Goodbye, Roger

Well, we all knew it was coming, didn't we? Roger Ebert, film critic of the Chicago Sun Times for nearly fifty years, passed away today at the age of 70 after a long battle with cancer. A few days ago he posted an announcement to his blog that he was taking a "leave of presence," reducing his workload significantly after discovering that his cancer had returned. I'm glad he got to say goodbye, even if it wasn't meant to be such a final one.

To say that Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel had a great influence on my development as a movie fan is a massive understatement. It was thanks to years of watching "Siskel & Ebert" every Sunday evening before "60 Minutes" that I understood that you could discuss films seriously, as pieces of art as opposed to entertainment. Of course, they clearly enjoyed the films they reviewed, and Ebert was always the one who was more inclined to stick up for the mainstream blockbusters, the genre pictures, and the oddball efforts. Ebert was, after all, the screenwriter of "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," directed by the supreme 70s schlockmeister, Russ Meyer.

I followed the program up to the bitter end, through the years with Richard Roeper, through the idiot Bens, and through the brief return to form with Michael Phillips and A.O.Scott before it was finally cancelled for good. During grad school I'd even stay up every weekend to watch it in the post-midnight timeslot where the local ABC affiliate had banished it. Fortunately, episodes went online and it was easier to access. A new version of "At the Movies" came along on PBS a few years later with other hosts, but I lost track of it after a few months, and it didn't last much longer after that. I still see movie ads sometimes and find myself expecting to see the once ubiquitous "two thumbs up!" quote pop up somewhere. People used to parody that line to death, but I haven't heard it in years.

I didn't have regular access to Ebert's written reviews for the Sun Times until the internet came along, and soon I became a regular reader, not just of the reviews, but of his columns, the Q&As, the letters, the interviews, festival reports, awards commentary, and much more. His writing was so strong, so personable, so funny, and so inviting. Even after I stopped visiting the site regularly, I still kept up with this blog as best I could. And when I first started writing reviews myself, it was his work I modeled myself after. How long should a movie review be? I checked his stuff and noted that he got the job done in 600-700 words per review. I also noted that he would revisit and write new reviews for older, beloved films. And he would write opinion pieces, simply because he had an opinion that he felt should be shared. And once in a while, he would change his mind.

I so admire the relationship that he had with his readers, the dialogues and discussions that he would have, and his ability to share so much with his fans. When he championed a movie, he would do it passionately and wholeheartedly, no matter what anyone else thought. I remember him getting behind the little-seen science fiction film "Dark City" in 1998, eventually declaring it the best film of the year. My DVD of the film has the commentary track he recorded for it. I probably never would have seen the movie without his recommendation, and now it's one of my favorites.

And then there was his Overlooked Film Festivals, and his shot-by-shot analysis screenings at the University of Chicago, where he taught many classes over the years, and so many other fascinating film events that he was at the center of. I would read the recaps or hear about them from other fans, and wish I could have attended somehow, even though I was always hundreds and hundreds of miles away. It was never hard to find fans of Roger Ebert though. He's clearly the most influential film critic of our times, the most popular and among the most trusted. There's no one who writes about film that hasn't benefited from his success or his example.

We've had a very long time to get used to a world without Roger Ebert. After his illness he was still very active as a film critic, but you could see him slowing down bit by bit, and it was clear he would never recover from the disastrous surgery in 2006 that robbed us of his physical voice. On a recent visit to his site, I was alarmed to see that almost all the recent reviews had been contributed by other critics, notably Richard Roeper. I hurriedly checked his blog to make sure he was still there, that he was still writing.

And then a few days ago we got the announcement of his effective retirement. And now the balcony is closed.
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More Podcast Recs

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, so I thought I'd pass along links to some of the movie-related and television-related ones that I've been enjoying. All of these are free through iTunes or the links below. Enjoy.

The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith - The host is a giant fanboy and it took me a while to get used to his style, but he conducts great Q&As with working screenwriters. Most of the interviews are conducted in conjunction with screenings of the writers' new movies, so after Goldsmith’s done with his questions, there's often a little audience participation too, nicely edited so that there are none of the breaks or the awkward pauses that usually come with live Q&A sessions. I recommend waiting until after you've seen the specific movies being discussed prior to listening to the podcasts, because they focus on the writing process, and how scripts are developed, and what got cut and what got changed on the way to the big screen. This is the side of filmmaking I love I hearing about, and as far as I'm concerned the writers never get as much of the spotlight as they should. Some recent highlights include Joss Whedon on "The Avenger," David O. Russell on "Silver Linings Playbook," and Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee discussing "Wreck-it-Ralph."

