Crapstorm Effect

AFI Fest programming director Robert Koehler (who’s also reviewing Sundance flicks for Variety).stopped by to say that Debra Granik‘s Winter’s Bone, the second-hottest Sundance title besides Crayfish…no, Catfish (which I’ll be seeing in two or three hours time), is “wildly over-rated..in fact the heat it’s been getting here is a demonstration of what’s wrong with the Sundance Film Festival. It’s the same thing with regular critics who sit through crap film after crap film, and then when something fairly decent comes along they’re so grateful that they over-praise it.”

9 thoughts on “Crapstorm Effect

  1. First of all, the AFI sucks as both an organization and as a third or fourth run festival. And anyone who works for them cannot be trusted.

    Especially a guy like Koehler who resorts to ridiculous hyperbole like when called Maher’s Religulous “brilliant” (which it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, though, it is enjoyable) or this nugget in reference to Monster’s Ball: a movie “bolstered by a poetic, intelligent sensibility not seen in an American film since Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line.”

    Why not see the film first before giving any sort of credence to the opinion of a guy like that? It’s not like he’s Anthony Lane or something.

  2. “It’s the same thing with regular critics who sit through crap film after crap film, and then when something fairly decent comes along they’re so grateful that they over-praise it.”

    Like, for example, THE HURT LOCKER, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS or STAR TREK….

  3. Death, those were two masterpieces and a solid genre outing, but the perfect example of this would be AN EDUCATION. I liked it, I’m not saying it was HAPPY, ENGLAND, but compared to the word out of Sundance the emperor is certainly underdressed.

  4. Well Koehler’s review of The Dry Land was unnecessarily harsh. To wit:

    “The pic applies a melodramatic sledgehammer to the real issue of PTSD, and the combination of crude storytelling manipulation with undistinguished filmmaking proves counterproductive. Editing is full of hiccups and odd timing, and the dominant shooting style — handheld camera setups and wide-angle lenses — lacks imagination.”

    I saw the movie and it is not “undistinguished filmmaking”, in fact, it was quite an accomplishment given the thematic territory.

    Is this guy a bitter failed filmmaker?

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