Film Comment intern Paul Brunick on the current state of film criticism

Did anyone else read this article? I felt like he made some good points and I enjoyed reading it. Looking forward to next installment. Still, I'm sure there are still ways we can pick it apart and be snarky about stuff:

http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/ja10/onlinecriticism.htm

(Film) Comments?

this guy interns a lot!

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2010/07/courtroom-dramas.html

Though White’s historical authority and verbal dynamism almost intimidates you into thinking he’s right

first lol

Got the issue in the mail this week and haven't done more than glance yet, but was wondering who the author was.

Rex Reed looking down his nose at any writer is a laff tho.

i think he's right on most of the important stuff, e.g. how small those storied battles of the 1960s were

sort of think that a lot of the people in their top 40 are paid writers (lol 'paid') or academics already, which sort of raises questions that could be taken further

great article!

Ditto Rex Reed. I'm tempted to say that he is to Kael/Sarris what Cameron Crowe is to Bangs/Marcus/Christgau, but that'd be unfair to Crowe, who probably had some worthwhile reviews published in Rolling Stone alongside the celebrity profiles. I'm partial to all the old and dead people--he should have thrown in Kauffmann, Farber, Simon, and Macdonald--so much so that I don't know enough about people writing right now to have much of opinion on the piece.

As a general proposition, I think it's probably true that things were never as good as people claim they were, nor as bad as people say they are right now. So in that sense, I agree with the guy. I skim-read lots of very well written reviews online, and, for every Kael and Sarris in the '60s, I'm sure there were a dozen daily reviewers writing nice things about Elvis movies and Paint Your Wagon.

yeah, the instances of Sarris and Kael working for free are instructive.

Rex Reed literally knows nothing about cinema, he's an entertainment writer who's lasted.

http://filmlinc.com/fcm/so10/onlinecriticism2.htm

reactions, etc?

Interesting, but though its a useful corrective to the doom-mongering, the conclusion "film commentary, far from being exhausted, has barely begun to tap its evolutionary potential..." seems to gloss over the professional practicalities. Will movie advertising fund papers to run wonky film blogs rather than capsule reviews of the week? Or are the convenors of this kind of discussion going to be moonlighting academics with time on their hands and Netflix? I suppose The Auteurs/Mubi is an interesting compromise.

i waited for the print version to arrive before reading it

p much agree w. stevie t there. but i think brunick is saying that weekly reviews* have always been pretty much rubbish, and that quality film criticism has never been a money gig. (he says that the bloggers have inherited the mantle of positif and film culture, which didn't pay or didn't pay much.)

*i wonder if it's something he's researched, but it's quite true that newspapers got interested when advertising $$$ came into the equation, c. 1920.

can someone just anthologize all these "current state of film criticism" essays and send the whole print run to the north pole or something?

Interesting (or not) that in the face of all of the 'criticism is useless' and 'mainstream doesn't care' that the Social Network tv spots and cardboard stand-ups in cinema lobbies are basically just huge quotes from Peter Travers and the Film Comment piece.

that's always a red-herring argument: critics were never that important in the grand scheme of things

but 'the social network' is trying to capture an unpscale audience and doesn't have what oscarbait movies usually have, ie big stars, presold property, blubbery bits

(not using oscarbait pejoratively, but that's what sony is gunning for)

http://www.nypress.com/article-21675-discourteous-discourse.html

is the internet KILLING FILM CRITICISM?

haven't read yet

tl

Consider how film criticism now works: Publicists select favorable media outlets to create advance buzz (embargoing others) and then, with frat-boy mentality in effect, no one else in cyberspace dares dissent from the hype.

he's talking about 'the social network', which has indeed had an exemplary PR campaign

but this is tarded

the folks out in cyberspace don't dissent coz they haven't seen the movie. when they do, they will (or not), but the publicity machine has been a powerful thing in movies for way longer than the internet has been around. access has always been the key thing that defines the pros from the amateurs -- and that actually kind of sucks. if anything the internet threatens to destabilize it, at least a bit.

*some* of what he says is sort of true but apart from anything else brunick's fisking of his 'toy story 3' undermines his cred

crude interlopers of a once august profession

Armond you are a treat

Every moviegoer with a laptop claims equal—vengeful—standing with so-called professionals.

he pulled this exact move the other week -- what was it, saying something was not as good as 'the overrated parallax view'

his self-aggrandizement/self-righteousness never fails to amaze

He has such a narrow view of internet opinion. He's right to some degree, as comments sections on RT and a load of other sites tend to be pretty awful. The bigger (ha!) target is probably Harry Knowles, who is not only absolutely awful in his fanboy blatherings, but has an incredible amount of that access that mayne talkes about.

Still, as the Brunick article mentions, there are loads of amazing film blogs and discussion on the web. Armond is just too isolated from everything to see that. He must see himself as the One True Voice. Even if the internet weren't around I bet he'd be railing against every single other critic out there for their corrupted opinions (although part of me thinks he's already done this).

Armond would barely exist at all anymore were it not for the internet.

This is just another iteration of the "journalists dissing citizen journalists" tack.

Armond still sometimes writes well about Euro art films ILX doesn't ever see.

Very rarely. And who cares? He's awful not matter what he covers, and "Euro art films", whatever that means anymore, haven't exactly been underserved by tiny-circulation alt weeklies.

eg, the Ozon film that vanished from NY in 2 weeks

yeah but if that ozon film was praised endlessly by critics and widely seen by the public, armond would be about two weeks away from backpedaling.

I have a hard time believing Armond writes well about anything

(apart from how awesome he is)

I would hope a full-time New York based film critic who also happens to chair the New York Film Critics Circle would cover an Ozon film, especially as Ozon is hardly an unknown (though I still haven't seen anything good by him).