Giles Coren is restaurant critic at the Times (of London). Last week he wrote a very angry letter to the subeditors complaining that they were "tinkering with his copy". The subs were guilty of deleting a single indefinite article.
posted on Jul 24, 2008 - View this thread

Via The Friendly Atheist and the New York Times, this blog post and this article explain two instances of a very, very unsettling new phenomenon.
posted on Jun 17, 2008 - View this thread

What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Movies by Armond White. Premiere.com critic and cineaste blogger, Glenn Kenny responds. Movie reviewers across America lose their jobs. Hachette Filipacchi follows suit at Premiere.com. Kenny blogs about The End of an Era - having written reviews for the site and the previously cancelled Premiere magazine for nearly fifteen years.
posted on May 8, 2008 - View this thread

Martha Nussbaum reviews three recent books on Shakespeare and philosophy. The essay offers an excellent analysis of love in Antony and Cleopatra and Othello, and an excellent discussion of the interaction between philosophy and literature.
posted on May 5, 2008 - View this thread

17 Notorious Living, Working Cinematic Provocateurs. The Onion A/V Club strikes again.
posted on May 5, 2008 - View this thread

Bioculture critiques Cultural Critique Until literature departments take into account that humans are not just cultural or textual phenomena but something more complex, English and related disciplines will continue to be the laughingstock of the academic world that they have been for years because of their obscurantist dogmatism and their coddled and preening pseudo-radicalism. Until they listen to searching criticism of their doctrine, rather than dismissing it as the language of the devil, literature will continue to be betrayed in academe, and academic literary departments will continue to lose students and to isolate themselves from the intellectual advances of our time.
posted on Apr 7, 2008 - View this thread

Roger Ebert to return to writing movie reviews. Love him, hate him, disagree with him, worship him, whatever, but Pulitzer Prize winning movie critic Roger Ebert, after several operations that have left him without the power of speech, will return to writing movie reviews shortly after his 10th Annual movie festival, Ebertfest. Me, personally, I'm happy as heck about this.
posted on Apr 2, 2008 - View this thread

Atlanta's Theat(er|re) community is unloading on a local Christmas show.
posted on Dec 11, 2007 - View this thread

You'd think news of a Creem Magazine retrospective book would be greeted with cries of glee. You'd be wrong. Occasional staff shutterbug Bob Matheu licensed rights to use the name of the beloved, iconoclastic Detroit rock zine years after it ceased to be relevant, but despite occasional "Creem is back" announcements, only produced a website.
posted on Dec 2, 2007 - View this thread

Stylus Magazine is closed. Home to some of the best writing about rockism, and Rasputin, slsking and The Stranger. Greatest hits/bluffer's guide here.
posted on Nov 2, 2007 - View this thread

National Novel Writing Month (seen before) starts Nov. 1. The goal: complete a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, Nov. 30. If you'd like to start, or are otherwise working on a novel, Sean Lindsay and others would like you to please stop.
posted on Oct 31, 2007 - View this thread

David Denby and Joe Queenan on Knocked Up and the new genre of romantic comedy.
posted on Oct 6, 2007 - View this thread

'These are a few of my least favorite things.' Melvin Jules Bukiet shares his thoughts on some contemporary writers, some of whom call the borough of Brooklyn home. Writers with names like Foer, Sebold and Eggers, among others. His thoughts are mostly negative. [via]
posted on Sep 26, 2007 - View this thread

Going After Gore "Al Gore couldn't believe his eyes: as the 2000 election heated up, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other top news outlets kept going after him, with misquotes ("I invented the Internet"), distortions (that he lied about being the inspiration for Love Story), and strangely off-the-mark needling, while pundits such as Maureen Dowd appeared to be charmed by his rival, George W. Bush. For the first time, Gore and his family talk about the effect of the press attacks on his campaign—and about his future plans—to the author, who finds that many in the media are re-assessing their 2000 coverage."
posted on Sep 4, 2007 - View this thread

