Lots of discussion emanating from Anthony Kaufman's two blog pieces on "Critic/Bloggers" (here and here - with great comments at both) including my piece yesterday - and much of it is summarized over at Chuck Tyron's blog. Chuck reminds me of Anne Thompson's piece in Variety last Friday, which opens with the reminder that the first step is admitting you have a problem:
My name is Anne and I'm a blogger.
Thompson's piece is really about the whole of online film reporting, as she delves into online entertainment and gossip sites like TMZ and Defamer, as well as aggregator news sites like Aint It Cool and YahooMovies. Related to Anthony's initial post (and some of the comments to it), Thompson notes that a number of veteran critics - both with and without day jobs - are now starting blogs:
Many media outlets are building online traffic by giving their best-known writers blogs. While fact- and spell-checking is still de rigueur, so are more personal statements of point-of-view and opinion. On a blog, writers can get away with a heartfelt lack of objectivity that they can't inside the strictures of the newsroom. New York Post critic Lou Lumenick is one of a growing number of daily newspaper critics who are reaching out to readers via blogs. Other notables: the Boston Globe's Ty Burr, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Carrie Rickey and the Oregonian's Shawn Levy. (Some ex-print critics have developed their own online followings, including EmanuelLevy.com, HenrySheehan.com and DaveKehr.com.)
Speaking of the Post's Lumenick, a recent post on his blog referenced a open forum question on Variety's website - "Are film critics really needed anymore...or is it a washed up profession?" (here we go again) - and the response from "an anonymous 'Variety staffer'". Said staffer was answering the charges of Variety editor Peter Bart, who had chastised crix for not getting why the public at large was falling for big hits like 300 and Wild Hogs.
In Lumenick's comments, said anonymous staffer (only anonymous cause that's how things work on the Variety site), outs himself as journeyman critic Peter Debruge, who hits on some of the same topics that Kaufman and I have been mentioning:
Variety is perhaps the single most supportive outlet of film criticism in print, and our jobs as critics here are very much secure. But that's not true of the way the same line of work is being treated elsewhere, and I felt compelled to respond to what Peter Bart left out of his initial column. I think there's a very salient argument to be made about the state of film criticism today, what with the widespread online availability of amateur opinions (the phrase sounds disparaging, but I believe that non-professional opinions on films are more likely to represent a "peer judgment" for most moviegoers than those meted out by the more aesthetic-minded critical community).
We've seen it in a number of places. Village Voice Media let one of their best editor/critics go when they cut Dennis Lim, and the alt-weekly chain hase been moving away from locally-based critics. Eleanor Ringel Gillespie is leaving her post at the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, presumably to be replaced with wire reviews. The Los Angeles Times cut Kevin Thomas and now keeps just one dedicated critic on staff, relying on columnists and copy editors to fill out the section each week. And newspapers everywhere (including two that I freelance for: the Miami Herald and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram) are turning to wire reviews to save money.
These points are, I think, incredibly on point. In a strange way, the democratization of the internet - the ability for me and you and everyone else to have the same level of access to a public forum, and in some cases the same or larger reach via sites like IMDb and Amazon - has fundamentally changed the way in which films are discussed, and ultimately the context in which they are received. In ye olden days, the first review you might see of a film would come from your local, trusted critic or from Siskel and Ebert or, if you went to the art house, a snip from the Times or Christian Science Monitor review. Now, the first review you might see is Vlad, an OKIA who seeks to provide no context, no meaning, just a random guy telling you what you will feel, because Vlad sees himself as the everyman.
In the comments to my post yesterday, Jason Scott wrote that it all comes down to filmmakers liking those who like their work, heretofore referred to as "stuff":
People who don't like their stuff are any number of criminals and cretins, lacking certification, brainpower, awareness, perspective, or anything else that would explain why they don't fit into the set of people who like their stuff.
I think going "cloggers" or "online know it alls" and all that is just a clever defense mechanism for people who make stuff to build up against the fact that once it's out there, they can't do anything about people seeing and commenting on their stuff.
I think this is an oversimplification of what I am saying. I'm as interested in a critical (read: negative) review of my "stuff" as I am a positive review, so long as I feel that the writer has invested some qualitative amount of time, energy, thought, digestion, wisdom into the review. One of my favorite reviews from Gigantic judged the film as mediocre, but the writing in the piece was smart and comparative to other films. It brought context.
Likewise, I read plenty of rave reviews from OKIAs - "it rocks! it's the greatest movie ever!" that meant absolutely nothing to me. Now is that elitist? Is it any more so than if you were to spend hours and hours making a gourmet meal and when you present it to your guests you don't get a charge if the only thing they say is "delicious"? Or that it actually means more when someone says, "I see what you were going for here. What do you think about adding radicchio next time instead of basil?"
That's the filmmaker's issue. Some people are just going to have gut bursts of reactions. And on some websites, OKIAs are the rule not the exception - and two of those websites just happen to be IMDb and Amazon - two of the more important sites for film. And there's nothing to be done about that.
So I'm all for online bloggers who can review films and provide context as well as film critics who expand on their thoughts on their blogs. I'm for local reviewers that you grow to trust, who have a language and a perspective that you can understand, and who - as Ty Burr wrote recently - "sits in the same theater you do -- and understands how and why that matters". I'm for major media conglomerates (whether Tribune or the Voice) understanding that it isn't enough to have a set of critics that you can plug in and wire service their reviews and stories in. You need a film writer with a feel for what's happening locally, whether it's the latest film festival line-up (I've noted on this festival run that often the local "free weekly" have failed to provide coverage of the festival when the weekly is part of a larger chain and reviews are sent in from other markets) or special film event or burgeoning DIY scene.
To the extent that some of this is being lost is depressing. One can only hope that cloggers and critics find a way to plug some of this vacuum, to continue to provide context, even as they expand the dialog in other directions.
Well, to clarify, I think that you prove what I'm trying to say when you indicate that the well-thought out reviews and criticism are what grabs you, not the source where they come from. If you go browse a usenet group or forum or even IMDB and find someone really sat back and worked it over, you appreciate it. I still contend that a negative review filled with things you don't agree with is going to piss you off, of course.
But beyond that, I'm just saying that terms like "Cloggers" are just ways for creators to immediately demarcate and velvet-rope off pieces of the critical space out there and go "Well, what do you expect of that lot". A defense mechanism.
For example, Stephanie Zacharek of Salon hates computer animated movies. HATES them. Goes off on them endlessly about how horrible they are, how the artifice drives her nuts, etc. I wouldn't trust her to review a powerpoint chart. But she's in Salon and all, and that's some measure of success (arbitrary and otherwise). But one might go "Well, that's not a PRINT publication, they'll take ANYBODY". Or "That's just SALON", etc.
This is what I mean by creators slicing off the sources to be able to handle the reviews they don't like.
Posted by: Jason Scott | May 10, 2007 at 04:40 AM