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Film Criticism in the Age of the Internet: a Critical Symposium

Posted on: Thursday, 2 October 2008, 03:00 CDT

By Anonymous

Caught in the Web, print and new media writers debate the pros and cons of online, where everyone's a critic. In introducing the Critical Symposium on "International Film Criticism Today" in our Winter 2005 issue, we maintained, with a certain resigned pride, that "critics at independent film magazines have virtually complete freedom, and a generous amount of space, to express their opinions if they are willing to endure the relative (or, in some cases, total) penury that results from being unaligned with the corporate media." In recent months, American critics, having been fired, downsized, or bought out by a host of publications, are realizing that even making compromises with their corporate employers does not guarantee them a job.

Given the current economic malaise, the role of online criticism has become increasingly prominent. There has also been, at least in certain quarters, an intensification of the occasional friction between print critics and the denizens of the blogosphere. In a typically ungracious broadside in The New York Press, Armand White wailed that "Internetters... express their 'expertise,' which essentially is either their contempt or idiocy about films, filmmakers, or professional critics. The joke inherent in the Internet horde is that they chip away at the professionalism they envy, all the time diminishing critical discourse."

One goal in coordinating this Critical Symposium on "Film Criticism in the Age of the Internet" was to chip away at some of the hyperbolic rhetoric exemplified by White's jeremiad. Although the twenty-three respondents to our survey represent a host of critical stances, they all consider the relative virtues and flaws of both print and Internet criticism from a nuanced perspective that is indeed alien to vituperative anti-Internet critics such as White. Some of the participants in the symposium confess that they know little about Internet criticism, while a few bloggers take gentle jabs at their print brethren. Yet civil discourse prevails.

In addition, it soon becomes clear that there are very few critics in the current environment who are exclusive inhabitants of either the print or Internet realms. A certain number of longtime print critics have either been forced-or chosen-to become full-time bloggers, writers who started out as bloggers or Web critics have found print jobs, diehard Internet critics occasionally make appearances in film magazines, and even the most inveterate magazine and newspaper critics are pleased that their reviews appear on their publications' Web sites.

It is also of interest to note that, when it comes to embracing or critiquing Internet criticism, it is much too simplistic to speak of a yawning generational divide: veterans of venerable print publications often express undiluted enthusiasm for the possibilities of the Internet, while younger critics are far from hesitant to utter a few caveats concerning unrestrained cheerleading for the uneven quality of critical conversation on the Met.

Choosing whom to invite to this symposium was certainly daunting. Unlike our previous symposia on American and International criticism- "Film Criticism in America Today," Cineaste, Vol. XXVI, No. 1, December 2000, and "International Film Criticism Today," Cineaste, Vol. XXXI, No. 1, December 2005-the terrain appeared almost limitless and, despite our familiarity with the world of print criticism, we are still engaged in an ongoing process of learning about the brave new world of the internet. We might well have invited a totally different roster of critics and enjoyed an equally stimulating panoply of viewpoints. Nevertheless, we believe that we've assembled a lively and erudite (if far from comprehensive) group of seasoned critics, young bhggers, and writers who continue to oscillate between traditional and newfangled venues.

For assistance with this Critical Symposium, we are especially grateful to suggestions offered by Steve Erickson, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Girish Shambu.

We posed the following question to our respondents, suggesting that they could choose either to answer the individual questions, or to use them as departure points for their own essay.-The Editors

1) Has Internet criticism made a significant contribution to film culture? Does it tend to supplement print criticism or can it actually carve out critical terrain that is distinctive from traditional print criticism? Which Internet critics and bloggers do you read on a regular basis?

2) How would you characterize the strengths and weaknesses of critics' blogs? Which blogs do you consult on a regular basis-and which are you drawn to in terms of content and style? Do you prefer blogs written by professional critics or those by amateur cinephiles?

3) Internet boosters tend to hail its "participatory" aspects- e.g., message boards, the ability to connect with other cinephiles through critics' forums and email, etc. Do you believe this "participatory" aspect of Internet criticism (film critics form the bulk of the membership lists of message boards such as a film by and Film and Politics) has helped to create a genuinely new kind of "cinematic community" or are such claims overblown?

4) Jasmina Kallay, writing in Film Ireland (Sept.-Oct. 2007), has claimed that, in the age of the Internet, the "traditional film critic... is losing his stature and authority." Do you agree or disagree with this claim? If you agree, do you regard this as a regrettable or salutary phenomenon?

