Roger Ebert mourns the loss of film critics
December 4th 2008 02:17
Roger Ebert posted a wistful, head-shaking article on his blog, lamenting the loss of film critics from newspapers all across the nation... he even starts with a big statement:
"A newspaper film critic is like a canary in a coal mine. When one croaks, get the hell out."
He's right, of course... the film critic is one unnecessary cost to a newspaper because, let's face it, no one really reads the reviews, they only need to look at the number of stars, or dollar signs, or thumbs, or goldfish - some metric of whether that movie is any good.
One particularly egregious example is an article I read in the Sydney Morning Herald, a review of Norbit which found that the most offensive thing about the movie is that it wasn't "funny".
Immediately adjacent to the review were the box office totals for Australia, with Norbit the clear winner, raking in millions.
This simple example is a clear flag to the editors of the paper, that reviews, while a nice touch, serve little purpose other that to fill a bit of space. With tough times at newspapers, film reviews are likely to be the first to go. As Ebert notes of his fellow reviewers:
"Michael Wilmington is gone from the Chicago Tribune, Jack Mathews and Jami Bernard from the New York Daily News, Kevin Thomas from the Los Angeles Times--and the internationally-respected film critic of the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum, has retired, accepted a buy-out, will write for his blog, or something."
While it may seem like a minor catastrophe to Ebert, my generation seems rather satisfied with the way things turned out - after all, this is a film blog, and I get far more readers writing on the internet than I could by writing in the local rag.
Admittedly, the quality of the reviews on this site are likely to be inferior to those that Ebert wrote for the Sun-Times, perhaps because it was his full-time job, whereas 20/20 Filmsight operates in the cracks of time between breakfast and lunch.
We'll get there, though, and, in the meantime, there are hundreds, thousands of films to watch and anticipate.
Of course, the issue of money is a big point - writing for 20/20 Filmsight doesn't really keep me above water, but instead, the power of the internet is the influence that this blog can have in far places in the world. Recently, a reader from India took my advice and caught a screening of "The Vanished Empire", the latest film from renowned Russian director, Karen Shakhnazarov.
That's worth more than 30 pieces of silver, in my opinion.
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Comment by The Rusty Can
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That must've been a great feeling.
On ya, Cib.
Comment by Cibbuano
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On an unrelated note, I am dying to know if you saw Rocknrolla, Cib! My reiview is HERE, but I'd love to know what you thought.
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