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Between a critic and a crank

Tony Kushner knows the difference. He responds to Clive James' playground insults (see How Not To Write About Film) in kind, with a scathingly funny (and totally accurate) letter to the New York Times. The Pulitzer-winning writer of "Angels in…

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Movies 101: Opening Shots Project

"Barry Lyndon" opens with a bang. Any good movie -- heck, even the occasional bad one -- teaches you how to watch it. And that lesson usually starts with the very first image. I'm not talking necessarily about titles or…

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'Birth' of a Buñuelian Notion

My friend the film critic Richard T. Jameson made a clever and brilliant observation about Jonathan Glazer's "Birth," my favorite movie of 2004, before I'd even seen it. RTJ said he thought it was as if the Surrealist masterpiece "Un…

May contain spoilers

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Re: Saddam's penis

Satan bunks with Saddam. At The Hot Blog, David Poland has somehow gotten ahold of an obscenely funny memo from "South Park"'s Matt Stone, sent to the MPAA Ratings Board during negotiations over the rating for 1999's "South Park: Bigger,…

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From 'Gumnaam' to 'Ghost World' to... 'Lost'?

Enlarge image: "Jaan Pehechaan Ho" Terry Zwigoff ("Crumb," "Bad Santa," "Art School Confidential") said that as soon as he saw this musical number, "Jaan Pehechaan Ho," from the 1965 Bollywood production "Gumnaam," he knew he had to have it for…

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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…