Film Criticism

[matrixschmatrix]

The AVClub has been one of my most checked sites for years, but I don't know if I'll be interested after this- I don't watch much TV, and this knocks out both a lot of the weekly film coverage and the majority of writers for the most interesting running features- no World of Flops, no New Cult Canon, no book-to-movie thing that Tasha used to do, etc etc etc. That leaves, what, the Newswire?

[knives]

I imagine at least some of the new meat will do an admirable job taking their place. Salva's already done some good stuff taking Pierce's place while Alston recently had what I feel is the best critical work done on the site in a long time just a few weeks ago. Also while it's not typically critical Random Roles is always a joy especially when Harris who is staying does it. That we're getting new faces doesn't mean that we are getting no quality.

[essrog]

Whatever we're losing from the A.V. Club, it looks like we'll be gaining somewhere else, so that offsets my disappointment. I think it's great that all the departing writers are getting the band back together someplace else. Noel Murray joining the stable is another big plus.

[mfunk9786]

Robinson was one of their best even if I often disagreed with her. What makes her worse?

Her personality in the Reasonable Discussions podcasts was what I was taking issue with, I have no quarrel with her written stuff but she was always pretty insufferable in audio form

[colinr0380]

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky is becoming a "semi-regular contributor", with his first piece on The Age of Innocence.

[Gregory]

Hot damn!

Availability: DVD, but no Blu-ray yet (though one is supposedly in the works for a 2013 release)

Criterion?

[Professor Wagstaff]

Hot damn!

Availability: DVD, but no Blu-ray yet (though one is supposedly in the works for a 2013 release)

Criterion?

Please God, let it be true [-o<
The Age of Innocence has long been one of my most desired blu upgrades, and if it can come out as a CC release with all those added features (and God knows there's a wealth of information to mine from), I'd be thrilled. I rewatch the film every 1-2 years and without fail find myself shaking each time during the epilogue, emotionally wrecked by the ultimate choices of the characters. I swear each viewing that I'll never watch it again, but I always do.

[dwk]

I'm pretty sure that Image is releasing The Age of Innocence Blu-ray

[Matt]

Study Finds Film Criticism Dominated by Men

Someone needed to do a study to discover that? Study Finds Sky is Blue, Ice Cream Delicious.

[Andre Jurieu]

I prefer a European Iced Milk.

[antnield]

They’re joining former staffers Keith Phipps and Scott Tobias at another Chicago-based media company, for a film-specific project that will be announced soon.

The Dissolve (coming soon)

[Oedipax]

Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but my gut reaction is I don't want Pitchfork's sensibilities anywhere near cinema.

[med]

Seems more like you'll be getting the old-guard AV Club's sensibilities on cinema.

[Alan Smithee]

I really hope we get a combination of both. Most mainstream film criticism isn't as obsessive as pitchforks. I like that pitchfork also often times assumes you know what they're talking about, when they make references. Something you can't get away with at a major publication. If The Dissolve follows the Pitchfork model we would get a lot of news everyday, 5 film reviews from most mainstream to least, everyday, and an assortment of feature articles. That would be great. I think it's a mistake to be based out of Chicago though. New York simply gets more films sooner.

[med]

May AV Club's list fetishization stay with the AV Club. I'd happily live my life without ever seeing again on a home page something like "23 Films in Which a Gun Is Introduced in the First Act but Does Not Go off in the Third."

[matrixschmatrix]

I get the feeling they'd been getting bored with the inventory thing themselves for a while now. I'm hoping we get a lot of things like Scott Tobias's New Cult Canon- talking about movies that have a cachet but haven't necessarily been critically picked over, and actually treating them with some depth. Nearly all of the writers who jumped ship had some kind of feature like that, and while I imagine they can't literally resume the same thing, I hope the ideas can carry over.

[Jeff]

First comes the great news about the A.V. Club crew joining forces again at The Dissolve, now the wonderful Matt Zoller Seitz has been named editor of the relaunched rogerebert.com. His first blog post shows how much he "got" Roger and what a great steward of his legacy he'll be. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky contributes there too. Between these two organizations and Filmspotting, Chicago is again the capital of infectious, accessible, enthusiastic discussion of the movies. Somewhere Roger and Gene are smiling.

[AlexHansen]

The House Next Door was an essential bookmark when Seitz was in charge, so Ebert's site is in really good hands.

[Jeff]

The fine staff of the A.V. Club walks among us again. The Dissolve is live.

[mfunk9786]

Glad to see the site up, but man, they need to fire whoever worked on the formatting of it. It is a mess on my iPad in portrait mode and a mess on my widescreen monitor. The only place it's been remotely functional is if I turn my iPad to landscape mode. It is, quite frankly, disastrous when you hover over a category on the top of the site and only like 1/4th of what you should be seeing pops up. Of course, the writing is great and it's great to see it up and running, but damn.

Also, and this is a pet peeve, but the half star looks like 80% full.

[FakeBonanza]

film.com must now be the undisputed king of relentless list fetishization.

[med]

My place of employment went on a site-blocking spree recently. One of the sites to get zapped is Jonathan Rosenbaum's. It falls under 'Category: Pornography.'

[domino harvey]

I haven't watched Out 1 yet but I did assume the title referred to watersports and alerted your employers to its presence on that site. My bad

[Andre Jurieu]

My place of employment went on a site-blocking spree recently. One of the sites to get zapped is Jonathan Rosenbaum's. It falls under 'Category: Pornography.'

Not sure that they classified it as pornography, but the site-blocking software on my office computer network zapped Rosenbaum's site about 2 or 3 years ago. That might be one of the rare instances that they've been ahead of the curve, even if it kind of demonstrates that they are far behind-the-curve in terms of their ability to determine what should be considered inappropriate.

[hearthesilence]

HA, I bet I know why. Whoever edits his site hotlinks most of their images - very few, if any, are hosted on the same server as his articles - and for some of the more explicit films reviewed, they use images that are watermarked with site names or url's to what are clearly softcore pornography sites. A filter would easily pick up on that.