Word: artful
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Manhattan, 1978; the opening of a gallery show of Manny Farber's paintings. The art historian Jonathan Crary was there: "I was in a group around Manny when a young guy cut in, saying, 'I have to introduce myself, I'm one of your biggest fans,' and he went on with a meandering account of how Manny's writing had influenced him. Watching this total stranger, Manny stood there with a look of skeptical appraisal, until the guy concluded with, 'Your work has changed my life.' Manny replied convincingly, 'I doubt...
...asked to present to him. I'd gotten to know him in the '70s when, as editor of Film Comment magazine, I'd run some of the last pieces he'd write in a 35-year spell of movie criticism, before he devoted full time to his art work and teaching at the University of California, San Diego. So I was aware that this Arizona native could be as courtly as a ranchhand in church; also that he wasn't reluctant to flash his acerbic side. We were chatting on a Telluride lawn, and, after I'd taken some conversational...
This summer has proved that the action film is where most of the talent has gone: into the technique and technology of pure moviemaking, of getting the viewer's blood racing by blowing stuff up. Handmade art is on the wane; machine art is here to stay. The gentle crafts of acting, of sculpting witty dialogue, of a director's subtle sense of where to lead the camera and the audience may be in decline, but the second-unit guys and stuntmen and CGI wizards are at the top of their game. It's not the highest form...
...Death Race 2000, which we'll get to later, the new picture was scripted and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who did the Resident Evil series and a few other artifacts of high-hackdom. (This Anderson, a Brit, is not ever to be confused with the U.S.-bred, high-art fave Paul Thomas Anderson, of There Will Be Blood renown). But the movie is less a one-man show than a highly complex, finely tuned product, manufactured by an army of geek specialists and cyber-grease monkeys. What Death Race loses in soul - which would be extraneous baggage...
...Irish-Catholic heritage makes him a demographic dream in appealing to swing voters. He is both a Washington insider and a hero to working-class Americans and labor union leaders, in part because of his rhetoric, but also because of his own middle class upbringing. He has mastered the art of the network Sunday show television appearance as well as the classic vice-presidential skill of savagely attacking his political opponents with both a smile and the use of casual, kitchen-table idioms...