RARA-AVIS: Re: LA Confidential/Chinatown Comparisons
Kevin Smith (kvnsmith@total.net)
Thu, 25 Sep 1997 11:49:34 +0000
Seems to me that the LA Confidential/Chinatown coupling was
probably
started by one critic and latched on to by the studio and
played for all
it was worth, leaving every lazy reviewer out there with an
easy angle.
Most reviews I've read end up being comparisons, with LA
usually being
dismissed as inferior to Chinatown. What a shock! You could
watch movies
for a year that weren't as good as Chinatown, and still never
be
disappointed, IMHO. While comparisons in a critique are
legitimate, I
find it's become a sort of shorthand that replaces real
criticism. No
wonder they're usually quoted in sales pitches. (Sort of like
the way
every PI novel blurb seems to drag up Chandler or Hammett or
Macdonald
or, lately, Parker).
I haven't seen the film yet (I'm looking forward to it), but
I've read
the book, and it never really struck me as similiar to
Chinatown. Maybe
Pulp Fiction, with its multiple storylines and multiple
protagonists?
Chinatown was about a good man in a bad place, LA is about
bad men in a
bad place. (See? Now I'm doing it!)
And remember, guns don't kill people, evidently books
do!
Kevin Smith
#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.