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S'està carregant… Hookedde Pauline Kael
   Cap No hi ha cap discussió a Converses sobre aquesta obra.  jasonpettus | Mar 24, 2010 | 
 “Hooked” may not be Kael’s best assemblage, but... the period it covers (late 1985 through mid-1988) is roughly concurrent with my time in college. This was for me, as for so many people I know, several years of determined work avoidance ornamented by great, ecstatic bouts of purposeful moviegoing. It was a stealthily brilliant time for almost-art-house movies, and I cut my teeth on “My Beautiful Laundrette,” “Blue Velvet,” “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” “High Tide,” “Tampopo” and “The Dead.” It was a peerless era for pop confections, too, movies I liked then and am still happy to trip over on basic cable: “Raising Arizona,” “Broadcast News,” “Moonstruck,” “Fatal Attraction,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “Pretty in Pink.”... Rereading “Hooked” was a treat, like someone taking me to the Grand Central Oyster Bar and saying, “Amigo, the check’s on me.” I can’t imagine a better beach book in 2011. It’s devilish entertainment and a surefire way to polish your Netflix queue until it shines. Let’s at least give Kael the last word. She was nearing 70 when she admitted in this book, “I am still a child before a moving image.” Pertany a aquestes sèries
Pauline Kael's works have evoked either adoration or strong criticism. But few readers of the New Yorker, for which she serves as movie critic, react to Kael with indifference. Critics should consistently provoke opinion, and Kael does so without fail, as shown in this collection of her New Yorker reviews. Over the years, Kael has lost none of her bite; she is still brimming with opinions--but opinions fully supported, not simply thrown out to see how far their ripple will travel. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
Debats actualsCapCobertes populars
 Google Books — S'està carregant…GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)791.43The arts Recreational and performing arts Public performances Film, Radio, and Television FilmLCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana: (3.96)
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Now that I'm finally entering the last phase of my recovery from the bad bicycle accident I had last year, and am up and clicking at full speed again regarding the contemporary books I review on a professional basis, I've decided to start more and more getting through the older books in my reading list as well, the ones that are on there for personal reasons only. And one of the older writers on this list is the late New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, because of having so many people now compare my essays to hers; and in an interesting twist of fate, it turns out that of the twenty or so books she published while alive, the only one in the permanent stacks of my neighborhood library happens to be Hooked, covering just the reviews she wrote from 1985 to 1988, a.k.a. my senior year in high school and first couple of years in college, arguably the one period in my life I saw more contemporary movies than any other. (And indeed, of the 175 random films covered in this particular volume, I've seen 75 of them, making it an excellent opportunity to see whether I agree with Kael's taste in movies or not.)
And yes, after finishing this book, I now agree that Kael and I write in a very similar way, although to my haters let me make it clear that I am not comparing the quality of my writing to Pauline Kael's; I simply mean that both of us tend to write very long, highly analytical critiques of artistic projects, penned in a funny, conversational style and referencing a lot of history, with neither of us afraid of expressing strong opinions when it's called for. And in this you can see Kael as creating the blueprint for all modern long-form arts analysis, with her influence seen in everyone from the New York Times' Michiko Kakutani to the staff of The Onion AV Club; and that's a very interesting thing, I think, given that in our current world of a million crappy critics who no one pays attention to anymore, Kael is becoming more and more forgotten by the day, and that I imagine many Kaelesque long-form critics like myself have no idea that that's who they're emulating in the first place. Obviously there's a certain inherent datedness in these old books of hers, but I encourage anyone interested in thoughtful artistic analysis to read through some of her work to see how the master did it, and especially concerning the countercultural times of the '60s and '70s when she first made a big splash.
Out of 10: 8.8 (