R.I.P.: Judith Crist (1922-2012)

I used to half-joke that, back when I was in my early teens, the two most prominent film critics in America arguably were Pauline Kael and Judith Crist – meaning that, while I was growing up, I wanted to do a girl’s job.

Unfortunately, I more or less had to give up on making that jest quite a while back – and, no, not because so many people would instantly respond, “Hey, what the hell about Andrew Sarris? Or Stanley Kauffmann?”

The melancholy truth is that, despite her impressive span of glory days in the 1960s and early ‘70s, a period during which she served simultaneously as film critic for New York magazine, TV Guide and The Today Show, thereby ensuring a consistently high profile, Crist – who passed away Tuesday at age 90 – slipped into relative obscurity a long time ago. So much so, in fact, that throughout the last couple of decades, I found myself more often than not having to explain who she was – and what she meant – whenever I made that tongue-in-cheek but not entirely untrue remark about my early influences.

In her prime, Crist was a trailblazer as well an opinion-shaper, earning at least a footnote in the history of American film criticism when she became the first full-time female film critic for a major American newspaper, The New York Herald Tribune, in 1963. After that, as New York Times writer Douglas Martin notes in an appreciative obit that is well worth reading in full:

Her commentary had many homes: The New York Herald Tribune, where she was the first woman to be made a full-time critic for a major American newspaper; New York magazine, where she was the founding film critic; and TV Guide, which most defined her to readers. Her reviews appeared there for 22 years at a time when the magazine blanketed the country, reaching a peak readership of more than 20 million. She was the Today show’s first regular movie critic, a morning fixture on NBC from 1963 to 1973. And she wrote for Saturday Review, Gourmet and Ladies’ Home Journal.

A Harris Poll of moviegoers in the 1960s cited her as their favorite critic. In 1968, Film Quarterly called her “the American critic with the widest impact on the mass audience.” When TV Guide decided to dismiss her in 1983 to replace her column with a computerized movie summary, executives told her they might come crawling back to her in six months to beg her to return. The magazine was deluged with letters, and asked her back three weeks later. She was given a raise and stayed until 1988.

And yet: Tastes change, influence wanes. As early as 1973, she was eased out of her spot at The Today Show and replaced by quipster Gene Shalit. She continued to write – and, at Columbia University, teach – past the turn of the century. By 2009, however, she had fallen so far off the radar that writer-director Gerald Peary opted to not mention her at all in his documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism -- a questionable decision that I did indeed question in my Variety review of the film.

As you likely already have surmised: I was an ardent fan of Crist’s work during my formative years, and continue to be an admirer even as I stagger into my dotage. (While typing this in my home office, I can spot my well-thumbed, personally autographed copy of her book The Private Eye, The Cowboy and the Very Naked Girl on a nearby shelf.) She could launch lethal zingers with the best of them – she once described The Sound of Music as fodder “for the 5-to-7 set and their mommies who think their kids aren’t up to the stinging sophistication and biting wit of Mary Poppins ” – but I enjoyed her more for the unbridled enthusiasm she brought to praising both serious cinema and what she called “delicious trash.”

Crist -- like Kael, Sarris, Kauffmann and a handful of others -- was a must-read critic during a golden age much beloved by movie buffs, stretching roughly from 1967 to 1980, when there seemed to be so very many must-see movies. Consider, if you will, her Top Ten for 1967:

1. Bonnie and Clyde 2. La Guerre est Finie 3. The Graduate 4. In the Heat of the Night 5. In Cold Blood 6. Ulysses 7. The Battle of Algiers 8. Falstaff  9. Father 10. The President’s Analyst

Worthy choices, all. Movies, much like Crist’s own best work, that have stood the test of time, even if some, like Crist, are no longer as widely recognized as they once were.

Back in 1973, not too long after her ouster from The Today Show, Crist gave a lecture at Loyola University in New Orleans while I was in my final year as a journalism major. I had the opportunity to speak with her – and, yes, get my book autographed -- during a pre-lecture reception, and was greatly charmed by the lady. (I admit it: I laughed out loud, like the most transparent sort of sycophant, when she made a passing reference to her Today Show replacement as “Gene Shallow.” Sorry, Mr. Shalit, I couldn’t resist.) And during the lecture itself…

OK, there’s no way to write this without sounding like ego-tripping, so I’ll try to be brief. On a couple of occasions during her lecture, she paused while trying to remember the name of a specific actor or director. The first time this happened, I impulsively blurted out the name she was fumbling for – and immediately felt embarrassed for being a presumptuous jerk. But, wonder of wonders, Crist merely smiled in my direction, and said, “Thanks.” So I felt emboldened to chime in again when she had a second stumble.

