In The Company Of Glenn

The Rosenbaum Archive

...sounds like it could be the name of a Robert Ludlum novel, no? Or not. If you weren't aware of it already, know now that former Chicago Reader film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, now retired, has a website where he's archiving his voluminous, and voluminously smart and provocative, film writing. He writes that he hopes the site "will grow and sprout more features in the weeks and months ahead," and so do I, but what he's got up already is, as they say, cherce, so check it out.

J.R.'s foray into not-quite blogging, along with Ray Young's abrupt shutdown of Flickhead and the great Matt Zoller Seitz's bowing out of both print and online movie writing, has touched off a few ruminations on this movie-blogging life, from Dave Kehr, David Hudson, and most intriguingly of all, Tim Lucas. I've been a follower of Tim since before he began Video Watchdog magazine, and when he started blogging a few years back—blogging brilliantly, I might add—I just didn't know how he found the time. Still don't. Turns out he's not so sure these days.

White noise

My friend (well, he was my friend, and then he does this) Aaron Aradillas points me to New York Press critic Armond White's latest "everybody in the world sucks but me" screed, "What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Movies," which he kicks off by flexing his disdain for the "opinionated throng" of internet critics who emulate the "Vachel Lindsay-Manny Farber tradition." That's a great start, given that only a person who has read either Farber, or Lindsay, but by no means both, could possibly conceive of yoking the two together in this way.

'Sunrise' semester, and/or, Dave Kehr, King of the Hipsters

"Hope Glenn Kenny gets a hold of this," Keith Uhlich writes over at The House Next Door's Links For The Day, apropos Oscar-watch-dude Tom O'Neil's, shall we say, contrarian perspective on F.W. Murnau's Sunrise. Apparently O'Neil can't get on the bus with certain "Oscar Nazis" (there's a phrase that ought not be dwelt upon, not to mention even ever uttered) who "insist that we should fight for Sunrise to get its due and reverse the common misconception that the lowly Wings was the first best picture winner," because, by O'Neil's light, Sunrise is "paper thin, hilariously schmaltzy" and its "three primary characters are cartoonish clichés and their performances 3-inch slices of honeyed ham."

Janet Gaynor and George O'Brien in Murnau's Sunrise

Now I'm flattered that Keith thinks I'm the go-to guy when an ignorant, vulgar, hubristic critic is in need of an evisceration. But I'm afraid I can't help him here, because, truth to tell, I think O'Neil's kind of got a point.

Speaking in blurbs

So earlier this week I was on a queue to get into a screening, and many of the usual New York suspects are there. My pal Thelma Adams was quizzing me about Zeroville, the dizzying Steve Erickson novel I was reading, and all manner of amiable chitchat ensued as we waited for the publicist to show up. At one point a venerable, oft-times-cranky-in-the-manner-of-"these kids today with their music" critic and man-about-town began enthusing to another party about the film he'd just seen. "This really terrific charming thing, with Dennis Quaid, and Sarah Jessica Parker, and that Juno girl..."

"What movie?" I think it was Thelma who posed the question.

"Smart People," he said. He then paused deliberately, and very slightly cocked an eyebrow. "Smart People...smart movie," he said, with precisely zero irony.

I tell you, I didn't know whether to prostrate myself at the man's feet, or projectile vomit. And I'm still torn, frankly.

The glass-half-full view on Ansen

The internet is abuzz on Newsweek movie critic David Ansen's acceptance of a buyout from the magazine, and tea-leave readers see yet another indication of bad things for movie criticism in the print world. Probably so. But close reading of the accounts of David's not-yet-imminent departure from the pages of the mag indicates the move is a pretty good thing for David.

Newsweek's buyout offer, which was accepted by over 100 staffers on both the biz and edit side, is one of the sweeter ones I've ever heard of. Two year's salary—hell, that's enough to get engaged twelve times!—plus health coverage up to age 65, improved pension, etc. And in Ansen's case, he's on staff until year's end, whereupon he signs on as a freelance contributing editor, a perch from which he can still be in the game, writing, albeit away from the grind of weekly movie reviewing, which the 62-year-old critic has been doing at Newsweek for, like, 30 years.

Good for him, I say. David and I aren't close pals, but he's a droll, companionable fellow, always a good face to see on the festival circuit. He was part of the giddy gaggle (now it can be told!) that bonded over the nitrous-oxide-like effects of Julie Taymor's Across the Universe at last year's Toronto Film Festival. The after-screening dinner—with David, fellow vet Leonard Klady, my buddy Tom Carson of GQ, and the peripatetic Elvis Mitchell—was a welter of hilarity, and Leonard and David had the best stories. David will be missed, absolutely. But he's not quite gone just yet.

