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Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: books, crime, Judd Apatow, movies, Pauline Kael
No time to describe this now, just know it's about Pauline Kael and her influence on contemporary—and contemporary New Yorker—film criticism, and also that the writer uses "kaelled" as a verb in his headline. (Which seems to be a gaming term when spelled with one L; if you know more, write in.) As for me, I own almost every single Kael volume in first edition, and I don't collect first editions! And one of 'em's signed! Don't burgle me!
Speaking of film critics, Juno, Knocked Up, and suchlike, here's a sound critique of complaints by Time's Richard Corliss, who thinks critics are showing off with their lists of arty obscurities and ignoring "mainstream" movies. What can American movie audiences handle? Why don't we try making and hyper-promoting fewer terrible movies and find out?
Who she?
I'm Emily Gordon, reachable at emily@emdashes.com.
I'm an editor at PRINT magazine in New York City. I've worked at The Nation, Newsday, PEN America, and Legal Affairs. I've written for the NY Times Book Review, Salon, The Washington Post, The Village Voice... continued
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A few clips
- Report: Learning to read with comic books edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: The King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: Does The New Republic's recent redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Proposal: A more attractive MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands (for Print)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
Tell me more
They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—emphasizes what’s between: in particular, between the lines, covers, and issues of a magazine close to my heart.
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Written and edited by Emily Gordon (plus various guest contributors), designed by Pretty, and illustrated by Inkleaf. Additional drawings by Carolita Johnson. Kissable pencil girl by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
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Comments
Yes! I am so sick of studios assuming our idiocy (or encouraging it). It's even worse when critics do it; someone has to be optimistic about the future of film and the people who go see it! (That's why I wrote the critique.)
Pauline Kael was no snob; she liked "Used Cars," hardly a bastion of renegade independent cinema. She also hated "Hiroshima mon Amour." Anyway, I don't think Kael created "the rift between popular movies and cinematic movies." What she did was made the cinematic movies more popular, or become the norm for a bit. Scorsese, De Palma, Coppola: these are all popular directors, liked by a wide variety of people. Film moves forward and should reflect the present: the old sweeping Hollywood dramas had little resonance to the culture in the 70s, which is why Kael championed a new kind of filmmaking and why that filmmaking became the norm and eventually became popular.