The third time she couldn’t remember a name, I briefly held back – after all, this was her lecture, not mine, and I didn’t want to look like a complete doofus. So Crist turned, looked directly at me in the auditorium audience, smiled once one more and asked, “OK, you know, who is it?” I did know – she was trying to remember Don Siegel, director of Dirty Harry – so I told her. And she thanked me. And I felt the way mortals usually feel after they’ve been of some small service to a deity.

I have dined out on that story for decades, of course. (At least, I have done so while breaking bread with fellow film buffs.) But what I really took to heart that evening was something Crist said when asked about the difference between her reaction to a film as a critic, and an average moviegoer’s response.

“I’m just like you,” Crist told the Loyola University audience. “I’ll see a movie, and think, ‘Yay!’ Or, ‘Ugh!’

“The only difference is, I take that ‘Yay!’ or ‘Ugh!’ – and stretch it out to four or five hundred words.”

Which, come to think of it, is pretty much the same thing I’ve been doing for the last 40 years or so.

So you see, I was right: I did grow up to a do a girl’s job.

What if Vertigo had been... shorter?

In recent days, former students, TV interviewers, fellow critics, passing strangers, drunks stumbling out of doorways... They've all wanted to know the same thing: What do I think of Vertigo bumping Citizen Kane out of the No. 1 spot on the Sight & Sound list of the top movies of all time?

My first impulse is to reply: Hey, I didn't get a ballot, so who cares?

On further consideration, however, I have to admit that, while I prefer Orson Welles' enduringly amazing and influential masterpiece, I have always appreciated Vertigo as one of Alfred Hitchcock's all-time greats -- and maybe, just maybe, his most deeply personal film. Indeed, I deemed it worthy of its very own chapter (excerpted here) in my currently out-of-print book (which I hope to expand and update as an e-book just as soon as I find the time to write the updates, and, well, you know, figure out how to upload an e-book). And while looking at that chapter after the announcement of the Sight & Sound list, I felt compelled to attach this addendum:

After multiple viewings of Vertigo over the years, I have come to wonder: What would the reaction have been back in 1958 – indeed, how would critics, academics and movie buffs view it today – if Hitchcock had opted to end this masterwork about ten or 15 minutes before he does? (Assuming that the Production Code would have allowed him to do so.) That is: What if The Master of Suspense had announced “The End” immediately after Ferguson (James Stewart) and Madeleine (Kim Novak) share their fevered embrace in her hotel room, bathed in a greenish light that seems to signal a shared madness, as she finally abandons all trace of her true self and he passionately grasps his last hope for a second chance?

And what if the audience were left to consider that the only way these two characters could possibly enjoy happily-ever-aftering is to maintain interlocking lies – his self-delusion, her selfless deception – forever more?

Would even Alfred Hitchcock have had the audacity to spring something so thoroughly unsettling, if not downright perverse, on us?

Here's a YouTube clip of the aforementioned scene featuring commentary by Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut. Something tells me even The Master never considered ending his movie with this, uh, stunning climax.

"When you're rich, you want a Republican in office"

Looks like porn movie star Jenna Jameson is swallowing... er, I mean she's coming... oh, hell, looks like she's getting behind Mitt Romney.

On the other hand: The Huffington Post reports that Ron Jeremy remains an Obama supporter.

Free on Hulu: Two in the Wave

In 1959, critic-turned-filmmaker Francois Truffaut – whose incendiary reviews of the Cannes Film Festival had gotten him banned from that fest just one year earlier -- made his first big splash as an auteur at Cannes with his debut feature, The 400 Blows, his profoundly affecting and enduringly influential autobiographical drama.

One year later, Jean-Luc Godard – another outspoken firebrand who railed against the prevailing norms of cinéma de papa in the pages of the French magazine Cahiers du Cinema – plunged into feature filmmaking with Breathless, his stylistically audacious and exuberantly fatalistic neo-noir romantic melodrama.

Together, these two friends – destined, perhaps inevitably, to become competitive rivals, then bitter enemies – helped launch La Nouvelle Vague or, if you don’t parlez-vous français, the French New Wave, a loose-knit, deeply committed group of highly individualistic film directors who burst upon the international scene in general and the U.S. art-house circuit in particular during the heady days of the post-Eisenhower Era.

