Further Goldstein Thoughts :: Hollywood Elsewhere
Patrick Goldstein was a part of the LOS ANGELES TIMES for quite awhile; I first remember reading his rock-gossip "Pop Eye" column. And for the past dozen years, he was on the film Industry beat, writing "The Big Picture" column mixing "what directors and studios told me" anecdotes, Right-leaning salvos against Hollywood liberals (I remember singer/songwriter Nellie McKay taking a few minutes during a concert at Sunset Strip's Roxy to vent her irritation about Goldstein), and annual columns about film-savvy teens rating their interest in Summer Movies based on trailer viewing.
Whether or not one liked Goldstein's opinions, he was certainly readable on a regular basis. But the LOS ANGELES TIMES is evolving in terms of entertainment/film coverage into TV-tabloid (sort of like this week's Tony Scott Danger Seeker article), fluffy, zippy-and-zingy, etc. And if Patrick Goldstein is nudged into taking a buyout (ending his TIMES career), it's safe to guess that Kenneth Turan (who's the 2012 equivalent of THE NEW YORK TIMES' Bosley Crowther circa 1967; i.e. Not Down With Contemporary Film Pop Culture) will be asked to walk the plank.
UPDATE 10:53 p.m.: Geoff Boucher, who wrote the "Hero Complex" column for the LOS ANGELES TIMES (focusing mainly on fanboy-favored Big Movies), is also being let go from the paper according to chatter on Twitter from various people in the film critic/reviewer communities.
Showing posts with label Betsy Sharkey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Betsy Sharkey. Show all posts
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Friday, April 6, 2012
James Cameron vs. LATIMES film critic Kenneth Turan: the battle over perceptions of TITANIC.
LOS ANGELES TIMES film critic Kenneth Turan panned TITANIC upon its original release in 1997--which eventually led to Turan now being supplanted by Betsy Sharkey as critic/mainstream movie cheerleader.
Here's James Cameron's famous rant at Turan's expense--sent as a letter to the editor:
He's Mad as Hell at Turan
James Cameron Gets the Last Word on Our Critic's 'Titanic' Commentary
I have shrugged off Kenneth Turan's incessant rain of personal barbs
over the last few months, since he is clearly not a big enough man to
admit when he is wrong, and it has been amusing to watch him dig
himself into a deeper hole each time he tries to justify his
misanthropic sensibility with regard to "Titanic." But it's time to
speak up when Turan uses his bully pulpit not only to attack my film,
but the entire film industry and its audiences.
Turan says that "the flip side of 'Titanic's' ability to draw hordes
of viewers into the theaters is the question of where these viewers
have been for the past several years. In its unintentional underlining
of how narrow an audience net most movies cast over the American
public, 'Titanic' is not an example of Hollywood's success, it's an
emblem of its failure." It shows, he says, "how desperate the
mainstream audience . . . has become for anything even resembling
old-fashioned entertainment." They have, he says, been "deadened by
exposure to nonstop trash."
Having gone on record condemning "Titanic" as so bad "it almost makes
you weep in frustration," he is now desperate to account for the
phenomenon of its unprecedented global critical and commercial
success. To do so, he has settled on the outrageous conclusion that
since "Titanic" is garbage (because it has been spoken and so it must
be), then everything else around it--every other film in recent
years--must be worse garbage. With one sweeping statement he condemns
and dismisses the entire output of Hollywood.
Turan has tipped his hand. We now see his true heart. It's not that he
doesn't like some movies, as is a critic's prerogative. It's that he
doesn't like all movies. Simmering in his own bile, year after year,
he has become further and further removed from the simple joyful
experience of movie-watching, which, ironically, probably attracted
him to the job in the first place. The best critics keep that joy
alive, while the worst let their cynicism twist them beyond any
recognizable connection to the experience of a general audience in a
movie theater.
Turan sees himself as the high priest of some arcane art form that is
far too refined for the average individual to possibly appreciate. He
writes as if the insensitive masses must be constantly corrected, like
little children who do not have the sense or experience to know what
is good for them without the critic's patient instruction. This is
paternalism and elitism in its worst form, and utterly insults the
movie audience, which is theoretically his constituency.
