Again, she delivers.

Talk about pithy – here’s Manolha Dargis on the Sex and the City Movie:

“Sex and the City” delivered the television goods for six seasons, no small thing in the pop culture annals. That should have been enough or at least plenty for all concerned, but Ms. Parker apparently felt compelled to go big screen, making good on a project that had started to come together in 2004, only to fall apart over money issues and Ms. Cattrall’s reluctance to climb aboard. I wish Ms. Parker had let that bee in her bonnet go silent, because the movie that she and Mr. King have come up with is the pits, a vulgar, shrill, deeply shallow — and, at 2 hours and 22 turgid minutes, overlong — addendum to a show that had, over the years, evolved and expanded in surprising ways.

I’m going to see it tomorrow night, and as a big fan of the show I’m excited. But I’m even more gleeful about this review and her use of “turgid” and the reference to Laura Mulvey a couple of paragraphs later. Here’s a spoiler: she hated it.  

Without Ruth

Manhola Dargis reviews Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure. This review lacks the same guarded optimism that her review of Tina Fey’s Baby Mama has. If you’re not reading Dargis’s reviews (regulary), there’s a link on the sidebar. She’s an excellent writer, an astute critic, and funny (in that dry, Will Strunk kind of way).

My thesis revolves around films and shows Morris has made that focus on one subject (namely, Temple Grandin and Robert McNamara, in separate films). I’m hoping to side-step the complications Dargis points out – a large cast of interviewees, in particular – in my analysis, but I don’t know if that’s possible. We’ll see!