Film Criticism

[med]

Oh, Rosenbaum has a DVD Beaver-esque tendency to include stills of female nudity, so I suppose it was a matter of time.

[Altair]

Catherine Rampell's article Reviewing the Movies: Audiences vs. Critics for The New York Times has been bandied around a fair amount for its statistical analysis of Rotten Tomatoes user review being on average more positive than professional film critics. An interesting read to be sure.

[domino harvey]

Has anyone even bothered to keep checking The Dissolve? Pitchfork's web design has historically always been awful, but they really stepped it up for their offshoot here. Virtually unnavigable, I feel like I'm browsing some college student's needlessly complicated portfolio website

[warren oates]

I agree completely. And I'd almost say that the content -- or certainly the categories in which its presented -- is equally annoyingly obscure, overcomplicated, precious, etc.

[Matt]

Has anyone even bothered to keep checking The Dissolve? Pitchfork's web design has historically always been awful, but they really stepped it up for their offshoot here. Virtually unnavigable, I feel like I'm browsing some college student's needlessly complicated portfolio website

I just follow them on Twitter and click on their direct links to stories that sound interesting. But yes, the website itself is like someone's design school final project. All this stuff popping up from the edges is the 2013 equivalent of blinking text.

[Shrew]

The design is absolutely awful and buries most of the content that's on there. Regularly updated sections like the reviews and "Movie of the Week" content, which have so far been pretty good, tend to vanish really quickly. Overall, I'd say the content is good though, some for some bad thinkpieces, a few failed attempts at Sean O'Neal snark in the newswire, and the Performance Review section, which seems to be both too limited (let's only talk about these winners of these awards, not the nominees or other noteworthy performances from the year) and too broad (let's talk about NYFCC nominees, even though the NYFCC didn't exist this year!)

Mostly, I appreciate the quixotic attempt to cover stuff outside of theatrical releases like VOD, streaming, and dvd releases. And the weekly short film feature has a lot of potential, even if it's just "watch these underseen short films."

[Camera Obscura]

It's the terrible design and hopeless navigation that made me stop reading "The Dissolve" (thank God for Twitter...), but the content is not so hot either... Are people really coming here for interesting writing or actual movie updates worth reading in the first place?

Seems reasonable we should give 'em some more time, but for all the talent involved, this has to be one of the most disappointing initiatives of the last couple of years... I'd probably enjoy some of their writings 10-15 years ago, but content-wise, they seem to have been stuck in the early 2000s as well (considering they're very much aiming to offer some 'intelligent' new insights in either classic, or contemporary cinema, in which they fail miserably..). Their conversation-style features are absolutely terrible, and as far festival offerings are concerned, they seem completely out of the loop of what's happening in recent cinema...

[Jeff]

Tobias is still one of my favorite film critics, and I enjoy most of the rest of the crew's writing too, but, yeah, the site's an unnavigable mess. Twitter route for me too.

[kuzine]

Nobody's using rss feeds anymore these days to follow sites? That's how I typically keep track of sites that interest me (ignoring any design mess along the way). Don't have twitter though, but seems less practical to organize/archive/search etc(?).

[matrixschmatrix]

I like the Dissolve, but it definitely lacks the easy navigability of the AVClub, which is the main reason I keep reading it- they've got Vishnevetsky, and their TV coverage hasn't changed much, but outside of that the brain drain is incredibly noticeable. It's infuriating that Mike D'Angelo writes for both sites, but it seems a though he reserves the stuff that really irritates me- where he dismisses something for reasons that have little to do with the work and everything to do with some critical paradigm he's trying out- for the AVClub, and he's not worse than A.A. Dowd, who just doesn't provide a lot of insight ever.

The Dissolve's reviews are good, their features are good, even their comments section is solid, though a little underpopulated- but I literally wish they'd never transitioned from tumblr, which was way easier to get through.

[AidanKing]

All change at the Sunday papers in the UK this week with Philip French leaving The Observer and Jonathan Romney leaving the Independent on Sunday. Philip French is retiring and has been replaced by Mark Kermode so his leaving is understandable, though sad, but the situation at the IoS appears to be a US-style cull of (good) critics as the long-standing music critic, Simon Price, has also gone and Jonathan Romney's column seems to have been replaced by nothing.

