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David Denby

David Denby Books

Journalist

David Denby, born in 1943, is an accomplished American journalist. His career spans various fields, including literary, film, and theater criticism. Denby is known for his insightful and incisive commentary, contributing to The New Yorker magazine for many years.

Snark: A Polemic in Seven Fits

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Do the Movies Have a Future?

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“Snark often functions as an enforcer of mediocrity and conformity. In its cozy knowingness, snark flatters you by assuming that you get the contemptuous joke. You've been admitted, or readmitted, to a club, though it may be the club of the second-rate.”

Manners Sarcasm Conformity Mediocrity Snark

Book:Snark: A Polemic in Seven Fits

Source: Snark: A Polemic in Seven Fits

“Snark is what people on the inside call any attempt at protest from people on the outside. I hate it on principle, as do all Columbia professors, Catholic priests, and Mississippi Klansmen.”

Book:Snark: A Polemic in Seven Fits

Source: Snark: A Polemic in Seven Fits

“Crash is hyper-articulate and often breathtakingly intelligent and always brazenly alive. I think it's easily the strongest American film since Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, though it is not for the fainthearted.”

Thinking Film Alive Rivers Intelligent Strongest Crash Mystic Hyper American Film

Author:David Denby

“The Nazis, for him, are merely available movie tropes--articulate monsters with a talent for sadism. By making the Americans cruel, too, he escapes the customary division of good and evil along national lines, but he escapes any sense of moral accountability as well. In a Tarantino war, everyone commits atrocities. Like all the director's work after 'Jackie Brown,' the movie is pure sensation. It's disconnected from feeling, and an eerie blankness--it's too shallow to be called nihilism--undermines even the best scenes.”

Source: Do the Movies Have a Future?

“Mi-yammi! The extraordinary city, with its Judeo-Cubano population, its mix of surgical-appliance and sex-fetishist obsessions, takes the American melting pot past the boil. It represents pretty much everything Patrick J. Buchanan hates.”

Past Hate Sex Cities Extraordinary Population Obsession Pot Melting Melting Pot Appliances

Author:David Denby

“Art talk is punk. Let the movie do your speaking for you.”

Author:David Denby

“The greatest all-around American film actor is James Stewart.”

Film Actors American Film Film Actors

Author:David Denby

“The problem of criticism is not judgment but evocation - conveying the particular emotional and visual feel that the movie has.”

Feels Problem Emotional Particular Judgment Criticism Visuals Conveying

Author:David Denby

“You might learn as much about how to write by reading Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Wallace Stevens, Raymond Chandler, Saul Bellow, Paul Muldoon or a hundred other good novelists or poets than by seeing another round of John Ford revivals.”

Writing Might Reading Seeing Poet Hundred Rounds Novelists Revival Reading Shakespeare

Author:David Denby

“Entertaining the reader is a good function.”

Reader Function Entertaining Good Fun

Author:David Denby

“The action comes at us through a buzz of nattering remarks.”

Action Remarks Buzz

Author:David Denby

“Trivial details have been summoned, in part, to make a satirical point about upper-middle-class marriage-that the whole thing can slip away between the white wine and the arugula salad.”

Has Beens Whole White Class Middle Wine Details Middle Class Slips Salad Satirical Upper Middle Class White Wine Arugula

Author:David Denby

“Never throw fruit at someone who understands the theatrics of the situation better than you do.”

Situation Fruit Better Than You Theatrics

Author:David Denby

“Corporate irony not only ridicules the thing it is selling but the very act of selling it. In the process it disarms critics by making anyone who goes against the flow of commerce seem clueless.”

Seems Process Flow Critics Selling Corporate Irony Commerce Ridicule Clueless

Author:David Denby

“The director, Antoine Fuqua, relies on small details, which anchor the vigilante-as-saint myth in at least a minimal degree of reality.”

Reality Directors Degrees Saint Details Myth Rely Anchors Vigilante Small Details

Author:David Denby

About the Author

Born: 1943
Known for: Journalist
Quotes: 15

Related Topics

American Film Details Directors Film Accountability Action Actors Alive Anchors Appliances

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People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

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Snark: A Polemic in Seven FitsRelated source material

Do the Movies Have a Future?Related source material

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