Judges' Comments
JUDGES’ COMMENTS ARTS CRITICISM Circulation 50,000 and over First Place: Washington City Paper, “Pine of the Times,” “Sheet Smart” and “Pain by Numbers” by Jeffry Cudlin • Cudlin’s work is rich in historical knowledge while never paying too much homage to the edifices of tradition. It’s a pleasure to read: lucid, intimate in tone, teaching the reader something without making it feel like a lesson. His piece on Christo and Jeanne-Claude was my favorite of anything I read. It really made me think differently about an artistic team whose work I thought I already understood. (Powers) Second Place: Village Voice, “Kill One for the Gipper,” “What We Learned about the Election in This Summer’s Movies” and “Deep Freeze” by Jim Hoberman • So much fun, such a great gift for contextualization, so supple at drawing lines between cinema and sociopolitics. (Patterson) • This guy is very knowledgeable, with excellent insights into politics. (Drabelle) Third Place: LA Weekly, “Benjamin Button,” “Diary of the Dead” and “The Visitor” by Scott Foundas • Foundas’s piece on George Romero’s “Dead” movies was my second-favorite of the whole bunch. It really got at some larger ideas but was also very grounded in the material at hand, and its tone was friendly without being too flip. The take-downs of “Button” and “The Visitor” were also very effective - unsparing but, again, not flip, with the objections at their core very relevant and well-stated. (Powers) Honorable Mention: LA Weekly, “From Reverence to Rape,” “Waugh and Remembrance” and “Was Roman Polanski a Pedophile?” by Ella Taylor • Taylor is tough and unsentimental without veering into the arrogance that many critics who see themselves as ‘speaking truth to power’ often express.
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