Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

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

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/index.html?story=/ent/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/04/08/farewell

xpost:

(I make a distinction between film reviewing and film criticism, which is a more scholarly and academic pursuit. Unlike film reviews, film criticism is more concerned with form rather than content.)

Ugh.

Criticism is just explaining (to yourself, to your friends, to the public) why you like or don't like something. Reviewing is a form of criticism. There is no reviewing that is not criticism. This is a phony "rap"/"hip hop" binary.

Mmm, not sure about that. Some of the best criticism leaves me wondering (and sort of not caring) about whether or not the author even liked a movie or not.

I always thought Stanley Kauffmann had a short, simple, and unpretentious distinction between film reviewing and film criticism (I think it was him--maybe he was quoting someone else): film reviewing assumes you haven't seen the film in question, film criticism assumes you have.

Manny Farber said "whether you LIKED it is the last thing I care about."

(which admittedly is part of why I've never totally gotten Farber)

<3 vadim rizov <3

― Hey girl, what's up? Yo? What's up? What's up? What's up? (Tape Store), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 1:44 AM (3 months ago)

i can now say 'dope guy irl, too' :)

xpost I was thinking precisely of Farber after reading Eric's last comment. The Film Comment piece he wrote with Patricia Patterson on Taxi Driver makes it difficult to tell whether they dug it or not in any absolute sense. Certainly leaning towards "not. But the leaning is soooooooo so brilliant that the piece eclipses the film itself (which I'm no fan so caveat emptor and all that).

"not."

which I'm no fan OF

yeah the farbs is notorious for that

been dipping into dwight macdonald recently -- str8 up awesome

not shedding many a tear for steph z

yeah the farbs is notorious for that
And also for being able to coinlessly start an old kinetoscope viewer by striking it with his fist.

well, Zacharek is not vanishing:

http://www.movieline.com/2010/04/welcome-stephanie-zacharek-movelines-new-chief-film-critic.php

been reading olden sarris articles via google news archive:

http://news.google.co.uk/newspapers?id=0tMQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=CYwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6490,5674023&dq=new-york-film-bulletin&hl=en

lol a fictional nikke fink tv show: http://ausiellofiles.ew.com/2010/04/12/diane-keaton-hbo-tilda/

this is good blogging: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/04/times_critics_t.php

punishing panorama of pessimism
Ha!

Few filmmakers are as achingly earnest in their political views, and as deeply in touch with the soul of the proletariat, as Ken Loach is.

stephanie zacherak is terrible

yup

izzat bcz u think Loach is terrible?

that's a corny phrase, actually "soul of the proletariat" is an awful (and condescending to my ears) phrase. but loach is a really down-to-earth dude, a true progressive. who makes more-or-less dull films more often than not.

I agree. And I'm not sure his movies are clear about who/what the "proletariat" are.

p'haps cuz he's not all that doctrinaire

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/2015

seems like a chill bro

never seen one of the films he's recommended, to my knowledge

would be sweet to be on the festival circuit

too many film reviews waffle on and on about the narrative. i really dont need to hear it broken down for that long. they should stick to REVIEWING rather than describing. which is why sight and sound has the right idea by separating the synopsis and review.

There are ways to intertwine narrative recountings with criticism. Some of the best BFI monographs did it.

André Bazin
― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, December 30, 2002 7:47 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark

this is a solid choice, but can the bazin fans out there read french?

i just read richard roud's review of 'what is cinema?' from 1968 and it is pretty astonishing how poor the translation was. and amazingly it's been unchanged ever since.

there are new translations for this book, no?
i read it in both french and portuguese, never looked in english.

yeah some canadian firm has done it proper. but the widely disseminated uni of cali version is still the standard in anglophone countries.

it frightens me the lack of accuracy and care in a lot of these translations.

where did you read that review, nrq?

sight and sound, spring 1968

can't c+p

ic thx!

geoffrey howell-smith goes as far as to say the translation "may have done more harm than good" here
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/polls/film_books_full.php (and also points out the canadian edition is only available in canada due to copyright) Ian Christie also points out it's a poor translation, and rosenbaum says there's no one good volume to recommend. but a lot of anglo critics there seem as ignorant of major problems as i was (i read volume ii & some anthologized stuff), and the french of course have no compunctions.