Week in review: 3/24 - 3/28

The great critic debate -- should critics write, or rather, write much more, about form? -- waged on in earnest this week. To briefly recap: Last week, music critic Ted Gioia published an invective against contemporary music journalism, decrying the lack of technological knowledge among writers more concerned with "lifestyle reporting" (nattering away about pop stars' salacious personal lives) than providing insight into or intelligently commenting upon the formal aspects of a song, how the thing is structured and actually made.

Gioia's screed resonanted with critics across multiple platforms, including film. A number of movie critics have chimed in, debating issues such as:

• Is it important for a film critic to have a background in filmmaking?

• How much of her review should a critic devote to a discussion of formal elements?

• How relevant are a critic's emotional "feelings" about a film?

• Even if a critic does believe she should devote more space in her review to an analysis of form, do readers want to read it?

It's a fascinating debate, and in particular, we thought rogerebert.com Editor-in-Chief Matt Zoller Seitz's impassioned response was well worth the read. We've also got NYT's David Carr weighing in on the pressures journalists face to drive traffic to their sites, a relevant companion piece.

Below, you'll also find info on Disney President Anne Sweeney's successor (Sweeney is leaving to pursue her dream of TV directing; we're all for it.); a bittersweet obit on the late James Rebhorn, written by the deceased actor before he passed; the appointment of a pretty cool and eminently likable female director to Critics Week jury president; the first word on a beloved cartoon character's real-life, not fictionalized, origins story; a PR nightmare at the recently wrapped CinemaCon; and some great celebrity drawings that beg to be made into a line of T-shirts or displayed in ostentiously expensive frames.

Thoughts on our picks? Let us know what we missed in the comments below!

Please, Critics, Write about the Filmmaking, rogerbert.com

Risks Abound as Reporters Play in Traffic, NYT

Disney Names Ben Sherwood as Anne Sweeney's Successor, The Hollywood Reporer

'Homeland' Actor James Rebhorn Wrote His Own Obituary, The Hollywood Reporter

Andrea Arnold Tapped Jury President of Critics Week's Grand Prize, Variety

Winnie the Pooh Origin Story Developing at RatPac, Variety

Theater Owners Chief: '12 Years a Slave' Was 'Too Intense' to Watch in Cinema, The Hollywood Reporter

 Agata Marszalek, Illustrator, Subtraction.com

A look at letters through the camera's lens

When the NYT published an OpEd about the death of letter-writing the other day, many commentators engaged in a collective eye-roll. It isn’t the medium that matters, they countered, so long as we’re still writing (“obviously” was the implied addendum). Others waxed nostalgic about their cache of love letters and cited the personal immediacy, as opposed to the temporal immediacy of email, of holding a letter that had once been touched by the person who wrote it.
   
Unsurprisingly, Hollywood has long made use of the romantic and psychological aspects of letters. They can provide a glimpse into a character’s thought process without the use of a narrator, they can serve as a convenient plot point, they can even help illuminate character through a quick shot of his or her handwriting. The latter was of great importance to the 1940 crime film The Letter, in which Bette Davis’ acquittal or condemnation hinged upon a letter written in her hand. Not to hop aboard the Luddites’ horse-drawn bandwagon, but being caught via an email trace doesn’t quite match the ironic richness of a baddy who has literally sealed her own fate.

Even with their growing archaism, letters continue to play a cinematic role beyond mere props or plot devices in Victorian novel adaptations. Whether it’s Wes Anderson building the foundation of his runaways' love story through an epistolary correspondence in Moonrise Kingdom, or David Lowery using letters as a link between Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck in a film that otherwise sees the lovers in just three scenes together in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, or Briony (Saoirse Ronan) abusing her role as a letter-carrying messenger in Atonement, letters have yet to be narratively discarded.

Our latest list is a look at some epistolary highlights in both classic and recent films. It’s a brief one, so let us know what we’ve missed in the comments below:

The Letter (1940)
Available on Netflix
A wealthy, married woman (Bette Davis) murders a well-to-do man in the middle of the night in Malaya. She claims the man was the aggressor and she shot him to save her honor. But when a damning letter addressed to the victim, written in the woman’s hand, surfaces, the woman and her lawyer must do everything they can to keep the evidence from coming to light.
 

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Available on Netflix
Co-workers at a gift shop in Budapest, Alfred Kralik (Jimmy Stewart) and Klara Novak (Margaret Sullivan) simply cannot get along. Each finds the other insufferable, and certainly not nearly as cultured and amiable and generally wonderful as their respective pen pals – right? Based on the play Parfumerie, the same source material for 1998’s You’ve Got Mail.
 

Vertigo (1958)
Available on Netflix and streaming on Hulu
Detective Scottie Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) has been having a rough time of it ever since he watched a criminal fall to his death. Now Scottie’s got a bad case of vertigo, though that doesn’t stop him from taking what should be an easy if odd case: trail a friend’s wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), because the friend (Tom Helmore) fears she’s suicidal. His concern proves tragically justified when Scottie, too afraid to pursue Madeleine to the top of a tower, watches her throw herself to her death. When he finds a woman who looks just like Madeleine, whom he had begun to love, months later, he forces her to dress up and adhere to his ideal. But this new woman has secrets of her own – which she explains in a letter that helps out the audience a great deal, even if she rips it up before poor Scottie can catch a glimpse.
 

Atonement (1997)
Available on Netflix
The worst little sister of all time, Briony (Saoirse Ronan) is charged with delivering a love letter from Robbie (James McAvoy), the son of a family servant, to her sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley). Briony has a crush on Robbie, and is both confused and angered when she witnesses a moment of sexual tension between the two. She soon finds an outlet for her jealousy when an assault is committed later that night. Briony accuses Robbie, using the explicit letter he’s given her as proof of his deviant mind. Her lie has resounding repercussions.
 

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Available on Netflix
Two kids in love exchange a series of letters as they plot to run away together. A serious crowd-pleaser.
 

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013)
Available on Netflix
Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) breaks free from prison four years after being found guilty for a crime he perpetrated with his lover, Ruth (Rooney Mara). He swears he’ll come back for her and their daughter, expressing his love first as an inmate, then as a fugitive on the run, through letter after letter.