SModcast - This pick requires a little filtering. "SModcast" is both the name of a podcast and also a collection of podcasts associated with writer and director Kevin Smith. He's got a bunch of different ones related to the entertainment world, including "Hollywood Babble-On," which is a pretty free-form weekly discussion about current movies and television, "Smoviemakers," where he interviews filmmakers, "Film School Fridays," where he throws down with film students, and the main "SModcast" occasionally has guests like "Looper" director Rian Johnson. Some of the smaller shows aren't updated all that often, or were just kind of abandoned by the wayside after a few installments. However, my favorite at the moment is still going strong, and that's "Fatman on Batman" which is exactly what it sounds like. Kevin Smith geeks out about the Batman universe every week, and the 1992 "Batman: The Animated Series" in particular. He's had one several key members of the cast and crew, including a fantastic two-parter with Mark Hamill. Smith certainly doesn't neglect the comics though. I'm saving the recent Grant Morrison appearance for a rainy day.

Firewall and Iceberg – I've recommended this one before, but it was sort of tacked on to another post, and I really think these guys deserve all the kudos I can give them. Alan Sepinwall and Dan Fienberg are two prominent television critics who host the best television podcast, bar none. These are the guys who know the industry inside out, who understand the inexplicable network decisionmaking, and who can juggle talking about multiple shows, old and new. They'll review each individual episode of the ones they consider the most important, like "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Man," episode by episode, every week. Others only need to be checked in on from time to time. The lousy stuff gets a quick review, and only ever comes up again if there's been a major development. It's amazing the amount of ground these two can cover in a single show, and they don't even run that long. I tend to get more out of one of their ten or fifteen minute episode reviews than the podcasts that spend a whole hour on the same subject. And thanks to them, I know about pilot season, and about press tour, and exactly how “Community” is doing, because they’re just as obsessed about it as I am.

Kermode and Mayo's Film Review – Film critics Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo review films for BBC radio. They do more or less what every other movie review show does, offering their critiques on the new releases, related interviews, and some lively discussion about the recent entertainment news. This one stands out for the personalities and the professionalism. Mark Kermode's quite the character, and I suspect his personality may come across as grating to some, but I find him very informative and entertaining. And because it's the BBC, the show has the clout to get some big names to come by to promote their movies, though at the same time that means you get more actors and fewer directors and writers. It's also nice to hear the perspective of a couple of Brits who are working off of a difference release schedule and aren't as Hollywood oriented as most of the other shows I listen to. I've gotten some great recommendations for smaller films like "Perfect Sense" and “Chico and Rita,” that were higher profile in the UK than in the US, that I might have otherwise missed.
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The List Season

I hear a lot of complaints about the "best of" year end critics' lists, how they're so reductive and they're so repetitive, and how everyone just ends up reinforcing each other's choices. There's a lot of validity to these arguments, but I love year end lists and often I depend on them for recommendations. There hasn't been a single year where I haven't come away from perusing the major and not-so-major critics' lists of the best movies or television shows without having dozens of new titles to add to my personal "to watch" lists. I always hear the same complaints every year around this time about how recent movies have been underwhelming, and there aren't as many good films as there were in years past. And every year, the critics' lists put my fears to rest, because of the sheer scope and volume and variety of different titles.

The professional critics are the most informed members of the media establishment, because it's their job to see and evaluate everything. I try to keep up with all the reviews and the festival reports during the year, but there are always titles that slip through the cracks. The year end lists are a handy aggregation of every critic's biggest recommendations, and a great way to suss out what I've overlooked. I get a huge number of foreign, independent, and documentary titles to look out for, especially the ones that haven't been very high profile. Sure, people are buzzing about "Amour," "Holy Motors," and "Rust and Bone," as possible foreign contenders in the Oscar race this year, but then you have titles like Ann Hui's "A Simple Life," that popped up on Roger Ebert's list today, and Kleber Mendonça Filo's "Neighboring Sounds," a Brazilian drama that appeared on A.O. Scott's. I didn't know either film existed before yesterday. "Bully" and "Searching for Sugar Man" have been the most talked about documentaries, but I'm more excited about tracking down "Detropia," "The Gatekeepers," and "How to Survive a Plague."