Turan says I write "lowest common denominator screenplays that
condescend to their audience." The condescending one here is Turan,
who is insulting the majority of the filmgoing public by telling them
that they shouldn't like what they like.
"Titanic" is not a film that is sucking people in with flashy hype and
spitting them out onto the street feeling let down and ripped off.
They are returning again and again to repeat an experience that is
taking a 3-hour and 14-minute chunk out of their lives, and dragging
others with them, so they can share the emotion. Parents are taking
their kids, adults are taking their parents. People from 8 to 80
(literally) are connecting with this film. After 14 weeks in release,
"Titanic" is still No. 1 in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan,
Mexico, Australia, the U.K. and almost every other country in which it
is playing. Audiences around the world are celebrating their own
essential humanity by going into a dark room and crying together.
The script for "Titanic" is earnest and straightforward, wearing its
heart on its sleeve. It intentionally incorporates universals of human
experience and emotion that are timeless--and familiar because they
reflect our basic emotional fabric. By dealing in archetypes, the film
touches people in all cultures and of all ages. Is this pandering? Or
is it communicating? Turan mistakes archetype for cliche. I don't
share his view that the best scripts are only the ones that explore
the perimeter of human experience, or flashily pirouette their witty
and cynical dialogue for our admiration.
He says that "Cameron is not someone to be trusted anywhere near a
word processor" and calls the "Titanic" screenplay "the worst script
ever written," carrying on as if this is an accepted fact, a "given"
upon which all his further arguments are then built. He conveniently
ignores the fact that the Writers Guild of America voted "Titanic" one
of the five best original scripts of the year with its nomination for
best screenplay written directly for the screen. There is no more
critical and discerning body in the world when it comes to
screenwriting. But in Turan's private reality, the vast majority of
the worldwide audience and the majority of Hollywood screenwriters are
wrong, and only he is right.
Turan's critical sensibility is the worst kind of ego-driven elitism.
The illustration accompanying the article says it all. One tiny figure
trying vainly to stop the juggernaut. But is that any sane person's
definition of the role of the critic--to stand alone in complete
opposition to the tide of popular taste?
Poor Kenny. He sees himself as the lone voice crying in the
wilderness, righteous but not heeded by the blind and dumb "great
unwashed" around him. It must be a great burden to be cursed with such
clear vision when your misguided flock bray past you, like lemmings,
unmindful.
Turan has forgotten, if he ever knew, the role of senior film critic
for a large urban newspaper. When people spend their hard-earned money
on a movie at the end of a long work week, all they ask is that their
local critic steer them toward the good ones and help them avoid the
turkeys. It's not too much to ask. And it's a fairly simple job, once
you grasp it. You get to go to a movie first, before anyone else, and
then come back and tell everybody about it. You even get to trash it
if you didn't like it. What you don't get to do is grind on and on,
month after month, after the audience has rendered its verdict in the
most resounding of terms, telling everybody why the filmgoers are
wrong and you are right.
Nobody's interested in the vitriolic ravings of a bitter man who
attacks and rips apart movies that the great majority of viewers find
well worth their time and money. Turan has lost touch with the joys of
film viewing as most people would define it. He has lost touch,
therefore, with his readership, and no longer serves a useful purpose.
When critics like Roger Ebert or Janet Maslin talk about film, they
demonstrate a deep knowledge of and respect for their subject, a
respect for filmmakers regardless of the specific blunders made on a
particular film, and a genuine unwavering joy at the magic of cinema.
Even when they don't like something of mine, I respect the source.
They make me want to try harder.
Give us a critic who actually likes movies. Give us a critic who has
at least some slight understanding of the toil and energy, the hopes
and dreams that go into a movie, any movie. Give us a critic who shows
respect for our chosen art, and whom we can respect in turn. And give
us one who respects the paying audiences who look to him or her for
guidance, not for lectures on how stupid they are for liking what they
like.
