Film Criticism

[colinr0380]

I hate to say it but it think that is also a good example of Siskel and Ebert missing the point of many of the films they are reviewing, over and above the less interesting discussion of who is 'right' or not (of course no one is in a battle of individual opinions, especially entrenched ones!):

Blue Velvet is a great film but I agree with Ebert that you are meant to feel intensely uncomfortable - that's a David Lynch film in a nutshell! The thing he finds terrible is kind of what makes the film so powerful, if not that likable. (I'm relatively OK with Blue Velvet but have bigger issues with Wild At Heart, a film which I think is both magnificent and highly troubling in its 'cool' attitude to violence. Yet it doesn't shy away from the showing the aftermath, which mitigates my issues somewhat. But feeling troubled by the film doesn't make it a objectively a bad film, just subjectively a problematic one). Field of Dreams gets caught up in a tug of war of how good it is in portraying the attitude to baseball versus taking a magical realist and sentimental view of the subject, when the bigger problem (or success!) is that the film could really be about achieving any dream in order to appeal wider than to just baseball fans (it kind of ignores a niche audience for a wider one). She-Devil gets the worst debate as Siskel and Ebert bicker over why Meryl Streep and Rosanne Barr don't have any scenes together when it was advertised as such, ignoring how successful it is as an adaptation (it isn't) and whether the changes it makes to its source material are interesting in their own right (they aren't). House of Games gets a debate about why a film cannot appeal to everyone and has to be complicated or edgy. Once Upon A Time In America is used for a debate about cutting around different versions of a film.

They all could be interesting debates but the big problem is that they do not really get deep into Siskel and Ebert's feelings about the film, especially as the episode goes on and they fall back on 'easier' and less insightful topics relating to truth in film advertising or niche audience appeal. When really a much more interesting "You Blew It" kind of debate would revolve around discussions about whether a film can change on re-viewings into something you might like more (or perhaps even less!) and if they were really daring they could have even broached the subject of entrenched opinions of a professional film critic in the context of having to act as an 'official reviewer' (do you need to stick without any deviation to your original assessment of a film because otherwise you could potentially be accused of having 'misled' your audience earlier on, or are you allowed to present a different opinion as your views change over time?), and whether having contrarian opinions purely for the sake of debate ever actually achieves anything other than a stalemate.

[domino harvey]

The idea of a professional film reviewer revisiting their initial opinion is a good one, though one can imagine why it doesn't happen too often beyond the reason Colin suggests-- when would people who have to see everything find the time to revisit something they've already seen and dismissed (or revisit a film they liked but didn't effusively love)? But at least with a show like this you'd think the principals would at least revisit the small selection decided to be under discussion! For what it's worth I do remember Ebert publishing a footnote to his two-and-a-half star review of the South Park movie when it was reprinted in his yearly omnibus, conceding that the film was really a three-star affair despite how much it unnerved him. And before it went completely to shit, Entertainment Weekly used to have a sidebar with their main movie reviewer at the time, Owen Gleiberman, where readers would write in and he got the "revisit" question once and he admitted to over and underpraising assorted films (I think one of the titles revised upwards was a Whit Stillman movie)

[flyonthewall2983]

Or this one from the late Iain Banks:

Probably the only time you'll ever see the word "annoyingly" in a pull-quote.

[MichaelB]

Robert Harris said that he regarded Polanski's The Ghost as "version 2.0" of his novel (he co-wrote the screenplay with Polanski), but I'm not sure if that made it onto any of the advertising materials.

[colinr0380]

Ghost 2.0 would perhaps make it sound too much like a Ring-style "be afraid of the internet" horror film!

[Andre Jurieu]

I hate to say it but it think that is also a good example of Siskel and Ebert missing the point of many of the films they are reviewing, over and above the less interesting discussion of who is 'right' or not...

...They all could be interesting debates but the big problem is that they do not really get deep into Siskel and Ebert's feelings about the film, especially as the episode goes on and they fall back on 'easier' and less insightful topics relating to truth in film advertising or niche audience appeal. When really a much more interesting "You Blew It" kind of debate would revolve around discussions about whether a film can change on re-viewings into something you might like more (or perhaps even less!) and if they were really daring they could have even broached the subject of entrenched opinions of a professional film critic in the context of having to act as an 'official reviewer' (do you need to stick without any deviation to your original assessment of a film because otherwise you could potentially be accused of having 'misled' your audience earlier on, or are you allowed to present a different opinion as your views change over time?), and whether having contrarian opinions purely for the sake of debate ever actually achieves anything other than a stalemate.

This is basically a summary of why I always found any version of Ebert's review-shows to be a frustrating experience. It always felt as though there was a much more interesting debate that could be possible if the critics would ever bother to set aside or move past the discussion over whether or not they should recommend the film to viewers. I understand that's the basic premise of the show, so that function can't be ignored entirely, but it always resulted in a show that seemed to gravitate more towards taking around the movie rather than actually discussing the contents of the movie. The show was kind of simultaneously fascinating and annoying in how often they would accidentally bump into debating the contents of the film, glancing into what the film was actually attempting to express, but then quickly scurry off into a debate over the more superficial aspects of the films or minor problems within the industry.

