From: langdonboom@gmail.com   
      
   On Friday, September 7, 2001 at 12:02:36 PM UTC-4, Nimrod`` wrote:   
   > On Fri, 07 Sep 2001 10:21:34 -0400, Ruth    
   > wrote:   
   > >In article , Nimrod``    
   > > wrote:   
   > >   
   > >>    
   > >> I....I.....I can't believe it but I actually suffered through this   
   > >> whole damn treatise. I haven't forced my way through this much musty   
   > >> navel lint since I was a self-serious college-age Jesuit.   
   > >>    
   > >> I'm tellin' ya...it's been eons since I read the like, folks. This   
   > >> guy Carney actually takes four to five bottomless paragraphs of   
   > >> sterile doublespeak per sub-topic to describe long-known aspects of   
   > >> moviemaking shorthand which history's best filmmakers grasped on   
   > >> instinct while screwing some broad in their trailer or popping   
   > >> one-too-many corks.    
   > >>    
   > >> Matt's Messiah is Exhibit-A on why the world needed a Pauline Kael who   
   > >> kept us in touch with our organic excitement about cinema.....instead   
   > >> of sucking it dry like some academic vampire. She was the antidote to   
   > >> those like Carney the Vampire who muddied the waters, giving off grave   
   > >> illusions of newfound discovery by hammering their unwitting victims   
   > >> with dense prose....when all he's really doing is raking over dry old   
   > >> bones. He's like that politician-lawyer alluded to by Hal Phillip   
   > >> Walker's soundtruck in Altman's NASHVILLE: If you ask him the time of   
   > >> day he'll tell you how to build a watch.   
   > >>    
   > >> (Heehee...how's that for tilting things back on-topic to the passing   
   > >> of Our Lady Kael?)   
   > >   
   > >Hehe....well done. But I am still not sure how I feel about the Carney    
   > >article...I think I may read it again( and I have read it twice) . It    
   > >does rather remind me of many late night conversations with the eager    
   > >young college student self procalaimed "radicals"of my yoot. There is a    
   > >need, it seems, to disadain much of went before when you are young and    
   > >silly ( as opposed to old and silly like me). My problem is that I like    
   > >Jon Jost, Cassavettes and Von Trier as well as Stephen Spielberg,Robert    
   > >Altman, and whoever the heck directed the second Star Trek movie. I must    
   > >be confused.   
   > Dat's okay, Ruth....your confusion is commendable. And it was   
   > Nicholas Meyer.   
   > By the way, I love Von Trier as much as I love Robert Altman...which   
   > is, alas, more than I love Cassavetes these days (though I still have   
   > a soft place in my heart for him and enjoy revisiting him   
   > periodically).    
   > I can't help but wonder what our young Israelite, wandering in his   
   > aesthetic desert, would think of the likes of Lars Von Trier...who   
   > practically derails the pinball with his bells and whistles; the only   
   > natural heir to Welles, me thinks. Perchance, have you seen his film   
   > of Carl Theo. Dreyer's script, MEDEA? I think it's great. Dreyer is   
   > one of my favorite directors....I get life'sblood from VAMPYR, DAY OF   
   > WRATH, PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC....and I think Von Trier is probably the   
   > only living director who could have done such justice to Dreyer's   
   > screenplay. Of course, it doesn't hurt that he's a fellow countryman.   
   >    
   > N``   
      
   20 years later..... this is still potent stuff, and well worth wrestling with   
   in every successive generation if we're up to the task. Knee-jerk   
   anti-intellectualism aside, it can be difficult going, agreed - but like JFK   
   said, we do this not because it    
   is easy, but because it is hard.... looking at our assumptions and blind spots   
   always is.     
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)