Zach Campbell

Elusivelucity Blogspot

1) Internet criticism has absolutely made a significant contribution to film culture. Speaking personally, for one crucial example, The Chicago Reader's film reviews archive (including its archived capsules) allowed me to first dive into the work of Jonathan Rosenbaum, Fred Camper, and Dave Kehr. (All three critics have a presence on the Web these days, too.) Before the Internet, a teenage cinephile like myself-circa 1998-could have scrounged back issues of various periodicals for some of their work-but here was a great deal that would have been inaccessible otherwise. Others could easily help me list quite a few more examples like these. So on that initial front-broadening the readership of writers who otherwise would have been contained to a certain geographical network-the Internet has been a giant boon. In terms of criticism, journalism, and discussion whose genesis has been online, however-listservs, blogs, sites like Slant (http://www.slantmagazine.com)-the issue is less clear cut. "Significant," yes. I think the jury's still out on all the ways in which it has been positively or negatively meaningful for film culture. But while there is a lot of "junk" in Cyberspace, l am convinced that the blog and online discussion communities today, at their best, perpetuate the luxurious bloom of small cinema magazines and cine-club chat that proliferated all over the world's film cultures in the earlier decades. Internet criticism, or online "film culture" more broadly, supplements more established print discourse. Sometimes, vice versa.

2) Blogs often lack a certain polish, technical or conceptual. When we don't have editors or other authority figures pressuring us on our writing, we can be very indulgent with our prose and our navel-gazing. Certainly there can be a workshop atmosphere from time to time, where online denizens critique each other's work rigorously and constructively. But in real experience I don't think this happens enough, and we tend to settle into routines of reading and thinking, not rubbing against each other in productive ways. (The Internet of course always allows unproductive conflicts.) I think of my own blog as a public notebook, and often post very unpolished or unreadable musings accordingly, in the hopes that people will help me work through my ideas. In all honesty though I, and many of my fellow bloggers, would do well to become still stronger writers and researchers. I hardly mean to suggest that all blogs and Web sites must adhere to professional print standards. That would be unfeasible in any case. But we have certain freedoms that most professional critics don't have; for those of us who would like to be counted without snark alongside the pros, we must hold ourselves up to more of the same basic standards. I check a lot of blogs, film- related or otherwise, but to name a handful of my favorites, there is, of course, the cordial and polymathic Girish Shambu's place (http:// www.girishshambu.com/blog) which is the hub of my personal "film blogosphere"; Andy Rector's indispensable Kino Slang (http:// kinoslang. blogspot.com); Mubarak All's Supposed Aura (http:// supposedaura.blogspot.com); Kimberly Lindbergs's Cinebeats (http:// cinebeats.blogsome.com). That's just a drop in the bucket. And of course not all blogs are their proprietors' personal foray: let us spare a healthy review of sites such as Serge Daney in English run by one "LK" (http://sergedaney. blogspot.com) and My Gleanings by "jdcopp" (http://jdcopp.blogspot. com).

3) I am not sure how "new" the online communities of film culture are. A discussion group like a_film_by (of which I was a founding member, in full disclosure) drew together a lot of people who already knew each other in real life, including people of generations older than my own who ran in the same circles in New York or Paris... in the 1970s. The sense of community discussion, I suspect, is not so new. It's now more a matter of articulations and scale. Aside from cinephilic discussion, the Internet has allowed for an altogether new spin on an old presence in film culture- bootleggers, collectors, and traders. Not all film culture is defined by talk! 4) What stature and authority did the traditional film critic hold before the Internet? It could be that the proportion of the bourgeoisie who once read reviews has shrunk; the name "Rosenbaum" possibly means less to the merely casual film fan than "Kael" or "Sarris" did forty years ago. I couldn't pretend to know. Among the crowd who devote attention to film criticism in a serious way, I don't think there has necessarily been a devaluation of the stature of worthy critics. We could consider the case of Rosenbaum, who would be an uncontroversial nomination to the spot of America's most important film critic over the last fifteen to twenty years. When he wrote his provocative piece on Ingmar Bergman for The New York Times ("Scenes from an Overrated Career," Aug. 4, 2007), multitudes online challenged him. Rosenbaum himself responded gamely and civilly to some of these criticisms in discussion groups and blogs. Was this whole affair an instance of an unassailable figure being profanely attacked by the electronic unwashed? Or was it instead the healthy debate of impassioned viewers and commentators, propelled by the mutual capacity to respond across tremendous physical spaces in much more rapid succession and greater visibility than would have been the case had a similar article come up in 1978? I lean towards the latter (as I suspect Rosenbaum himself would). In certain respects, the Internet may not be as innovative and revolutionary as the hype proclaims. I suspect a lot of its usefulness and merit is in fact in keeping certain older practices alive.