Sure, lots of these lists do largely look the same. According to Metacritic, which aggregates many critics' lists and keeps track of how many mentions each films gets, the most popular films of the year among the critical set are "The Master," "Zero Dark Thirty," "Moonrise Kingdom," and "Lincoln," which is not unexpected. However, you're not likely to see many lists that look exactly alike, and there's such a wide range of pictures that make appearances. Crowd-pleasing genre films like "Cabin in the Woods" and "The Raid: Redemption" show up on several lists apiece right alongside obscurities like "Dark Horse" and "Compliance." "Ted" is sitting pretty in the #2 spot of Peter Bradshaw's list, sandwiched right between "The Master" and "Amour." I didn't think much of "The Dark Knight Rises," "Premium Rush," or "Cosmopolis," none of which got a particularly strong reception, but I've seen them on individual lists too, because somebody out there loved them enough to save them a spot.

I tend to trust lists like this more than review aggregators or award wins, because the choices are very personal to a particular reviewer, and the limitation to ten or fifteen or twenty entries means they have to weigh all these different films against each other and weed out the mediocrity. Though they got roughly the same percentage of positive reviews, it's telling that a grand total of nobody put "Hitchcock" on any of these lists, but more than a few found room for "Cloud Atlas." And while every reviewer paid lip service to PIXAR's "Brave," when it came down to it, "Frankenweenie" and "Wreck-It Ralph" emerged as the best regarded mainstream toons of the year. I say mainstream, because there are a pair of independent animated features, Chris Sullivan's "Consuming Spirits" and Don Hertzfeldt's "It's Such a Beautiful Day," that have been picking up a lot of critical buzz despite tiny theatrical runs that didn't even qualify them for the Oscars.

As usual, my own best of the year list won't be ready until next October because I'll be busy tracking down many of these titles. Most people are getting down to the last handful of theatrical releases and ready to call it quits on 2012, but my current "to watch" list still has roughly fifty entries and I don't think I'm done adding to it yet. How could I write an honest list worth a damn without first getting a look at intriguing films like "Chicken With Plums" or "Berberian Sound Studio" or "War Witch"? "Holy Motors" has been such a divisive film, I feel I really should have an opinion on it. After all, at this point last year, I'd only seen six of the films that ultimately ended up on my 2011 Top Ten list. (And more on that in a day or two)

So it may be the end of the year, but for me 2012 movies are just getting started.
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Goodbye to the Nostalgia Critic

It had been a while since I've written about comedian Doug Walker and his web series, "The Nostalgia Critic," where he reviews older movies and television shows aimed at the children of the 80s and 90s. I admire the collection of talent that he and his partners have put together through their production company, Channel Awesome, and the variety of super low-budget programming that they've created for the That Guy With the Glasses website, mostly other media review shows. Once a year, they get all the various contributors together and make an anniversary special, usually a feature-length spoof. This year they did an eight-part web series called "To Boldly Flee," tacking science-fiction films and shows. And in the last installment (spoilers ahead, though the news is everywhere), the character of the Nostalgia Critic was killed off. The next day, Walker posted a video clarifying that he was indeed ending "The Nostalgia Critic" as a weekly show to move on to other, more ambitious projects.

And good for him. There were some signs over the last year that "The Nostalgia Critic" concept was facing a dead end. The show started on Youtube back in 2007, and there have been over 200 episodes produced since. Walker was clearly starting to hit the bottom of the barrel for nostalgic material to review. He pulled a few wild stunts like reviewing every single Disney animated feature during the month of December and gave in to fan requests to review more recent bad media like the live action "Scooby Doo" movie. Before "To Boldly Flee" was released, he appeared in a long string of crossovers with other reviewers on the site. I think Walker could have easily kept the show going for another year or two by changing up some of his criteria, but I'm glad he stopped now before he ran it into the ground completely. Still, it's a pretty gutsy move considering that "The Nostalgia Critic" is far and away the most popular show on the Channel Awesome roster, and brings in the most revenue.

