In Contention

Tag: Todd McCarthy

  • No pressure

    Variety

    UPDATE: It gets worse: Joshua Newton quotes Variety president Neil Stiles as saying “No one takes these reviews seriously,” and that the paper plans to cease reviewing altogether this year.

    EARLIER: After firing most of their chief critical staff, just one week after it came to light that they’d suppressed a negative review in order to appease a film’s well-moneyed producers, Variety hasn’t been much of a friend to the struggling art of film criticism lately.

    Amazingly, however, in this NYT take on the situation, the powers that be at the venerable trade paper find ways to make themselves look even worse. I refer to this stunning foot-in-mouth statement from editor Tim Gray, as he attempts to smooth over the Robert Koehler-“Iron Cross” fiasco:

    Of the “Iron Cross” go-round, Mr. Gray said he removed the [Robert Koehler’s] review from the Web after a lawyer for the director and producer, Joshua Newton, objected, but reposted it after viewing the film and deciding to “stand by the review as it was written.”

    The line between church and state, wrote Mr. Gray, remains as firm as in Sime Silverman’s day. “There is no advertising influence or pressure on the editorial independence of our reporting.”

    (more…)

  • Wow

    Just … wow. From The Wrap:

    Todd McCarthy, who has been writing at Daily Variety for 31 years, was fired on Monday along with two other critics, as the trade elected to cut costs and move to freelance reviews.

    [McCarthy says,] “Everyone’s going to speculate, and all I can say, It’s the end of something. What that is I don’t know. I know what it means for me. I’ve been fiercely and proudly reviewing at full speed since all the cutbacks. I made sure we had no slippage in our festival coverage and film reviewing, I’ve worked hard in recent times to make sure nothing slipped. The reviews have been the most unchanged part of Variety, period. Forever.

    What a sour note to follow the Oscars with. How Variety can call itself the leading trade voice in the business and not retain a staff film critic is something I don’t quite understand, but there you have it. Commiserations all round.

  • Somewhat ironic

    One of the numerous problems I always had with the late critic Pauline Kael was the pride she took in seeing a film only once before reviewing it, and in maintaining that she would never go back and revise an opinion later. While I could understand this stance from a professional point of view — Kael was nothing if not opinionated, and it was no doubt necessary that her opinions be seen as absolute, unwavering and not subject to change — from a human standpoint it always seemed silly. While the great majority of movies don’t need or deserve repeat viewings, why deny yourself the pleasure of seeing films you love a second or third time, or of watching a film more closely to understand how the filmmakers made it work?

    Penned by Todd McCarthy on October 11, 2001 in relation to David Lynch’s then on-coming “Mulholland Drive,” and in an age when the internet had not yet begun to make traditional media sweat.