Zach Campbell works and studies in New York, completing, among other things, an MA in cinema studies. He blogs at http:// elusiveluciditv.blogspot.com.

"While there is a lot of 'junk' in Cyberspace, I am convinced that the blog and online discussion communities today, at their best, perpetuate the luxurious bloom of small cinema magazines and cine-club chat that proliferated all over the world's film cultures in earlier decades."-Zach Campbell

Robert Cashill

Between Productions and Cineaste

1) There are an estimated 113 million blogs out there, and 112 million seem to be about film. It's so big it can't help but have an impact, and so diffuse it's hard to gauge what that impact is. A lot of it is the usual piggybacking off print sources, which are invaluable for jump-starting online conversations even in their (presumed) twilight. The problem with print is that there are space limitalions, and formalities (like gobs o' plot summary) to be observed for the hoi polloi. What I like are writers who dispense with this, figuring you're in the know and up to speed, and dive right in to isolate key facets of a favorite film, either in a snappy paragraph or a deep-dish essay. It's an elastic medium, so the terrain can be as big or as small as the critic chooses.

Sites I have bookmarked include Hollywood Elsewhere (http:// hollywood-elsewhere.com/), which gets my heart started in the morning; Tim Lucas's ruminative and eclectic Video Watchdog (http:// www.videowatchdog.blogspot.com/); the mysterious Arbogast on Film (http://arbogastonfilm.blogspot.com/); Turner Classic Movies' idiosyncratic adjunct Movie Morlocks (http:// moviemorlocks.com/); the invaluable DVD Beaver (http://www.dvdbeaver.com/); and Glenn Erickson's informed and informative DVD Savant (http:// www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant). I check in with these and others when not fiddling obsessively with my Netflix queue.

2) Just as anyone who appears in a porn film is a de facto porn star, so, too, does anyone who blogs on film become an instant expert on the subject, just by showing up online. But there are professionals who write (and think) very amateurishly and amateurs who know more about the niches of this or that genre than any professional ever will. What I like is a professional who lets his or her hair down on the Web in a manner distinct from the voice- from-the- mountaintop style of print reviewing, as Matt Zoller Seitz was doing, and an amateur who conveys a stockpile of information with clarity, style, and wit. Then again, I'm more often drawn to the subject of a posting than I am to the writer; the opposite is true in print, where the name above the title has been the draw.

3) I learn a lot in the nooks and crannies, at the Mobius Home Video Forum (http:// www.mhvf.net/), the Home Theater Forum (http:// www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/sddvd-film-documentary/), or at Dave Kehr's site, where the host throws out the red meat for auteurist death matches (polite, civilized death matches). And I try to give back. The online community is strengthened by the give-and-take at these more thoughtful sites. I'm not sure how it's weakened by the mosh-pit comments sections elsewhere, but they're mostly for rubbernecking. Interesting tidbits that bring you closer to a film or a filmmaker, which you might pass on to the community at large, pop up in unexpected places. The user's comments at the Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/) are a lot of white noise; still, every so often, a commenter will reminisce about what it was like to have the film crew banging around his house on a location shoot, or how accurately a movie reflects a historical episode they lived through. Little, intimate gleanings that the Web makes it easier to share, if not always to find through all the rest.

4) Two things happened this spring. One was a distinct uptick in the number of newspaper and magazine critics becoming masterless samurai, looking for paying work in times of "old media" scarcity. Forget stature and authority: the traditional film critic is losing his or her job, period. And in the blogosphere, where some turn for meager sustenance (two-and-a-half years in on my own blog, and the Google ads I should just shuck off have yet to return a penny), there was a new wrinkle: Not blogging. Seitz's turning over the keys to his site, The House Next Door, to someone else set off a seismic ripple of soul-searching: Why am I doing this, when I could be doing something more productive?

