{"id":9145,"date":"2014-12-28T23:28:56","date_gmt":"2014-12-29T04:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=9145"},"modified":"2015-01-02T13:00:27","modified_gmt":"2015-01-02T18:00:27","slug":"love-tantrums-and-the-critical-reviewer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=9145","title":{"rendered":"Love, Tantrums and the Critical Reviewer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Scorpion<\/a><\/p>\n

In the last few months there have been spikes of the age-old arguments about the interactions of authors, reviewers and fans. When the three overlap, as is increasingly the case in several genres, it\u2019s no wonder that the injunctions are for discussions to be as uncritically gushing as they\u2019re in fanfic.<\/p>\n

It should be no secret by now that I don\u2019t care if people dislike my re\/views. Furthermore, my attributes and experiences make it unlikely that I\u2019ll hold a majority view very often even within communities like SFF, futurists, space aficionados, etc. Not that I\u2019m prone to hermetic hermeneutics: after fifty-plus years of avid reading, film watching and gaming, I remain firmly in favor of art being accessible<\/a>. I like plenty of scifi and fantasy films, even Hollywood ones, even ones that are glaringly imperfect \u2013 as long as they\u2019re not in-your-face insulting; as long as they show a scintilla of originality and love of craft.<\/p>\n

Recently, people used terms like \u201ccurmudgeonly\u201d and \u201cjaundiced\u201d to characterize my dislike of Interstellar<\/em> of which I briefly said the following, as I deemed it too crappy (in all \u201cfive dimensions\u201d) for a full-length review: \u201cHaving now seen Interstellar<\/em> — a loss of three hours I bitterly regret — I’ve concluded that the praise I’ve seen must refer to a film located at the end of a distant wormhole. The clich\u00e9s, clunkiness, regressive triumphalism and sanctimony are sickening. So is the misuse of Hathaway and Chastain. Interstellar<\/em> wants to be Contact<\/em> if\/when it grows up. Even McConaughey was more bearable in the latter.\u201d [Though I think Contact<\/em> would be vastly improved if he was excised from it altogether.]<\/p>\n

There have been similar tantrums whenever I\u2019ve disliked a fave-du-jour, although nobody (yet) has called me \u201ca harlot\u201d as someone called Stephanie Zacharek<\/a> for daring not to have orgasms over Guardians of the Galaxy<\/em>. But you know what? Even something as smarmy as love standardized for US audience palatability can be done right in SFF films. Love is not McConaughey chewing the scenery, his neck veins throbbing like harp strings. This is love — across several dimensions yet, but without self-satisfied trumpeting:<\/p>\n