The films we haven't seen

Don't even talk to me if you haven't seen Peter Tscherkassky's 1999 Outer Space, above...

In the comments thread for the below post on Jess Franco, a couple of friends seem to be asking me to weigh in on Mick La Salle's San Francisco Chronicle piece, in which La Salle, the movie reviewer for the paper, admits to not having seen five putatively canonical films; chronicles his viewing of said five, To Kill a Mockingbird, Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey among them; and offers some banal and relatively unhelpful assessments of them, deeming, for instance, 2001 "impenetrable."

I can't say I am all too agitated by any of this. First off, we all have movies we haven't seen; one of the glories of being a cinephile, professional or otherwise, is that the learning curve's forever a straight line, going up. More pertinent to me is that Mr. La Salle, who apparently has some bona fides in the field of pre-code Hollywood film, has never impinged on my consciousness prior to this, and appears to come from a perspective/sensibility I have about zero interest in. Read La Salle's take on Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember. "[N]ot quite the sappy indulgence I remember," he says, and how nice for him. Now, if you'd like, check out Dave Kehr's careful, detailed assessment of the 50th Anniversary DVD of the film in The New York Times. "An Affair to Remember evolves effortlessly, almost invisibly, from light romantic comedy to a kind of spiritual drama, as the characters cast off their public identities (they are both performers: he in the tabloids, she on nightclub stages) and approach their essences..."

Not everyone is Dave Kehr, whose incredible erudition is an organic feature of his work. That's true. But while Kehr's around and writing, what do I need La Salle for? Which isn't to say I don't understand that Dave's taste and perspective aren't for everyone, that some readers and potential film-goers are more comfortable in La Salle's sphere.

The best reviews of '4 Months...'

Jeff Wells is enthused, and rightly so, about New York Times' critic Manohla Dargis' review of Cristian Minghu's spectacular 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, and I can't say I blame him. Dargis is both a passionate and astute critic, and this film brings out both those qualities in their fiercest, most pursuasive potencies. I also commend you to J. Hoberman's notice on the film in The Village Voice, which not only sums up Minghu's picture beautifully but also presents the only overview of abortion/not-abortion-in-2007-film that didn't make me roll my eyes. His perspective on Juno is mordantly hilarious and totally right-on.

My own review of 4 Months is, frankly, a turgid piece of hackwork that is appalling compared to these brilliant considerations does not reach the inspired heights of those pieces, but as you will see, I'm as enthused about the movie as Dargis and Hoberman are. So see it, why don't you?

A friend writes...

Frequent commenter Bill, below the post titled "The New Year," makes an impassioned plea:

I'm going to ask this here because a) I don't want to read the There Will Be Blood post, as I'm still avoiding spoilers, and b) there really isn't anywhere to ask it. So...

Glenn, I have criticized you for being too personal and, well, mean in this blog before, and I think the less anyone does of that the better. But I'm going to go ahead and be hypocritical and BEG you to say something about that goddamn Slate movie roundtable. Those [...] guys are the worst people in the history of the world. "John Ford kicks massive ass, but[...];" referring to Antonioni as "Mickey A.;" saying things like "war, war, war, how do you like it, how do you like it"...I mean, Jesus Christ. Do something, Glenn. I'm begging you.

Bill, lemme get this out of the way, right off the bat: I love you.

Updated to Jan. 7

Richard Corliss, I'll put my anecdotal evidence against your anecdotal evidence any day!

I'm a big fan of Richard Corliss—as a writer, as a person, as a fellow Guy With A Beard—but I'm not sure I follow the thrust of his Time online column entitled "Do Film Critics Know Anything?" in which he observes that critics often give awards to movies a lot of people haven't seen, and that that's perfectly all right, except when it's not. Not only am I not quite sure what his argument is, I'm also not quite sure what he thinks critics ought to do about it. His argument, that is. Oh, forget it.

It's not what I wanted to address in the first place. No, what I wanted to address was the anecdote he kicks off the piece with.

"Messy Aliveness"

That's what Richard Kelly's Southland Tales has, according to Fernando F. Croce at Cinepassion. Picking up the ball that Manohla Dargis couldn't quite get past the line of scrimmage in her own Times review of Southland, Croce contrasts the Kelly film with No Country For Old Men and, while admitting Men is a "stupendously crafted exercise, unquestionably," and going on to say that "one hopes [it is] the beginning of a whole new phase in the Coens [sic] ouevre," he finally admits that Country "feels dead" to him, while the execrable, puling, adolescent Southland Tales "feels alive."