Film Critic Carina Chocano Laid Off in Latest ‘LAT’ Cutbacks

Yet more bad news from the abattoir better known as the Los Angeles Times newsroom: Film critic Carina Chocano is one of 75 staffers put down today by butchers at the Tribune Co., bringing to 325 the number of LAT employees laid off since last summer and the fourth full-time film critic to vanish from a Tribune daily since July 2007.

Chocano, whom we’ve admired since her days at Salon, broke the news in a brief note to FishbowlLA; her departure leaves veteran Kenneth Turan as the lone full-timer among a growing pool of freelancers (including Kevin Thomas, whose own contract the paper bought out in 2006). Fittingly or not, Chocano’s final feature for the Times addressed the portrayal of hard economic times in the movies: “The pendulum seems to be swinging again from the decadent mainstream art of fat times to the scrappy countercultural art of lean times. For a while, at least, anger and unadorned reality may stage a cathartic comeback.” We’d like that, too, Carina — just not like this.

• Among the OUsted at the LAT: Carina Chocano [FishbowlLA via MCN]