On Tuesday, July 25, 2006 at 8:50:14 PM UTC-7, Joe Gillis wrote:

http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/whitty072506.html
Woe Is the Mainstream Movie Critic
BY STEVEN WHITTY
Are film critics necessary?
That's a question that's been asked a lot lately, in studios, at
newspapers and by bloggers. And the answers -- at least from most
critics' standpoints -- haven't been comforting.
Since the year began, studios have opened about a dozen films without bothering with screenings. Long-time critics have been reassigned or
let go at the Los Angeles Times, the Daily News and the Chicago Tribune
(with the Dallas Morning News planning "voluntary severance" deals).
Hundreds of online writers now compete for the same readers and
advertising, and few have a high opinion of their print-media
counterparts.
"Critics occupy an important role in the movie business, but that role
has been diminished over the last several years," says Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart, whose fine new book about blockbusters,
"Boffo," inspired a recent spinoff documentary on HBO. "The days of the Pauline Kaels are over."
Helping end them, he admits, has been Hollywood's increasing reliance
on pre-sold titles, saturation advertising and action franchises aimed
at teenage boys.
"When I started at Paramount in the '60s, you opened a picture in four theaters and hoped for good reviews," says the former studio exec.
"Nowadays, when you open a movie on 4,000 screens, spend $80 million on
ads -- well, you're not exactly dependent on word of mouth."
No argument there, and no news to veteran critics.
"I think the studios have finally realized they have all this power, so
why don't they use it," says Dave Kehr, who reviewed films for the
Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News and the New York Times before switching to a DVD column for the Times. "They don't need us. People
like Adam Sandler have demonstrated that you can treat critics with
open contempt and it doesn't make the slightest difference."
The concentration of corporate power has changed criticism, and the
rise of the Internet has changed critics -- and neither for the better.
This year marks my 25th writing about entertainment, and the end of my
first full decade writing exclusively about film. And this story is not
a complaint. Early-morning screenings of "Garfield" sequels
notwithstanding, any job where you can spend one day watching 12
straight hours of John Ford movies, and the next day talking with Meryl Streep, is a good gig.
But the world has changed since 1981 -- and not just because studios no longer send around bottles of Scotch at Christmas. And those changes
have affected what we write and what you read.
To begin with, every studio is now part of a conglomerate, and every conglomerate now worships at the altar of "synergy." Warner Bros.
movies get hyped in that corporation's Time magazine. Universal
Pictures makes sure their stars get booked on their own NBC. And of all
the annual Oscar nominees, you can guarantee that whoever has a movie
from Fox will get the next day's cover of the company's New York Post.
This sort of editorial over-promotion is tiresomely obvious, but it
isn't necessarily dangerous -- as long as the actual reviewers at those sister outlets remain impartial. But it not only lessens the studio's
need to reach out to other media, it gives them an incentive not to.
Why help a competitor? Why lose an exclusive?
Not only are interviews harder to get, but screenings are in short
supply, too. Many major films now screen once, often the night before
reviews have to be filed. Films that the studio expects reviewers to
trash -- generally anything with a chainsaw or Rob Schneider -- aren't screened at all. Why not, they say, "let the audiences discover it for themselves"? You know, like a minefield?
It's a grave new world of media management, and it's here to stay.
"More and more films will either be screened at the last minute or not
at all," predicts Bart.
"They manipulate it all extremely well." says Kehr. "By not giving you
time to work on a piece they're hoping to get a better review, or at
least a more superficial one. ... Of course, when Oscar time comes
around, then we're courted, and there are lots of screenings."
Yet this sort of obstructionism helps no one.
Any critic worth a paycheck can bang out a review in an hour, but to
write a critique -- something that fits the film into the context of
its source material, its creators' credits, and the mood of the times
-- takes a little longer. Holding last-minute screenings of films like
"The Da Vinci Code" didn't keep people from writing about them. But it
did make it more challenging to write about them intelligently.
Some films, of course, are always a challenge to write about
intelligently. But what do studios really lose by showing them? The
