the reviews aren’t in
Film Critic Carina Chocano Laid Off in Latest ‘LAT’ Cutbacks
7:35AM STV | 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. More »
The Continuing Adventures of Ben Lyons, Starfucker
9:20AM STV | We (and you) were none too pleased when Ben Lyons joined Ben Mankiewicz as the host for At the Movies earlier this year, particularly when we considered Lyons’ track record as something of a half-wit Richard Roeper to Mankiewicz’s low-rent Roger Ebert. And while Manckiewicz has settled in relatively well in the last six weeks, we continue to cringe at the sight and sound of Lyons fluffing away at Hollywood loins in his blurb-fertile reviews. Still, we knew he was a hack; what we didn’t know (at least to the extent we do today) was the garish, staggering extent of his starfucking. More »
‘Cheap Dates’ and Dying Breeds: Whither the Women Film Critics?
8:15AM STV | The film-critic execution chamber has been mercifully quiet for most of the summer, with gripey David Ansen notably still refusing to die as others continue to line up behind him. And while on one hand we’re glad to see few women among the condemned, we’re reminded today that it’s all relative: A recently released study notes that 70% of reviews published in the top 100 American dailies are written by men. Moreover, almost half of those papers don’t publish any reviews by women at all. And despite our beloved Dargises, Chocanos, Rickeys and others, we’re afraid that not a number you should expect to climb any time soon: More »
Brilliant Film Critic Tragically Mistaken For Pathetic Drunk
6:00AM Defamer Hollywood | Unless it results in an extra getting thrown off the set of Transformers 2 for lunch crimes against Michael Bay, we’re not generally in the blog-comment monitoring business. But some flame wars are so spectacular (and some news days so implacably slow) they defy ignoring — especially when obvious intoxication is involved, and especially when the offending party himself is the only one around to catch fire. More »
Hachette Chops Veteran ‘Premiere’ Film Critic Glenn Kenny
6:50AM Defamer Hollywood | Defamer Critic Death Watch, Part XXIV: We’d heard whispers from the deck of the slave ship today that magazine publishing giant Hachette Filipacchi would be paring around 15 jobs from Elle.com and other Web sites, and among them sadly appears to be Premiere film critic and blogger extraordinaire Glenn Kenny. He made the announcement today at In the Company of Glenn, where he’s blogged since late 2006. More »
Movie Criticism Inches Closer to Death as Angry MSNBC Readers Lash Out
3:25AM Defamer Hollywood | After last week’s caustic conflagration among film critics, we’ve been closely monitoring the heart rates of reviewers all over the country as even more fall away from the ranks. This week saw the departure of Matt Zoller Seitz, the New York Times contributor and House Next Door founder who stepped away to pursue filmmaking full-time. We wish Seitz all the best, because judging by this series of damning reader retorts to a recent MSNBC survey of criticism, his timing couldn’t possibly have been better: More »
Escalating Film Critic Crisis Enters Crucial ‘Everything Sucks’ Phase
4:40AM Defamer Hollywood | Since film critics’ heads began rolling en masse at newspapers and magazines a little over a month ago, the debate over the job’s future has ignited deep thoughts from New York to Los Angeles. The discussion turned especially profound this week as a selection of esteemed critics moved on to slapping anyone and anything that would stand still long enough to absorb their blows. Follow the jump for our favourite sallies of critic-on-critic violence:
If Critics Aren’t Dead Yet, Patrick Goldstein Will Finish the Job
9:10AM Defamer Hollywood | If film critics are in fact a dying breed, we at Defamer would like to urge them to get on with it. It’s a little cruel, we know; some of our best friends are critics, and we’ll miss them terribly. But if we have to read another motherfucking article like the one Patrick Goldstein wrote today about the Demise of the Print Film Critic, we’ll suck it up, go door-to-door and whack every reviewer we know our own selves just to make it stop. More »
Massacred Film Critics Have a Friend in Scott Rudin
4:35AM Defamer Hollywood | The film-critic deathwatch we launched here way back in January (and continued yesterday) hit The New York Times this morning, when part-time Oscar gadfly and inveterate media observer David Carr surveyed the carnage from the sidelines. It’s not a story we haven’t been hearing for years, but Carr’s essential access to insiders from Scott Rudin to Michael Lacey — the bloodthirsty boss of the New Times chain currently decimating New York’s Village Voice — hints that conventional wisdom among film and publishing types won’t be reconciled any time soon: “For those of us who are making work that requires a kind of intellectual conversation, we rely on that talk to do the work of getting people interested,” said Mr. Rudin, who produced No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, two Oscar-nominated and critically championed films last year. “All of the talk about No Country, all of the argument about the ending, kept that film in the forefront of the conversation” and helped it win the best picture Oscar. … More »
