REVERSE SHOT CALLS OUT DARGIS
For those of you who’ve been reading indieWIRE‘s film reviews recently, you’ll know the group of young writers at Reverse Shot — who have partnered with indieWIRE to provide film criticism — like to play rough. (See their review of Palindromes a few weeks back.) Manohla Dargis, the fairly recent addition to the New York Times reviewing team, doesn’t mind taking off the gloves herself. I wonder how she’d feel about what Reverse Shot was saying about her entries on the Times‘s “Cannes journal” on their blog.
Some excerpts:
“This is a real gem from Manohla Dargis’s Cannes diary: ‘I’m leery of writing more because I don’t think the film has distribution and I don’t feel comfortable bringing the weight of this paper into the mix at this point.’ She’s talking about Atom Egoyan’s new film Where the Truth Lies (notes from the press conference can be found here) with Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth, and Alison Lohman. Manohla, please stop. If you’re worried about distribution deals and throwing the NY Times‘ influence around, then I guess you guys will have to start steadfastly refusing to review those films in the New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films that arrive without a theatrical release plan. And you should probably end the stupid Cannes diary and pack it up, because I hear that lots of films come to the croisette unsold every year.”
“Is anyone else getting tired of (or even reading) the NY Times Cannes Blog? At least Scott and Dargis, in their back-bending efforts to show their readers the “behind-the-scenes” action of the festival (didn’t DePalma’s Femme Fatale lesbo-heist say everything that needed to be said?) have dropped the critical veneer and revealed a little about themselves, coming off like nothing so much as a pair of socialites who happen to have a forum for their opinions. Yesterday’s gem “How Is Cannes Like High School?” is pretty classic. P.S. – Manohla, how can you claim to have been afraid to throw your hat in the ring on the Egoyan yet pump off this on Manderlay, which is also without distribution: “the film is every bit as boring as Dogville?”
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