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April 04, 2009

No comment: Where film criticism belongs

The randomness that is the internets provides this student emanation on "Where Film Criticism Belongs by Sam Watermeier of the Carmel High School HiLite, Indiana. Sounds like the run-of-the-mill blog to me: "Film critics rarely if ever actually make a significant impact on any one film or filmmaker. People need to realize this. Like I was saying earlier, people try too hard to attach a sense of purpose to film criticism. Film criticism is not supposed to change or influence film. It’s not even really supposed to influence readers because it is not the critic’s job to market films. A lot of critics don’t realize this. Like Peter Travers, they think they are supposed to “sell” films to their readers. Film criticism should be viewed as simply another form of personal expression like poetry or painting. It is ideally meant to be an extremely personal, uncompromising, intimate form of art, yet many critics try too hard to form a relationship with their audience and take on a conversational stlye [sic]. They care too much about other people’s movie tastes and focus on what the audience may or may not like. They don’t own their opinion and these days, their reviews are not introspective enough. Now, I’m not saying I hate film critics. They are my heroes. There are many I admire: Roger Ebert of course, Owen Gleiberman from Entertainment Weekly, Adam Kempenaar and Matty Robinson from the radio show, Filmspotting. However, they are the only critics that really say something with their reviews. They are the kinds of critics I can only dream of being. I worry though that with all these shallow critics around these days and their unfortunately pedestrian views, the field of work I dream of being involved in may be slowly fading away and losing the integrity it once had."

Posted by Ray Pride at April 4, 2009 01:04 PM

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Posted by: T. Holly at April 5, 2009 05:07 PM

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