Skip to main content

Plinkett reviews

Pardon me, I'm just recovering from pounding every review on this section of Red Letter Media, and trying to figure out just why they were so compelling. (I'd recommend watching at least the Phantom Menace review, just to get a taste. Trust me, it's worth it.) They're the first reviews I've ever seen that are in some cases almost as long as the films themselves—but they're so enjoyable I watched the ones even for movies I hadn't even seen before. Anyway, here's my bullet-point list:

1. They're really funny. That's the most obvious good part. The timing, delivery, and visuals are really good, and show some obvious hard work. The dude's wheedling drone was also great. I'm hearing it in my head now reading other people. The joke about how Lucas changed the title of Return of the Jedi (in the Sith review) had me cackling hours later. (The rape jokes, on the other hand, for me went too far in places.)

2. They go through the plot with a fine-toothed comb. I've never seen someone take so much care in explaining just how everything in these prequels makes no sense on the most basic logical level. I've been chipping away at a novel, and it gives me a good sense of how you would go through to tighten up the plot and make sure everything fits together.

3. They're great criticism. I thought at first that they would just be funny takedowns, but they actually reveal serious love of film and of the original series. They explain really clearly why the original films work so well. Obviously the first Star Wars weren't super-great art, but they clearly got something right. As a hyper-literal science guy, good, clear art criticism that I can understand is rare. As Keith Humphreys said the other day when talking about the usual art critics:
Perhaps I am too “low church”, but when I read art critics, I usually think three things: 
1) I have doctoral level education, and I can barely understand what you are saying
2) I suspect that you are writing more about yourself than the artist in question
3) You are making it harder rather than easier for people to get something out of the experience of art

Many people are intimidated by art and thus shy away from it. Jargon laden art criticism makes this problem more rather than less acute, and that makes me mad both on my own behalf and on behalf of other people who miss out on the richness of art because high-end criticism makes it seem over their head. In contrast, although it probably gets derided as mere “art appreciation class” instead of serious criticism, I am quite grateful when an expert relates plain-spoken observations about a painting that help me understand it better.
Good stuff.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why Did Reality Winner Leak to the Intercept?

So Reality Winner, former NSA contractor, is in federal prison for leaking classified information — for five years and three months, the longest sentence of any whistleblower in history. She gave documents on how Russia had attempted to hack vendors of election machinery and software to The Intercept , which completely bungled basic security procedures (according to a recent New York Times piece from Ben Smith, the main fault lay with Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito ), leading to her capture within hours. Winner recently contracted COVID-19 in prison, and is reportedly suffering some lingering aftereffects. Glenn Greenwald has been furiously denying that he had anything at all to do with the Winner clusterfuck, and I recently got in an argument with him about it on Twitter. I read a New York story about Winner, which clearly implies that she was listening to the Intercepted podcast of March 22, 2017 , where Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill expressed skepticism about Russia actual...

The Setswana Grammar Manual

One of my few successes during my service here was formatting the Peace Corps South Africa grammar manual for Setswana, written mostly by Art Chambers, an SA16 volunteer.  For anyone wanting to learn Setswana, I reckon it's a pretty good primer, so I present it for free here .  If you think it sucks and you want to make changes, or you'd like to take a look at the raw TeX file, you can find it here .

On Refusing to Vote for Bloomberg

Billionaire Mike Bloomberg is attempting to buy the Democratic nomination. With something like $400 million in personal spending so far, that much is clear — and it appears to be working at least somewhat well, as he is nearing second place in national polls. I would guess that he will quickly into diminishing returns, but on the other hand spending on this level is totally unprecedented. At this burn rate he could easily spend more than the entire 2016 presidential election cost both parties before the primary is over. I published a piece today outlining why I would not vote for Bloomberg against Trump (I would vote for Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, or Biden), even though I live in a swing state. This got a lot of "vote blue no matter who" people riled up . They scolded me and demanded that I pre-commit to voting for Bloomberg should he win the nomination. The argument as I understand it is to try to make it as likely as possible that whatever Democrat wins t...