Get the lipstick
I like a fiesty reviewer. I like the ones that get me inspired or defensive or outraged or leave me laughing. The best is some combination of the four. Such writers are fun and seem lacking to my eye. Recently the top review I have read comes from the New Yorker. The magazine reviewed "Spider-Man" earlier this summer and reading said review the day after seeing the movie left me nearly in tears. This week's New Republic features a review of the proposals released earlier this summer on what to do with ground zero in Manhattan. The much-maligned proposals have been tabled, but I had yet to find a review that gave voice to my feelings. Though it's not yet online, I'll provide this snippet:

The fault lies not with the hapless architects who were asked to dress up this pig of a project, but with the clients themselves, most notably the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. ... What is truly scandalous, then, in light of the supposedly transformed country in which we have been living since September 11, is how brazenly greedy the Port Authority has been in insisting that it wring every dollar out of the rebuilding. This is nothing other than war profiteering. In an abject age in which cash-and-carry commercialism disfigures almost every aspect of our public life, this shameful grab proves that even at the mouth of hell the buck still rules.

- posted by levinson @ 9/06/2002 10:26:00 AM