On At The Movies this past weekend Richard Roeper announced: 1) The past 20 years of At The Movies (formerly Siskel & Ebert & the Movies) is going to be archived for free download online. That's several thousand reviews -- from Adventures in Babysitting to Zodiac. Unfortunately, the first ten years of of the show was poorly preserved. Ebert writes, "Starting Thursday, Aug. 2, visitors will be able to search for and watch all of those past debates, including the film clips that went along with them, plus the “ten best” and other special shows we did. The new archive will be at www.atthemoviestv.com, and will be the web’s largest collection of streaming reviews." 2) Roger Ebert will be a guest for an online chat Thursday at 8:00 Eastern (7:00 Central). You can submit questions in advance here. The chat will be at this link.  (Until the actual archive shows up online, you can enjoy these links.)
posted on Aug 1, 2007 - View this thread

Christopher Plummer as Nabokov lecturing on Kafka
posted on Jul 5, 2007 - View this thread

Crawdaddy, one of the first rock criticism magazines, has made a comeback online, including some selected articles by the magazine's founder, Paul Williams. The SF Weekly has mixed feelings about the magazine's return. (via largehearted boy)
posted on May 30, 2007 - View this thread

What if Apple is bad for design? Or at least not good?
posted on Apr 27, 2007 - View this thread

Is the 21st century making you miserable? This young fellow may know why. Is he right, folks?
posted on Feb 9, 2007 - View this thread

The backlash against design. Are you Anti-fluff or Anti-stuff?
posted on Jan 12, 2007 - View this thread

Where's Waldo? Reflections on Copies and Authenticity in a Digital Environment. Consider for a moment The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (JSTOR PDF here) by Douglas Davis. Alternatively, of course there is The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (alternative link) by Robert Luxemberg. Not to be outdone, Charles Alexander Moffat recently added to the discussion with The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction. I hope all of the authors mentioned were able to make it to the ATA's fundraiser last year called The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction. Some people are willing to admit that it's not just all about the Benjamin^.
posted on Nov 29, 2006 - View this thread

What Good Are the Arts? asks John Carey’s recent book of the same name. The New Criterion think Carey’s thesis is informed by cynical political motives rather than earnest convictions, and accuses Carey of dabbling in the risky art of aesthetic relativism: Obviously, art is ultimately about “the search for truth” (a lesson we’d do well to remember before society falls apart). But as Carey and others point out to the contrary, the Third Reich was all about art—and yet, art under the Third Reich had precious little to do with “searching for truth.” So just what good are the arts? Here’s what a few others have to say on the subject.
posted on Oct 4, 2006 - View this thread

No language, just sound: How writer Ned Raggett came to ignore the lyrics.
posted on Sep 6, 2006 - View this thread

Eight rules for writing a female comics character worth reading Karen Healey lays a cursory path for avoiding the major pitfalls of women in comics. Part of the larger Girl Wonder site (previously). Also good is Designated Sidekick's takedown of IGN.
posted on Jul 21, 2006 - View this thread

Bible Dudes. I'm a Bible Scholar, a Scriptural caller, I got a lot of books but not a lot of dollar. Things from antiquity you know they be ravin', I throw around words like sitz-im-leben, A bazillion languages are cloggin' my head, All of my heroes have been a long time dead. Come on along now, all the Bibledudes' buddies, Cuz Yo! We gonna rap BIBLICAL STUDIES!
posted on Apr 14, 2006 - View this thread

"It is nothing less than a generation-defining event.... It is this era’s 2001: A Space Odyssey." Even as the second, shorter cut of Terrence Malick's Pocahontas epic is slinking out of theaters, The New World is dividing and confounding critics, audiences, and bloggers: "The New World is my new religion." - "The New World separates the wheat from chaff." - "The first necessary film of this young year." The Village Voice's J. Hoberman observes the growing cult, Dave Kehr of the New York Times weighs in and gets testy. Matt Zoller Seitz responds. In the meantime, Malick is reportedly preparing a third, longer cut for the DVD.
posted on Mar 14, 2006 - View this thread

Wondermark An Illustrated Weekly Jocularity. While you're there, be sure to check out Malki's Comic Script Doctor columns (in particular his Freudian interpretation of Marmaduke).
posted on Jan 29, 2006 - View this thread