Forget about Clinton--how do we impeach Kenneth Turan?
JIM CAMERON
Santa Monica
Here's James Cameron's famous rant at Turan's expense--sent as a letter to the editor:
He's Mad as Hell at Turan
James Cameron Gets the Last Word on Our Critic's 'Titanic' Commentary
I have shrugged off Kenneth Turan's incessant rain of personal barbs
over the last few months, since he is clearly not a big enough man to
admit when he is wrong, and it has been amusing to watch him dig
himself into a deeper hole each time he tries to justify his
misanthropic sensibility with regard to "Titanic." But it's time to
speak up when Turan uses his bully pulpit not only to attack my film,
but the entire film industry and its audiences.
Turan says that "the flip side of 'Titanic's' ability to draw hordes
of viewers into the theaters is the question of where these viewers
have been for the past several years. In its unintentional underlining
of how narrow an audience net most movies cast over the American
public, 'Titanic' is not an example of Hollywood's success, it's an
emblem of its failure." It shows, he says, "how desperate the
mainstream audience . . . has become for anything even resembling
old-fashioned entertainment." They have, he says, been "deadened by
exposure to nonstop trash."
Having gone on record condemning "Titanic" as so bad "it almost makes
you weep in frustration," he is now desperate to account for the
phenomenon of its unprecedented global critical and commercial
success. To do so, he has settled on the outrageous conclusion that
since "Titanic" is garbage (because it has been spoken and so it must
be), then everything else around it--every other film in recent
years--must be worse garbage. With one sweeping statement he condemns
and dismisses the entire output of Hollywood.
Turan has tipped his hand. We now see his true heart. It's not that he
doesn't like some movies, as is a critic's prerogative. It's that he
doesn't like all movies. Simmering in his own bile, year after year,
he has become further and further removed from the simple joyful
experience of movie-watching, which, ironically, probably attracted
him to the job in the first place. The best critics keep that joy
alive, while the worst let their cynicism twist them beyond any
recognizable connection to the experience of a general audience in a
movie theater.
Turan sees himself as the high priest of some arcane art form that is
far too refined for the average individual to possibly appreciate. He
writes as if the insensitive masses must be constantly corrected, like
little children who do not have the sense or experience to know what
is good for them without the critic's patient instruction. This is
paternalism and elitism in its worst form, and utterly insults the
movie audience, which is theoretically his constituency.
Turan says I write "lowest common denominator screenplays that
condescend to their audience." The condescending one here is Turan,
who is insulting the majority of the filmgoing public by telling them
that they shouldn't like what they like.
"Titanic" is not a film that is sucking people in with flashy hype and
spitting them out onto the street feeling let down and ripped off.
They are returning again and again to repeat an experience that is
taking a 3-hour and 14-minute chunk out of their lives, and dragging
others with them, so they can share the emotion. Parents are taking
their kids, adults are taking their parents. People from 8 to 80
(literally) are connecting with this film. After 14 weeks in release,
"Titanic" is still No. 1 in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan,
Mexico, Australia, the U.K. and almost every other country in which it
is playing. Audiences around the world are celebrating their own
essential humanity by going into a dark room and crying together.
The script for "Titanic" is earnest and straightforward, wearing its
heart on its sleeve. It intentionally incorporates universals of human
experience and emotion that are timeless--and familiar because they
reflect our basic emotional fabric. By dealing in archetypes, the film
touches people in all cultures and of all ages. Is this pandering? Or
is it communicating? Turan mistakes archetype for cliche. I don't
share his view that the best scripts are only the ones that explore
the perimeter of human experience, or flashily pirouette their witty
and cynical dialogue for our admiration.
He says that "Cameron is not someone to be trusted anywhere near a
word processor" and calls the "Titanic" screenplay "the worst script
ever written," carrying on as if this is an accepted fact, a "given"
upon which all his further arguments are then built. He conveniently
ignores the fact that the Writers Guild of America voted "Titanic" one
of the five best original scripts of the year with its nomination for
best screenplay written directly for the screen. There is no more
critical and discerning body in the world when it comes to
screenwriting. But in Turan's private reality, the vast majority of
the worldwide audience and the majority of Hollywood screenwriters are
wrong, and only he is right.
