Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

http://www.amazon.com/Cahiers-Cin%C3%A9ma-Neo-Realism-Hollywood-Harvard/dp/0674090616

thanks NN

quitting this nonjob

how come?

there's a line in The Great Beauty (which I sort of hated otherwise) to the effect of "I'm too old to do things I don't want to do."

also

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."
- Samuel Johnson

Yeah, well Samuel Johnson was a well known junket whore.

Read on Alfred's blog that EW's Owen Gleiberman just got canned after having been with the magazine since its inception. I haven't read that mag in years, but my family had a subscription years ago and I always enjoyed his criticism. His minority-opinion reviews of The Last Boy Scout and Groundhog Day were particularly memorable. Would love if Rolling Stone could somehow lose the never non-hacky Peter Travers and pick up Gleiberman.

c'mon man Peter Travers electrifying as the bruised heart of the rolling stone empire.

MZS on the sacking: http://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/for-the-love-of-it-notes-on-the-decline-of-entertainment-weekly-the-firing-of-owen-gleiberman-and-the-ongoing-end-of-an-era

Bordwell's last entry on those '40s critics:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2014/04/20/the-rhapsodes-afterlives/

Seitz's advice to young critics:

http://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/advice-to-young-critics

(I was conscientious, as an old neophyte, on about 8/10, but never had any illusion I'd make a living at it, so I just ran out of time and motivation)

https://media.vocativ.com/photos/2014/04/Movie-Critics-Graphic-Full2.jpeg

http://www.vocativ.com/culture/media/screening-hacks-americas-movie-critics-rated/

odious

that doesn't seem to allow for the possibility that maybe "200 of the highest-grossing movies of the decade" were mostly shit

thou daren't deviate from the norm

consensus = truth

Kael, Kauffmann, and Simon would have been off the chart for the duration of their careers; Sarris the same for his heyday, though he really softened the last decade or so. Farber would have been in another county (though he was only a regular reviewer for a short while).

i'm FPing any score-related posts in future

Reunion in Vienna (1933, Franklin) 7/10
*Inside Llewyn Davis (2013, Coen, Coen) 8/10
Adam & Yves (1974, de Rome) 5/10
*Manhattan Melodrama (1934, Van Dyke) 6/10
Slap the Monster on Page One (1972, Bellocchio) 7/10
Love Is Strange (2014, Sachs) 6/10
Devil in the Flesh (1986, Bellocchio) 5/10
The Eyes, the Mouth (1982, Bellocchio) 6/10
Manakamana (2013, Spray, Velez) 7/10
*An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (2012, Nance) 8/10
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976, Ross) 7/10
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970, Wilder) 6/10

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Etc., etc., etc.

I don't think ratings are a problem in and of themselves, least of all on a message board where there's no review attached.

well, we're not critics. Glossing over substantive stuff on critical chops in favor of another mass-market barometer is for shit.

no one's making a scoresheet of our ratings, yr comparison is specious

jaymc might be

and the NSA.

I don't know, I just don't see ratings as a problem when accompanied by good writing. Christgau rated records for 40+ years. If you mean that ratings are usually accompanied by poor writing, that's probably true. But they don't cause the poor writing.

i'm talking about RATINGS IN ISOLATION, goddammit

Okay...My mahy talents notwithstanding, I'm not a mind-reader.

"many"...typing not one of them, not anymore.

new site

Critics Round Up is the first movie review aggregator to select reviews based on the quality of writing moreso than popularity. That doesn’t mean CRU will pick up on all of the worthy film writing online. Good writing has and will continue to fall through the cracks, which is inevitable since the internet is so big and constantly expanding. But unlike Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, CRU will not fail in bringing your attention to new writing by esteemed critics like Adrian Martin and Kent Jones or reputable film journals like Senses of Cinema and La Furia Umana, people and sites that absolutely shouldn’t be overlooked.

http://criticsroundup.com/about-critics-round-up/

http://criticsroundup.com/which-critics-are-included/

100% in favor--notice, though, they are converting to a score ("CRU Rating").

Find this combination confusing on the "Which Critics Are Included" page:

The New Yorker: Richard Brody
The Nation: James Agee, Manny Farber
The New Republic: Manny Farber
Time: James Agee, Manny Farber

They've had a twitter feed for awhile now, and frequently sent out round-ups of rep screenings.

I hope Agee's on the wagon--shouldn't Twitter while drunk.

farber wrote for all those publications! also he is dead, and hadn't been writing criticism since 1978. but i'd love to hear what he has to say about neighbors!

xpost beat me to it!

If they're having a historical section, again, great, all for it. It was as much Brody's name on its own that jumped out at me. The New Yorker had one or two other great critics they might want to add, ditto The New Republic.

I wonder if they are including niche writers like Tony Rayns and Grady Hendrix; I'll read anything by them that I can get my hands on.

"niche" meaning = Asia

http://www.filmcomment.com/entry/bombast-ad-hominem-ad-nauseam

yeah, was tempted to put that in the Armond thread

that Cinemania '94 CD-ROM to which he alludes was invaluable to me.

Yeah, I had the '96 version.

'95er over here

well, that was a completely useless article.

sounds like you've never been lambasted by a filmmaker in a comments section

i prefer slow-roasted to lam-basted

are we supposed to congratulate these dudes for ad hominem attacks or at the very least feel compassion for them, idgi. pretty telling in kenny's blog was matt zoller seitz's story about how this ed champion guy retweeted MZS's personal remembrance of his wife on what would have been her 40th birthday and implied that they didn't love each other. kind of crazy how even armond white doesn't hold a candle to ed champion or np thompson in the ranks of the unhappy sociopathic misogynistic creeps of internet film writing.

all these people deserve each other, no? maybe not MZS. but kenny, white, et al, they seem to live to rile other critics up. i think they like doing that more than they like movies, honestly.

Film criticism does seem to attract certain...personality types, that's for sure

I don't know what you are taking about, puss hole.

lol

I guess I haven't followed Glenn Kenny's battles. I read him regularly until he left MSN.

He's a good writer and a smart critic, but he has a tendency to lurk around Jeffrey Wells' site. I've never had any run-ins with him, but a lot of people I know have and detest him to varying degrees because of it.