The answer: Because we like the instant gratification. We get out what we choose to write about, when we choose to write about it, hit "publish," and for better or worse it's online. I am nostalgic for the horse-and-buggy days, when I had to go to the local library to catch up with Kael and Kauffmann, and distrust knee-jerk attacks on the old guard of print critics. Their reviews have much to tell us about the times they were written in, however dated or out-of-touch the opinions register today, and the old arguments still resonate.

In changing times, where critics try to maintain a livelihood, and relevance, in old media and the new bully pulpit, and question whether or not to continue at all, the most powerful person in the blogosphere isn't a critic. It's GreenCine editor David Hudson, for the hits he brings us when we are anointed for his daily aggregation. If he or GreenCine Daily decided to pull the plug, we would all be adrift until someone else with stature, authority-and the patience to wade through all this stuff-took over the rudder.

Robert Castiill, a Cinceaste Associate, blogs at Between Productions, www.robertcashill.blogspot.com, and http:// Popdose.com).

Mike D'Angelo

Esquire and The Man Who Viewed Too Much

Call me traitor. I was part of the initial wave of Internet film critics, way back in 1995, when pretty much the only people online were college students and tech nerds. The site I created had (and still has) no ads, no graphics, and no agenda-just endless text. The thought of somehow parlaying this hobby into a career in print media literally never occurred to me. I had zero ambition-and yet I was writing a 1500-word column every single week, generally reviewing three to six films (all of which I paid to see in commercial release), simply for the joy of writing, and to entertain a readership that couldn't have amounted to more than maybe 500-600 people. Looking back on that era now, after ten years in the print trenches, it seems very Shangri-La.

And yet that degree of purity is now the norm. For every print critic who gets the axe, another dozen bloggers appear, many of them arguably more passionate and knowledgeable than the professionals they threaten to supplant (or at least render irrelevant). Granted, not all of these cats can actually write-one noted online critic, who seems to have quite a respectful following, wields a prose style so hilariously turgid that I can never make it past sentence #2; you need a machete to hack your way through his thicket of synonomous adjectives. But of course the glory of the Internet is that a voice more to your liking is only a mouseclick away. What matters is the sheer number of ardent cinephiles out there getting all "ars gratia artis" on our asses.

The problem here, for those of us who'd like to continue being paid a living wage in the field, is that people willing to devote so much time and energy sans recompense are even more willing to accept any old pittance somebody might offer them. I was fortunate enough, when print media stumbled onto my site (which happened fairly quickly), to land ridiculously lucrative free-lance work-my first regular gig, for Entertainment Weekly, paid $2 per word. A decade later, one of my employers-a strictly online venture, significantly- decided they could no longer afford my (admittedly sizable) fee more than once a month, and shifted from a review format to a daily blog. I know and respect several of the folks who contribute to said blog, but I also know that they're being paid something on the order of one cent per word. (Literally.) And if talented writers are prepared to accept assignments for what's basically ramen money, clearly there's no earthly reason for anyone to shell out premium wages, much less a medical plan. Yeah, I know, boo hoo. And there's no question that the recession we're all desperately pretending not to be mired in has been more responsible for the various layoffs and buyouts than has the Imminent Heat Death of Newsprint. Still, I do foresee a future in which the most gifted critics will wind up preaching primarily to a small, self-selected choir, while the average filmgoer-to the extent that he or she consults criticism at all-will simply check the aggregate results available on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. It's inevitable that the more voices there are competing for your attention, the less valuable each individual voice becomes. And so a paradox: The advent of online criticism has simultaneously fostered greater diversity and greater homogeneity. Just like the expanding universe as a whole, if you think about it.

What I miss about writing online-and the reason 1 eventually started my own blog, though it's only updated approximately three times per annum-is the freedom to define your own audience, both in terms of what you choose to address and how you go about addressing it. If you have no editor, maybe nobody's catching your occasional lapse into self-indulgence; at the same time, though, neither is anybody shooting down your prospective ideas on the grounds that readers don't give a damn about Guy Maddin or Hong Sang-soo. And you can just assume a fairly high degree of cine-literacy, if that's the way you prefer to write. "Rivals Ten on 10 as the longest DVD supplement ever projected in a theater to a paying audience," I wrote of Captain Mike Across America, Michael Moore's latest "effort" from Toronto last year-a comparison I simply could not make in print, because merely explaining who Kiarostami is would likely eat up all of my remaining word count. On the Net, even if a particular reference sails over your head, there's always Google.

