[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by SF-TX

Damn! I was hoping that a man (David Forsmark) I was previously unaware ....

With respect, I understand that you're being sarcastic. My point simply is that I don't think Mr. Forsmark is a very good reviewer. I think his grasp of American mass popular culture needs strengthening. I think he uses his reviews as part of a broader plan of self-promotion common among new media journalists of all stripes. A few examples follow.

Earlier this year, Mr. Forsmark wrote:

The show is not only one of the greatest sitcoms ever — it made Time magazine’s 100 Greatest TV Shows list — but also the most meaningfully conservative television show of its generation.

The show in question? Fox's King of the Hill (link). (IIRC, there was a show called Seventh Heaven.)

While Mr. Forsmark is attempting to make a name for himself as a cultural critic and scourge of the American left, his list of favorite films includes.

Favorites: In no particular order:High Noon, Casablanca,The Searchers,The Seven Samurai, The Godfather I & II,Saving Private Ryan, The Lord of the Rings, Dirty Harry, Bringing Up Baby, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Big Sleep, Night of the Hunter, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Patton, Psycho, Rear Window, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest, O Brother Where Art Thou, Fargo, The Manchurian Candidate, Double Indemnity, The Apartment, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, On the Waterfront, Heat, The Great Escape, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Guns of Navarone, Rio Bravo, Red River, Lonestar, The Apostle, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Dr. Strangelove, The Music Man, Three Kings, Tin Men, Tootsie, Spartacus, The Silence of the Lambs, Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail, Rashomon, Yojimbo, The Right Stuff, Rob Roy, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Blackhawk Down, We Were Soldiers, Jaws, The Sixth Sense, Life is Beautiful, My Darling Clementine, Friendly Persuasion, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, The Matrix, October Sky, Hoosiers.

While I'm especially fond of Lone Star, Three Kings, and Spartacus, that trio of films and especially Spartacus--the script was ghost written by Dalton Trumbo--hardly have much good to say about the American right. The other two are outright hostile.

As a film reviewer, Mr. Forsmark frequently offers odd observations. In 2001, while reviewing Traffic, he compared Steven Soderbergh to Howard Hawks and Hitchcock while discounting the importance of artistry in story telling. (This dismissal of artistry, by the way, is in accord with contemporary cultural criticism that is broadly--and, arguably, inelegantly--described as Leftist.) For Mr. Forsmark to suggest that Soderbergh's treatment of America's war on drugs does not have an overtly hostile political message makes me wonder if he actually watched the movie or if he fell asleep (as many theater goers did the two times I saw it). <<LINK>>

Then there's Mr. Forsmark's review of Michael Mann's The Insider (1999) <<LINK>>. In this review, Forsmark falls over his grindstone to go after the MSM at the expense of developing a fuller understanding of the issues he's attempting to discuss. In this case, he over looks the fact that Lowell Bergman is the embodiment of the Leftist values that Forsmark believes undermine America. It was Mr. Bergman who, in an article for Rolling Stone, argued that Ronald Reagan was nothing more than a pawn for monied interests in his home state of California.

Finally, take his review of Bowfinger (1999) <<LINK>>. Arguably, his efforts to present himself as a person who knows how Hollywood works and someone who "gets" all the jokes would have worked better had he showed any awareness that the character of Daisy (Heather Graham) was Steve Martin's revenge on an ex-girlfriend (the lovely Anne Heche).