The next Frank Rich

In a peculiar way, I’m becoming very fond of David Denby, one of The New Yorker‘s resident movie reviewers. It’s clear that he aspires to be another Frank Rich — Rich, of course, being the former New York Times‘ theater critic who made the leap to ultra liberal political op-ed columnist.

In the short time that Denby has floated across my radar, he’s never succeeded in writing a review that didn’t include an attack against the current administration. (See my posts here and here, for examples.) His latest movie review is no exception, as he waxes ecstatic about Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke, which he calls “the most magnificent and large-souled record of a great American tragedy ever put on film.”  Come on, Denby.  Don’t hold back.  What do you really think about the movie?

The review has the obligatory FEMA bashing, and “where were the Feds” statements, but what’s really interesting is the part where Denby gives a laundry list of those people in the movie whom he most admires.  Here it is, and I’ve inserted a few hyperlinks to give a little more background on some of the things he references:

Keeping his own voice largely absent and his presence invisible, he [Lee] finds the city’s tattered survivors. He also consults a variety of lawyers and local politicians, and such luminaries as Harry Belafonte and Al Sharpton; the musicians and New Orleans natives Wynton Marsalis and Terence Blanchard (the latter wrote much of the beautiful music for the film); the historian Douglas Brinkley, who makes impassioned critiques of Bush Administration officials and the Federal Emergency Management Agency; and the Mississippi man (a doctor) who publicly advised the Vice-President, when he visited the area long after the storm, to go fuck himself.

Yeah, that’s quite a cast of luminaries there.  To the extent a man is known by the company he keeps and the people he admires, I’ve just learned a whole lot about Denby, all of which he would have done better to keep hidden from public view.