Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Butthurt.

Benjemima Buttuninteresting

it's a solid zing

xp

Although Peter Bradshaw's right about 'The Reader'

nrq i fully expected you to have revived this with the one-word answer "me"

i don't want to see that film tbh so can't judge. i felt david hare's comment that "oh, well, obviously if these hatin' film critics had been around in 1933, the nazis would never have won" had the ring of sarcastic truth.

xpost

lol, not even.

Even if only one or two of the gump comparisons are true its enough to say it would be a waste of a ticket, tbh.

i like little white lies magazine - the writing isnt always great but i like the enthusiasm/passion.

i wish they had a contents page. is that too square for words?

also u should only do "the XXX issue" if XXX has some kind of zeitgeisty cultural heft. "the 'man on wire' issue" not so much.

yeah they do too many theme issues. since i started buying it its all been centered around just one film. maybe theyre strapped for content or trying to please PR/distributors. the east asian cinema special was good though. gave me lots of tips of what to watch.

The Last 117 Employed Film Critics in America

http://moviecitynews.com/voices/2009/090302_critics.html

There are many other full-time movie critics, but they're working freelance. Maybe they should change the word to "salaried."

as someone who thinks freelance just means jobhunting every damn day, i say nyaaahhhhh.

To think Ben Lyons will still be on that list when 100+ of the other get the ax ...

filmbiz friend finds Edelstein secretly gay

Not so secretly, judging by his review of I Love You, Man on today's CBS Sunday Morning.

frontin' ^

"Most people think that film criticism is largely a matter of stating evaluations of a film, based either in criteria or personal taste, and putting those evaluations into user-friendly prose. If that’s all a critic does, why not find bloggers who can do the same, and maybe better and surely cheaper than print-based critics? We all judge the movies we see, and the world teems with arresting writers, so with the Internet why do we need professional critics? We all love movies, and many of us want to show our love by writing about them.

In other words, the problem may be that film criticism, in both print and the net, is currently short on information and ideas. Not many writers bother to put films into historical context, to analyze particular sequences, to supply production information that would be relevant to appreciating the movies. Above all, not many have genuine ideas—not statements of judgments, but notions about how movies work, how they achieve artistic value, how they speak to larger concerns. The One Big Idea that most critics have is that movies reflect their times. This, I’ve suggested at painful length, is no idea at all...."

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=4102

"the world teems with arresting writers"

not really, dave! read yr own books fer evidence.

what happened to screengrab?

Folded up shop a month or so ago. Not sure it was really generating the traffic it should've.

kinda digging this Philip Kennicott but i haven't read that much

documentary reviews, esp (THE GARDEN, IOUSA)

Mark Peranson is giving Armond a run these days as the English language's crustiest critic.

http://www.cinema-scope.com/cs39/spot_peranson_stupid_cannes.html

i don't think i trust any publications re: documentaries

For all her hollywood insider cattiness, I kinda trust Manohla Dargis

ha eric i was just reading that

guardian/observer reviewers seem a bit hit and miss (but then who isnt). i think i read peter frenchs review of t4 salvation in the observer and either he wrote too much and it got chopped or he just seemed to have nothing to say so just padded it out as much as poss. but then id prob rather read empire reviewers.

Oh my God, maybe I'll actually start watching this again:

At the Movies’ welcomes Scott, Phillips
Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz are being replaced by two new film critics

NEW YORK - After a year of getting slammed for their performance as film critics, “At the Movies” co-hosts Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz are getting their tickets punched.

Replacing them next month on the long-running syndicated series will be film critics A.O. (Tony) Scott of The New York Times and Michael Phillips of The Chicago Tribune, ABC Media Productions announced Wednesday.

The abrupt change reflects a move back to the show’s quarter-century-old roots after a year its detractors dismissed as lightweight and too fast-paced.

Lyons, a Hollywood reporter and film critic for the E! network and ABC’s “Good Morning America,” took particular heat for hobnobbing with Hollywood insiders and allegedly seeking blurb glory in movie ads.

“We tried something new last season,” said Brian Frons, who heads up the Disney unit that oversees ABC Media Productions. The departing co-hosts “did everything we asked of them, and they have been complete professionals.

“However, we’ve decided to return the show to its original essence — two traditional film critics discussing current motion picture and DVD releases.”

Scott and Phillips seem to follow in a tradition of critic co-hosts that reaches all the way back to the show’s first incarnation in 1975, a local effort called “Sneak Previews,” which paired rival Chicago newspaper film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel.

The incoming Scott has spent nearly a decade as a film critic at The New York Times. He was the Sunday book critic at Newsday and a freelance contributor to publications including The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Review of Books.

Phillips is the film critic of The Chicago Tribune. He has written about entertainment and the arts as a staff writer and critic for the Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune, among other publications.

The pair, who in the past have both appeared on the Chicago-based “At the Movies” as guest critics, will take over when the new season begins the weekend of Sept. 5 (check local listings for day and time).

In an interview Wednesday, the departing Lyons said he looks back on his year with the show with satisfaction and no regrets.

