Eric wrote:Uri wrote:And then there was Clayburgh. Her movie was a huge event and she was the It girl, excuse me, woman of the moment and I can see why An Unmarried Woman and her turn in it were the right thing in the right time, but – and I know it's my fault and not hers – I'm totally turned off by her persona. Maybe it's her sloppy posture, maybe it's her voice, maybe it's the bizarre way her upper lip meets her nose, I just can't overcome something about her and immerse myself in her performances. Sorry.
So if Magilla is Rex Reed, that must leave John Simon for Uri.
Ok, growing up being familiar with the reviews of Ze'ev Rav-Nof, Dan Fainaro, Uri Kline, Me'ir Schnizer – all of them, I'm sure, household names around here, I had to do a little checking, and I came up with the following:
John Simon, the most dyspeptic film critic of all, goes off on Atom Egoyan at the New York Film Festival.
BY CHARLES TAYLOR
If nothing else, the criticism of John Simon has kept alive a sense of history. No one writing today has done more to uphold the aesthetic standards of the Third Reich. As film critic for the National Review and theater critic for New York magazine, Simon's specialty is making punching bags out of people whose looks he finds repellent, especially those who don't conform to traditional modes of beauty. (Barbra Streisand has been a favorite target over the years: Early in her career, he said she looked like "a tremulous young borzoi.") If a performer isn't Simon's idea of pinup material, the merits of his or her work are beside the point. It was one of his remarks that once earned him a plate of hot goulash in the face courtesy of actress Sylvia Miles. His prejudices often make him sloppy with the facts. In his review of Razl Ruiz's film of Proust's "Time Regained," he identified Ruiz as "like Proust, a homosexual." As Film Comment pointed out, that should come as some shock to Mrs. Ruiz.
Now I know who and what I am and I'll have to live with it. Knowing that none of you were ever subjected to a less then objective and pristine judgment should be my comfort in this low point of my life.