Turan's critical sensibility is the worst kind of ego-driven elitism.
The illustration accompanying the article says it all. One tiny figure
trying vainly to stop the juggernaut. But is that any sane person's
definition of the role of the critic--to stand alone in complete
opposition to the tide of popular taste?
Poor Kenny. He sees himself as the lone voice crying in the
wilderness, righteous but not heeded by the blind and dumb "great
unwashed" around him. It must be a great burden to be cursed with such
clear vision when your misguided flock bray past you, like lemmings,
unmindful.
Turan has forgotten, if he ever knew, the role of senior film critic
for a large urban newspaper. When people spend their hard-earned money
on a movie at the end of a long work week, all they ask is that their
local critic steer them toward the good ones and help them avoid the
turkeys. It's not too much to ask. And it's a fairly simple job, once
you grasp it. You get to go to a movie first, before anyone else, and
then come back and tell everybody about it. You even get to trash it
if you didn't like it. What you don't get to do is grind on and on,
month after month, after the audience has rendered its verdict in the
most resounding of terms, telling everybody why the filmgoers are
wrong and you are right.
Nobody's interested in the vitriolic ravings of a bitter man who
attacks and rips apart movies that the great majority of viewers find
well worth their time and money. Turan has lost touch with the joys of
film viewing as most people would define it. He has lost touch,
therefore, with his readership, and no longer serves a useful purpose.
When critics like Roger Ebert or Janet Maslin talk about film, they
demonstrate a deep knowledge of and respect for their subject, a
respect for filmmakers regardless of the specific blunders made on a
particular film, and a genuine unwavering joy at the magic of cinema.
Even when they don't like something of mine, I respect the source.
They make me want to try harder.
Give us a critic who actually likes movies. Give us a critic who has
at least some slight understanding of the toil and energy, the hopes
and dreams that go into a movie, any movie. Give us a critic who shows
respect for our chosen art, and whom we can respect in turn. And give
us one who respects the paying audiences who look to him or her for
guidance, not for lectures on how stupid they are for liking what they
like.
Forget about Clinton--how do we impeach Kenneth Turan?
JIM CAMERON
Santa Monica
Monday, March 1, 2010
Another conniption fit from Richard Schickel--this time about film criticism.
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/03/over_the_hill.php
After a recent takedown of the late Robert Altman, film critic/hagiographer/professional scold Richard Schickel [who, at his best, gave the world the 70s PBS miniseries THE MEN WHO MADE THE MOVIES and made the restored-and-expanded reissue of Sam Fuller's THE BIG RED ONE possible] lurched into action at a recent film critics' panel at UCLA's Billy Wilder Theater at West L.A.'s Hammer Museum recently.
I'll sort-of-agree with Schickel that nowadays newspapers and magazines want film critics to be
cheerleaders for current mainstream product (evidencing the career of Betsy Sharkey at
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES).
But Schickel can't help but to blurt out dumb insults of online film critics (that he allegedly doesn't read) and defame Ain't-It-Cool News founder Harry Knowles solely for his physical appearance.
As I said in the Hollywood Elsewhere comments section, Schickel--in a perfect world--would be best off founding a website/critics' blog (a la Glenn Kenny's SOME CAME RUNNING) with, say, ex-NEWSWEEK critic David Ansen.
Then, Schickel (provided he was willing to do the work) could write only about the current domestic and international films that come up his personal standards.
After a recent takedown of the late Robert Altman, film critic/hagiographer/professional scold Richard Schickel [who, at his best, gave the world the 70s PBS miniseries THE MEN WHO MADE THE MOVIES and made the restored-and-expanded reissue of Sam Fuller's THE BIG RED ONE possible] lurched into action at a recent film critics' panel at UCLA's Billy Wilder Theater at West L.A.'s Hammer Museum recently.
