James Gray

I am amused that in the NY Times fall preview in a profile of James Gray, Dennis Lim compares his career to that of Tarantino, calling him the anti-Tarantino:

Steeped in very different artistic traditions — one postmodern, the other arguably premodern — the two filmmakers have had divergent career paths. Mr. Tarantino quickly became a paragon of hipness, an inspiration for legions of copycats. Mr. Gray, who has made only three films in 13 years, is something of an accidental maverick: an unrepentant traditionalist in a business that prizes newness and shtick. Sober, allergic to irony, filled with grand gestures and operatic emotions, his movies are, in more than one sense, not cool.

I have long been a fan of James, sometimes all alone, and I'm glad that all the meatheads out there are catching up with what to me is a self-evident truth. The guy is quietly being a genius. Oh and how genius is this quote?

In a recent interview in Manhattan Mr. Gray said: “Apparently I’m the dramatic version of Jerry Lewis. Someone wrote that I’m the object of Gallic fetish.”