I hope Mr Romney continues writing for Sight and Sound and Film Comment as I have enjoyed reading his work for years and have particularly been impressed by his willingness to reconsider his views on film-makers (e.g. Bruno Dumont).

Addition: I've just noticed Michael B refers (in the Under the Skin thread) to Jonathan Romney no longer working at the IoS as 'scandalous.' I would agree wholeheartedly with this.

[MichaelB]

I also notice that the Observer has used French's departure as an excuse to sneak in star ratings.

Fortunately for the likes of me, I believe Nick James's position with regard to Sight & Sound adopting them is still "over my dead body".

[AidanKing]

I believe Nick James's position with regard to Sight & Sound adopting them is still "over my dead body".

Thank goodness for that. I hope that Sight and Sound will always remain a star-rating free zone.

[jindianajonz]

But what if I want to know how somebody feels about a movie but don't want to take the time to actually read what they have to say?

[colinr0380]

Strange how the almost unclassifiable Upstream Color was both Romney and French's final film, something which depending on the audience member can fluctuate wildly between five stars and one star!

[AidanKing]

But what if I want to know how somebody feels about a movie but don't want to take the time to actually read what they have to say?

I may be being dense here but why would you want to know what someone feels about a film without knowing the reasons why? A star rating doesn't help you with knowing what the film looks like, sounds like, what it intends to do, how it goes about doing it and how far it achieves its intentions. It doesn't help you at all if the film is incredibly ambitious and doesn't really achieve its objectives or is very small-scale and perfect in what it does. In any event, if you don't actually read the reviews, you have no way of knowing how far you agree with the particular critic's point of view anyway thus rendering the star rating useless.

I think marking art as if it's homework is a particularly pernicious modern phenomenon and I hope it goes away soon. You don't usually see it in book reviews fortunately but that's yet another indication of the relatively low regard in which film is held in UK/US culture.

[jindianajonz]

I was being sarcastic, but you have elaborated my thoughts exactly

[AidanKing]

I was being sarcastic, but you have elaborated my thoughts exactly

Whoops! I apologise for inadvertently taking your irony seriously. I'm so glad you weren't defending star ratings. Sorry.

[colinr0380]

I guess stars do look better on a DVD cover though. And don't take up as much space as a paragraph of text (or even "Two Thumbs Up!"), leaving room to add more five star reviews!

I saw this on a shelf and it was so ridiculous I thought it might be a piece of conceptual art:

[jindianajonz]

But if we only had stars on the cover, we wouldn't have my all time favorite box quote: "I think this is a great definitive Twin Peaks Gold Set...." -David Lynch

[colinr0380]

Or this one from the late Iain Banks:

[AidanKing]

That Iain Banks quote reminds you of what a nice man he appeared to be and how much he will be missed.

It seems that Jonathan Romney, late of the Independent on Sunday, is going to be reviewing a film each week on the Film Comment website, which is good news. I hope he's getting paid.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Glenn Kenny and Sean Axmaker amongst many others laid off by MSN Entertainment.

[Matt]

Granted, I don't read a lot of film reviews and criticism, but I didn't even know there was such a thing as MSN Movies. I thought Glenn Kenny only had his blog.

[domino harvey]

I know much has been said and understood about Siskel and Ebert's frequent disagreements and rough patches, but I stumbled upon this episode from 1990 entitled "You Blew It" and it is nearly unwatchable. I'm not sure who thought it was a good idea to base an entire special edition around petty arguing, but that's what the viewer is treated to as Siskel and Ebert each pick a film the other hated and one they liked, both "unjustly" in the other's eyes, and rail against their call. There is however no attempt made to engage in any positive aspects of the exercise and the two rehash old arguments in a vicious and just plain mean way, with Ebert being far more antagonistic and, well, shitty. The level of disdain and lack of respect shown for each other is remarkable, even for these two. See how far you can make it into an episode built solely on cheap shots and open hostility-- I just barely managed!