I'll sort-of-agree with Schickel that nowadays newspapers and magazines want film critics to be
cheerleaders for current mainstream product (evidencing the career of Betsy Sharkey at
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES).
But Schickel can't help but to blurt out dumb insults of online film critics (that he allegedly doesn't read) and defame Ain't-It-Cool News founder Harry Knowles solely for his physical appearance.
As I said in the Hollywood Elsewhere comments section, Schickel--in a perfect world--would be best off founding a website/critics' blog (a la Glenn Kenny's SOME CAME RUNNING) with, say, ex-NEWSWEEK critic David Ansen.
Then, Schickel (provided he was willing to do the work) could write only about the current domestic and international films that come up his personal standards.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Another new low for LA TIMES film critic Betsy Sharkey.
This enthusiastic review of ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: THE SQUEAKUEL by second-chair LOS ANGELES TIMES film critic Betsy Sharkey may give you an idea of the pressure facing people who write about movies to be at one with studio product--especially sequels to family fare that make Big Money: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-squeakquel23-2009dec23,0,7439065.story
PEOPLE's Leah Rozen, who stepped down from her reviewer position recently, said something about leaving before all movies looked to her like the recent OLD DOGS.
If something like that occurs, I'm guessing Ms. Sharkey will roll with the changes just fine.
PEOPLE's Leah Rozen, who stepped down from her reviewer position recently, said something about leaving before all movies looked to her like the recent OLD DOGS.
If something like that occurs, I'm guessing Ms. Sharkey will roll with the changes just fine.
Friday, December 18, 2009
This time, Kenneth Turan gives a more-or-less good review to a James Cameron movie.
Not sure how many people remember the....let's call it titanic...... anger that James Cameron displayed in a letter to the LOS ANGELES TIMES in early 1998 because chief film critic Kenneth Turan gave a harsh review to Cameron's then hugely-popular and now semi-forgotten film about two young lovers on a doomed ocean liner. Feel free to Google Turan's original review and Cameron's response.
Now, here's a tinyURL link to Turan's review of Cameron's AVATAR: http://shar.es/aDAiQ
Feel even more free to judge for yourself whether Turan's opinion (partially a sense of awe over AVATAR's technical achievements) is genuine or not this time around.
For my part, I was surprised that Turan didn't recuse himself and give second-chair Betsy Sharkey the assignment--or even offer it to now-freelance Kevin "I like just about everything" Thomas.
Now, here's a tinyURL link to Turan's review of Cameron's AVATAR: http://shar.es/aDAiQ
Feel even more free to judge for yourself whether Turan's opinion (partially a sense of awe over AVATAR's technical achievements) is genuine or not this time around.
For my part, I was surprised that Turan didn't recuse himself and give second-chair Betsy Sharkey the assignment--or even offer it to now-freelance Kevin "I like just about everything" Thomas.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Another low for LA TIMES critic/cheerleader Betsy Sharkey.
No doubt Betsy Sharkey's a dream-come-true for THE LOS ANGELES TIMES in that she's willing to do the at-one-with-blockbusters cheerleading that mostly-fuddy-duddy Kenneth Turan can't lower himself to accomplish.
But this article of Ms. Sharkey's in today's edition is rather disgraceful pandering:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-heroes5-2009jul05,0,2815935.story
And it makes me miss Ms. Sharkey's immediate predecessor, Carina Chocano (who had her flaws, but at least a bit more integrity)--plus the critics long departed from the TIMES' pages (Michael Wilmington, Sheila Benson, Charles Champlin, Peter Rainer, Manohla Dargis).
But this article of Ms. Sharkey's in today's edition is rather disgraceful pandering:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-heroes5-2009jul05,0,2815935.story
And it makes me miss Ms. Sharkey's immediate predecessor, Carina Chocano (who had her flaws, but at least a bit more integrity)--plus the critics long departed from the TIMES' pages (Michael Wilmington, Sheila Benson, Charles Champlin, Peter Rainer, Manohla Dargis).
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