more reviewers hate something like "Bloodrayne," the more its core
audience turns out. And baby-boomer critics -- many of who cut their
fangs on monster pictures -- might even give a stylish shocker like
"Silent Hill" the benefit of the doubt. Why not give the film a chance?
"The fear used to be that critics wielded too much power, but bad
reviews certainly didn't hurt (the new) `Pirates of the Caribbean,"'
says Paul Dergarabedian, the founder of Exhibitor Relations, a
box-office analysis firm. "People go on opening weekend based on the marketing and their emotional connection to the characters. After that,
it's word of mouth. ... So if bad reviews don't matter, why not show
the film? Even a negative review is still publicity. It still raises awareness."
Another jolt to mainstream critics has been the rise of the Internet, a phenomenon that has studios buying online ads and mainstream media
rethinking their approach. Some Web site critics brag that they have
more readers than their local paper; some papers worry that their print reviewers won't appeal to the online generation they're trying to
reach.
And so the Village Voice, once the bastion of long-form, serious
reviews, has made room for shorter, snarkier and shallower critiques. Entertainment Weekly has been redesigned to look more like a Web site, crowded with trivia, inconsequential lists and personal Q-and-A's.
All of which seems like both an overestimation of the strength of the
Net and an underestimation of the appeal of print. To begin with,
mainstream media are still pretty vital. They're also, for all their mistakes, still pretty accountable.
Many Web sites, however, operate like personal fiefdoms. How do you
know that the anonymous rave you saw wasn't posted by a publicist? How
can you be sure that the blogger you've bookmarked isn't plugging only
film festivals that comp her expenses?
Like so much of the conversation on the Web, film commentary has grown shrilly personal. A typical review from FilmFreakCentral.net's Walter
Chaw -- a rising Web star -- called the latest "X-Men" the work of "a homophobic, misogynistic, misanthropic moron." The Hollywood Reporter's
Web site called this "refreshing candor." Kehr calls it "name-calling."
It's also endemic. Sure, there are cyber critics who post detailed
critiques rooted in an appreciation of cinema's history. But sometimes
it seems as if they're outnumbered -- or at least outshouted -- by
hundreds of Comic Book Guys, all hurling invective and tediously
explaining how every other reviewer is wrong.
"The Internet has given a huge number of young people the chance to
write criticism and yet so many of them are imitating the worst
aspects," says Kehr, who keeps a hand in at davekehr.com. "It just
seems as though there are an awful lot of people getting up on their
hind legs and yelling. If you disagree with them you're an idiot. And
if you choose not to continue the disagreement endlessly, you're a
coward."
What all these changes can do -- should do -- is cause us to think
again about what purpose movie criticism serves.
The critic's job is very simply trying to capture smoke in words, and
get a purely emotional experience down on paper, with a sense of
history and comparison and context and wonder.
Those are the sort of things real critics always try to write about,
whether the movie was screened for them a week in advance or they had
to see it on their own dime Friday morning. They are the sort of things
that lead us to champion films that don't have a conglomerate behind
them, and to feel gratified by their success.
Yes, it's fun to write a bitchy review of a lousy movie that's stolen
two hours of our time. But it's truly satisfying to praise a great odd
little film like "C.S.A." or "Tarnation" -- and know that, because of
your review, the picture attracted a few more viewers, stayed in the
theaters a little longer, and maybe had enough of a success to make its director's next project just a bit easier.
The joy of discovering great cinema is the reason we began to do this.
It's also the reason we still do, and the reason we continue -- even if
the studios make it harder, or some bosses seem less interested, or the Internet makes anyone with a keyboard into a commentator.
It's the magic of the movies. It's the wonder of watching a career
catch fire -- or occasionally the melancholy of seeing one flame out.
And mostly it's the rush of seeing something new, the thrill that makes
us want to reach out and catch someone by the sleeve, the excitement
that makes us want to shout, "Wait, wait -- you have to see this!"
July 25, 2006
(Stephen Whitty is film critic for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. He
can be contacted at swh...@starledger.com.)

(Youtube upload):

"My Issue With Film Critics Today"

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