Mar
3rd
Tue
3rd
Dark Visions
I fully expect the Watchmen movie to be awful, so I’m very sympathetic to the harsh reviews that have been popping up, including this especially hyperbolic notice from The Quietus. However, this review by The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane grates on me in the worst way, not because he dislikes the film or its source material (bold move!), but because he trashes comics/superhero fans in such obnoxious and culturally dated terms. His snipes about obsessive fans and their apparent crippling fear of women are aggravating, but mostly because he seems not to recognize that a very similar (and often far more odious) sort of nerd is abundant in cinematic circles. Look, I can forgive the guy for writing off superheroes based almost entirely on their consistently horrendous portrayal in film, but this relative snobbery about mediums is ridiculous. Just think of how easily one could rewrite this review as being about film: “The world of cinema is a curious one. For every masterwork, such as Metropolis or Citizen Kane, there seem to be reels of torture-porn horror pictures and middlebrow Oscar-bait, featuring Dane Cook and his CGI chihuahua co-stars.”
What Matthew said.
