To get away from the past week I've been reading anything unrelated I could find. It's amazing how ineffective this week's magazines seem. Newsweek, Time, The New Yorker, simply because those issues have nothing to do with the news this week. Before the deluge next week will bring, I found this interesting for all the critics and review-readers here.

It's an example of why Kael was a great critic. From her review of Spielberg's first film "The Sugarland Express" reprinted in this week's New Yorker:

"The director, Steven Spielberg, is twenty-six; I can't tell if he has any mind or even a strong personality, but then a lot of good moviemakers have got by without being profound.... Composition comes naturally to him (and) Spielberg uses his gift in a very free-and-easy, American way-for humor, and for a physical response to action. He could be that rarity among directors - a born entertainer...

If there is such a thing as a movie sense - and I think there is - Spielberg really has it. But he may be so full of it that he doesn't have much else. There's no sign of the emergence of a new artist (such as Martin Scorcese) in "The Sugarland Express," but it marks the debut of a new-style, new-generation Hollywood hand."

There, before he even embarks on his own career, you have an amazingly accurate synopsis of his career. This is what Kael had in spades, the ability to see into the films and those behind them, with an eye most of us, and almost nobody in the game business, actually has.

Amazing.
-Andrew