yep. the Z essay was remarkable only for what it wasn't: insane ramblings from a paranoid-schizophrenic, which is what he sounds like when he turns a review of Salt into a tea-party manifesto, or any number of his other recent fever-induced ramblings. What he does in the Criterion pieces is largely straightforward, pseudo-academic, trite, and devoid of any real personal insight - which is what the best essays offer. All they really do is prove he is indeed capable of coherence, or at least he is in the hands of an actual editor, but not much else. I hate that they give him any work though, and I hope his recent descent into madness has put an end to the relationship. Anyone who pens lines likedomino harvey wrote:I find his polished stuff dull and unmemorable-- he has no ideas about film outside of the flamethrower approach he's honed at NYP. His essays for Criterion are like the studious but rote papers that bored academics parse together a couple times a year for tenure-required conferences, the sort that audiences fidget politely through and then instantly forget when the next person starts speaking
simply can not be taken seriously. for fuck's sake.Such escapist action tropes somehow make suspense indistinguishable from sedition.
