This is really just a test, but I thought I’d try to say something interesting along the way. New Yorker critic David Denby doesn’t like Ben Stiller: “He’s never done much for me.” “He’s not effortlessly funny.” “He looks like a mildly paranoid gibbon.” By the time I read the last comment, I had already dismissed Denby for making, earlier in the piece, the ridiculous error of describing Eugene Levy’s career as “fizzled out” (commercially-speaking, Levy seems to be doing more than all right. He’s in no danger of not finding work. Besides, unlike Martin Short, Levy was never a bona fide star to begin with. So how can his movie career, like Short’s, “fizzle out”? And did Denby not see Levy’s amazing performance in “A Mighty Wind”? The fact is, Levy is talented and we’re seeing him more and more. Isn’t that good? Presumably, if you are funny, talented, prolific, and hairy, Denby will hate you). I know mildly paranoid gibbons, Mr. Denby, and Stiller is no mildly paranoid gibbon.
I know Arnab’s watching, so–hi, Arnab.
Denby is among my least favorite critics; his sense of what’s right and wrong about film–and it’s always pitched as right and wrong, rarely as affecting or smart or thrilling–is usually skewed to the dull/conservative (not a deadly sin, necessarily, for a critic) and toward the dully-written (a deadly sin for a critic). He wants to be Pauline Kael, but he has Michael Medved’s sense of taste, with a slightly-more-red-state sensibility. Bleah. What he has to say about comedy interests me about as much as what Jerry Falwell has to say about erotics.
Even if he has some, small, obvious point about Stiller’s omnipresence. You nail him, John, on missing the boat on Eugene Levy. But then, as Mark Mauer once put it, you are probably the only person in the world for whom the presence of Eugene Levy will guarantee your attendance at a film.
What are you testing?
i once read a funny dismissal in the new yorker–i don’t know if it was denby. went something along these lines: “this is what is formally known as decadence and popularly known as crap”. of course, it was in a review of “kill bill vol. 1” and was wrong. but funny nonetheless. does anthony lane still do film reviews for the new yorker? for some reason i subscribed to the new yorker my first couple of years in the u.s. then i realized i never actually read it.
I thought the point about Stiller was that he’s not “effortlessly funny?” He usually portrays painful humiliation, as the ungainly victim of somebody/something else. And is that thing about the gibbon a WASP swat at the Jews? What’s up with the New Yorker? who cares about their film critics? I tried to read some Anthony Lane–for christ’s sake, he already has a book-length collection–but it’s too much of striving for elegant witticisms and turns of phrase, and I kept thinking of that Monty Python bit, “your majesty is like a stream of bat’s piss” etc. Leave it to Evelyn Waugh and just review the damn movie with some intelligence. my favorite critic was J. Hoberman though I haven’t read him in a while. Nikki’s grandmother is brief and to the point. As for Eugene Levy, I would see most movies with him in it (though the theory hasn’t been sorely tested…would I really be willing to see “New York Minute”??)–Syd Dithers deserves our respect.
Ah, you’re right again, Frisoli. Why bother with the New Yorker? I can put up with Lane, but more for his occasional style than for anything he says about film. He wrote one good thing: a piece on the midnight-show revival of “The Sound of Music” in London, in which he put away the churlish impersonation of Kael and exposed something about how and why he cherishes film.
Hoberman’s a bit high-falutin’ for me, but he’s smart. I like David Edelstein’s stuff (at Slate), and I’ve grown very fond of Manohla Dargis, and still like A. O. Scott. I miss Elvis Mitchell, but mostly for the stuff he would write about horror or Hong Kong films.
you’ve grown fond of manohla dargis? what is this? some attempt to appear butch after the “time of the wolf” induced sappiness? the only thing i’ve ever liked about dargis is that she said “fuck” a lot in her reviews for the l.a weekly.
Yeah, I used to hate her–she seemed typically reductive and grad-school cynical in her political/artistic assessments of movies. But her Times stuff is always smart and … well, engaged; she gets taken by movies (almost alone in the critical world she loved “Ocean’s 12”) as often as she takes them to task.
She makes me butch, eh? I lose all that masculine edge by also liking A. O. Scott.
I disagree with you on just about everything.
Wait–who is the ‘you’ you disagree with on everything? I hope it’s Arnab, and not me. I find my opinions very agreeable, and I assume most reasonable people would as well.
Let’s get some clarification on the big question: am I butch or not? Were you disagreeing with Arnab that liking Dargis did make me butch, or with me that liking Scott re-feminized me?
ah comment spam–at last it has found us.
Spam? Say it ain’t so, lesbian anime girl…
mike, you’ll find the name is a link* to a site where naked people do messy things with their bodies. i am going to change the comment settings back to the default where any comment containing a url will require approval. yes, you’re going to have to find your lesbian anime on your own.
*removed the link