Everyone needs a little more Nick Pinkerton in their life. So hurrah for his new weekly column-slash-eloquently-mad-personal-rant at SundanceNOW. How we think back with fondness on the early days of Reverse Shot’s blog, from where Pinkerton would humble the film world with a swift flick of his mighty pen. His byline now haunts something he has dubbed “The Classical.” Here’s why:
“I feel compelled to argue, though, that this column’s title is not so fusty as it seems at first glance. ‘The Classical’ refers to the critical writings of Maurice Scherer a/k/a Eric Rohmer on cinema’s ‘classical’ age (‘The classical age of cinema is not behind us, but ahead’), which I have long admired and puzzled over, as well as a title from the songbook of Mark E. Smith’s long-running dance outfit The Fall, of whom the late DJ John Peel famously said: ‘They are always different. They are always the same.’ This gets at the particular conversation that Smith’s group, in its prime, upheld between traditionalism (the rhythmic bedrock of American rockabilly and its physical presence; Mancunian provincialism) and progress (the responsiveness to new, outre currents in music, from Krautrock to rave; the continual skin-shedding reincarnations). That balance remains an inspiration.”
With that in mind, get going on your reading. Last week’s introductory installment is here. This week, Nick takes on the “mummies who populate Film Forum ‘pon a Tuesday afternoon” and “that Hazlitt of hype, that Johnson of jargon: Whoever writes ‘The Buzz’ capsules on the Internet Movie Database’s Now Playing/ Coming Soon section.”
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