The Village Voice and IndieWire have both put out their dueling film critic's polls this year, with Wall-E and Flight of the Red Balloon topping the lists, respectively. [Previously] [more inside]
posted by Weebot on Jan 4, 2009 - 16 comments

Death To Film Critics! Hail The CelebCult! "A newspaper film critic is like a canary in a coal mine. When one croaks, get the hell out. The lengthening toll of former film critics acts as a poster child for the self-destruction of American newspapers, which once hoped to be more like the New York Times and now yearn to become more like the National Enquirer. We used to be the town crier. Now we are the neighborhood gossip."
posted by An Infinity Of Monkeys on Nov 29, 2008 - 37 comments

John Leonard is dead. A literary prodigy at thirty-two when asked to edit the New York Times Book Review, Leonard oversaw the NYTBR's glory days between 1971 and 1975. Television critic for New York, monthly books critic for Harper's, regular contributor to The Nation and The New York Review of Books, he also went out of his way to help young writers.
posted by ed on Nov 6, 2008 - 14 comments

“Another Rosenberg Executed”? Classical music critic Donald Rosenberg may be the reigning expert on the Cleveland Orchestra, having written an entire book on the esteemed ensemble. But failure to fawn over conductor Franz Welser Most has gotten him booted off his newspaper’s classical music beat. People are beginning to notice… [more inside]
posted by Faze on Sep 23, 2008 - 16 comments

Indiewire put out their second annual film critic's poll recently. There Will Be Blood tops the list, with Zodiac, No Country for Old Men, Syndromes and a Century, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days following behind. [more inside]
posted by Weebot on Dec 28, 2007 - 40 comments

In 1964, Mel Brooks won both the Oscar & BAFTA Best Short Film awards for The Critic. His first film, it revolves around an old man heckling abstract animation that he doesn't understand. Youtube (lower quality) | brettratner.com (higher quality)
posted by miss lynnster on Sep 23, 2007 - 37 comments

George Melly, singer, writer, and expert on Surrealism, has passed away aged 80.
posted by motty on Jul 5, 2007 - 18 comments

Cockeyed Absurdist - jonmc's 300 most favorite songs and why, including Iron Maiden, The Exciters, Neil Young (as a greaser), Captain Beefheart, Hanson, and of course, The Dictators.
posted by hellbient on Mar 23, 2007 - 134 comments

This appears to be a new low for Michael Crichton, a moderately scary guy who's already caused some head-scratching in these parts. (Main link requires reg. Summary here. via)
posted by gurple on Dec 14, 2006 - 109 comments

"A fedora hat worn by me without the necessary protective irony would eat through my head and kill me." Goodbye to George W.S. Trow, one of the strangest, wisest, disturbingest writer ever to gape at, marvel at, and love his fellow Americans. His 1980 essay "Within the Context of No Context" (which shared with J.D. Salinger's last published story the distinction of taking up an entire issue of the New Yorker) placed television, irony, and distance at the center of the new United States. He also wrote the less well-known (but equally beautiful) short story collection Bullies, along with a novel and several screenplays, helped found National Lampoon, and was a staff writer at the New Yorker from 1966 until 1994, when he quit in protest of Roseanne Barr's guest-editing stint. He died on November 24, in Naples, at the age of 63. Appreciations from the New York Observer, Slate, and Gawker.
posted by escabeche on Dec 12, 2006 - 17 comments

"So I think we maybe have this sort of snobbish reputation. But we're just really honest, opinionated music fans." (via)
posted by bardic on Apr 30, 2006 - 178 comments

The 16mm Shrine writes about movies. "The fact that there’s any talent in Brazil not devoted to kidnapping schemes and making curare poison out of small frogs, let alone the kind it takes to make an epic like Meirelles’ breakout film, City of God, is astounding ... [With The Constant Gardener,] I hoped Meirelles might be able to inject some excitement into material that probably had an initial interest level hovering somewhere between televised Canadian parliamentary proceedings and rough notes for a thesis project on religious atavism in Norway. ... Weisz is an activist, which means she’s easy and doesn’t shave her legs, and gets very upset if you notice. She also becomes immediately attached to the African children surrounding her in that particular stage of starvation and illness that makes their eyes big and their stomachs small enough that they still look small and pitiful, but not yet weird enough that they could pass for shark-toothed baby Grays from The X-Files. She gets involved in a conspiracy and soon ends up dead, leaving Fiennes to pick up the pieces and grow a backbone."
posted by Marquis on Sep 22, 2005 - 24 comments

C'mon, Roger Ebert, tell us what you really think about "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo." And on a completely related note, today Ebert's website launched "Ebert's Most Hated," a collection of classic zero- and one-star reviews. My favorites: "North" and "Freddy Got Fingered."
posted by Saucy Intruder on Aug 12, 2005 - 118 comments

"Brett Meisner has helped to put the 'rock' back into 'rock and roll' forever!" said Kurt Loder in 2003. Given Meisner's impact as a music critic and rock 'n' roll badboy, this is something of an understatement...
posted by ph00dz on May 30, 2005 - 8 comments

For almost ten years, independent rock critic Glenn Mcdonald has kept a highly personal and elegantly well-written music column, The War Against Silence. He has championed artists popular and obscure, and remembered acts that others might regard as 1980s nostalgia with melancholy and grace. As his past few columns have vacillated between the personal and the musical, he has opted to end his run at the beginning of September.
posted by pxe2000 on Jul 29, 2004 - 16 comments

New Zealand critic blasts LOTR. Big budget movie special effects have overshadowed the timeless are of storytelling and character development. "..The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy is, as a work of cinematic art, ham-fisted, shallow, bombastic and laughably overrated.." [More Quotes inside]
posted by stbalbach on Apr 8, 2004 - 48 comments

McDonald's gets bad review, sues critic. "McDonald's has labelled as "defamatory and offensive" an influential Italian food critic, who poured scorn on the quality of the fast-food giant's cuisine. The corporation has sued Edoardo Raspelli, a critic and commentator for the Italian newspaper La Stampa, after he compared its burgers to rubber and its fries to cardboard, in an article last year. McDonald's is seeking undisclosed damages, possibly as much as the 21m euros (£15m; $25m) it spent on advertising in Italy last year. " Is it really defamation if it's true? What if every restaurant that got a bad review decided to sue?
posted by kayjay on May 31, 2003 - 33 comments

I'd like to thank the Academy. And the French. Film critic Michael Sragow, late of Salon and currently of The Baltimore Sun, ruminates on the upcoming Oscar telecast and wonders why such a "lib-rad industry" would sit-out the night and pass on the opportunity to bang us all over the head with soporific political messages. In actual movie talk, he sez of LOTR: "I don't think there has been a fantasy film IN MOVIE HISTORY as faultlessly acted, as magnificent in its scope and invention, and as enthralling in its narrative drive as I'm sure the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy will turn out to be. "
posted by baltimore on Mar 21, 2003 - 2 comments

pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat. Modern art is rubbish says Institute of Contemporary Arts Chief Ivan Massow...
posted by Spoon on Jan 17, 2002 - 28 comments

Clinton critic accused of being a wanker -- Matthew J. Glavin, who heads a legal foundation trying to have President Horndog disbarred, has been accused of publicly fondling himself and an undercover federal officer. More details here.
posted by rcade on Oct 4, 2000 - 5 comments