When I first stumbled across the show, I liked Walker enough to keep coming back week after week, but I didn't think there could be enough interest to sustain the efforts of more than one or two of these amateur critics reviewing bad movies and video games. But what did I know? After four years in operation, That Guy With the Glasses and its affiliate sites currently feature over fifty different contributors who tackle everything from comic books to Doctor Who episodes to obscure beverages. Walker's easily the most talented of the bunch, but I also like Lindsay Ellis's "Nostalgia Chick," a "Nostalgia Critic" spinoff that has evolved into something more complex and interesting, and Kyle Kallgren's "Brows Held High," devoted to the dregs of pretentious art house cinema. Walker has also developed a couple of other characters who host their own shows like "Bum Reviews" and "Video Game Confessions," though they aren't nearly as successful or popular as "The Nostalgia Critic." Then again, they've never had nearly the amount of time or attention from Walker.

The rise of Channel Awesome has been fascinating to watch unfold because it is one of the first, rare examples of a group of entertainers who have built a niche for themselves through the internet and attracted a loyal audience completely apart from the traditional models. Similar online talent like video game guru James Rolfe have occasionally partnered with bigger commercial outfits, but Walker has avoided Hollywood completely, supported by a mix of ad revenue and donations. I don't think they even advertise the sites at all, aside from the occasional talent appearances at anime conventions. Walker's stuff is still heavily dependent on Hollywood output because so much of it is commentary on existing media, but there's never a sense that he's beholden to any of the usual media corporate overlords, which is great. He can be as profane and weird and creative as he likes without worrying about stepping on too many toes.

As traditional media has been in the midst of endless upheavals recently, with the doomsayers predicting all sorts of terrible things, it's nice to remember that web-based "new media," is out there. It's not a really viable alternative for most of your entertainment needs yet, but it is making in an impact, especially among the internet-savvy younger audiences. And it's been around long enough now for a guy like Doug Walker to have made a modest success of himself and want to strike out and do new things. So I'll be rooting for his success, not that I think he really needs it. Walker's built up quite a reputation, and I'm sure most of his fans will stick around to see what he comes up with next.
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Sight and Sound's Latest Poll Surprises

After fifty years, "Citizen Kane" has fallen. Yes, the latest once-a-decade Sight & Sound poll from the British Film Institute, that asks international film professionals to choose the best films of all time, has elevated Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" to the top spot. "Citizen Kane," has moved to second place, followed by Ozu's "Tokyo Story" and Jean Renoir's "The Rules of the Game." It's an announcement that means a lot to film historians and academics and the people who like talking about films as art. I'm sure it means very little to the average movie viewer, who hasn't heard of most of the films on the new Top Ten list, which includes entries like Dziga Vertov's experimental film, "Man with a Movie Camera" and F.W. Murnau's "Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans." The most recent entry is from 1968: Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey."

This makes sense, though. If you're looking at the development of film art since its inception, you have to take into account the innovations and impact of each film on the others that came after it, and the earlier ones made greater strides comparatively to the ones that came later. One of the reasons that "Citizen Kane" is so highly regarded is because it pioneered or popularized a large number of film techniques that are still in use today. The more recent films are harder to evaluate because it's not always so clear how they contribute to the art of filmmaking, or how they embody its best qualities. Sight & Sound also released a Top 50 list of the runners up (really 52, because of a three-way tie for the last spot), that includes only two films from the new millennium, "Mulholland Dr." and "In the Mood for Love."

Why is this poll such a big deal, though? There are a lot of different organizations and publications that run similar movie polls. The prestige of Sight & Sound's Top Ten comes from its exclusivity and its longevity. The poll has been run every ten years since 1942, and provides a great snapshot of what the major film critics and historians of the day use to measure everything else against. We can see different trends come and go as different films move up and down in the standings. The only film that has been on all seven lists has been "The Rules of the Game." "Battleship Potempkin" is six for seven, edged out this year, but only just. It's currently sitting at 11, and I'm sure it will be back in future lists. Meanwhile, the winner of the first poll in 1952, "Bicycle Thieves," disappeared entirely from the Top Ten after 1962. It came in at 33 in 2012.