There were other notables in their ranks – including Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda – but it was Truffaut and Godard who, then and now, defined in the minds of most critics, academics and cinephiles the revolutionary vitality of a filmmaking movement influenced in equal measures by Italian Neorealism, Hollywood Classicism and anything-goes youthful audacity. So it is altogether fitting that director Emmanuel Laurent has chosen to focus almost exclusively on the early careers of those two artists in Two in the Wave.

Written and narrated by film critic Antoine de Baecque, who has authored authoritative biographies of both men, this celebratory documentary is an ingeniously conceived and executed collage culled from newspaper and magazine clippings, newsreels and TV interviews and, of course, generous swaths of film clips. You can read more of what I had to say about it durng its 2010 Museum of Fine Arts, Houston debut here. And you see if for yourself up there. Or right here.

Killer sushi? Zombie outbreaks? Violent vigilantes? Must be time for Fantastic Fest

The eighth edition of Fantastic Fest -- the world's wildest genre-movie extravaganza -- is set for Sept. 20-27 in Austin, arguably the only place on the planet weird enough to handle its spectacular excess. And judging from Monday’s announcement of the first titles confirmed for the FF2012 schedule, I'd say festivalgoers are in for the usual smorgasbord of heavy artillery, sexual perversity, edgy sci-fi, scantily clad cuties, flesh-eating zombies and unrestrained ultra-violence.

But wait, there’s more: This year’s line-up also features eccentric animation, with the previously announced opening-night presentation of Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie, and vicious vigilantism, with the gala premiere of Peter Travis’ Dredd 3D.

For the benefit of those who tuned in late: The latter is an R-rated adaptation of the John Wagner/Carlos Ezquerra comic strip set in a futuristic society where relentless supercops like the eponymous Dredd (played by Karl Urban) serve as judges, juries – and instant executioners. You may recall there was an earlier attempt to bring this source material to the screen. You may also remember that it didn’t turn out too well. This one is supposed to be better. Or, at the very least, bloodier.

Among the other intriguing titles in this first wave of FF2012 offerings:

COCKNEYS VS. ZOMBIES -- When a badly planned bank robbery and a zombie outbreak collide, hilarity allegedly ensues in this  British comedy starring Michelle Ryan (star of the ill-fated Bionic Woman reboot) and Lee Asquith-Coe (soon to be seen in the direct-to-video Strippers vs. Werewolves – you think I’m making that up, don’t you? – and Kathryn Bigelow’s  Zero Dark Thirty).

DEAD SUSHI -- Japanese splatter-action comedy is served up raw when director Noboru Iguchi and karate girl Rina Takeda join forces to take on flying killer sushi monsters.

I DECLARE WAR – Here’s the inside skinny from the Fantastic Fest press office: “A group of exceptionally creative teens gets sucked into their own private Lord of the Flies scenario when an after-school game of ‘war’ turns into a test of loyalty, strategy and friendship.” Sounds like more fun than a Dungeons & Dragons tournament. And – gasp! – it’s from Canada.

ROOM 237 – Rodney Ascher’s provocative documentary examines bizarre theories about subtext and symbolism that can be found – if you look really, really hard – in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (which, not incidentally, also will be screened at FF2012).

SECRET CEREMONY – A textbook example of the jaw-dropping weirdness that often resulted back in the late 1960s and early ‘70s when Hollywood studios briefly indulged maverick auteurs by bankrolling eccentric (and, occasionally, incomprehensible) “art films.” In this case, the maverick was the late Joseph Losey (The Servant, Modesty Blaise), and the plot has something to do with a middle-aged prostitute (Elizabeth Taylor – yes, that Elizabeth Taylor) who’s despondent over the drowning death of her daughter, a disturbed young woman (Mia Farrow) in desperate need of a mother figure, and a creepy stepfather (Robert Mitchum) who does his damnedest to facilitate an unhappy ending. If you’ve ever seen this 1968 psychodrama on broadcast TV, you may be in for a few surprises, and no little befuddlement, if you catch it as part of FF2012’s “House of Psychotic Women” sidebar: Like many Universal Pictures releases of its time, it was trimmed of salacious content, and supplemented with newly shot footage (intended to “explain” the confusing goings-on) before being unleashed on unsuspecting viewers. Presumably, FF2012 will be screening the original version exhibited – fleetingly – in theaters.    

WRONG – French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux’s follow-up to his 2010 thriller Rubber – a.k.a, “The Killer Tire Movie” – is described as an “absurdist opus” about an everyman who goes to extremes when he awakens one morning to find his beloved dog is missing. Early reports indicate that homicidal wheels do not figure into the plot of this one.

