Ridley vs. Tony--do I have to choose just one? Why must one's artistic and entertainment preferences always be confined to one camp or the other? When I was in university, people would peruse my record collection (I'm dating myself with that one) and marvel that I'd have The Clash's "London Calling" or Joy Division's "Closer" right next to Springsteen's "The River" and Lindsay Buckingham solo albums--was I schizo? Hardly--just eclectic, and years later, I still can't understand why everything must be defined as either "mainstream" or "alternative" (or the dreaded "guilty pleasure"). Can't Ridley's more austere and meditative works (well, comparatively) reside on my video shelf along with Tony's giddy and operatic bombast? Not all that long ago, I used to hate Tony Scott's films--"Top Gun", "Days Of Thunder", and "Beverly Hills Cop 2" are among the most excruciating endurance-fests I've ever had the displeasure to witness--but he's redeemed himself with "Crimson Tide", "Enemy Of The State", "True Romance", "Man On Fire", and last year's delirious and woefully undervalued "Domino".
The New Republic's Lee Seigel lays it on thick with typical criticspeak and lambastes Tony as the very embodiment of everything wrong with cinema today, while The New York Observor's Ron Rosenbaum finds the younger Scott's recent films progressive and subversive.
Siegel's lament can be found here, after which you can read Rosenbaum's defense here.
