Ed Howard and Jason Bellamy's maiden voyage over at The House -- a comprehensive (to put it mildly) debate on the career of David Fincher -- is an odd piece of contemporary film criticism: endlessly engaging, without a whiff of pretension or vitriol, and written in easily understandable words. That's so crazy it just might work.
2 comments:
Craig: Thanks for the very kind words. If the tone of our debate is as you described, we have succeeded, and I'm pleased.
Without sounding too proud, I think that we've set our bar pretty high with this first effort. And the subject has a heck of a lot to do with it. Fincher's work is almost ideal for this kind of discussion -- very debatable, and so welcoming to multiple viewpoints.
Anyway, maybe all of our conversations won't be as "endlessly engaging" as this one (again, if the description fits, Fincher deserves the majority of the praise), but I hope at least that your other observations will always apply: criticism/analysis without pretension, vitriol or unnecessary English elegance that, in my mind, often makes a critic's opinions harder to pinpoint rather than easier.
If at any point Ed and I fail to meet those latter benchmarks, if at any point it seems like our collaborations suggest we are ending the discussion rather than starting a larger one, I'm counting on you to let us know.
High praise, Craig. Thanks a lot! I'm just glad to see we've triggered some conversation about a great and too-often underestimated director. In fact, I think I found, in the course of our conversation, that even I'd been underestimating him.
Thanks again.
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