In Contention

Tag: critics

  • Yours truly at Empire Big Screen

    Here’s some exciting news for my London-based fans — all six of you, give or take members of my immediate family. If your long-cherished dream has been to see me in the flesh, offering my own limited insight into the whys and hows of film journalism, that can become a reality today.

    I am flattered — not to mention a little bewildered — to have been invited to take part in a couple of panel discussions at this weekend’s Empire Big Screen event at the O2 Dome, an exciting three-day summit of sorts for movie fans featuring a range of screenings, exhibits, talks and other swell distractions. The panel I’m taking part in is called ‘How to Become a Film Journalist’ (alternative title: ‘How to Try in Business Without Really Succeeding’) and I, for one, look forward to learning the answer.

    I’ll be on this afternoon at 3pm, as well as twice on Sunday, with an impressive array of panellists including Anna Smith, David Edwards, Charlie Lyne and Tim Robey, the bylines of whom are familiar to far more UK film buffs than my own. If you happen to be at Big Screen — check out the full lineup here — do come along and watch me bluff.

  • Metacritic scrutinizes the ‘Social Network’ critics

    Confession: since their utterly senseless redesign, Metacritic has gone from a daily (many times daily, often) stop on my web rounds to a place I barely visit. “It’s like walking through my old high school,” wrote my friend Nick, echoing my thoughts precisely. “I used to live here, now I can’t even find the bathroom.”

    It’s all for the best, probably: the less brain space I devote to the numerical quantification of critical opinion that, for some folks, now seems to stand in the place of critical opinion itself, the better for my sanity. I know which critics I like and/or which ones matter, and I can just as easily visit them in their own online living rooms.

    That said, I remain fascinated by how the advent of review-scoring has made the media (the new media, in particular) unprecedentedly obsessed with the role of critics — at a time when their opinion seemingly couldn’t have less influence on the paying public. This year alone, we’ve already seen flare-ups on the blogosphere over the critics who dared to sully the Rotten Tomatoes scores for “Toy Story 3” or “Inception”; the notoriously hard-to-please Armond White has become the critic that everyone claims not to care about, yet the arrival of one of his against-consensus pans is now greeted with mass re-Tweeting.

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  • Degrees of devotion

    The best thing that came out of last week’s online fracas over assorted critics’ response to “Inception” was a brief swell in useful conversation about critical nuance and responsibility. On Thursday, I touched on the Rotten Tomatoes-trained tendency of many readers to box film criticism into distinct ‘love’ and ‘hate’ camps, and as far as I’m concerned, US-based British writer Tom Shone has pretty much the last word on the matter. Responding to a Sasha Stone post about the blogger/critic divide, Shone writes:

    The blogger/critic dust-up over Inception illustrates the divide between those who for whom love of a film means nothing less than full-throated devotion, coupled with a blindness to all its flaws — a kind of creeping politesse that insists on nary a bad word be said of the great and the good. The kind of writer for whom the words “genius” and “masterpiece” silence all internal debate. And those whose admiration for a film or filmmaker comes striated with a sense of its imperfections, who see no contradiction between loving a film and finding fault with it — the faults peg their admiration higher. The blogosphere seems sometimes to forget this. They mistake reverence for respect. They’re strangely pious. Again: where are the outlaws?

    I have nothing further. (P.S. He likes “Inception” just fine.)

  • Meet me halfway

    (Yes, more “Inception.” I’ll be writing about it once more today. Certain readers have been warned.)

    One day away from “Inception,” and after a fresh spate of reviews hit the web in the past few days, a familiar “you’re either with us or the terrorists” mentality is starting to emerge. We had a taste of it last month, when critics not on board with “Toy Story 3” were taken to task for daring to sully its Rotten Tomatoes rating — and already, even mild detractors of Christopher Nolan’s latest are being branded “bitter,” “haters” or simply “wrong” by the film’s more enthusiastic online champions.

