David Denby
A Taste of Cindy
Today's Post gives Cindy Adams a much-deserved page-one teaser: "WTC: Why I hate this lousy movie."
Inside, on page 14, Cindy--self-nominated as "New York's watchdog" (motion seconded! And carried!)--touches all the critical bases:
* Filmgoing experience? "Slow-moving and formulaic."
* Commercial prospects? Oliver Stone's "handlers are moving him around with a tweezer. Must be, like on that actual day itself, they, too, can smell death."
* Factual accuracy? "Goshen to Manhattan for a cop driver on an empty highway at that hour is an hour and 15....He couldn't still be driving at 6 a.m."
* The ethics of commodifying and aestheticizing the mass murder of thousands of people, thereby reinforcing the horrifying success of the terrorists in their principal aim of creating an unforgettable spectacle? "When it came to filming, the city wouldn't allow Oliver Stone to close off those streets again and again, dress them with ash and debris and personal belongings and bleeding bodies, and more screams and agonies and horror and people jumping from windows...[F]ilm crews were permitted establishing shots, skyline shots, outdoor location shots only as close as Canal Street. The rest was newsreel footage, CGI graphics and whatever real pain they could fake in the studios in L.A.....I now report these Hollywood people out for a buck should have left us alone."
Cf. David Denby in the New Yorker, calling United 93 "a hundred percent professional filmmaking" and "true existential filmmaking," in the belief that settles anything. read more »
Plus, a restaurant manager kissed her! And a waiter!
Today's score:
Five Yorkies!
Read Their Lips: Six Months on the Mouth of American Movies With David Denby
[...]
"Scarlett Johansson wears her blond hair up, which brings out the oval shape of her face and the soft beauty of her features, and she, too, has an unusual upper lip, curved and fleshy, and a low, smoky voice." - GAME PLAYING, by David Denby, The New Yorker, January 9, 2006.
"Chiyo, lips painted in a crimson circle, does attain a surpassing chic, but her paramount desire, which is to preserve her virginity for the highest bidder and then become the mistress of a handsome married gent (Ken Watanabe) who was once nice to her as a little girl, isn't very attractive psychologically, and provides little that we can root for." - BEASTS AND BEAUTIES, by David Denby, The New Yorker, December 19, 2005.
"Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Cash in the bio-pic 'Walk the Line,' is a remarkable-looking actor, with deep-set blue eyes, a long chin, and a scarred upper lip that serves as a nice equivalent to Cash's crags and creases." - RINGS OF FIRE, by David Denby, The New Yorker, November 21, 2005.
"Bill Murray has strong cheekbones, a lordly crest of hair, and thin lips that he presses together in an act that suggests self-containment more than disapproval." - LONERS, by David Denby, The New Yorker, August 8, 2005.
Related: "Sally, who always disconcerted me because she was lushly beautiful, and in dark auburn colors, like the one model in the fashion magazine who did not conform to cliché, Sally with her soft lips and lustrous head of reddish-brown hair had never said anything that was the least bit interesting..." - Great Books, by David Denby, 1997, p. 168."One of Shapiro's students, Francesca, a tall young woman with ripely rosy lips and a head of tousled hair, spoke English so well, with so little accent, that I had hardly noticed she was Italian." - ibid, p. 238. read more »
—Matt Haber
