If anyone's interested, there is some backstory to this this review...

...I asked a certain someone if they had seen the film and would help me with my review. Their first response was wholly unsatisfactory. So I nagged. And got this...

!!! How much crit do you want? Keeping in mind I have, you know, several clients, my own writing, and a class to start preparing for Tuesday. Maybe a larger comment is, you might suggest more about how it could be better, instead of just kind of ragging on where it isn't good. The part where you talk about Evelyn waugh is maybe the best. I think you're still too flip, in a way that isn't that funny, but that may be your audience. I would take a couple of moments in the film and really plumb them, in depth, analyze exactly where they do and don't work, and build up a review from there, instead of trying to summarize, which means you end up with fewer, if any, specific comments, and forces you/one into generalizations also, unrelated, I agree more or less with the review that follows yours, but, for me, 1) bill murray being him and 2) the shots/beauty of them and 3) the funniness of japan, even if shallowly shown, gave me enough to make up for the lack of real analysis and depth of the movie. though there were weak scenes but there were many good ones and the fact that the lounge singer's band was called sausalito was very good, very apt as was the blonde's press conference -- more subtle than you give it credit for -- we both have dogs, we both live in LA

there. i got it out of you. it was worth taking the risk of annoying you. i can't disagree with anything you just said. especially the part about your writing class for tuesday. well. i guess—working backwards/upwards from in depth analysis of a few key scenes would be an interesting method. i will try that either on this review or another one. part of the reason i don't do that is because that involves more thought and more credit than i'm willing to give copolla/the film. it just doesn't deserve that from me. which is where you say—flip—why should anyone read my flip reviews then? well. fine. they shouldn't. but then in that case they shouldn't be seeing this film either. they should rent even a non-famous kurosawa such as sanjuro—which i've just started watching—or branded to kill—which i will send you a copy of if you want it. i do exactly what you just wanted me to do with films that deserve it—it seems when writing about good films, all you have to do is take any scene in it and analyze it, and you'll automatically be saying something about the film as a whole. this is probably because in a good film, any given scene has something to do with the essence of the film. so i agree completely with you—but we disagree in terms of who i should be writing for—or whether there is therefore even a role for flip comments about B+ films. i trust you will agree with all of what i've just said here. so i don't have to kill you.

Oh, and you can say it's not worth working that hard for a review of a mediocre film, but that's what a good critic was—99% of movies aren't Andrei Rublev, and it's why being a critic, chez moi, sucks/would suck. The load of mostly average movies. Books, whatever.

do they have critics for sex parties?

...and again, later...after some (but not enough) revision...

Originally, I had written: I'm not sure if I want to fuck her or just fuck some life into her? Maybe I'll have to do both. This was apparently not the wisest move on my part. My girlfriend writes: I actually didn't mind the line about you giving Scarlett a good pounding insofar as I'm concerned, as your exclusive lover; but in truth I did pause to question it as a problematic remark in terms of straight up sexism. It's always problematic to talk about fucking sense or life into a woman you don't know - it feels very aggressive and the feminists would stone you if they knew. It doesn't really have a place outside the frat house. If you were in academia you would be on probation if not dethroned. My boyfriend writes: This review is much better. Take out the part immediately about "i don't know whether to want to fuck her...."

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