Spoilerish comments here. (Linking instead of whitefonting for added protection.)
'Sleeper'
Buffista Movies 6: lies and videotape
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
Your LJ post starts duplicating itself, Jess.
Oops - fixed.
By the way, I LOVE that avatar.
Thank you!
One other nonspoilery thing - as much as I like the actor, casting Nestor Carbonell as the Mayor was a mistake. There is just no way to make casting Batmanuel in a Batman movie not funny.
There is just no way to make casting Batmanuel in a Batman movie not funny.
Heh.
An interesting article about Pauline Kael, Will Smith, and how pop culture became the only culture.
Kael assumed she was safe to defend the choices of mass audiences because the old standards of taste would always be there. They were, after all, built into the culture. But those standards were swiftly eroding. Schrader argued that she and her admirers won the battle but lost the war. Acceptable taste became mass-audience taste, box-office receipts the ultimate measure of a film's worth, sometimes the only measure. Traditional, well-written movies without violence or special effects were pushed to the margins. "It was fun watching the applecart being upset," Schrader said, "but now where do we go for apples?"
Kael assumed she was safe to defend the choices of mass audiences because the old standards of taste would always be there.
I don't remember her being a populist so much as appreciating good genre work and not dismissing it out of hand. She didn't even like Raiders of the Lost Ark, and she certainly loved certain high mandarin art films. (She disliked slow quiet filmmakers like Ozu and Bresson, but loved sensationalists like Fellini and Kurowasawa.)
I've been known to laugh at Family Guy, but I always feel kinda dirty about it. TV Heresy: It's totally time to cancel "The Simpsons". Makes me sad to say so because I used to love it so much. But things end, and it's a shadow of its former...everything.
but loved sensationalists like Fellini and Kurowasawa
Kurosawa yes, but she had little-to-no use for Fellini from La Dolce Vita onward (IOW, pretty much what we think of when we think of Fellini).