Word: criticizes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...painter and a movie critic, Manny, who died at 91 last week, was the enemy of the ornate, the long-winded, the self-important. His collages asserted the artistic value of small things in boxes; his writing championed the cramped brilliance of little men in tight spots - in the B movies he loved and, through his writing, helped raise from forgotten to fashionable, from gargoyles to saints. At the same time he sniped at critics' darlings like Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles. (Citizen Kane was "exciting but hammy.") Above all, he urged the moviegoer's attention away from plot...
...eight-cylinder vehicle from which some prankster removed the brakes. It's got the red meat of fanboy film ardor: cars with guns - the movie's tag line is "Gentlemen, start your weapons" - and cons with girls. Though the picture doesn't deserve to appear on any critic's 10-best list, it observes the minimum standards of modern action films, which is to say it looks smarter, talks sassier and moves faster than almost anything else on the market...
...bused in from another school, treat Dana with loud contempt, and the principal is ready and eager to close down the Drama Department, i.e. Dana. His grand idea has been to stage productions of old hit movies - Erin Brockovich played by teens - which are routinely panned by the local critic, another student at the school. No one cares for him, including his wife, Brie (Catherine Keener, in another of those roles that require her to do no more than laugh a lot at the hero's inadequacies...
...artist and a critic, he was the enemy of the ornate. Manny Farber, who died at 91 near San Diego, championed the beauty of small things in his collage work and the cramped brilliance of little men in tight spots in the B movies he loved--films that, through his writing, he helped raise from forgotten to fashionable. Son of a store owner in the mining town of Douglas, Ariz., he played football at Berkeley, then went East and upended movie criticism. Writing for the New Republic, the Nation, Time, Cavalier and a host of art and film journals, Farber...
TELEVISION The Black List HBO; Aug. 25; 9 p.m. E.T. This spare film collects 22 black celebrities' insights as told to critic Elvis Mitchell--from Toni Morrison (left) on how her race liberated her as a writer to Chris Rock on his dad's theory about competing with white people: "If you have six and the white guy has five, he wins...