i'm not brian to whom above question was posed, however...
film scholar tony williams alluded to kael in reponding to review richard james havis wrote in _cineaste_ about lisa odham stokes' and my book on hong kong cinema, in his letter whch _cineaste_ printed, tony accuses havis and kael of argumentum ad hominem... [havis] 'makes derogatory comments of a personal and intellectual nature against the authors reminiscent of the dark days of pauline kael whose discourse has been aptly described by jonathan rosemnbaum in movies as politics as one of marketplace "instant response and unretractable opinion" and incoherent "through its absence of sustained theory or argument."'...'it is not accidental that this review appeared in an issue granting pauline kael a dubious intellectual position very much in the manner of those previous attempts at rehabilitating richard nixon'...
elsewhere, tony referred to kael as a red-baiter, citing her original view of _salt of the earth_ as evidence...
in the interest of disclosure, tony is a personal friend... mh