Why Review Movies
Posted by SpikeMar 2
Found this piece on IFC.com via a tweet by Roger Ebert, a short piece with some very interesting thoughts and quotes. Some excerpts:
And he was just getting started. As the panel caromed from subjects like the ever-depreciating value of movie reviews at major outlets to the viability of online journalism, Schickel was always ready with the most biting response. On why editors at major publications — i.e. “former beat reporters and city desk guys and rewrite men that managed to stay upright in their chairs before they were finally felled by drink” — are no longer interested in serious film criticism, Schickel remarked, “They’re going to spike your review because it’s insufficiently enthusiastic… It’s like the insufferable optimism of America.”
and
[John Powers] continued, “I remember talking to Paul Schrader once about how when he came into movies, he thought he entered what was the natural state of movies, which is you got to make ‘Taxi Driver.’ You got to make all these weird, interesting movies and Hollywood wanted you to do it and it was only when it began to stop he realized he was living in the historical aberration. And for a lot of film critics, we are living in the historical aberration probably in the history of the arts where you got to make a lot of money, write about an art form at its peak and actually not only have it at its peak, but the public in general was going to that art form for ways of understanding the world. It’s not that way now.”
6 comments
Comment by Fernando on March 2, 2010 at 7:26 am
Last week I quoted Schickel on my blog, in a post on food writing. Here’s the quote,
“Criticism – and it’s humble cousin, reviewing – is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions … It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author’s (or filmakers’s or painter’s) entire body of work, among other qualities.”
There are still film reviewers out there who meet that bill – but they are rare.
Comment by Jim on March 2, 2010 at 11:03 am
I’m constantly surprised by the number of “weird, interesting” movies coming out of Hollywood these days: the Coen Brothers, Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman, Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, Gus Van Sant, David Lynch. It’s a bit of a cop out that the critics are pining about the “good old days” rather than writing seriously about this stuff…
Comment by Spike on March 2, 2010 at 12:04 pm
The deep knowledge is key – and an ability to communicate that knowledge. The fortunate thing is that the internet allows access to the writings of those few critics who fit the bill.
Comment by Spike on March 2, 2010 at 12:10 pm
I don’t know. The number of “weird, interesting” movies to me seems smaller than it did in the past. And it also seems to me that in the past, those movies were released by majors rather than indies and better able to penetrate to the mass audience. But I agree that every generation, to some extent, looks back to the “good old days” and some day these will be the good old days for future generations.
Comment by Jim on March 2, 2010 at 1:16 pm
I like to read the reviews on the back of pirate DVD covers – some of them are totally scathing about the contents of the DVD, it is as if no one bothers to proof read them. Either that or extreme Chinglish.
Comment by Joseph on March 2, 2010 at 1:32 pm
“….or like the insufferable bleatings of a 78-year-old snot.”