A Few Words About A few words about...™ Oliver! -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Dick]

I don't know what this means, except I assume it has something to do with Pauline Kael? Did she not like Lean's epics? I've only read a few of her writings, as I pretty much have zero need for film critics. I don't recall ever agreeing with a single word she ever wrote. She always came off like someone who was desperate to be considered cool. Her reviews never convinced me that she even saw the picture she was reviewing.

Well, Pauline seemed to me to be an often pompous, grumpy old maid who seemed to dislike most films except those made by her favorite directors (De Palma, etc.) Nevertheless, I bought all of her books and found her writings provocative and entertaining.

 

[PMF]

Kael soup, anyone?

I don't know what this means, except I assume it has something to do with Pauline Kael? Did she not like Lean's epics? I've only read a few of her writings, as I pretty much have zero need for film critics. I don't recall ever agreeing with a single word she ever wrote. She always came off like someone who was desperate to be considered cool. Her reviews never convinced me that she even saw the picture she was reviewing.

You are correct. Pauline Kael's review of Ryan's Daughter was scathing, to say the least. Legend has it that Kael's was the catalyst review that sent Sir David Lean into a self-imposed exile for 14 years. "A Passage to India" became his comeback film.
Meanwhile, lest - or Lester - we forget, Sir David Lean had also directed "Oliver Twist".

 

[B-ROLL]

You are correct. Pauline Kael's review of Ryan's Daughter was scathing, to say the least. Legend has it that Kael's was the catalyst review that sent Sir David Lean into a self-imposed exile for 14 years. "A Passage to India" became his comeback film.
Meanwhile, lest - or Lester - we forget, Sir David Lean had also directed "Oliver Twist".

I've found the Oliver Twist to be more difficult than the Peppermint Twist or just The Twist ...

 

[Thomas T]

I don't know what this means, except I assume it has something to do with Pauline Kael? I don't recall ever agreeing with a single word she ever wrote. She always came off like someone who was desperate to be considered cool.

Kael was cool! She was the first "cool" film critic after the stodginess of the likes of Bosley Crowther, Stanley Kaufmann, Hollis Alptert etc. She marched to her own drummer. While film critics fawned over Last Year At Marienbad and Hiroshima Mon Amour, she said they sucked. When critics dismissed Bonnie And Clyde, she single handedly saved it and if it weren't for her, the film would hardly have received the critical acclaim and Oscar nominations that followed. She was liberating in an era of stuffy academic American film critics and embraced film makers like Peckinpah and De Palma who worked in less respectable genres than the William Wylers, David Leans, Stanley Kramers and other directors embraced by the establishment. She was like the French film critics in that way.

 

[Thomas T]

I've got an even worse one. At the West Side Story re-release in about 1967 or so, the management inserted an intermission in the middle of the Rumble! They placed it at the moment Riff is driven back against the fence without his knife. Boom! Intermission! I couldn't believe my eyes!

Very odd since the film has an appropriate intermission (replicated in the current blu ray) which comes right after Tony leaves the drug store where he works and the camera pulls back ..... intermission ... entr'acte ... the second half begins with the I Feel Pretty number in the flower shop. Robert Wise didn't want an intermission but gave theaters the option if they wanted one with an intermission that he felt was appropriate.