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Posted: |
Feb 21, 2017 - 7:52 AM
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By: |
RoryR
(Member)
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/movies/richard-schickel-dead-time-film-critic.html?emc=edit_th_20170221&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=54765500&_r=0
I used to like reading his reviews of movies when I was growing up and regarded him as one of the best, and I still do.
But I have to say that as a voice in many a DVD or Blu-ray commentary, he could be quite boring, though he knew his stuff.
“The truth, very simply, is that most movies are lousy or, at best, routine,” Mr. Schickel wrote in “Keepers: The Greatest Films — and Personal Favorites — of a Moviegoing Lifetime” (2015).
“Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author’s (or filmmaker’s or painter’s) entire body of work, among other qualities.”
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Posted: |
Feb 21, 2017 - 8:20 AM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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"Mr. Schickel wrote that two measures of a movie’s quality should be how much a viewer retains and how much one wants to see it again."
Oh I do like that. Complements something from another critic in his NY Times article back in Aug. 2002:
It's Like a Movie, but It's Not
By NEAL GABLER
...In most entertainment, the audience responds emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, even physically. There is a level of engagement, and we usually judge entertainment on the basis of how much engagement it elicits. At its simplest, as in so many teenage movies, the illusion of entertainment eschews other forms of engagement for purely physical effects. At its more complex, engagement is replaced by another mechanism entirely. Instead of character development in movies or full-bodied jokes in situation comedies viewers get a set of signals, a kind of code, that advises them how to respond without having to expend the effort, however minimal, that real entertainment demands. You see or hear the signal and you respond as if you were getting the real thing. Or put another way, you are given the form and you provide the content.
http://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=9612&forumID=1&archive=1
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His greatest contribution may have been his work on restoring THE BIG RED ONE.
He, belatedly, became a champion of Clint Eastwood, to his lasting credit.
RIP
Bruce
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