Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

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

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)

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― 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)

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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