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The musician: John Darnielle on criticism

Hughes & Darnielle Saw The Mountain Goats (John Darnielle and Peter Hughes) this weekend and I can't get the show out of my head. (Not only that, I don't want to.) Darnielle writes and performs songs that earn the adjective…

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The critic: Manohla Dargis on film criticism

I came across this interview, several years old, with New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis at senses of cinema. This was back when she was still writing for the LA Times, and I think she has some incisive things…

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The filmmaker: Wayne Kramer on critics & criticism

Paul Walker is scared. And he's running. Wayne Kramer, the director of "The Cooler" and "Running Scared," took the negative reviews of his last picture pretty hard. They weren't all negative, though. Roger Ebert gave "Running Scared" three stars and…

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All trails lead to 'The Searchers'

Ethan Edwards, John Wayne and the ghost of Harry Carey. I had a favorite lit professor in college, Larry Frank, who said that all of literature could be seen through the looking glass of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." He made…

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Snakes on a ... zzzzzzz

It's about snakes. On a plane, bitch! For many months we've been hearing about the "brilliant" high-concept of "Snakes on a Plane." Hey, the whole premise is right there in the title! I guess after "Die Hard on a Plane"…

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Product placement: The lives of 'The Sopranos'

An extended family moment: Blanca, Hector, AJ. Never send a business reporter to do a critic's job. I'm sometimes amused by the naïveté of my critical and academic colleagues when it comes to the business realities of how movies are…

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Critics: Irrelevant, or just... right?

X-Men: Flameout. Dave Kehr asks: Now that “The Da Vinci Code��? has fallen another 40 percent (according to today’s New York Times), can we expect all of those trade papers that ran “Film Critics Proved Irrelevant��? stories to come back…

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The March of 'The Sopranos'

Best. Line. Ever. Christopher Maltisante (Michael Imperioli), discouraging his newly pregnant wife from counting their chicken: Remember the penguin movie, how you cried? You sit on an egg for months, one little thing goes wrong, you're left with nothin'.

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How Not to Write About Film

The Real World: Atlanta. The New York Times Book Review wastes nearly four pages on the dumbest, most banal crap about (ostensibly) movies and movie criticism that I have ever come across. It's called "How to Write About Film" and…

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'The Break-Up' & 'Superman Returns': Not what you think

Lovelorn Supe: Looking for Lois in all the wrong places. Despite the marketing campaign, the makers of "The Break-Up" say their movie is not supposed to be a romantic comedy -- which is precisely what many critics criticized it for…