YOUNG GUN IN THE TIME – From South Korean filmmaker Oh Young Doo, director of FF2011 offering Invasion of Alien Bikini, we get a time-travel confection involving sex shops, robot hands and Hawaiian shirts. In short, something for everyone.

Trailer Park: Cloud Atlas

I have just seen the trailer for Cloud Atlas. I want to see this film tomorrow. No, I want see it tonight. Hell, I want to see it right now. (Hat-tip to my student Vanessa Marin for alerting me to this wonderment.)

Dane Cook goes there, and steps in it

Speaking as someone who's actually had complimentary things to say about Dane Cook in the past -- who, indeed, thought My Best Friend's Girl wasn't without merit -- all I can say about his spectacularly tone-deaf attempt to make a joke about the recent Colorado shootings is: What. A. Jerk.

Update: Cook has apologized.

Christian Bale is a class act

A few days ago, Christian Bale said that his heart went out to the victims of the Aurora shootings. Today, he decided to bring his heart there. As my Aussie friends might say: Good on ya, mate.

Take Back the Knight (and Be Not Afraid)

Andrew Breznican of Entertainment Weekly is absolutely right: We should not let the Colorado shooter scare us. We should defy this terrorist’s attempt to intimidate us by doing the very thing that will minimalize any collateral damage he might cause. And we should take Breznican’s words to heart:  “[I]f you want to defy the theater-shooter and the terror he has created — go out this weekend to see a film and enjoy being with your fellow moviegoers.”

But, really, why wait that long?

I propose that we designate this Thursday, July 26, as the night we collectively rally against the madman who murdered so many and tried, even if only as a secondary aim (after ensuring his own notoriety), to permanently despoil the communal pleasure of moviegoing. I propose we call this group endeavor Take Back the Knight – but hasten to add that if you’re not a Batman fan, or you’ve already seen The Dark Knight Rises, or you just don’t yet feel ready to see that particular movie at this particular time, then see something else.

Any movie, of any sort. At any theater, be it an IMAX auditorium or second-run house. Hell, go to a drive-in if there’s one operating within driving distance of your home.

Just go.

Want to go see a politically-themed documentary that criticizes President Obama? Go. Want to go see a summer blockbuster, or a box-office under-achiever? Go. Want to savor one of the year’s best documentaries – if you’re lucky enough to be living in a city where it’s screening? Go.

Just get out of your house, get in your car, ride your bike or board your preferred means of public transportation. And go. 

You see, the SOB who slaughtered the innocents in the Aurora megaplex obviously wants us to think of him and shudder – and, of course, reflexively recall his name -- every time we’re in a movie theater, at any point for the rest of our lives.

Well, to hell with him. Literally.

Ironically, I have first-hand knowledge of something like that paranoia. Back in 1961, while I was growing up in New Orleans, the ceiling collapsed at the second-run moviehouse in my Ninth Ward neighborhood, the aptly named NOLA Theatre. One person died during the disaster, dozens were injured – and the incident quickly attained the status of local legend. (Trust me: If you’re a New Orleans-born movie fan of a certain age, you instinctively wince whenever you hear any reference to “the NOLA cave-in.”) After extensive repairs, the NOLA re-opened, and remained in operation for more years than you might think. But I won’t lie: Every time I saw a movie there after the disaster, I spent almost as much time looking at the ceiling – steeling myself for the worst – as I did watching the screen. 

And not just because, on the night of the cave-in, my mom, my kid brother and I actually had planned to go to the NOLA -- but changed our plans when we saw Snow White and the Three Stooges had been replaced as the featured attraction by William Castle’s Homicidal.

But here’s the thing: I was an absolute wuss while I was growing up. Really. I got so freaked out by The Spider that when a humongous arachnid popped up in Have Rocket, Will Travel – yeah, another Three Stooges movie; are you detecting a pattern in my misspent youth? – my mom had to physically restrain me from running out of the theater.

And yet, wuss that I was, I mustered up the courage to go back to the NOLA within days of its re-opening.

So, come on: You know you’re more courageous than I was as a wuss back in the day, right?