There were some other developments that are unique to this particular list. A tweak in the rules required that films that are part of a series should be considered individually, so the first two "Godfather" films," which came in fourth place in 2002, are now 23 and 31 in 2012. The number of participants in this round has also increased dramatically, 846 in all, compared to the 145 who voted in the 2002 poll. We don't know who all of these people are, but the sheer number of new voters suggests that the 2012 list might be a better indicator of critical consensus than some of the lists that have come before. It's hard to be certain without more information, and I hope we get it soon.

So what do I think of the latest poll results? Well, I'm not much of a fan of "Vertigo," and I don't think it's in any way superior to "Citizen Kane." So much of the the film's reputation for greatness seems to be coming from critics hellbent on taking it apart and sussing out meanings that may or may not actually be there. I certainly agree that "Vertigo" is a great film, but I don't buy that it's the best of all time. If I had to pick a Hitchcock film, there are plenty of other contenders. It's hard to argue with most of the other entries. "Rules of the Game" is beyond reproach. I would have preferred a different Murnau, but I understand why "Sunrise" is there. Ditto "8 & 1/2" and "Tokyo Story."

However, I've always disagreed with the amount of praise for "The Searchers," and the newest addition, "Man with a Movie Camera," strikes me as very odd. Sure, it shows off a lot of different film techniques and uses them to enliven its documentary narrative, but it comes across as so gimmicky. If you're curious, back in May I wrote up a post with my own picks for the the new list, the movies I would have voted for. I ended up with two films in common with Sight & Sound, "The Passion of Joan of Arc," and "2001: A Space Odyssey."
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The Reviewer Consensus Problem

The worried murmurs started last week. Did you see that PIXAR's "Brave" racked up three negative reviews out of eleven, bringing its early score down to 73%? As of this morning, it's at 71%, with six negative reviews and fifteen positive ones. The early reviews always tend to skew toward the positive because of marketing pressure, so this would seem to indicate that "Brave" may be in serious trouble with the critics. However, when you read the reviews, they run the gamut from raves to pans, with most falling somewhere in the middle. People are reacting to the film very differently, and there is no apparent consensus. And that's a problem.

One of the deep dark secrets of most movie goers is that we like consensus. We're easily swept up in hype, we like to be part of a mass experience, and we like our reviews and reviewers to be simple and declaratory. We like star ratings and letter grades and Rotten Tomatoes percentages. We want the critical establishment and their opinions to be monolithic, because then it's easier to process and react to them. Analysts and box office watchers who still occasionally believe that the reviews do matter, also find it easier to quantify their impact if they're uniform. The urge to conform can be strong. Witness the mockery and abuse heaped on the few reviewers who didn't like "The Avengers," and the few who defended "Sucker Punch." The trouble is that in most cases there isn't a consensus, and attempts to create the appearance of them can be seriously misleading.

Look at the reviews for "Madagascar 3," our reigning box office champ, currently sitting pretty with a 75% positive review score. Most of the reviews say more or less the same thing - it's a big improvement on the first two "Madagascar" films and exceeds expectations, resulting in positive marks. However, there's still a wide range of opinions about why the film deserved those marks. Some reviewers are adding points for improvement, while others aren't making comparisons to the previous films at all. Some are grading on a curve because the movie is aimed at kids, while others make no such allowances. There are commonalities that you can derive from looking at these reviews in aggregate, but the 75% figure only tells us that 3/4 of the reviewers came out it favor of the film overall. To get a better figure of how much the average reviewer actually enjoyed "Madagascar 3," it would be better to look at Metacritic, which assigns numerical values to each review and averages them to reach a final score, in this case a 59, indicating predominantly mixed reviews.

The only thing the Rottentomatoes score tells us about "Brave" is that there will be no positive consensus on the film, as there have been for the past PIXAR films. And yet the rumors and whispers keep circulating, and I've started to see premature speculation about whether this could make a dent in the box office returns, and whether there might be something seriously amiss at PIXAR to result in two critical misses in a row. In some ways I think this kind of anti-hype is helpful in countering the ridiculously high expectations that some viewers place on the most anticipated new films like "Brave," "Prometheus," and "The Dark Knight Rises." On the other hand, jumping the gun with these kinds of conclusions should be discouraged. There's so much pressure in the entertainment press to be the first in time with analysis, there's been a growing tendency to slap a label on film's performance before it actually has a chance to perform.