    Predictably, some are labeling the film a “love it or hate it” deal — a statement that necessitates boxing a number of mixed or conflicted reactions into the “hate it” pile to be true. Todd McCarthy’s indieWIRE review, for example, is a respectful piece that nonetheless states some reservations with the film, but has been conveniently described by Jeff Wells as a “slam.” I’ll detail my own thoughts on “Inception” later today, but I’m already being told in some quarters that I’m against the film because I judged it a flawed-but-respectable “B/B-” effort in my initial Twitter take.

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  • Who needs consensus?

    If you keep up with the American critical scene, you’ll probably have got the message by now that people kinda like “Toy Story 3.” No surprise there: every one of Pixar’s features since their 2006 misfire “Cars” has been greeted with the kind of mass veneration usually reserved for returning messiahs, and on at least a couple of occasions, they’ve deserved it. (That’s no dig at their latest, which I have yet to see.)

    You’ll also likely have heard that a certain Armond White is less impressed, dismissing the film as “drivel” and adding that “‘Transformers 2’ already explored the same plot to greater thrill and opulence.” Of course, in its own way, this is as knee-jerk and predictable a response as many critics’ annual ejaculation over the Pixar brand; White is accused virtually on a weekly basis of disingenuous contrarianism. It’d have been greater cause for concern if he’d liked the movie.

    As exasperating as he can be, I’ve stood up for White on these pages before, and I continue to do so: as I wrote on Twitter last night, I see his reviews as calculated provocations to the reader, forcing them to engage with the idea of critical responsibility. And for all the talk of “trolling,” I do think he’s conditioned himself to the point where he believes every word he writes — for better or worse.

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Critical condition

    Gabourey Sidibe in PreciousAhead of its U.S. release this week, there is a wave of mild surprise in the blogosphere over the fact that “Precious,” the film deemed by some (yours truly included) to be the present Best Picture frontrunner, is currently sitting on a lowly Metacritic score of 57. Fitting neatly with the largely media-fabricated talk of a backlash against the film, some commenters are citing this rather arbitrary number as a debit against the film’s chances.

    As much as I’d personally like that to believe that — and as relieved as I am to see that I’m not the only person who didn’t respond to the film – such talk will doubtless be short-lived, given the paucity of reviews making up the current score and the likelihood of raves to come. If anything, public support is more crucial than critical consensus to this film’s campaign – if audiences don’t turn up to see this grim, minority-oriented indie, many Academy members won’t feel compelled to either.

    That said, it looks increasingly possible that “Precious” (I refuse to use that lumpy subtitle all season, by the way) could turn out to be a more critically divisive item than might have been expected following an ecstatically received festival run.

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  • Word

    Roger Ebert has written an eloquent and impassioned response to what he sees as the demise of film criticism as an artform, prompted by the depressing news that the Associated Press has posed a 500-word limit on all entertainment-related articles, including all reviews and think pieces:

    Why do we need critics? A good friend of mine in a very big city was once told by his editor that the critic should “reflect the taste of the readers.” My friend said, “Does that mean the food critic should love McDonald’s?” The editor: “Absolutely.” I don’t believe readers buy a newspaper to read variations on the Ed McMahon line, “You are correct, sir!” A newspaper film critic should encourage critical thinking, introduce new developments, consider the local scene, look beyond the weekend fanboy specials, be a weatherman on social trends, bring in a larger context, teach, inform, amuse, inspire, be heartened, be outraged.

    Exactly, sir. And 500 words just doesn’t cut it. Hell, the reviews I write here are twice that, more often than not. 500 words is an exam question answer. 500 words is an eight-grade book report. 500 words is not usually an adequate space in which to stimulatingly engage with, dissect, and reassimilate a work of art. Chances are anyone who finds longer pieces too challenging doesn’t read reviews anyway.

    I don’t need critics to tell me whether to see a film or not. I have my own instincts for that. I need critics (good ones, at any rate) to test and expand my understanding of the film after the fact. A great critic, be it Pauline Kael, David Denby or Ryan Gilbey, offers an interpretation that, whether it contradicts or consolidates my own, reveals alternative possibilities within the work at hand. If you limit their imaginations to a paltry word limit, you limit those of their readers too.

    Of course, if all you want from a film review is a star rating, you’re probably not reading this. If you are, I encourage you to read Ebert’s full piece here.