Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

i'm just posting this friendly reminder in every film thread. ^__^

~~~~The Top 75 films/movies of the 2000s/oughties VOTING THREAD~~~~ BALLOTS DUE FEBRUARY 2

Often funny:
http://ilovemovies.blip.tv/rss

ok, backing up on the House Next Door. I know Vadim would occasionally do music write-ups, and is currently doing his singles of the oughties, but a single review for Stylos?

So I gotta ask: is there a new editor and/or does the blog have a new remit in regards to what it covers?

not being bitchy fanboy or anything. it's all cool, but ever since your 'sensibility' comment I'm wondering what's changed.

Honestly, I don't think anything has changed with regard to editorial policy, other than to include the sort of material that would've been included in Slant's old blog -- which, yeah, included singles reviews, Oscar predictions, political commentary, et al.

J. Ross. I trust he fired if he not die soon.

hope he die soon.

"I trust he fired if he not die soon."
tempting username

richard schickel droppin' truthbombs WTFbombs at a post-screening Q&A in LA:

"Watching all these kind of earnest people discussing the art or whatever the hell it is of criticism, all that, it just made me so sad. You mean they have nothing else to do?" asked Schickel before adding, "I don't know honestly the function of reviewing anything."

...

When asked by Thompson if he ever read criticism online, Schickel gave a forceful "no," before explaining "Why would you do that? I don't actually read many reviews. I never did. But I'm not going to go around looking for Harry Knowles [the portly Ain't It Cool News founder who is featured in the documentary]. I mean look at that person! Why would anybody just looking at him pay the slightest attention to anything he said?!? He's a gross human being."

http://www.ifc.com/news/2010/03/nothing.php

Is he going all Brian Williams and making fun of "bloggers in bathrobes"?

"The poll's imperfect. We never get out the hip-hop press. Our rolls are larded with part-timers who buy many records and miss many more. And they're joined annually by newbies who learned to write from literary theorists and honed their opinionizing skills in the dog-eat-dog cenacles of college radio."
--You Know Who

"I remember talking to Paul Schrader once about how when he came into movies, he thought he entered what was the natural state of movies, which is you got to make 'Taxi Driver.' You got to make all these weird, interesting movies and Hollywood wanted you to do it and it was only when it began to stop he realized he was living in the historical aberration. And for a lot of film critics, we are living in the historical aberration probably in the history of the arts where you got to make a lot of money, write about an art form at its peak and actually not only have it at its peak, but the public in general was going to that art form for ways of understanding the world. It's not that way now."

totally OTM

could not agree more about harry knowles!

paul schrader is fucking lying there. he knew full well that 'taxi driver' was unusual even in 1976. that said, he was a film noir aficionado (arguably there are elements of film noir in 'taxi driver'). he also knew that hollywood had produced exceptional work in the past.

Paul Schrader only kinda incidental to the main point, which is that the medium and the discourse around it have changed irrevocably, and that the previous state of affairs was by and large a historical abberation.

which is that the medium and the discourse around it have changed irrevocably, and that the previous state of affairs was by and large a historical abberation

p much could have been written at any time in the last 80 years.

rly tho.

1930s: sound has destroyed the medium
1950s: the reaction to tv has brought about giganticism
1960s: the golden era has ended
1980s: boo hoo it isn't the 1970s
2010s: we ah doolee appointed fedural mahshuls

more like

00s to 1900s: ownership of cultural artifacts largely restricted to an educated, wealthy elite
early 1900s: mass media invented
1930s: studios/major labels/publishers control their industries
1950s: studios/major labels/publishers control their industries
1960s: studios/major labels/publishers control their industries
1970s: studios/major labels/publishers control their industries
1980s: studios/major labels/publishers control their industries
1990s: studios/major labels/publishers control their industries
2000s: studios/major labels/publishers get a little worried, attempt to freeze industry at previous state
2010s: internet destroys industry, money/jobs evaporate, mass media hopelessly splintered into a billion little pieces

yeah, plucky lil myspace movies like avatar just have to deal with the new paradigm as best they can

avatar, the most expensive movie ever made but still can't sell as many tickets as Gone With the Wind. there's behemoths on top and a million ants on the bottom, what's been carved out is the middle.

