Nicole Cliff has been reviewing
Classic Trash fiction for The Awl, with a recent exposition on
Clan of the Cave Bear. Jeffrey Sconce reviewed 100 obscure and largely unloved books last year on
Consumed and Judged, and shows no sign of slowing down.
Pop Sensation profiles the cover of one, generally trashy, paperback, three times a week, (and includes a seemingly random quote from the book).
posted by latkes
on Feb 8, 2012 -
19 comments
Gizmo's Freeware is a non-commercial community website staffed entirely by volunteers. Our primary function is to help you select the best freeware product for your particular needs.
posted by Trurl
on Jan 21, 2012 -
8 comments
The
Hatchet Job of the Year Award, sponsored by
The Omnivore, is looking for 'the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the last twelve months'. The
shortlist includes
Geoff Dyer on Julian Barnes ('excellent in its averageness'),
Lachlan Mackinnon on Geoffrey Hill ('he is wasting his time and trying to waste ours') and
Jenni Russell on Catherine Hakim ('if you should pass it in a bookshop, pick up a copy and drop it somewhere where nobody's likely to take an interest in it'). Mary Beard, another of the shortlisted candidates, insists that '
it's not actually a prize for skewering .. it's for honest as well as entertaining book reviewing, that isn't afraid to go beyond deference, to call a spade a spade'.
[more inside]
posted by verstegan
on Jan 17, 2012 -
21 comments
Many ages ago, before some had yet to hear of The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings or the collectible LOTR glasses sold at Burger King, critics did their initial reviews. Here's the
original review by the New York Times of The Hobbit in 1938. Then came
The Fellowship of the Ring, followed by
The Two Towers, and of course
The Return of the King.
Here's a 1967 interview with Tolkien after the influence of his work was starting to be felt. One interesting detail noted is that Tolkien typed the entire 1200+ page manuscript of TLOTR with two fingers. Of course, not everyone viewed the books so favorably. The
BBC has detailed some initial criticism against the books, but this seems to have been the minority response within a generally broad and warm literary reception.
posted by SpacemanStix
on Dec 15, 2011 -
44 comments
The American Journalism Review asks,
is automotive journalism fundamentally corrupt? Car manufacturers pay for lavish trips and grant extensive seat time in their most desirable cars – in exchange for good reviews. Journalists who write critical reviews are blacklisted. Among the worst offenders is Porsche, who
blacklisted journalist Jack Baruth after lukewarm (or simply balanced)
print and
video reviews of the Porsche Panamera in 2009. Since then, Baruth, who owns three Porsches, has taken to compiling lists of Porsche’s deadly sins (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6, but
not 7),
fabricating Porsche test drives,
bashing fellow automotive journalists who he sees as being
too soft on Porsche, and
borrowing privately-owned cars in order to write reviews. Baruth writes mostly for
The Truth About Cars, which guards the independence of its writers so fiercely that its reviews of the Prius, for instance, ranged from the
unremittingly hostile to
defensively positive to
relatively balanced. But what about journalistic independence in mainstream outlets, which often rely on freelancers who simply don't have the funds to be functionally independent of car manufacturers, and which don't want to displease advertisers?
posted by Dasein
on Oct 3, 2011 -
85 comments
Reviewing Netflix's 'Example Short 23.976.' Netflix has subsequently released the short in a variety of forms and at various lengths, in one case looping it for a full eight hours in a version that many viewers compared to Andy Warhol's 1964 film Empire.
In another case the film was compiled into "a sample show with many episodes" titled Example TV Mega-series 700,
containing exactly 700 episodes.
posted by shakespeherian
on Jun 28, 2011 -
17 comments
It was bound to happen eventually. After
a quarter-century,
26 Academy Awards, and an unparalleled streak of
eleven artistic and commercial triumphs, Pixar's latest project,
Cars 2, is
Certified Rotten. Critics have
assailed the film as a slick but hollow vehicle for Disney's
$10 billion-dollar Cars merchandising industry "lifestyle brand," replacing the original's serviceable tale of small-town redemption with
zany spy games,
hyperactive chase sequences, and even more
lowbrow aww-shucks potty humor from
Larry the Cable Guy. But it's not all bad news! Along with
a fun new Toy Story 3 short, preceding today's (3-D) premiere showings is a first look at next year's
Brave --
a darkly magical original story set in ancient Scotland featuring the studio's first female lead (and
director).
