Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Too Smart Reviewers ... Better than the rest of us!
Note: I highlighted excerpts of the "too smart reviewers" in Harvard 'Crimson'
Take the review of Tom Verlaine's CD from Ken Tucker on today's Fresh Air, (click to listen). "...he sang in a strangled groan and he distended high register notes with a precision that was rare among the primative bashing that characterized most punk..." or "...what distinguished Verlaine's music in the 70's from bands like Blondie or The Ramones, was his meticulousness..."
Here's an excerpt of a review of Canton Speakers in Sound and Vision,
"But no matter — despite the specs, these speakers aren't really made for full-range sound, and reactivating the subwoofer worked wonders. Bass heft and cleanliness were restored, and the speakers delivered a big, deep, satisfyingly dynamic presentation. For example, Chris Isaak's channeling of Roy Orbison on "Only the Lonely," from The Baja Sessions, reproduced all of the singer's meticulously modulated breathiness and "head tones" with great detail.
Overall tonal balance was quite natural, with just the faintest hint of extra warmth in the lower midrange frequencies (which I'd rate more as euphony than any bothersome coloration). The speakers also had a relaxed mid-treble that wasn't recessed enough to subtract any detail but worked to give them a touch less "air" than I'm used to with my reference speakers."
Let's see if I can help on this one- he mentions full range sound- I know healthy ears hear from a low of 30 hertz to a high of 20,000 hz. So the speakers' range don't cover the full range of our hearing. "Bass heft and cleanliness were restored?" I know alot of cheaper subwoofers can't reproduce lower sound precisely- perhaps he means a degree of precision of realistic bass. The heft might refer to timing?....
The point is that if you want to know if the speakers are worth buying, read the last paragraph.
Let's look at a NY Times review of one of my favorite movies, Tombstone. (written by Steve Holder).
"In this capacious western with many modern touches, the Arizona boom town and site of the legendary O.K. Corral has a seedy, vaudevillian grandeur that makes it a direct forerunner of Las Vegas." and his take on Val Kilmer as Doc- ""Tombstone" goes to great lengths to portray Doc as a prefigurement of a dissolute modern poet, a frontier-era Jim Morrison. In one scene, the character flourishes Latin phrases. In another, he bangs out part of a Chopin nocturne on an out-of-tune piano. Mr. Kilmer, who gave an uncanny impersonation of Morrison in "The Doors," can be terrific at this sort of thing. But in "Tombstone," a performance that aims to chew all the scenery in sight seems slightly mannered."
Or the Times' view of 16 Blocks as written by Mahnola Dargis:
"And so, over the course of a generally tight 105 minutes, Mr. Donner and Mr. Wenk revisit the interracial pairing that has been a staple of action movies since the late 1950's, when Sidney Poitier was chained to Tony Curtis and which, of course, was central to the "Lethal Weapon" series. They also unleash fleets of bad cops, rumpled heavies right out of a Sidney Lumet movie, and stage an enjoyably chaotic chase with a bus that tips "16 Blocks" owes its largest debt to Clint Eastwood's thriller "The Gauntlet." In that film, Mr. Eastwood played the tough cop while his then-lover Sondra Locke played the would-be witness, which, for those familiar with the 1977 feature, gives the pairing of Mr. Willis and Mos Def an odd frisson."
Book Reviews are fun to read. Recently, NPR got my attention with this opening statement about books:
Call them buttonhole books, the ones you urge passionately on friends, colleagues and passersby. All readers have them -- and so do writers. This week, All Things Considered is talking with authors about their favorite buttonhole books. And the series continues all summer long on NPR.org.First book- "47" by Walter Mosely. The review, written by Stephen Barnes, is a good one. It captures my attention right away and -in this case- makes me want to read the book. But even so, Barnes can't help himself, "47, named after the eponymous slave at the center of the story, is gripping from the opening scene, a first-person narrative of loss, hope, shattered dreams and small victories. The tale becomes both fantastic and allegorical when a mysterious, omniscient runaway shows up at the plantation: Tall John, who carries a yellow carpet bag of healing potions, impossible devices and something even more revolutionary: the belief that there are no masters and no slaves."
Another good reviewer from NPR is Nancy Pearl. Again- a great review, but- well- Tell us how smart you are Nan!
"But again, Brockmeier doesn't mean this metaphorically -- in this intermediate place are ordinary people living their quotidian lives, publishing newspapers, falling in love, regretting the past, anticipating the future. In alternating chapters, we also get the story of Laura Byrd, who's part of a scientific team in the Antarctic. How these two seemingly disparate stories intersect gradually unfolds as the novel progresses. This is the kind of book you'll find yourself thinking about long after you've gone on to other novels. The writing is masterful, the ideas are provocative, and, all in all, this is a stunning achievement." Read an Excerpt: 'The Brief History of the Dead'
and Pearl completely sells me again on another book, but not before letting me know she really is smarter than the rest of us.
"It's compulsively readable, with simply gorgeous (but not overblown or especially lush) prose, and peopled with completely realized characters, both good and bad (and the bad are really, scarily bad). I have to warn you: Don't start the last chapter on what I still quaintly call a school night -- it's especially impossible to put down. Read an Excerpt: 'The Little Friend'
One of my favorite books- I read it when first came out in paperback- is Red Dragon, by Thomas Harris. Here's my kind of review from "Blah Blah Kent" on Amazon.
"Like everything in life, books too have classes, but, unlike us humans, books tend to divide themselves up according quality instead of quantity (money), and a novel like Thomas Harris's brilliant "Red Dragon" sits right there on the top, looking down on us and swooning with its evil, raving madly, because, guess what? You can't reach it. "Red Dragon" is a revolution, the book that has and continues to rip the thriller genre from the inside-out. It's one of the few books out there that will poison your sleep with fear and be worth studying in literature class. "
Nowhere in his review is Blah Blah Kent from Nowhere the least bit pretentious. And he's right when he says the book will "poison your sleep with fear AND be worth studying in literature class." Here's a smidgen of other reviewers :
"Critic Jospeh Amie, writing in theSaturday Review, observed: "The suspense is sustained by deft characterizations, fascinating crime-lab details, and a twisting plot, and understated prose," while Newsweek's Jean Strouse deemed Red Dragon "gruesome, appalling, occasionally formulaic and mechanical," but "guaranteed to terrify and succeed." In the New York Times Book Review Thomas Fleming recommends the book for "those who like their flesh to crawl."
I love reading, movies, music and high end audio-video sound and picture. I love being around smart(er) people and hearing them describe their reation to those things as well. But I'm just as easily put off at the hint of superiority I often pick up in reviews.
A good review makes me want to share the experience or grateful that I won't have to endure a bad one. A bad review makes it clear I will never understand or appreciate the material as much as the reviewer. A great reviewer writes or speaks in a manner we all can identify with- and appreciates what the material he/she reviews represents to its author. To put it another way, a great reviewer is someone I'd love to have a beer with.
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