Can be found here – read at your own risk. It’s a whole bunch of complaining about famous film directors.
I actually had hope for this lovely bit of… supposed director criticism, given that it was linked from Afterellen, where writers usually have good taste. Except Mr. Shapiro isn’t really criticizing the various director’s, well, directing (remember, people – they don’t actually write the film, they just tell the actors what to do…). Instead he’s taking random jabs at their films (writing, acting and all!), and than yelling that they suck. Wonderful, isn’t it?
And, you know, it could have been a good article. For one thing, all the directors he goes after are, y’know, famous white guys, who are after all consistently overrated. He’s not going to go that route, of course! His criticism of Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise “… is liberal tripe, although it does provide the best imagistic summary of modern feminism: two irritating “independent” women driving themselves off a cliff.”
Yeah.
Some of his targets could be considered moderately overrated for their directing abilities, of course – David Lynch only really appeals to people who like weird surreal stuff, for instance, and Tarantino, despite frequent moments of genius is so offensive as to balance his work out to only ‘decent’ (entirely my opinion, of course!) But all the same, every director he mentions both created unique works, and is quite influential. If that’s not criteria for a proper ‘rating’, I’m not entirely sure what is.
In any case, all this vitriol made me wonder what kind of directors and movies Mr. Shapiro actually likes. So I clicked over to the blog’s front page. Which is almost entirely occupied by articles praising the great and glorious wonderfulness of former President Bush.
Perhaps the whole thing is an elaborate parody?