“Where Michael Bay has mastered a kind of sensory-assaulting pop art, Favreau is a born storyteller, who engages the audience’s imaginations rather than crushing them in a tsunami of digital noise.” – Scott Foundas, LA Weekly
Without having seen Iron Man, I can’t agree or disagree with Foundas’s assessment of Favreau’s storytelling abilities (I also haven’t seen Favreau’s previous forays into directing, which he praises), and I’m not highlighting this little bit because he’s taken some kind of oppositional, principled outré stand—reviews thus far have been largely positive.
However, this brief comment—“Favreau is a born storyteller”—somehow got my mind racing about the triangular relationship between critics, audiences, and distributors. If this film were, say, the new work from an acclaimed young Romanian filmmaker, I could imagine Foundas’s quote plastered at the top of ads from coast-to-coast—he’s a legitimate critic, for my money one of the few truly thoughtful writers left amongst the rotating stable his syndicate employs, though whether or not readers are attuned to his specific voice, or just his attribution is an open question.
Does Iron Man need a Scott Foundas quote or review to succeed? Surely not. And given that the big movie machine works as hard as possible to erase the individual effects of non-brand directors (i.e. Spielberg) from their films, surely not if that quote attests to the director’s storytelling abilities instead of the special effects work or thrill-ride escapades. But yet here it is, snuck lightly into the last paragraph of a fine, well-considered piece of writing—it’s pretty much sold me on a ticket, but not that the studio really needs me either. Does the studio need any reviews at all to make this thing succeed? Probably not to cross the threshold into profits via ancillaries, but a gaggle of good reviews for big movies still holds sway, I think, for a certain group of folks who generally worry about leaving these sort of films assaulted and insulted (i.e. Michael Bay). Foundas’s writing for them, for me—certainly not for the studio here.
Before Foundas was syndicated locally, the only chance I had to read him was via the internet. There’s been a lot of typing expended on the effects of the http://www.world on the critical voice and it seems like there’s a general lack of consensus out there, aside from inside the thick skull of Armond White, who seems to view all us blog philistines as the imminent death of film culture. But is it possible that the movement of film criticism away from print might allow readers a more intimate connection with their cultural critics, one that I’d say has been largely severed over the last twenty or so odd years of media consolidation and saturation? Can we now seek out and find those voices like Foundas (or, modestly, Reverse Shot, for that matter) that speak to us? And what do we lose in terms of geographic specificity—that great hometown critic who knows his or her audience because they have been sprung from them? The age of the monolithic critical voice may have already closed—critics can still make and break certain films at the box office, but is that a role they necessarily should have or aspire to? Being able to influence readers is important, but what of dominating them?
We haven’t really taken a detailed plunge into this question at Reverse Shot yet, and this certainly isn’t it—we’re more concerned with diagnosing the changes in the medium at present. But I think we’ll get there. In the meantime, thanks to Scott Foundas for his review.
“While the film’s got many laughs – and, beware, full-frontal male nudity! – the finale’s a letdown.”
This comes to us from Thelma Adams, longtime US Weekly critic, on the latest addition to the Apatow family, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which opens Friday. Am I the only one who finds it a little odd to find a warning about a penis shot occupying any space at all in a capsule review lasting about 80 words (7.5% of the review for those counting)? The cautionary note seems especially strange coming from a publication that self-describes as offering “Celebrity news, gossip, and photos, information on fashion and beauty”—what’s better and more worthy of chitchat than a celeb’s unhinged dong writ large on the big screen? Our MPAA may be puritanical, but I think audiences are generally less afraid, especially when genitalia is played for a laugh (see: Ben Stiller’s contorted balls in There’s Something About Mary, or Malin Akerman’s untamed, pierced bush in The Heartbreak Kid).
Still, a critic looking at a collection of films that, as a whole, is terribly, terribly afraid of all those icky, floppy, weird parts we all carry around in our crotches (the “money” shot of Knocked Up was a horrible reminder of the ills that stem from boy bits touching girl bits) might find a stray dick worthy of some notice. I’m not sure whose wiener Forgetting Sarah Marshall will treat us to, but I’d expect to see Jason Segal hastily exiting an uncomfortable situation in the buff before the movie’s finished. (please not Jonah Hil….please not Jonah Hill….)
Not that the film’s insistent ubiquitous marketing campaign is going to leave any potential audience member unsnared anway, but Thelma, even though you’ve phrased it as a warning, I think we all know that your clever insertion of an oh-so-subtly phallic exclamation point suggests you want your readers to be aware (rrr…) rather than beware.
tomorrow night to discuss his work in The Devil’s Rejects, Dawn of the Dead, and many other horror classics.
Also, Phil Morrison of Junebug (RS Top Ten 2005) fame stops in on Tuesday 4/25 to chat about his feature debut and Kent Jones will grace us with his presence on 4/27 to provide introductory notes to Claire Denis’s awesome L’Intrus (also RS Top Ten 2005). 4/30 sees the first New York screening of the acclaimed epic documentary A Lion in the House, and we’re showing Hou Hsiao-hsien, Rodrigo Garcia, Neil Jordan—what more does one need?
“Commercial filmmakers could do worse than update Shakespeare as the makers of She’s the Man have done. They could pretend to be hip by being fashionably superficial as in the horrible new hipster bloodbath Brick which disgraces the teen-movie genre that John Hughes revolutionized. Through coarse imitation of film noir clichés cynically transferred to a high school setting, Brick disgraces basic social ideas. But She’s the Man enlivens the basics of falling in love and of sexual maturity by sweetly adapting the premise of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night”
“Don’t dismiss Fickman’s sex farce for kids; rather, consider that its concentration on the basics of sexual adjustment is preferable to Hollywood’s typical diet of violence for kids. By “kids” I also mean the (WAIT FOR IT….WAIT FOR IT…) hipster adults (YEAH, BABY, YEAH ARMOND!) who, wanting movies to provide them with the carelessness and smart-ass arrogance of adolescence, will indulge a mindless, graphic-novel knock-off such as the Sundance prize-winner Brick which snarkily transfers Dashiell Hammett-style crime fiction to a high school setting.”
”Brick jiggers the memory of camp; She’s the Man triggers the memory of art.”
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