TV and Movies

[Johnnyeager]

Another surprising favorite of hers:   "Jaws” (1975)

JAWS

“In ‘Jaws,’ which may be the most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made, the disasters don’t come on schedule the way they do in most disaster pictures, and your guts never settle down to a timetable. Even while you’re convulsed with laughter, you’re still apprehensive, because the editing rhythms are very tricky, and the shock images loom up huge, right on top of you. 

[Oznell]

@Sooner--   yes!   Reading her was like getting a rare treat in the mail!   When I was most under her "literary" influence, I even attempted to write like her, ha...

[Sooner]

@Oznell Well, but didn't her writing help you think critically and help you structure a paper?  It sure did me!  Some of the high school teachers thought I was a little off the tracks, but it paid off in college! 

[Oznell]

Another great example of her lack of film snobbery, @Johnnyeager !   She could feel the sinewy "pull" of certain kinds of mass entertainment, and render it for readers in colorful, understandable terms...

[Oznell]

You're right @Sooner ,  it did help me too!

[Johnnyeager]

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975)

“‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ is a powerful, smashingly effective movie — not a great movie but one that will probably stir audiences’ emotions and join the ranks of such pop-mythology films as ‘The Wild One,’ ‘Rebel Without a Cause,’ and ‘Easy Rider.’

Forman is an intelligent, tentative director — which is another way of saying that his virtues are largely negative. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one hell of a good film, but it works emotionally only because of its story and acting; it lacks the excitement of movie art.” 

[Sooner]

A little off topic, but I remember one issue of the New Yorker devoted mostly to to the subject of garlic.

Why don't we have things like that now?  You could learn so much from the New Yorker then.  

[Oznell]

So true, @Sooner ,  the halcyon days of the New Yorker seem long behind them now.   Something to do with puffed-up journalistic self-importance, I expect!

@Johnnyeager,  you've inspired me to post one of my favorite passages from the above-referenced New Yorker piece she did on Cary Grant,  "The Man from Dream City".  (By the way, that whole essay is readily readable just by googling "The Man from Dream City",   and it is so, so well worth the read, esp. for us film fanatics.)

"Grant’s marital farces with Irene Dunne probably wouldn’t have been as effective as they were if he hadn’t suggested a bedevilled constancy in the midst of the confusion. The heroine who chases him knows that deep down he wants to be caught only by her. He draws women to him by making them feel he needs them, yet the last thing he’d do would be to come right out and say it. In “Only Angels Have Wings,” Jean Arthur half falls apart waiting for him to make a move; in “His Girl Friday,” he’s unabashed about everything in the world except why he doesn’t want Rosalind Russell to go off with Ralph Bellamy. He isn’t weak, yet something in him makes him hold back—and that something (a slight uncertainty? the fear of a commitment? a mixture of ardor and idealism?) makes him more exciting."      Pauline Kael,  New Yorker 1975

[spiderw]

I remember the name and that she was a movie critic but have to admit I didn't read her reviews.  However, after reading this post and comments along with some of her critiques, I just taped it .  I rarely read reviews by movie critics but any one who praised JAWS is a person of interest for me.  LOL

[golding76]

oznell,

So glad I came to this forum now (hadn't visited all day).  I read Kael religiously back in the day.  I've set the show to record.

Ah, my past.  Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris.

I also had a subscription in the '60s to "Ramparts" magazine.  No wonder Bruce Herschensohn never called me for a date when I lived in Miami.  He was part of the Nixon administration and would visit Key Biscayne with Nixon.  Bruce probably checked me out for my political leanings.  LOL  He had asked my cousin for my number after she and I ran into him in Georgetown on one of my visits back home in the early '70s.  Glad I didn't wait for his call... It never came.  My cousin (conservative) knew him well; they were good friends.

I just remembered.  I also subscribed to the "National Review."  Yes, I admired Bill Buckley.  That is what is so different now.  People are so unwilling to learn what the opposition is saying or thinking.  But of course, the thinking was more balanced then and not rancorous as it is now.  Buckley of the felicitous phrase!  Ah!  Loved him!