MetaFilter posts tagged with criticism

Hey, That's Mine!

Paid In Full — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:19:36 -0800

Dude, You Stole My Article They say everyone's a critic, but in this case, the critic is everyone. Today in Slate, Jody Rosen uncovers what just might be "in purely statistical terms ... the greatest plagiarism scandal in the annals of American journalism". ~~Via~~ Stolen from Zoilus.

sinuosity

plexi — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:46:27 -0800

Realist Fiction by George Saunders:
"Last night, in a biker bar, I overheard two men discussing what distinguished “realist” fiction from more “experimental” work. Although one shouldn’t generalize, I never expect bikers to be literary critics. Well, these were literary critics, and good ones—in fact, they’d bought their “hogs” with royalties from a book they’d co-written, Feminine Desire In Jane Austen."

Experimental Fiction by George Saunders:
"Experimental fiction is the art of telling a story in which certain aspects of reality have been exaggerated or distorted in such a way as to put the reader off the story and make him go watch a television show."

Anger can make a man verbose

MrMerlot — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:15:13 -0800

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. Coren wrote: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh." It appeared as: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh." Apart from working as a restaurant critic, Coren (previously here and here) is also a satirist. I've done some checking and apparently he is not making this up.

Everything should be subject to critical analysis.

kldickson — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:41:48 -0800

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. A frightening new era of political correctness - about religions - erupts on college campuses, to the dismay of those who value academic discourse, academic freedom, and critical analysis.

Thumbs down. No stars.

crossoverman — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:44:13 -0800

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.

Shakespeare and philosophy

painquale — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:38:38 -0800

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. From the essay: "To make any contribution worth caring about, a philosopher's study of Shakespeare should do three things. First and most centrally, it should really do philosophy, and not just allude to familiar philosophical ideas and positions. It should pursue tough questions and come up with something interesting and subtle--rather than just connecting Shakespeare to this or that idea from Philosophy 101. A philosopher reading Shakespeare should wonder, and ponder, in a genuinely philosophical way. Second, it should illuminate the world of the plays, attending closely enough to language and to texture that the interpretation changes the way we see the work, rather than just uses the work as grist for some argumentative mill. And finally, such a study should offer some account of why philosophical thinking needs to turn to Shakespeare's plays, or to works like them. Why must the philosopher care about these plays? Do they supply to thought something that a straightforward piece of philosophical prose cannot supply, and if so, what?" There is some discussion of the piece here.

Trying to rape the viewer into independence

chuckdarwin — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:56:04 -0800

17 Notorious Living, Working Cinematic Provocateurs. The Onion A/V Club strikes again.

Getting It All Wrong: Bioculture critiques Cultural Critique

jason's_planet — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:26:57 -0800

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.

Faster Roger! Write! Write!

willmize — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 04:49:45 -0800

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.

Probably not quite a fiasco!

bovious — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:21:17 -0800

Atlanta's Theat(er|re) community is unloading on a local Christmas show. Fun to read how awful it can get. This fellow explains why you probably won't read anything like that from him. And this, of course, shows just how awful it can REALLY get.