>From the opening of Ebert's review of "Pearl Harbor": " "Pearl
Harbor<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=REVIEWS01&TITLESearch=Pearl%20Harbor&ToDate=20071231>"
is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941,
the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its
centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love
story of stunning banality." My favorite part is the very first clause, but
it's all pretty good. His review of "Battlefield: Earth" is also
entertainingly devastating.
But of course, the really quality pans have to be of something deserving so much attention. It needs to be cutting something down to size that purports to be much bigger than it really is. Or something like that.
j
On 8/25/07, wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu> wrote:
>
> It depends on what your trying to do by examining that crap. An
> interesting contrast to this statement might be the examination that
> Antonio Gramsci gives to very bad literature (missionary tracts, fascist
> magazine article, etc.) in his Prison Notebooks. Obviously, Gramsci is
> trying to see how this crap work (or doesn't work) in producing a
> national-popular culture and isn't really interested in focusing on
> denouncing the material as crap per se (although SF criticism has a
> healthy and entertaining strain of material that does just this...
> started by Damon Knight in In Search of Wonder....) robert wood
>
> > Which is why it's sort of silly to focus on the crap -- as in posts
> > slamming this or that musician. I would like to cite again Marianne
> > Moore's preferences when she was editor of the Dial. Good books got long
> > reviews. So-so books got short reviews. Bad books weren't renewed. I
> > would like to see it become bad taste to show one's good taste by
> > listing the things (books, magazines, musicians, restaurants, etc.) that
> > one is too tasteful to accept.
> >
> > Carrol
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
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>
-- Jeffrey Fisher DemocracyInAction.org | Director of Community Development o: 202.558.2808 x115 | m:773.960.3599 http://www2.democracyinaction.org/blog
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