#criticism

It's far easier to write why something is terrible than why it's good. If you're reviewing a film and you decide "This is a movie I don't like," basically you can take every element of the film and find the obvious flaw, or argue that it seems ridiculous, or like a parody of itself, or that it's not as good as something similar that was done in a previous film. What's hard to do is describe why you like something. Because ultimately, the reason things move people is very amorphous. You can be cerebral about things you hate, but most of the things you like tend to be very emotive. ↗

— Chuck Klosterman

#dislikes #lieks #movies

Making judgments on films is in many ways so peculiarly vaporous an occupation that the only question is why, beyond the obvious opportunities for a few lectures fees and a little careerism at a dispiritingly self-limiting level, anyone does it in the first place. ↗

— Joan Didion

#criticism #film #movie #reviewers #movies

A lifelong movie I already knew the ending to ↗

— Jason Najum

#essay #memoir #pop-culture #movies

Goya’s savage verve, his harsh, brutal genius, captivated Des Esseintes. On the other hand, the universal admiration his works had won rather put him off, and for years he had refrained from framing them, for fear that if he hung them up, the first idiot who saw them would might feel obliged to dishonour them with a few inanities and go into stereotyped ecstasies over them. ↗

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

#criticism #goya #life #art

What is vital and healthy does not necessarily survive... An art, a whole civilization, may at any time slip through men's fingers in a very few years and be gone beyond recovery. If we are alive when such a thing is happening we shall hardly notice it until too late; and it is most unlikely that we shall know its causes. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#art

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it. ↗

— Moses Hadas

#books #classic-insult #irony #literary-criticism #time

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed. ↗

— Herman Melville

#poverty #poor

Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#criticism #jane-austen #london

In criticism, I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me. ↗

— Edgar Allan Poe

#critics #criticism

I don't see how the study of language and literature can be separated from the question of free speech, which we all know is fundamental to our society. [p.92] ↗

— Northrop Frye

#literary-criticism #education