After memorizing The Player, the visceral Short Cuts got me hugely excited for Pret a Porter. Oops. At the time, I had to learn for myself what Pauline Kael knew long ago: she "joked about his fertile seventies output that every other film was a masterpiece and that she wished she could skip the ones in between."
The quote's from David Edelstein's remembrance of Altman for NYMag. It's worth a read. [nymag]
Meanwhile, Tony Scott reminds me that that incredible Lily Tomlin-Meryl Streep schtick at the Oscars last spring was exactly the kind of offhand-yet-impossible tour de acting force Altman was able to capture. or coax. or catalyze in his films. [nyt]
And then there's a real leaping off point. David at GreenCine points back to Matthew Zoller Seitz's Altman Blogathon Weekend last March, in anticipation of the long overdue Altman Oscars.
Theresa Duncan's own remembrance of McCabe and Mrs. Miller is awesome, especially the anecdote at the end about Leonard Cohen finally coming around to liking the film that he reluctantly licensed his music to.
