DISQUS

Film School Rejects: Roger Ebert is Wrong About the CelebCult

  • Joshi · 11 months ago
    Apologies for the long comment...

    After reading Eberts article I found myself thinking many of the things you just pointed out.

    It's not that I disagree with Ebert on the facts, per se, but simply the conclusions he's drawn and reasons he's made for them. The Associated Press need to do what they need to do to stay in business as long as possible. Some may say that capping their entertainment articles to 500 words is wrong, but I'd say it's a necessary evil, akin to a school downsizing their art department for budgetary reasons... no one likes it, but it must be done.

    And frankly, people are finding less and less reason to buy newspapers and magazines anymore. I have a subscription to two film magazines ('Empire' and 'Total Film', them being the big ones here in the UK), otherwise I get all my news and reviews from the internet. In a world where, if a newspaper gets a big story about something, it has to wait till the next day to get the paper out and if a movie magazine gets a big story about something it has to wait until its monthly release to get it's story out, we now have the internet, a medium where that big story can be wrapped up and shoved into thousands of peoples RSS feeds within minutes of it breaking. There really is no comparison, the information age is here, lets embrace it.

    And frankly, the internet is the best place for movie reviewers. In your common garden Newspaper those reviews are being shoved between the flavour of the month and the sports results. The newspaper is for everyone and no one. If the paper sells 10 thousand copies, that doesn't mean 10 thousand people will be reading the film review, only those who are actually interested will read it. Compare that with the internet where, in this day and age, people will be pretty much plugged in to whatever film website you as a critic has set up in order to get their opinion read and what you have are people from all over the world get the review they asked for.

    Is it saturated? Diluted by the army of teenagers who like to call themselves critics because they have a blog and the ability to write a review in less than 50 words? Yes.

    Are your reviews now being read by less people than they were when it was just in the paper. Even for New York Times reviewers, I'm going to have to say no.
  • BillBrasky · 11 months ago
    thank you Cole

    I see Ebert's point in the CelebCult infanticizing journalism, but it is all of our free will decision to be a part of it or not. My fiance cares about celebrity gossip (people.com 1,000 times a day) where as I prefer FSR to decide what news is important to me. We all are drawn and support what interests us, and their will always be an audience for a solid, on point critique. Ebert should give us filmnuts a little more credit, and see that sites like FSR grow in popularity every day. Let the morons have their TMZ, and I will continue to click on what interests me ... films (this website along with Josh Radde has turned me into a film nut).

    This is market capitalism, just as some people need cheap, disposable items (TMZ) their is also a need for premium goods (FSR). Hundreds of movie sites are created every day, and hundreds disappear just as fast ... the masses will decide what is needed.

    I know this seems suck-up, but you guys deserve credit for distracting me a GOOD portion of the day.
  • Deborah · 11 months ago
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  • Reggie · 11 months ago
    The fact there are only 2 posts above me shows Ebert is right.
  • Christopher Z · 11 months ago
    The critic is absolutely dead. Before the internet, film criticism was dominated by an intellectual and snobbish elite who wrote for newspapers and magazines. The internet has taken film criticism away from the elite, and has put it into the hands of everyone else. In the internet age, the rest of us get a chance to be film critics and have our voices heard. All we have to do is either start a film web site and write reviews for it, or just write reviews on other movie sites such as The Internet Movie Database. Film criticism no longer belongs to the elite whose members included the late Pauline Kael, the late Vincent Canby, the late Gene Siskel, Roger Ebert, and of course many others. Film criticism now belongs to the general public.
  • Mathieu Lalonde · 11 months ago
    The critic is dead.
    The journalist is dead.
    Intelligent reasoning is dead.