I don't think there's too much danger of that happening to "Brave" because it's PIXAR, and their reputation is still very good with the family film-going set. True, this is technically a "princess" film with a female lead, making "Brave" a harder sell to little boys, but that didn't stop Disney's "Tangled." Also, animated family films are notoriously critic-proof. "Cars 2," in spite of all the negative press, still made a respectable $191 million domestically. Meanwhile, the very well received "Kung Fu Panda 2" underperformed with $165 million, and it's unclear whether we'll see that series continue. I have no idea whether the masses will embrace "Brave" or not.

However, right now the small collection of raves for "Brave" sound a lot more convincing to me than all the lukewarm praise for "Madagascar 3." I hope that the Rottentomatoes commenters trying to shout down the negative reviews on the site will get their heads around that idea. Consensus is often illusory, and not worth the trouble. Controversy is often more interesting, or at least more fun.
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Worst "Avengers" Related News Today

I hate Twitter sometimes. I hate the way it seems to bring out the worst in people, the way it amplifies small mistakes and thoughtless comments into huge, inescapable, Big Deals. I was perfectly happy conflating Samuel L. Jackson with his screen persona of the cool, eternally badass, righteous African-American hero. And then he had to go pick on New York Times film critic A.O. Scott, and he had to use the saddest, stupidest reasoning to dismiss Scott's negative review of "The Avengers." This is not on the level of a Mel Gibson or Charlie Sheen meltdown by any means, but good grief. What the hell was he thinking?

Scott's review is hardly a rant. Jackson's appearance as Nick Fury is described briefly, but not specifically critiqued. Most of the piece reads as a weary chastisement of the excesses of the larger superhero genre, but Scott certainly reviews "The Avengers" itself in considerable detail, and acknowledges plenty of positives along with the negatives. I can't see anything that would have caused Jackson to take this particular review so personally. Perhaps the fact that the New York Times published a hefty, laudatory profile of Jackson last week titled How Samuel L. Jackson Became His Own Genre has something to do with it. But why would Jackson expect positive notices based on that? A.O. Scott's reputation as a reviewer would be totally undermined if he was beholden to his publication's agenda, and couldn't critique as he pleased.

Or maybe it was the overwhelming, all-consuming levels of hype that have been building for the last several months. It seems like the entire media universe has been centered on "The Avengers" these last few days. Financial analysts have been gleefully tabulating the box office returns from overseas, where the movie opened a week ago in many territories. There has been a glut of midnight screening reports from last night. You can't browse any entertainment site today without coming across scores of reviews, interviews, reaction aggregators, trivia pieces, guides to "The Avengers" characters, Marvel movie retrospectives, and on, and on, and on. It's the culmination of a massive, carefully orchestrated marketing campaign that has been going on for years to turn "The Avengers" into the event film to end all event films.

In this sea of feel-good self-congratulation, the few published negative reviews stick out like a sore thumb. They go against the scripted narrative, and that must have irked. Maybe that's what prompted Jackson to break the unspoken but long understood rule that artists should refrain from getting into these kinds of kerfuffles with their critics. The critics do not critique for the benefit of the artists, but for the audiences, and are only beholden to them. And other critics, of course, who can help expand single reviews into longer discussions and the occasional spats. Actors and directors and marketing geniuses have a financial interest in how their product performs, and are thus disqualified from participating in the discourse. Their job is to drive the hype, and that means they have an obvious bias.

I don't know why on earth Samuel L. Jackson would think it was okay to do this. True, the traditional print critics have lost a lot of their influence in recent years, and summer blockbuster season is the time of year when critics tend to matter least, as populist spectacle holds sway at the multiplexes, but that doesn't mean their function is any different - to cut through the hype and give people an honest opinion. A.O. Scott did his job and spoke his mind. Jackson's reaction, on the other hand, though probably also completely honest, may actually have been counterproductive to his ends. His tweets have diverted attention away from the movie, far more than A.O. Scott's one negative review would have ever managed by itself. Right now, on "The Avengers'" opening day, Google tells me that there are over two hundred articles talking about the online Twitter war between Jackson and Scott instead of the onscreen fisticuffs between the Marvel superheroes and their enemies.

