In which I make a checklist
Big news: your girl was selected for the Young Critics Workshop at the Ukrainian Film Festival Berlin!
From this weekend through next, I’ll be working alongside seasoned and up-and-coming writers to probe the genre of film criticism and hone the craft in order to cover this year’s premieres.
It probably goes without saying how excited I am. Aside from researching the history of Ukraine for a bit of cultural context (and hoo boy is that a WHOLE nother ball game), I’m assembling some tools for my aspiring critic’s toolbox. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
- Read all the biographical material on Pauline Kael you can get your hands on
- Think about how exhausting it must have been to be Pauline Kael
- Watch those 2-hour items in your Netflix queue that you ‘didn’t have time for’ even though you had time for 6 20-minute episodes of New Girl
- Determine once and for all whether you will say ‘movies’ or ‘films’ (pretentious???)
- Perfect your cool/stoic/appraising/disdainful glance
- Improve your subtitle reading time as if training for a sprint
- Get used to saying “Don’t take this personally…”
- Conceive that you might one day actually find yourself in a position to say 🎶 don’t I know you from the cinematographer’s party? 🎶
- Incorporate a lot of black sweaters into the wardrobe
- Start looking for visual motifs wherever they may remotely be found
- Stop forgetting who Peter Bogdanovich is
Look out, Hollywood, I’m on my way!!
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