I’m fully aware, of course, that some people might read this and blast me for being so churlish as to think about moviegoing at a time when we should be mourning the murdered. And, to be sure, I can sympathize with, if not share, that point of view. But consider this: During his achingly poignant and deeply heartfelt tribute to the fallen Sunday evening in Aurora, Pastor Robin Holland of the community’s Living Hope Baptist Church had this to say at a nationally telecast memorial service:

“Dear Lord, we need to comfort one another… Because the truth of the matter, Lord, is, our city is hurting. But one day, Lord, we know that our city will march back into that theater. And we’ll claim that theater back, Father God. Because it doesn’t belong to terrorists. It belongs to the city of Aurora.”

Damn right.

So do the right thing: Remember the names of the victims, do not cower when you think of their killer. And do not let that detestable wretch keep you from going out to a theater or drive-in near you Thursday evening. Twitter the message with #TakeBackTheKnight – or whichever other way you choose. But however you choose, spread the word.

And be not afraid. 

Today's second shameless attempt to draw hits with a post that has The Dark Knight Rises in the headline

Back in the day, George Clooney (and director Joel Schumacher) wanted to give us a sunnier, funnier Batman. (And, while they were at it, a first look at a bad-ass Bane.) But, well, that didn't work out too well, did it?

Rush Limbaugh outs Dark Knight Rises as pro-Obama propaganda

And in today's edition of Stuff I Wouldn't Dare Make Up: Rush Limbaugh makes the Bain/Bane connection -- and is predictably (so very, very predictably) outraged. (Hat-tip to the blog poster known as Paul D.)

R.I.P.: Ernest Borgnine (1917-2012)

If you want to see just how great Ernest Borgnine could be when working with the right material, and the right director, take a look at the above short, part of the 2002 anthology film September 11. Borgnine passed away Sunday at age 95. He'll be missed. You can read my CultureMap tribute to the legendary Oscar-winner here.

Rollerball Redux at the Tour de France?

During an on-stage Q&A with me at the 2007 Starz Denver Film Festival, director Norman Jewison recalled the time he was approached by a producer who wanted to turn Jewison's 1975 film Rollerball into a weekly game show ala American Gladiators.

 "I made a film about the insanity of violence for the entertainment of the masses," Jewison said. "Now that’s really an obscene thought, isn’t it? This goes back to the Roman gladiators: ‘Let’s all get together and watch somebody get snuffed! Let’s all get together and we’ll see the supreme sacrifice here, we’ll watch a lion eat somebody. Let’s all get together Saturday afternoon.’

 "And so I made Rollerball, this kind of violent, strange kind of film about the future. And it was about a world where all political systems had failed and we were in the hands of corporate entities, the corporations controlled the world. In Europe, it became a kind of a cult film, very political film, and one of my most popular films. But in America, everybody was talking about the game. And some nut called me up and said, ‘Can I get the franchise for Rollerball because I think it would be a great, great game?’

 "I couldn’t believe it. And I said, ‘You schmuck. It’s about the insanity of violence!'"

 All of which leads me to wonder: Is that same producer watching coverage of the Tour de France today, and thinking: "Hey, maybe that would be a great weekly series?"

My son knows when to hold them, and knows when to fold them...

George Leydon played his cards right at a World Series of Poker tournament in Las Vegas last week. Didn't win a fortune, to be sure, but didn't get the leg-breakers on his trail, either. Since this writing stuff doesn't seem to be working out for me as profitably as I once hoped, I am looking forward to the day when my son can finance a lifestyle to which I would like to become accustomed.

What the devil?

I've heard from a reliable source that you should read Hunter Hauk's perceptive article about Satan is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers on the Cowboys & Indians magazine website, and then order a copy of the splendidly insightful documentary Charlie Louvin: Still Rattlin' The Devil's Cage (which premiered last spring at the Nashville Film Festival) right here. If you don't do either, well, don't blame me if you catch hell for it.

The Weight: A "Who's On First?" for a new generation?

Three years before the Sundance Film Festival premiere of his Arbitrage -- a smart, suspenseful and exceptionally well-acted drama set to open Sept. 14 at theaters and drive-ins everywhere -- Nicholas Jarecki directed and co-wrote The Weight, a slight but clever short that plays like a stoner version of a classic Abbott and Costello routine. The two movies have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common. Which, when you think about it, may be a promising sign that Jarecki is filmmaker worth keeping your eye on.

Obama vs. E.T.?

I've always suspected that Steven Spielberg cast Francois Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a scientist who could communicate with extraterrestrials because... well, because of course Truffaut could have communicated with extraterrestrials, if he'd ever had to, because that's the kind of amazingly astute and sensitive fellow he was. In much the same vein, I'm not at all surprised to hear that most people believe Barack Obama would be better qualified than Mitt Romney to handle an invasion by unfriendly extraterrestrials. After all: The dude took care of Osama Bin Laden, right? 

