Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for September 29, 2015

Critics dun us with their dubiously applicable opinions strained through their own filters. I enjoy conversations with such people, but I don’t enjoy reading any critic who takes him or her self too seriously. If even I, the great and powerful K&K, can appreciate that others can have valid and insightful opinions that might change my own, then all critics should leave room for a self-deprecating smile. I say give this strip’s critic a stone tablet and a chisel, and make him publish his review on it. By the time he’s done, we’ll be watching “Jurassic World”.

I didn’t know that Michael Bay made movies back in the Stone Age.

The actors met the critic at the club, afterwards.

Rocky pre-I?

The Critic’s comment: great material I may borrow and save for the next really boring family gathering that I can’t think of a way to get out of.

Ah! critical thinking…..

“And with the birth of Art came the inevitable afterbirth: the Art Critic.”

“Artfully presented, to be sure, but the plot is merely a tired rehash of the movie put out two years ago by the Forest People.”

Like most comic strips.

Plato’s cave.

That’s Wiley there, on the right; us on the left.

I give it two Opposable Thumbs Up !!

@HisTyness, History of the World, Pt.I There was much “relief.”

…..and soon to be knocked off his rock….er……?

Isn’t it amazingly silly that people get paid to tell us their opinion?

Am sure someone will think that their technique was used in the caves of France an Spain; but not true.Critics? Well such loved an hated for a long long time. An no admission price? Dat’s another problem since some even demand something for their blab, blab.

Good critics are good writers. Great critics are terrific writers. I always enjoyed reading the reviews of the top theater critics – Kenneth Tynan, George Jean Nathan, Walter Kerr, Alexander Woolcott, Stanley Kauffmann, Robert Brustein – who all displayed a wonderful facility of word craft and an extensive knowledge of dramatic arts..Cinema critics whose essays I have always enjoyed and learned from are writers of the quality of – Glenn Kenny, Vincent Canby, Dilys Powell, James Agee, Anthony Lane, Pauline Kael and André Bazin.

If you want to really learn and understand what film or theatre is about and have an enjoyable reading experience at the same time, I recommend any and all of the above writers.

When I was a kid (before TV) we used to do that at our parties. I forget what the name for it was, finger something.

The criticism I write—not for movies—is usually not so much judgmental as descriptive in such terms as to let the reader decide whether to pursue the item being discussed.

A Platonic movie critic!

http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm

Was that the name of the movie? Firefox is a browser.

As a former communications officer and pilot, I groan at the gross technical inaccuracies in some movies. My wife, the nurse, groans at the medical inaccuracies.

P.S. Both of us also groan at these same inaccuracies in the so-called evening news.

Here’s an idea of just how clueless some critics can be: When The Wizard of Oz premiered in 1939, one critic panned it saying it was “dull and unimaginative.”It seems that the movies critics like the least are the ones I like the most. It’s been this way for a long time.

This critic is reviewing a stone age Micheal Bay movie

Heck—most of us Dakotans groaned at the mountains gracing the North Dakota skyline in every landscape scene of the Bakken in “Blood and Oil”—not to mention the locals (all wearing bib overalls) drinking whiskey from the bottle, speaking in Utah/California accents, and generally acting like hooligans from somewhere. The only “North Dakota Nice” was from other immigrants to the boom. The crude oil was thick and black, not light and honey colored. And so on.

I hardly recognized myself.

oh well – wrong firefox i guess

“The Librarian swung on….Several times he had to flatten himself against the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by. He waited patiently as a herd of Critters crawled past, grazing on the contents of the choicer books and leaving behind them piles of small slim volumes of literary criticism…”……..Terry Pratchett Guards! Guards!