At the end of the day, the facts remain as follows: Samuel L. Jackson tweeted his displeasure at A.O. Scott's "Avengers" review and called for his removal as a Times' staff critic. When a respondent argued that Scott was entitled to his own opinion and that a big box office total doesn't indicate quality, Jackson shot back, "Actually, sometimes it DOES!” Cue the steam coming out of my ears.

I'm still going to see "The Avengers." I'm probably going to see plenty of other Samuel L. Jackson movies in the years to come, but now I know that Jackson's just another fallible human being, who probably shouldn't be on Twitter.
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Piling on Rex Reed

Last "The Cabin in the Woods" post, I promise, but I have to talk about the movie a little bit to talk about the latest target of the internet's derision, The New York Observer's veteran movie critic, Rex Reed. Reed is being pilloried from all directions this week for his review of "The Cabin in the Woods," which he vehemently panned. This might have gone unremarked upon, except that Reed's review was full of spoilers, and to many people's amusement and incredulity, a lot of those spoilers were wrong. In fact, most of his understanding of the plot was faulty, as the piece was full of errors that suggest Reed not only didn't grasp what was going on, but may not have been paying much attention to the movie.

This was not just a bad review, but an incompetent one. What's worse, Reed also took the time to lob a few choice insults at what he perceived to be "The Cabin in the Woods'" intended audience of "electronics nerds and skateboarders addicted to Xbox 360 video games whose knowledge of the arts begins and ends with MTV2." Yikes. To some extent I'm sure that Reed intended to be provocative, or even goading. But I don't think he anticipated the extent of the reaction to his review. Cue the gleeful online pummeling, the accusations that Reed is too old, too feeble-minded, and too out of touch for his job. Cue the mocking reaction pieces, the indignant dissections of everything Reed got wrong in his review, and a couple of well-meaning open letters, expressing more muted dismay. And good grief, it's been ridiculous to watch.

Yes, Rex Reed's review was a blunder and a bad one, but the reaction to it has been absurdly overblown. I've seen countless critics fail to grasp countless other movies, mostly on the artsy and erudite end of the scale. I've seen rants and railings against pretentious hacks and the fawning sycophants who enable their fatuousness. Last year, Terence Malick's "The Tree of Life" was subject to plenty of dismissive and hostile reviews, but the reviewers weren't attacked for their lack of comprehension or insight. Countless critics, many of whom I respect, seemed to be knocked for a loop by Tomas Alfredson's unorthodox approach to "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," and decided it was terrible. Many made errors trying to describe the labyrinthine plot, or missed certain crucial information entirely. I'm not naming names, but few suffered any adverse consequences.

I don't see Rex Reed's take on "Cabin in the Woods" as any more egregious. The big difference here is that "Cabin" is aimed at a geekier, more populist, more tech-savvy crowd, and Reed is an easy target. He's 73 years old and part of the old guard print establishment, a career critic since the 60s who has consistently refused to change with the times. Moreover, he has a colorful history of controversies and bad behavior, and he comes off as an arrogant, combative blowhard more often than not. But sometimes that's what you want in a movie critic, someone who will go to the mattresses to champion or bury a film, who isn't afraid of being the only one in the room to express a dissenting opinion. And with 93% of the critics delivering positive notices to "The Cabin in the Woods," that sure looks like the case here. Armond White, our usual iconoclast, seems to be MIA, leaving the contrarians awfully few in numbers. I know most of the Reed's detractors are going after him for the inaccuracies in his piece rather than the negative marks, but the unpopularity of his opinion sure does help paint a bulls-eye on his chest. Do you think Rex Reed would've garnered this much hateful attention if he'd included that line about the film's nonexistent vampires in a positive review?

