Miss Anthropy ([info]miss_anthropy) wrote,
@ 2007-06-27 14:19:00
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Entry tags:film, quotes

Sorry, can't help this one.
"Can a screenplay ever pause, rest, seize a quiet moment for philosophical reflection and tranquil contemplation? It cannot. To paraphrase critic Walter Kerr, in life we kill time; in movies time kills us."

--Richard Walter.



AND YOU SIR ARE WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE AMERICAN MOVIE INDUSTRY.

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[info]crackedwraith
2007-06-28 05:40 am UTC (link)
This calls for a big FAIL sign for Mr. Walter.

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[info]miss_anthropy
2007-06-28 06:40 am UTC (link)
YES.

I mean, christ. He's got a point if he's trying to berate complete inept first-timers from writing meandering introspections for 30 pages, and yes, every scene should have a trajectory, but CHRIST. This man has clearly never seen a Japanese narrative.

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[info]crackedwraith
2007-06-28 06:57 am UTC (link)
I don't think he'd really be open to one. He sounds like the people who are making (so far) this year's summer blockbusters.

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[info]miss_anthropy
2007-06-28 07:14 am UTC (link)
He is, alas, the Chair of the Screenwriting Department at UCLA Film.

One of his more successful former students is David Koepp, who wrote Spider-man and Jurassic Park. So... yeah.

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[info]crackedwraith
2007-06-28 07:37 am UTC (link)
I should have known. Only truly evil people paraphrase critics without mocking them.

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[info]miss_anthropy
2007-06-28 07:42 am UTC (link)
...Hey now. I'm training to be a critic. ;_;

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[info]crackedwraith
2007-06-28 08:02 am UTC (link)
...mocking in a hilarious way, a la MST3K?

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[info]miss_anthropy
2007-06-28 08:16 am UTC (link)
Heh, don't worry about it. Two main things to know about critics:

1) Most of them are indeed full of shit.
2) The ones that aren't enjoy a largely thankless lot in life.

Critics are the reason most of the media we know and love can be considered sophisticated or worth any depth. Critics are the people that said books, film, tv, animation, etc, CAN be read into, and appreciated intellectually, and as a means of discussing advanced ideas. Just because the people that are actually advancing the discourse share a job title with the people that confuse their biases for objective principles and give things ratings on a 1-4 scale doesn't mean it's cool to dismiss them all out of hand.

end-diatribe. I go back to my nerd corner now.

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[info]crackedwraith
2007-06-28 08:35 am UTC (link)
I am a bit out of sorts with critics, mostly because the two other people that I know to be heading towards that field -- have no business there. Will literally just sit there and complain and nitpick and consider that to be all a critic does. And at the end of the day, they'll hate everything.

So I'm very glad someone actually remembers what a critic is supposed to do.

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