A Broad’s Laugh: On Pauline Kael by Richard Kramer (Los Angeles Review of Books) And there was one more moment between us. She called me. She was in the hospital, although she didn’t say that. Her voice was weak, this writer whose voice was always so strong, all brass section, all parade. ‘What will become of all of you?’ she asked. ‘What will you do … Continue reading Richard Kramer on Kael
Phil Dellio: Something I’ve said more than once over the years is that the three biggest influences on me among writers are Pauline Kael, Bill James, and Greil Marcus. I consider myself lucky to have had some contact with two of them. I interviewed Marcus back when I first started writing, and he later contributed a few comments to my old fanzine; the past couple … Continue reading Kellow & Kael VIII (Phil Dellio interviews Brian Kellow)
Phillip Lopate reviews the bio in Film Comment: “Anyone who has hung around film critic circles will know that narrowing human thinness and provincialism that can set in when there is no other focus but movie talk.” Nick Pinkerton pans the book at Sundance Now blog: “I doubt I would’ve read Kellow’s Kael bio were it not for the fact that I was paid to … Continue reading Kellow & Kael (+ Schwartz), VII [updated]
I know, I said I was done with all this, but there’s just too much good stuff to ignore (someone could compile a book of interesting reviews about this book)*. I strongly recommend reading all of these, they are not perfunctory. The Cordial Enmity Of Joan Didion And Pauline Kael (Evan Hughes, The Awl) The Perils of Reading About Pauline Kael (Mary Pols, Time) The … Continue reading Kellow & Kael VI
It’s becoming pretty clear to me that I’m not going to be able to keep up with the incredible deluge of Kael stuff floating around the web right now, so this may or may not be the last roundup for a bit. Teaser alert, though: we have some original content slated for here as well, but that’s a little down the road. Anyway, here’s a … Continue reading Kellow & Kael V
And the hits kust keep on coming… Tom Carson: “Unlike those sturdy adolescents whose sexual initiation (‘Tante Alice wasn’t a blood relative’) or political primal scene (‘The Pinkertons shot Pops at noon’) made their fifteenth birthdays memorable, the most transformative event of mine was neither erotic nor radicalizing. Except, perhaps, in totally figurative senses of both words. Having noticed I liked movies, my parents gave … Continue reading Kellow & Kael IV [updated]
And the reviews keep coming: Jason Bailey, Village Voice: “While Kellow’s analysis is often trenchant (‘The life was seeping out of the film movement of the 1970s, and she knew it. All the more reason, then, to intensify her advocacy for the movies she loved, even for those that she thought simply showed promise’), his conclusions are frequently puzzling. He slams Kael’s appraisal of Ellen … Continue reading Kellow & Kael III (+ Nelson & Clint)
Some recent Kael items, including reviews of Brian Kellow’s forthcoming biography: What She Said: The doings and undoings of Pauline Kael, by Nathan Heller in the New Yorker Also by Heller in the New Yorker, Five Classic Pauline Kael Reviews Mad About Her: Pauline Kael, Loved and Loathed. A. O. Scott and Manohla Dargis discuss Kael in the New York Times. A pugilist, thank god. … Continue reading Kellow & Kael II
Couple early previews of Brian Kellow’s Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark: Joe Meyers: Kellow writes from the point of view of an admirer of Kael’s — like many of us, he came under the spell of one of her review collections when he was a movie-mad teen and then followed her week-by-week for the rest of her tenure at The New Yorker. The … Continue reading Kellow & Kael I
