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Okay, American Beauty is shallow, pretentious, smug, condescending, and parochial. It radiates the traditional show-biz contempt for the talent-free slobs who inhabit American small towns and suburbia, cut off from high-grade hemp, cutting-edge video equipment, and the other finer things in life. But American Beauty does have its good points as well. Specifically, it tells us all the steps we need to take to achieve supreme, continuous, and unending happiness. These steps are: IF YOU ARE A MIDDLE-AGED MAN
![]() IF YOU ARE A TEEN-AGED GIRL
IF YOU ARE A TEEN-AGED BOY
![]() IF YOU'RE GAY If youre gay you will always be happy. You will always have a gorgeous body, a fabulous lover, a fabulous career, and a fabulous house, unless you are a repressed homophobic Marine Corps colonel, in which case you should probably just go kill yourself. IF YOU'RE A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN Forget it, bitch! Youre old and ugly and nobody wants you! WHY THE CRITICS LOVE IT Theyre idiots!1 1Okay, not all movie critics are idiots. Only those who liked American Beauty are idiots. November 1999 | Issue 26 ALSO: More articles by Alan Vanneman |
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New book from the
editor and writers of
Bright Lights Film Journal
Action! Interviews with Directors
from Classical Hollywood to
Contemporary Iran
(Anthem Art and Culture),
by Gary Morris (Editor),
Bert Cardullo (Introduction),
Jonathan Rosenbaum (Foreword).
London and New York:
Anthem Press, 2009.
"I dare anyone to squeeze between
two covers a more varied, useful and
flat out entertaining sampling of
the personalities that make the
seventh art the liveliest."
David Hudson, IFC.com
Interviews
Robert Bresson
Roger Corman (with Bruce Dern
and David Carradine)
Allan Dwan
Clint Eastwood
Douglas Sirk
Robert Wise
Mania Akbari
Lars von Trier
Michael Haneke
Allie Light
Melvin and Mario van Peebles
Otto Muehl
The Brothers Quay
Barbara Kopple
Federico Fellini
Abbas Kiarostami
François Truffaut
Caveh Zahedi
Peter Bogdanovich and
Joseph McBride
on Orson Welles