On the other hand, I'm not sure even President Obama could do a better job of leading the human counteroffensive than... President Bill Pullman.

Preview: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

As I have noted before: In my other life, I'm a cowboy. And in the current issue of Cowboys & Indians -- The Premiere Magazine of the West -- I chat with director Timur Bekmambetov and lead player Benjamin Walker about Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, an audacious mash-up of horror and history that claims The Great Emancipator was a monster eliminator. You can read all about it here.

From Psycho to Juno: Andrew Sarris wrote about the movies that mattered

If you are a film buff of a certain age, you almost certainly have somewhere on your bookshelf a battered, well-thumbed paperback copy of Andrew Sarris’ The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968, one of the handful of truly indispensable books about movies ever published. I’m the proud owner of a first-edition copy, purchased back in the day for the princely sum of $2.95, and I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have stolen from… er, referenced it, and been inspired by it, during the past several decades.

It’s the book that more or less established the ground rules for judging the works of key American film directors (and foreign filmmakers who dabbled in English-language cinema) according to the standards of the auteur theory, a still-controversial concept -- despite the contributions of myriad collaborators, every significant film ultimately reflects the vision of one individual, its director, who is that film’s sole “author” – that originated with French critics (and future filmmakers) such as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, but was popularized on these shores by the esteemed Andrew Sarris himself. Like millions of other academics, film critics and plain ol' movie buffs, I devoured the volume at an impressionable age, and took Sarris' judgments (even those I disagreed with) to heart.

I was honored to meet Sarris on just a few occasions, most memorably during a panel discussion at the 1989 Sarasota French Film Festival, when I found myself on stage next to him and Molly Haskell, his lovely wife and fellow cineaste, and silently thanked God that the festival organizers inexplicably considered me worthy to be seated up there alongside them (and a few other august folks). The effortlessly ingratiating couple actually made me feel, fleetingly, like an equal – but, of course, I knew, and know, better.

At the time, I asked Sarris, politely but eagerly, when he might be writing a sequel to his masterwork. Sarris smiled warmly – as I’m sure he smiled the zillion or so other times some acolyte posed the same question – and offered a vague promise of “considering” the idea. Truth to tell, though, I always suspected that, like most film critics, he had a natural-born aversion to sequels.  

Andrew Sarris died Wednesday at the age of 83 – decades after solidifying his position among the pantheon of influential and essential American film critics, and after more than six decades of offering erudite, perceptive, and just plain fun to read essays and reviews for The Village Voice, New York Observer and other outlets. To give you some idea of his range: He was one of the first U.S. critics to recognize the greatness of Psycho – his annual Ten Best lists routinely embraced a stunning diversity of films and filmmakers – and nearly 50 years later, he chose, with an almost gleefully defiant fervor, Juno as the best American movie of 2007.

My deepest sympathies and best wishes go out to Molly Haskell, and to those friends and colleagues who knew Sarris intimately. As for myself, I feel disconsolately melancholy right now, as I consider that halcyon era – roughly speaking, the early 1960s to the late ‘70s – when film critics like Sarris, Haskell, Pauline Kael, Stanley Kauffmann, Judith Crist and a young whippersnapper named Roger Ebert wrote passionately and provocatively about cinema as art and entertainment. At the risk of sounding like someone besotted with nostalgia: It was a time when films and the people who wrote about them seemed a great deal more substantial, and were taken much more seriously, than they are in our present time.

At the same time, though, I think of Sarris maintaining his enthusiasm and optimism for cinema as long as he did. And I think of my friend Roger Ebert turning 70 a couple days ago, still going strong and writing brilliantly. With those two inspiring examples to guide me, how can I let a little thing like my upcoming 60^th birthday slow me down? Besides, I should remind myself, as I often remind my students, that great movies still are being made. And today, arguably now more than ever, those great movies – and the auteurs who make them – still need dedicated champions to keep spreading the good word. 

Father's Day

On a weekend when I am being treated to all manner of culinary delights by my son -- who, as I often have noted, is an upstanding and outstanding young man solely because of his mother's influence -- I find myself thinking of my own father, who departed this realm six years ago. Here is a link to the tribute I paid him back in 2006. I think he would be amused to see it has attracted two comments by Generic Viagra. That, or it would totally piss him off.

Update: On second thought, I think I'll go ahead and delete the spam.