The House Next Door (Free subscription) | 24/11/2009
By Aaron Cutler Andrew Sarris wrote of Elia Kazan in The American Cinema that “his career as a whole reflects an unending struggle between a stable camera and a jittery one.” Historically that’s more or less been the rap on Kazan—a highly-acclaimed filmmaker with many strong titles, but one whose work was too simultaneously bland and conflicted for the critical...
San Fransisco Chronicle (Free subscription) | 12/11/2009
... with the origins of American reviewing in descriptive notes. The talking heads include critics Andrew Sarris, Molly Haskell, grand old man Stanley Kauffmann, B. Ruby Rich, Roger Ebert, Kenneth Turan, Harry Knowles of aintitcool.com fame and many others - maybe too many. It's a lot to cover in 81 minutes, and we get more breadth than depth. Peary mentions early writers like Otis Ferguson...
Not Coming to a Theater Near You (Free subscription) | 10/11/2009
Director Gerald Peary emphasizes the essential role that disagreements have played in the history of film criticism: from the quarrels of Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael to the frequent arguments of Siskel and Ebert during their influential years as the co-hosts of At the Movies , critics and their audiences have thrived on divergences of opinion. Peary knows that the joys of reading...
