Ray has argued that the dated aspects of films directed by William Wellman are more valuable than the relative "timelessness" of those directed by HowardHawks because they have more to tell us about the worlds they came from-which is another way of saying that film criticism can and should be a way of writing about the world.'

["I am a man, and consider nothing human to be foreign to rue"],

The American taboo against discussing class

Mythologies about macho power and the pride of wanton blood-spilling are arguably at the roots of what put George W. Bush twice into office, but this is something we've generally allowed ourselves to laugh at only after it's too late to undo most of the damage.

INVOCATION: Dear readers, help us to deliver ourselves from our enslavement to production values, our ridiculous attachment to slickness which makes filmgoing in most sectors an exclusive subscription to the puerile pastimes and philosophies of stupid, vulgar millionaires.

"I would say that I take them more seriously than someone who has to write about them twice a week can afford to"

One used to assume, whenever one saw a person walking down the street speaking loudly to no one in particular, that this person was insane. Today one commonly assumes that this same person is a sane individual speaking to someone else on a phone, but it might also be possible to assume that the implied rejection of one's immediate surroundings

I think there's this weird thing at work now with the way people relate to, specifically, mainstream cinema. When they watch those movies, they like to be on the receiving end . . . and the sound is so loud, and the images are so powerful, they want to be totally passive. But then, a few months later, the salve film is on DVD, and they can watch it

intentionality is generally a hornet's nest.