Two men enter, one man leaves

From the under-read to the over-read ... I'd love to spend heaps of time dissecting the discussion, nay, bitter argument going on about film criticism and The New World over at Dave Kehr's blog. I've written before about the passions surrounding that movie, and nowhere are they more apparent than in the exchange in the comments section between Kehr and TNW evangelist, Matt Zoller Seitz. For anyone fascinated by film criticism and those who practice it, this is like the back-alley, black-market version of Slate's movie club: two brilliant critics brawling over a film, the nature of film commentary, and, of course, the other's personal style, wielding 30 pound steel-spiked paragraphs that would scare Mel Gibson. Be warned, it gets rough:

How about this, Dave: instead of dismissing the praise for Malick as a filmmaker, and essentially writing off his followers as moonstruck simps who aren’t using their eyes, ears and brains, actually take a look at the positive reviews, address those portions which specifically deal with technique, and refute them with examples. Pull reviews by me, Armond White, Manohla Dargis, N.P. Thompson and others who have praised the movie, zero in on discussions of the filmmaking within the text of the piece, and tell us how full of crap we are. And try to use counter examples. Not, “This person is obviously a moonstruck child,” but actually make the effort to talk about the same shot, the same sequence, the same music cue as the critic who praises Malick, and interpret it differently, to prove your point. I believe that’s called real debate, and I have yet to see you practice it on this particular topic. Are you still capable of it?

Filmbrain, as always, has some useful thoughts on the exchange as well.