“I’m extremely proud of the work Mank (Mankiewicz) and I did on the show,” Lyons said. He has been able to put complaints about him into perspective, though he did take exception to “malicious” attacks leveled by those who “hide behind a computer screen.”

In a separate interview, Mankiewicz said his soon-to-be-former co-host “took most of the heat” directed at the show, “and I think it was unfair and mean-spirited.

“But we’re film critics — and we can’t really go ballistic when people criticize us,” he reasoned. “I loved working on the show, all of it. It will sound hokey, but it really was an honor to continue that broadcast legacy that Roger and Gene created.

“I have worked on TV a long time,” he added, “and I know nothing is permanent in television.”

karina longworth

http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1117

http://s3.amazonaws.com/mmc-beta-production/assets/17570/Movie_Graphic_C.jpg

huh

http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture_society/counting-the-stars-1553

christopher null really sucks. (filmcritic.com)

quick, you can be one of the first 3,000 people to apply for this:

The L.A. Weekly is looking for a film critic/editor. Candidate must have deep knowledge and appreciation of contemporary film and film history, both international and Hollywood. Must write and edit extremely well in formats ranging from short and full reviews to interviews to longer reported features. Essential duties include planning and managing the Weekly's film section, including special issues; assigning freelancers; occasional blogging.

What happened to Ella Taylor?

Time for you to make like Jed Clampett and light out for the territory, Jesse.

I couldn't live in LA, or assign freelancers.

I came across that christopher null person as the only RT "critic" who dislikes Children of Paradise.

Maurice Scherer

cankles

hysterical british call of duty modern warfare 2 kid

quick, you can be one of the first 3,000 people to apply for this:

The L.A. Weekly is looking for a film critic/editor. Candidate must have deep knowledge and appreciation of contemporary film and film history, both international and Hollywood. Must write and edit extremely well in formats ranging from short and full reviews to interviews to longer reported features. Essential duties include planning and managing the Weekly's film section, including special issues; assigning freelancers; occasional blogging.

― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Monday, November 23, 2009 4:43 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha i'm like ... 5% tempted to apply for that since that is exactly my job and prob pays better. but... living in LA. not so much.

I'd rather not have a job that I'm sure to lose within 6 months.

ya that too

ran into D4v1d Ed31ste1n in a bar tonight! nice guy.

what happened to nathan lee?

he was very good. LAT shd hire him, but the full spec includes lots of non-critic stuff like doing fawning q&as and promoting the new times brand blah blah blah.

reading serge daney, who wasn't good at all, but it is interesting to read him since he has clearly been very influential.

reading serge daney, who wasn't good at all

Shine on you contrarian diamond.

P.S. Read some of YOUR stuff btw. Very good! Really wish you were less cranky, though.

RIP Robin Wood -- an indispensable Hitchcock critic (tho I believe his forthcoming book is about, ugh, Haneke):

http://www.thehousenextdooronline.com/2009/12/robin-wood-february-23rd-1931-december.html

oh shit. RIP.

Great, familiar quote from Glenn Kenny's blog:

I had better say that the Guilty Pleasures feature [in Film Comment] seems to me an entirely deplorable institution. If one feels guilt at pleasure, isn't one bound to renounce either one or the other? Preferably, in most cases, the guilt, which is merely the product of that bourgeois elitism that continues to vitiate so much criticism. The attitude fostered is evasive (including self-evasive) and anti-critical: 'Isn't this muck—to which of course I'm really so superior—delicious?'

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2009/12/robin-wood-19312009.html

A bunch more links:

http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1345

and a piece that includes a long 2000 interview at the World Socialist Website:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/wood-d21.shtml

I enjoyed the Hamlet with Ethan Hawke very much. I thought he was terrific. He was the best screen Hamlet. Much better than Olivier and certainly than Kenneth Branagh. He was without the Olivier affectation and all of Branagh’s self-consciousness. Branagh always seems to be saying, “Now to help you get this line, I’m going to put on an expression. This is important. Watch this.”

....I think what’s been crucial to any work on Hitchcock has been the work of radical feminists in the late 1960s, early 1970s. First, they launched an attack on Hitchcock because of all the persecution of women in his films, and then to amend that...although women are constantly tormented, terrorized and murdered in his films, the women emerge as the most sympathetic characters and the ones with whom Hitchcock seems to most deeply identify. The whole thing is turned on its head, and the films become about male oppression, rather than about the terrorization of women. I think the best of Hitchcock films continue to fascinate me because he’s obviously right inside them, he understands so well the male drive to dominate, harass, control and at the same time he identifies strongly with the woman’s position. The struggle against that, his films are a kind of battleground between these two positions....

Hawks, no, I feel more or less the same about Hawks. Although Rio Bravo is possibly becoming my personal favorite film of all time. Ever since I came to the conclusion that the whole world situation was hopeless, and that nothing would arrest the horrors, and the only thing left was to maintain one’s self-respect, if one can. I don’t see what’s going to arrest the onslaught of global capitalism. I hope that I’m wrong.

http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1345

morbs is tht 'ugh, haneke' as in 'uhhh lemme think, haneke' or 'ugh, haneke' as in 'ew gross, haneke'