Christopher Plummer, playing a man who comes out of the closet in his 70s, might have won Best Supporting Performance, but at least four people voted for a dog. The results for the crazy free-for-all that is the Indiewire Annual Survey, which polled 168 critics this year, came out today. The Tree of Life swept Best Film and Best Director, but the choices that only got a handful of votes are often the most interesting, including three different cast members from The Three Musketeers for Best Supporting and a vote for Transformers: Dark of the Moon for Best Film. You can see the complete results and links to all of the critics ballots here. [more inside]
posted by alexoscar on Dec 19, 2011 - 24 comments

Starting tonight, Ebert Presents At the Movies will begin airing full episodes of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert’s original PBS show, Sneak Previews. Taking a break from reviewing movies, co-hosts Christy Lemire and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky will introduce and discuss the episodes. Hungry for more classic Siskel & Ebert? Try the invaluable, Ebert-approved SiskelandEbert.org, a growing archive of home-taped episodes of Sneak Previews and At the Movies. [more inside]
posted by alexoscar on Aug 5, 2011 - 21 comments

Long before he wrote DVD reviews for The New York Times, Dave Kehr spent 11 years at the Chicago Reader perfecting the 100-word capsule review into a vehicle for his succinct, astute writing on a wide variety of films. All of them can be read for free at the Chicago Reader's website. Additionally, his long-overlooked long reviews have just been collected and published. [more inside]
posted by alexoscar on Apr 19, 2011 - 26 comments

Serge Daney (1944 - 1992) is often cited as one of the greatest film critics. After joining the legendary film magazine Cahiers du cinéma (which he would eventually edit) at age 20, Daney wrote extensively on the changing place of movies in culture, on directors new and old and on television, war and even sports. He founded the film magazine Trafic before dying of AIDS in 1992.

Though some of his essays have been officially translated and a small book of his writings has been published in English, the vast majority of his work remains untranslated into English. That hasn't stopped a devoted group of cinephiles from taking matters into their own hands. [more inside]
posted by alexoscar on Dec 13, 2010 - 12 comments

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

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

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