david edelstein Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Fan Rant: Critics of 'The Dark Knight' Are Allowed to Hate
Filed under: Action », Drama », Casting », New Releases », Celebrities and Controversy », Fandom », Comic/Superhero/Geek », Columns »
Look, I thought The Dark Knight had a lot of strong selling points: Combine a deft pace with thoughtful characterizations and a whopping IMAX design that turns the entire experience into a plot-driven theme park ride, and you've got one hefty dose of Batman adrenaline.
Still, comparisons to The Godfather Part II notwithstanding, The Dark Knight isn't foolproof -- in fact, no single movie in history is foolproof. The subjective experience of movie watching ensures that nothing can be universally liked by everyone, and rules of civility insist that humanity respect that truism. It's acceptable to feel passionately about a great work of art, and defend that perspective with rigorous argumentation, but much of the outrage over the minority perspective that The Dark Knight isn't any good has made such practical thinking impossible.
Deemed the first critic to pan the movie, New York's David Edelstein went out of his way to list the allegations against him sent along by various Batman fans. The House Next Door editor Keith Uhlich, meanwhile, fielded over a hundred rants in the comments section following his astute critique of director Christopher Nolan's questionable portrayals of violence. What's particularly shocking about this frightful deluge of negative responses is that many of these people began posting their disapproval before they even saw the movie.
Slate's annual Movie Club kicks off
Filed under: Critical Thought », Newsstand », Lists »
One
of the coolest things that Slate does every year is present a virtual movie
roundtable each December, during which a group of well-known film critics discuss the previous 12 months. Though it's
ostensibly focused on Top 10s, the conversations, which have been taking place since 1998, usually go off into all
sorts of interesting directions - and this year's is no exception. The participants in the 2005 Movie Club are an impressive crew: Slate critic David Edelstein (who is heading off to New York Magazine in 2006), the Chicago Reader's brilliant Jonathan Rosenbaum, the incredibly busy Scott Foundas (who writes for Variety and about about 100 other publications), and A. O. Scott of the New York Times. The discussion between the four (which takes the form of email messages) starts off with a bang, with Rosenbaum immediately diving into a discussion of film criticism in general, and what "best" really means. Don't be scared off by the theory, though – there's plenty of chatter about specific films as well, and the next three days of emails will surely offer intelligent, passionate disagreements. The chance to eavesdrop on these guys makes it well worth checking the link below every day (at least until Friday, when the 2005 Movie Club sadly comes to an end).
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