Reconstructing Aunt Sally's Secret Recipe. Addressing the Retranslations Fallacy, a common misconception about how the Bible we read has been handed down to us. [via]
posted on Jan 23, 2006 - View this thread

The Antichrist Checklist : The most recent entry in Slacktivist's extremely insightful and entertaining series on mocking and deconstructing the Left Behind books. Being written from the perspective of a non-fundie Christian just makes it even more powerful. Slacky reveals how manufactured the cooked-up, hacked-together "prophecy," that fuels the series is. If you believe all that nonsense, and can make it through this series with your wacky premillennial dispensationalist beliefs intact, then I'm sorry but there is no hope for you.

Highlights of this week's installment, the best I've seen in a while: the antichrist, the paucity of the biblical evidence for him/it, and this sentence: "The composite sketch derived from all these descriptions yields a portrait that looks a little like Nebuchadnezzar, a little like Antiochus Epiphanes, a little like Nero or Diocletian, and a little like Victor von Doom."
posted on Aug 19, 2005 - View this thread

The Confabulators. They Are Confabulators!! They Write About Music!! They Have Come From The Decemberists Board!! Ahhhh! It began on a message board (reg. required). All the latest news about The Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens, and now, more! Their latest entry: A review of Pitchfork's review of Sufjan's Illinois. That'll teach 'em.
posted on Aug 8, 2005 - View this thread

"Just about anything goes in contemporary cinema and no one bothers too much with what actually took place in the past." The World Socialist Web Site's movie review archive provides a different take on film, both Hollywood and international.
posted on Aug 1, 2005 - View this thread

The Shins Will Change Your Life A collection of fawning music "criticism" updated a few times a week. No commentary from the author, just excerpts from reviews.
posted on Jul 13, 2005 - View this thread

An insightful piece of poetry criticism by Adam Kirsch encapsulates the work of Charles Bukowski, popular poet with MeFi's and others. Camile Paglia has a go at poetry crit in her latest, Break, Blow, Burn. I read the Kirsch piece because I have a passing familiarity with Bukowski, and if I saw someone reading a volume, I'd have some snap insight into what their interests may be. Though I often judge a reader by their book's cover, I could do this with very few poetry books, and I can't remember seeing anyone with a poetry book, or telling me about a poetry book in a long time. While some of us read for pleasure, we probably aren't reading poetry. The slam poetry movement of a few years ago seems to have lost its media fire. The death of poetry is periodically announced, and others disagree. My casual observation is that many poetry lovers actually write poetry, and are not students of the genre. Poems are short, it's easy to call something a poem, and it may make the writer feel better to write one out. Rarely are they good, and rarer still will they find an audience outside of web communities of other poetry writers. Can vigorous and accessible poetry criticism revive poetry readership? Does anyone who does not write poems read poetry, especially unfamiliar poetry? Will anyone cop to writing it but not reading it? And should we care?
posted on Apr 26, 2005 - View this thread

MoMA Free Tomorrow for New York MeFi Readers! Well, everyone, actually. The Museum of Modern Art in New York reopens tomorrow and graciously offers a day of free entrance for all. Your chance to avoid the much-criticized $20 admission (views: con, pro-fessional, mayoral). Even good old free-admission Fridays bear the price tag of aggressive name-branding [paragraph 6] by an image-crazy donor (it's not charity anymore if it's advertising, folks, much less design-heady classiness-by-association). Some reports (scroll) from the press preview.
posted on Nov 19, 2004 - View this thread

Donnie Darko in his mind's eye. (One little boy, one little man) A pretty rad article on Donnie Darko, one of my favorite movies.
posted on Oct 27, 2004 - View this thread

STEWART: You know what's interesting, though? You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show. Just one tiny bit of a very memorable Crossfire on CNN. Guest is of course, Jon Stewart, one bright spot in our media cesspool, even though they seem to be clueless that he's parodying them.
posted on Oct 15, 2004 - View this thread

America Bashing. By Thai cartoonist Stephane Peray.
posted on Sep 27, 2004 - View this thread