Again, I don't agree with Reed's analysis of "The Cabin in the Woods," and I find his slap-dash fact-checking unprofessional and troubling. But I'm also sympathetic to his point of view. I know I'm far less likely to remember the details of movies I disliked than the movies I liked, and I've muddled plot points in summaries. There are certain genres of film I'm not predisposed to enjoy, and I've cast aspersions on those who do enjoy them. I've bitten off more than I could chew and I've gotten carried away and written some really idiotic things on this blog and elsewhere. I try to be self-aware about this, but sometimes I'll have a bad day and slip up. And it's no surprise that sometimes the professionals have bad days too.
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The Embattled and the Embargoed

The latest awards season kerfuffle concerns New Yorker movie critic David Denby, who decided to publish his review of David Fincher's new version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" on December 5th, despite an embargo on reviews imposed by Sony Pictures, which insisted that no reviews be published before December 13th. The fact that the review is highly positive didn't keep "Dragon Tattoo" producer Scott Rudin from banning Denby from all future screenings of his films, or the studio from sending out dire warnings of doom and gloom to any film critic who would dare to follow Denby's lead. The critical community has erupted in debate, with some supporting Denby and decrying the current embargo system, while others are calling Denby's actions unprofessional and a breach of trust.

Now why are there embargoes on movie reviews? There are a lot of different answers to this. The most common one is that it's the price of early access. The studios provide early screenings to film reviewers, with the understanding that reviews will be published in a certain time frame, so they can be incorporated into release and marketing strategies. Positive reviews and critical support are especially important during the December and January awards push, pretty much the only time of year that the studios like to acknowledge the importance of the critical community at all. Smaller films like "Margaret" and "Tyrannosaur" have seen their profiles raised recently, thanks to support from individual critics, and "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" could use that kind of help to keep from being lost in the rush of late-December releases.

Critics benefit as well. Early screenings allow more time to write reviews, and a commonly cited reason for embargoes is that they are supposed to help to level the playing field so one critic or group of critics can't scoop everyone else. However, critics are an unpredictable lot and aren't in the habit of always writing the sort of reviews the marketing departments would like. So it's an odd sort of love-hate, symbiotic relationship that's developed between the critics and the studios over time. And as you might expect, sometimes things can get contentious.

The studios are under no obligation to provide early screenings, and have been steadily reducing them and adding more red tape and conditions to attend the remaining ones. Security restrictions have steadily been stepped up, with bans on everything from cel-phones to Twitter usage. Many studios don't screen films they know won't be well-received anymore, especially the horror and smaller genre pictures that good critical notices wouldn't help much anyway. For higher profile stinkers, where the lack of reviews might sound alarm bells, the embargo dates are often very close to the time of their actual release dates, to try and minimize the damage of bad reviews.

Generally the studios' tactics don't have much of an impact on publication dates for reviews anyway. Everyone tries to publish within a few days of film's release date, just because that's when the reviews will be the most relevant. Other reviewers have broken embargoes before, though usually only by a day or two, and haven't run into this kind of opposition. The New Yorker review presents a special case, both because Denby is very high profile in the New York critical community and because he's breaking the embargo date by a full week.

So why did David Denby publish so far in advance? "Dragon Tattoo" won't be released until December 21st. Well, according to Denby, it came down to publication constraints. The New Yorker magazine only devotes limited pages to film reviews, and in a crowded December, there were too many films and not enough space to review them. Denby published his "Dragon Tattoo" review alongside one for "The Adventures of Tintin," which will also open December 21st, because he wanted to save more room for other pictures. Better a slightly premature review in the New Yorker than none at all, right?

Well, Sony and Rudin, and a lot of Denby's fellow critics didn't see it that way. You can read some of the leaked E-mails between Denby and Rudin on Indiewire, over here. Anyway, reactions are coming in from all sides, fast and furious. Other critics who haven't had the chance to see the film yet feel they've been scooped. Some claim Denby's just doing this to drum up publicity. Some claim that Rudin is overreacting, and that he's trying to drum up publicity. Nobody seems to think this will hurt the film, but everyone is sure that somebody is at fault.

I don't know whose side I'm on. Denby breaking the embargo was a clear breach of decorum and established protocol. On the other hand, he lays out some pretty compelling reasons for doing so, and it's hard to see how a very positive review could possibly hurt "The Dragon Tattoo" simply by showing up online a few days early. Rudin being so hyperbolic makes him look bad, but he's not just worried about this film, but the ones in the future that might be seriously harmed if this instance of embargo-breaking sets protocol. Then again, does the studio-controlled system of embargoes make sense anymore, when all but a few films are "critic proof," and the ones that are actually courted for critical support all get squeezed into the last six weeks of the year?

I just don't know. But it sure is fun reading the debate. Stay tuned.
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