishing up the movie this evening, we did a little amateur film criticism in addition to the theological discussion you’d expect. As a bit of a follow-up, I tracked down this post from from Matthew Dessem, a fellow user of the exceptionally clean Minima template by designer Douglas Bowman.

I love the “separation between Spiderman and state” bit at the beginning of Dessem’s post, and I thought both his theological and filmic discussions were well worth reading, though when it comes to the theology he cleverly warns us “I don’t really have a dog in this hunt, so take my opinion with a pillar of salt.”

Let me quote at some length his discussion of the apostolic accents, which our group discussed in depth (and came mostly to the right conclusions, from the sound of it). If you’ve seen the movie, feel free to chime in with your own thoughts on the film’s dialog and how it was delivered, or about anything else.

So that’s the theology; what about the film? Many people had problems with the casting and the accents. Harvey Keitel speaks like, well, Harvey Keitel, with a pronounced New York accent, as do the apostles. This may seem crazy, and the movie took a lot of heat for it, but it was a conscious choice. Scorsese says on the commentary track that the traditional approach here here, using the language of the King James translation, wouldn’t work because, “if the audience heard that language, and heard a British accent, they could be safe, they could turn off. it’s just a Biblical movie.” Scorsese, Schrader, and Cocks wanted to engage the audience more directly. That’s why the dialogue echoes the Bible but almost never quotes it directly [Good call, Scott. ~KMO]. And as Schrader puts it, colloquial English is “as appropriate as King James’s language. It’s not as appropriate as Aramaic but you’re not gonna get Aramaic.” I like to think Mel Gibson heard this commentary track and said to himself, “Oh, yeah?” For the most part, for me, the colloquial English worked the way it was supposed to. For one thing, giving the lower-class apostles New York accents sets up a nice contrast when the Pontius Pilate shows up, with a British accent. It creates the same cultural divide that Aramaic and Latin do in The Passion of the Christ. It’s the Rebel Alliance/Galactic Empire school of dialogue coaching, and it works very well here.

Some Notes On Movie Reviewers I Like and Technologists Whom I Fear Will Bring About the End Humanity As We Know It

Kyle

Couple more items to share from the last week or so…

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Manohla Dargis writes the funniest movie reviews this side of the AV Club. In fact, I think in the case of The Other Boleyn Girl, her review tops Tasha Robinson‘s. Then again, the latter is definitely my least favorite AV Club regular. (C’mon, she doesn’t even like The Big Lebowski.) A.O. Scott’s your man if you want to be reminded of just how wonderful the cinema can be, but if you’re looking for tongue-lashings, it doesn’t get any better than Ms. Dargis, at least in my book.

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Everyone should take a quick look at Andrew C. Revkin’s commentary on the “Grand Challenges for Engineering” report unveiled at a AAAS meeting a couple weeks ago. Revkin’s main point is that many of these challenges are really “opportunities waiting for shifts in policy and/or spending.” I think his line of thinking is related to my standard job/scholarship interview riff on why one might bother complementing a nuclear engineering degree with technical communication, editing, and writing tutoring work: because most of the nuclear industry’s serious problems are more rhetorical than technical.

I kinda shivered when I saw that Ray Kurzweil was on the committee that came up with these goals (the reverse-engineering of the brain thing is obviously at least partly his). Prescient and brilliants as he may be, and as bitchingly realistic as his keyboard sounds are (believe me, I’ve got an SP-76), the guy scares the hell out of me. Listen to Bill McKibben! Kurzweil’s thinking is dangerous.

…Seriously, go out and buy Enough right now. You wanna talk about clear thinking? McKibben has done something I didn’t think was possible: drawn an unambiguous line in the technological development sand without the usual neo-Luddite hand-wringing.