"Your talent is so great that you can expect fruit and vegetables to be thrown at every performance." Long before William Hung haunted the American music scene, there were The Cherry Sisters, a Vaudeville act that people loved to hate. A review that read, in part, "The mouths opened like caverns, and sounds like the wailing of damned souls issued therefrom," so offended the sisters that they launched a lawsuit which resulted in an historic ruling regarding fair comment. Oscar Hammestein II proclaimed them "the worst act in the history of light entertainment." Alas, no recordings exist.
posted on Apr 23, 2004 - View this thread

Philip Larkin: Great Poet, Shame About The Man? When is an excess of biography, i.e. high-minded, clumsily-disguised gossip, an impediment to literary appreciation? Nowadays, it seems always. [More inside.]
posted on Mar 19, 2004 - View this thread

How To Deconstruct Almost Anything. An engineer visits the world of postmodern literary criticism.
posted on Jan 9, 2004 - View this thread

This guy has hit the nail on the head. I've been marveling at how it was possible to completely screw up the sequels to what I consider the greatest action movie of all time. Matt Feeney has precisely and eloquently pinpointed everything wrong with the Matrix sequels.
posted on Nov 10, 2003 - View this thread

Film Schools obsessed with theory David Weddle complains that in film schools "discussions about movie characters, plots and the human beings who created them are replaced by theories such as semiotics, structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalytics and neoformalism. [More inside]
posted on Sep 14, 2003 - View this thread

Depp: Dumb Puppy Comment Wasn't Anti-U.S. "I am an American. I love my country and have great hopes for it. It is for this reason that I speak candidly and sometimes critically about it."
posted on Sep 5, 2003 - View this thread

Critics Gone Wild. Rarely do entertainment journalists have as fine an occasion to cut loose and shower their barbs as the opening of Gigli: "I fought the urge to punch someone once it finally ended." Not that anyone's surprised! Enjoy, if you get a kick out of scalding prose.
posted on Aug 1, 2003 - View this thread

"It was hard on the ear, and my dog hated it too." The Robot Rock Critic generates album reviews. "Type in an artist name. Pick from a list of ten music genres, from 'teenage pop' to 'frighteningly loud music.' Specify whether it's a band, a male solo artist, or a female solo artist. Then click 'review.'"
[via Easy Bay Express]
posted on Jul 10, 2003 - View this thread

Music crticism in weblogs: Chat rooms and vanity sites seem so mid-’90s in internet terms, but the future of music criticism is lurking deep in the blogosphere. An article from Toronto-based free magazine, Exclaim!
posted on Jul 2, 2003 - View this thread

Hey everybody, it's Appropriate Michael Savage's name for your own purposes day! With contributions from Haypenny, über, Neal Pollack himself, and much, much, more, all in response to these threats.
posted on Jun 26, 2003 - View this thread

The Worst Book I Ever Read “Finnegan’s Wake is the best example of modernism disappearing up its own fundament.” A Brief History of Time and Iris Murdoch show up twice. Mein Kampf is as interesting as a bus timetable and “JK Rowling is the sub-literary analogue of Tony Blair.” Tolkien appears most foten, making him the most hated of this little group.
posted on May 25, 2003 - View this thread

The Best Band in the Land, a report from the alternate universe wherein musical priorities in the 80s were a little bit different. Complete with a reader's guide. One of many pieces of Old Man Grumpus rock criticism at Exiled on Main Street.
posted on Apr 2, 2003 - View this thread

Dixie Chicks Pulled from Air After Bashing Bush Dude, these Texas people didn't find criticism of the president unpatriotic when Bill Clinton was president. They thought it was a sacred duty...Apparently country stations in Texas and elsewhere are pulling Dixie Chicks albums because their lead singer, while on an overseas tour, criticized Bush, saying she was ashamed to be from the state as him. People who want to criticize the critics of the critical comments are supporting the Chicks by buying their albums and requesting their songs. I never thought I'd buy a Dixie Chicks album, but that's what I'm going to do tonight, and I'm paying full price!
posted on Mar 14, 2003 - View this thread