[matrixschmatrix]

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.

Now the AVClub's an unnavigable mess too! Finally, the impetus I needed to switch entirely over to The Dissolve.

[Roger Ryan]

J. Hoberman replaces Dave Kehr in The New York Times.

[domino harvey]

I used to kill time by reading AV Club on my phone but the mobile setup is impossible to deal with and now I just won't bother. What the hell is wrong with web designers?

[matrixschmatrix]

They all want to look like Windows 8, apparently.

[domino harvey]

The redesign is maybe the worst, least-functional I've ever seen-- it's almost willfully wrong

[The Narrator Returns]

I want to say that everybody complaining about is just overreacting and being petty, but no. It just looks awful. Maybe if you exclusively go online on your tablet or phone, it looks fine. I read it on a fucking computer, and it looks like (as someone else so eloquently stated) "a Simpson/Bruckheimer film made into a website."

[domino harvey]

I first saw it on my phone and it doesn't look good AT ALL-- I checked on my laptop afterwards to see if it was just Mobile getting screwed but nope, it's ruined everywhere. Surely they'll show some common sense and revert, right?

[The Narrator Returns]

At the very least, they're working on reinstating the profiles, notifications, and TV Club stuff. That doesn't change that the front page is a clusterfuck, but it's a quarter of the way there.

[Perkins Cobb]

Surely they'll show some common sense and revert, right?

Has any website ever said, "You're right, our new design totally blows, we'll go back to the old one"?

[zedz]

I agree with all of the above. I often go on there during downtime at work to read whatever, but now I go there and I just can't be bothered. I would have thought it hard for a simple redesign to pull that off, but they managed it!

The real problem for me I think is that everything is basically identical and equivalent, so there aren't meaningful clusters and hierarchies to guide your eye and selection. It's been organized like a paint chart, but the visual information (which now dominates) is not systematic or necessarily any good indicator of whether you're going to want to read any given article - so it's more like a totally randomized paint chart. Useful!

[knives]

It also doesn't help that the front page seems stuck. I go there and literally the same stuff from when the change happened is on the front page.

[wattsup32]

For those of you who have studied such things, if you were going to design a film criticism syllabus, what readings would you include and in what order? I am particularly interested in critical theories (race, feminist, psychoanalytic, etc.).

[Satori]

For those of you who have studied such things, if you were going to design a film criticism syllabus, what readings would you include and in what order? I am particularly interested in critical theories (race, feminist, psychoanalytic, etc.).

I used Braudy and Cohen's Film Theory and Criticism this semester (augmented with some additional readings specific to the films I showed my students) and quite liked it as a baseline for criticism/theory. Depending on the level you are teaching, I would start with the basics- Kracaur, Eisenstein, Bazin, Deleuze, ect as a way into questions of form and realism. Robin Wood is a great way to introduce ideological theories- you can cover the absolute basics of Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism, and queer theory before moving onto the more complex readings. Braudy and Cohen has "Ideology, Genre, Auteur," but you might want to also do some chapters from Vietnam to Reagan and "Responsibilities of a Gay Film Critic." Mulvey and Metz are essential early on in the semester as well. Stam and Spence's "Colonialism, Racism, and Representation" is a great intro to race theory. Personally, I am also a big proponent of including readings that specifically address the films I show- this gives them models for the application of theory, which is really important for students who don't have a lot of experience with it.

[wattsup32]

Thank you! This will be a big help. I'm not teaching a course, but someone I know got roped into doing a course for high school seniors under emergent circumstances. I volunteered to find people who could help her put this together in a pinch (that's you all on the board). I knew you'd know what to do.

[kekid]

I am looking for books on films of Eric Rohmer and Roberto Rossellini. I am not looking for biographical information, but reviews/critique of their films. Any recommendations?

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Tag Gallagher's book is a great start on RR. Derek Schilling and Jacob Leigh are two recent sources on Rohmer. Schilling's book is a good introduction.

[Perkins Cobb]

DVDTalk writer (and Kurosawa/Mifune biographer) Stuart Galbraith IV has launched World Cinema Paradise, a new site to showcase his own writing about film and also to round up a lot of other historians and critics to contribute pieces. Dennis Bartok, Michael Jeck, Glenn Erickson, and Lee Marvin biographer Dwayne Epstein are among the initial contributors, and I'll be in there eventually too (although not as "Perkins"). I'm hoping it will attract some attention and become sort of a Dissolve lite for the DVD/retro audience.

[knives]

I'm sure this is a great site with great criticism given most of the writers involved, but that countdown is a step too far into comedy.

[Perkins Cobb]

I'm trying to convince myself that's a paid ad. Stuart and I are, in a friendly way, very much on opposite sides of the Mad World spectrum!