making Taxi Driver for a studio was unusual in '76, now it's unthinkable.

(btw "the middle" there = things like Taxi Driver, weird/innovative/unconventional movies that were bankrolled with big money, made by someone with a fair degree of well-honed skill, and distributed to the mainstream)

http://thecitylovesyou.com/cinerex/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/the-box-movie-poster-final-richard-kelly.jpg

Death to art

my best friend and I are feeling our way into film largely via the teachings of David Thomson - fortunately, we both find ourselves agreeing with about 85-90% of what he says

http://www.penta.net/SMH/SMH.gif

how did i know you'd be first on the scene

thomson is fun to read which is why he's worth reading, but he's wrong about all sorts of things. otoh, who isn't.

well yeah, it's not like he's ALWAYS right, but he stimulates me to watch and think about ALL SORTS of completely rad movies, and he has a way of guiding my thoughts to their rightful conclusion. plus i really do agree with him on a load of stuff! we have a very similar taste in late-period bunuel (i.e. this is the greatest shit ever filmed amirite)

hey, better david thomson than leonard maltin

http://www.prowsedge.com/images/princess_01LeonardMaltin05.28.09.jpg

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/variety-lets-two-of-its-top-critics-go/

woah t-mac is ankling?

Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

This guy's back! And he's swinging.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/apr/07/film-critic

Nice...photo.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/11/10/ronald_bergan_140x140.jpg

Yeah, I was a bit puzzled by that. (The tomato orgy, not his mugshot!)

I'm largely in agreement with this article. It's pretty much a no-holds-barred assault on the Guardian's own critics (Bradshaw anyone?), which endears it greatly to me.

xpost Someone needs to NSFW Kuleshov experiment this bitch.

it's fucking stupid louis

read the one he links to (and completely misreads)

where?

the ayo scott 1 from the new york times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/movies/04scott.html?ref=movies

ok but lol AO Scott has this as an early gambit: the surviving full-time classical music, dance and even literary critics might have trouble filling out a bridge game

right, onto the meat of the article...

And that kind of provocation, that spur to further discourse, is all criticism has ever been. It is not a profession and does not stand or fall with any particular business model. Criticism is a habit of mind, a discipline of writing, a way of life — a commitment to the independent, open-ended exploration of works of art in relation to one another and the world around them. As such, it is always apt to be misunderstood, undervalued and at odds with itself. Artists will complain, fans will tune out, but the arguments will never end.

this is a good point. bergan's article seems slightly predicated on the idea that film criticism is undergoing death + rebirth, rather than slow evolution.

However, he doesn't recognise that the only ones who mourn this situation are film reviewers like himself. The general punter doesn't give a toss.

scott isn't even mourning! hence I can see that bergan is creating something of a strawman to argue against - but the overall impression I get is that the two men are in accord, albeit that bergan is encouraging a strain of rigour in the 'spur to further discourse'

bergan is just a dick, scott is one of the best working critics, end of tbrr

by rigour I do sorta mean 'snobbery' haha

but if it's snobbery that says 'NO' to giving clash of the titans three comfortable stars when it's clearly a 0.5/10 movie then I am all for that tbh

scott's article is better-written and more well-rounded/open-minded than bergan's - granted

"but if it's snobbery that says 'NO' to giving clash of the titans three comfortable stars when it's clearly a 0.5/10 movie then I am all for that tbh"

well... points systems/stars are a sign of this civilization's impending collapse really

you can't prejudge this shit n e way

wtf this thread is 1,000+ posts?!

over about 1/12 of the history of the cinema if my maths is right, so

Film criticism has been dying longer than it's been living if my maths checks out.

I am completely OK with points systems, but wish they didn't hold such sway over the actual criticism - this is why ILX threads on movies, no matter how simple or unconsidered the sentiments therein, are often much, much more valuable bellwethers of a movie's quality than a cavalcade of reviews - they're NOT processed, slicked-down, hermetic arguments, they're a barrage of minute pointers which frequently give a more skeletal impression of the movie for one to drape one's own taste upon. ILX has better close-readings (in miniature) than most film reviews I've seen

a high standard