Evocative high-res concept art [mirror] is available at the official website, and
character sketches have leaked to the web, with the apparently striking teaser trailer sure to follow. Also, be sure not to miss the sneak peak of
Brave's associated short,
"La Luna"!
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 24, 2011 -
263 comments
It's a simple concept: Given a choice between two random movies, which one do you like best? That's the driving force behind
Flickchart, an
addictive review site for movie lovers. Faced with two posters, click the one for the title you prefer (weeding out the ones you haven't seen). Good! Now do it again. And again. And again. With each new face-off, Flickchart perfects a growing list of your favorite films -- and there can be no ties. This leads to some
difficult dilemmas:
Star Wars or
Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Citizen Kane or
The Godfather?
WALL-E or
Spirited Away? But you needn't struggle alone -- Flickchart is also social. By drawing on
the data of tens of thousands of fellow users, you can create
remarkably specific lists:
Martin Scorsese's Best Period Films.
The Best Road Movies of the 1980s.
The Worst Movies of All Time. If you rank enough films, you can generate interesting personalized charts, like "Your Favorite Musicals" or "The Best Movies You Haven't Seen." These filters carry over to the ranking system, letting you judge nothing but Horror movies or 1960s movies or unranked movies or movies from your top 100. You can also comment on
popular match-ups, lending your voice to contentious debates like
Ghostbusters vs.
Back to the Future or
Jaws vs.
Predator. Not a movie fan? Don't worry. Flickchart will be expanding into books, games, and music soon. Until then, you can give your own data sets the Flickchart treatment using
this tool from CNN.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Sep 3, 2010 -
202 comments
"In Japan, animation is not seen as the exclusive realm of children's and family films, but is often used for adult, science fiction and action stories, where it allows a kind of freedom impossible in real life. Some Hollywood films strain so desperately against the constraints of the possible that you wish they'd just caved in and gone with animation." --
Roger Ebert on anime, with this excerpt being related to
Tokyo Godfathers. Ebert has been a fan of anime for a while, especially the works of
Hayao Miyazaki. Ebert has reviewed 6 of the 18
Studio Ghibli films released to date, and
even interviewed Miyazaki with a bit of fanboy glee.
More reviews and videos inside. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Aug 30, 2010 -
92 comments
In 2008, Gabe Delahaye, senior editor of
Videogum (
previously), began the
Hunt for the Worst Movie of All Time. From
A.I. to
Zardoz, over 70 films have so far been surveyed, including
Crash,
Caligula (nsfw),
Kangaroo Jack,
Gigli,
The Notebook, and
Closer.
[more inside]
posted by rollick
on Feb 18, 2010 -
140 comments
Take your nose on a stroll down memory lane with vintage perfumery.
The Vintage Perfume Vault features fragrance reviews and articles on perfume history.
Perfume Shrine offers articles on perfumery including essays on the science of fragrance and aroma materials, interviews with perfumers and industry professionals, trend-watching.
Inspiration in Perfumery profiles Henri Robert, Andre Fraysse, Ernest Beaux and Edmond Roudnitska. More about olfactory delights from
1000 Fragrances.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Nov 6, 2009 -
24 comments
The Millions, online since 2003, is a book blog of exceptional breadth and depth, and "an independent literature and culture publication that pays its writers." Until recently, that breadth and depth was hard to fathom, as the site had outgrown its infrastructure. Now, however, its excellent
features are easy to find, as are series like
The Future of the Book,
Ask a Book Question, and
The Millions Interview. Superb reviews can be found
as they happen or in the
Book Review Index, and, a vestige of when The Millions was a one man operation, you can find out what C. Max Magee, founder of The Millions, is reading on the
Book Lists page.
[more inside]
posted by ocherdraco
on Aug 20, 2009 -
12 comments
