Gutbrain
Records
Wednesday, 01 February 2006
Gracie is recovering just fine from her surgery. She has one eye now, but she is as cute as ever. Photo to come.
Film criticism has been bothering me lately, mostly because there doesn't seem to be any. Most of what I see is not criticism, but lazy reviewing.
For example, consider the openings of these different reviews of Peter Jackson's King Kong remake.
We should start with the paper of record, I suppose. The New York Times review of Dec 13, 2005, begins:
| Among the reasons King Kong — the old 100-minute black-and-white version, that is — has retained its appeal over the years is that it reminds audiences of the do-it-yourself, seat-of-the-pants ethic of early motion pictures. |
This is a dubious claim. First of all, King Kong is from 1933: not exactly the dawn of cinema. The reviewer is trying to impose quaintness by using the phrase "early motion pictures". And the idea of DIY as an ethic (as opposed to a necessity) dates back to when? Punk rock?
And seat of the pants? Was that ever an "ethic"? Was it practiced by Cecil B. Demille or D.W. Griffith? Fritz Lang or Alfred Hitchcock? F.W. Murnau? When you think of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, does "do-it-yourself, seat-of-the-pants" spring to mind?
In short, I think this is totally bogus. Find out what appeal King Kong had to audiences in the '30s and you'll likely find out what appeal it has had to audiences since.
Enough with the Times. What about the Boston Globe? It's owned by the same people who own the Times and they reviewed the movie the same day. Their opening line:
| Peter Jackson's King Kong delivers all you could possibly want from a modern popcorn behemoth: state-of-the-art special effects, epic scope and running time, rampaging dinosaurs, things majestically going ka-boom. |
Bland but safe. Of course, anybody who had seen the preview for the movie already knew that it had dinosaurs in it. And the reviewer, after explicitly stating that the movie "delivers all you could possibly want", goes on to talk about all that he wanted but didn't get from the movie.
The Washington Post tackled the movie in question on December 14, 2005. Its reviewer began by posing questions and attempting to answer them. Remarkably, he gets most of the answers wrong. He even gets some of the questions wrong. Later he unwisely tries to invent a word, "mesmerization". I couldn't bring myself to read beyond what I'll quote here.
The new King Kong answers many important questions: Can a girl outrun a dinosaur? (Yes.) Can a tommy gun kill a prehistoric spider? (Yes.) Can a blonde and a monkey find true, if chaste, love at the top of the Empire State Building? (Yes.) Can three hours feel like 90 minutes? (Yes.) Can Jack Black act? (No.) One hundred eighty-seven minutes of mesmerization, astonishment, thrills, chills, spills, kills and ills, Peter Jackson's big monkey picture show is certainly the best popular entertainment of the year. |
No comment, not even on its shilling, swilling and cavilling.
Now, from the January 13, 2006, issue of the Times Literary Supplement, the first line of their piece on King Kong:
Somewhere in the upper levels of the Tate Modern, lurking at the gateway of an exhibition devoted to the works of Henri Rousseau, stands a sculpture by Emmanuel Frémiet. |
Ah. This could be an actual critic, or at least a good reviewer. The sentence contains information I didn't already know and nothing that's obviously wrong. Best of all, I actually want to keep reading.