Scott Foundas (L.A. Weekly) replies to Ebert's critic-bait

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Dear Roger:
Save for the storied contretemps between Pauline Kael and Andrew
Sarris, film critics are generally far too busy reviewing the new
movies that open each week to spend much time reviewing each other.
So I was understandably surprised to read your January 8 Chicago
Sun-Times editorial â€œIn Defense of the â€˜Worst Movie of the Year,â€™â€
in which you lambasted my opinion of Crash, a movie you have
repeatedly praised as being the best of 2005...
Iâ€™ve said that Crash, which was co-written and directed by Paul
Haggis, doesnâ€™t accurately reflect the city of Los Angeles as Iâ€™ve
come to know it after more than a decade of living here (during
which time Iâ€™ve made lots of meaningful connections with others,
none of which have been the result of a car accident). But as I
think back on the film, Iâ€™m not even sure that it reflects life as
we know it on planet Earth. The characters in Crash donâ€™t feel like
three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood human beings so much as
calculated â€œtypesâ€ plugged by Haggis into a schematic thesis about
how we are all, in the course of any given day, the perpetrators
and the victims of some racial prejudice. (Nobody in Haggisâ€™
universe is allowed to be merely one or the other.) They have no
inner lives. They fail to exist independently of whatever
stereotype theyâ€™re on hand to embody and/or debunk. Erudite
carjackers? A man who canâ€™t remember his own girlfriendâ€™s
ethnicity? You may see such things as â€œparables,â€ but I call it
sloppy, sanctimonious screenwriting of the kind that, as one
colleague recently suggested, should be studied in film classes as
a prime example of what not to do.

Roger and Me (Open in New Window)

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Parts Connexion

Topic - Scott Foundas (L.A. Weekly) replies to Ebert's critic-bait - clarkjohnsen 10:01:13 01/30/06 (2)

I guess SAG agreed with Ebert ! - EdM 14:53:41 01/30/06 (1)

"Ensemble Acting" is scarcely of Academy stature. But ya gotta remember... - clarkjohnsen 15:12:44 01/30/06 (0)

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