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Read other letters about this article
Someone just wrote: "..Someone who hates film wouldn't be so passionately moved when presented with a crappy film, surely...."
My first response is "Maybe so, maybe not". But, then, for various reasons (one of them being that I've usually, by mid-morning, read at least two or three publications that are rather more "solid" than Salon.com...and I'm gathering that Ms. Zacharek does the same), I'm also inclined to consider that Ms. Zacherek's reviews seem, also for varous reasons, calculatedly reactionary-----which is to say that (as with a lot of the writing at Salon these days) I can almost hear the careerist wheels spinning.....
If Ms. Zacharek LIKED the movie (or any of the movies she's disparaged in the past year or so)?...well, she'd be lost in a chorus of approving voices. So, how will she distinguish herself and be, if nothing else, the recognizable writer who gave a ROTTEN REVIEW?...
That's easy....just be the person who writes well (she usually does), but hated the movie. If nothing else, "Rotten Tomatatoes" and amazon.com (once the DVD's available) will boldly (in terms of typeface) feature her NAME and "SALON.COM" (!!!!!)
and, thus, are the careers (usually sufficently lucrative, if utterly predictable) of professional contrarians and curmudgeons made.........Kingsley Amis and Evelyn Waugh and Dorthy Parker were doing this sixty or seventy years ago......
Waugh, Like Zacharek, was also a master of the affectedly-wistful, but still stinging "Oh...I just don't know...I was so EXCITED when I heard about someone was doing/making/writing it...but the movie/book/play just left me feeling...oh?, like SOMETHING was missing.... you know? It's just so ODD, after all I'd expected!...."
The main "thing" is to GET YOUR NAME OUT THERE....
Zacharek does this very well, asnd my third impulse is to say "More power to you!" Rent does need to be paid.
Still, I read this review and was reminded of her review of "Sweeney Todd". I'm no remarkable fan or connisseur of Sondheim or, for that matter, musicals in general, but I read her review and wondered why she didn't recuse herself....since she obviously did't like Sondheim to-begin-with or musicals (or, as should have been embarassing for her after reading the letters, KNOW much about them either).
I read this reveiw and thought that pretty-much everything she disliked about the movie could be applied to the musical (if not, then she didn't make that sufficiently clear). In short, my impression was that she'd dislike seeing the musical....so why would she want to review the movie of the musical, unless she wanted to have her name at the top of the "Rotten Tomatoes" list of supposedly influential critics (albeit those who hated the thing)?
Oh well, I'm sure she'll stay in work. There are various ways of jump-starting a career as a critic, and she seems to have settled on one of most time-proven ones.
Sincerely,
David Terry
www.davidterryart.com