Of course, on the Net, one needn't necessarily write at all. I'm sure I won't be the only one in these pages to single out the remarkable video essays of Kevin "alsolikelife" B. Lee, which permit a degree of shot-by-shot analysis that no amount of careful or dazzling prose could possibly convey. Perhaps the true issue here is that so many of us still insist upon "dancing about architecture" when such a blatant compromise is no longer necessary, But it's a struggle I continue to thoroughly enjoy, and one I can't imagine ever wholly abandoning. And as I began-writing primarily for myself and a tiny cadre of friends and fans-so I may well end.

Mike D'Angelo currently writes a monthly film column for Esquire and contributes regular film reviews to Nerve.com and The Las Vegas Weekly. From 2000-2004 he was the chief film critic for Time Out New York. He blogs at The Man Who Viewed Too Much (http://www.panix.com/ ~dangelo/).

Steve Erickson

Gay City News and Chronicle of a Passion

1) There have been a few examples of Internet criticism making an impact on American film culture. It's aided the rise of South Korean cinema and mumblecore. In the case of Korean cinema, Filmbrain's blog, among others, hosted interesting debates on the films of Park Chan-wook, Kim Ki-duk, and Hong Sang-soo. Bloggers like Tom Vick seemed to respond to the snobbery implicit in Tony Rayns's attack on Kim in Film Comment. In the case of mumblecore, the blogosphere's attitude was more hype-driven; when the IFC Center launched its mumblecore series last year, every blog affiliated with indieWIRE united to promote it. The only criticisms heard about the films related to their allwhite casts, not esthetics. I'm not sure what Korean film and mumblecore have in common, although the parallels between the latter and the blogosphere are obvious, but I think bloggers like making discoveries they can claim as their own.

Internet critics and bloggers I read on a regular basis include GIenn Kenny, Girish Shambu, Michael Sicinski, Mike Atkinson, Dave Kehr, Bryant Frazer, Theo Panayides, Dan Sallitt, and Kanna Longworth. There are many more blogs I peruse on a more occasional basis, especially if I come across links to them on GreenCme Daily, which has become an essential resource. But I'm no expert on the field. I've never looked at most of the dozens of blogs linked by Girish or Filmbrain.

2) Blog writing tends towards informality and, much of the time, short bursts of information. At best, this can communicate an excitement that gets edited out of "professional" writing; at worst, it can lead to ill-thought-out gushing. In some cases, a dimension of anger has emerged from some critics' blogs that wasn't really apparent in their published work. The ability to incorporate links into text is a big difference from newspaper or magazine publishing, and it's sometimes useful. I don't really care whether blog critics are professionals or amateurs as long as their writing is strong.

3) I'm not sure that it's particularly new. I've seen similar kinds of community form during film festivals, at which one sees the same people at screening after screening over a week or more. The problem with the participatory aspects of online discourse is that they often attract people who value conflict and argument above all else. The Scylla and Charbydis of message boards are endless arguments and fading into apathy. I've only seen a few forums that have managed to navigate these successfully. The Mobitis Home Video Forum is the best example, but it's policed fairly heavily- discussions of Michael Moore films often get shut down for turning into off-topic political name-calling.

4) The traditional film critic only had stature and authority within a very small circle, with a few exceptions, like Pauline Kael, as well as anyone writing for The New York Times. Amateur or professional, I think that anyone writing serious criticism is essentially talking to a niche.

Stewe Erickson lives in New York and writes for Gay City News, Film and Video, and Baltimore's City Paper. His Web site, Chronicle of a Passion, can be found et http://home.earth link.nef-steevee/

Andrew Grant

Filmbrain

Unlike the music world, which had a thriving zine culture, there weren't that many options available to cinephiles in the pre- Internet era. While there was no shortage of film magazines, there wasn't much of a DIY spirit, save for some independent publications on Psychotronic or other cult cinema. The Internet provided film enthusiasts with a much-needed forum to share their opinions and, more importantly, to find one another. Unfortunately, the image of the film blogger was tainted early on by the rise of Harry Knowles, whose Ain't It Cool News became a Web sensation thanks to the legions of fanboys who embraced the "It's cool/It Sucked" brand of film criticism (and discourse) found on the site. Yet lurking in the shadows were the dedicated film bloggers, motivated not by hit count, but by their own passions and a desire to share their enthusiasm with fellow travelers.

What separates the better film blogs from traditional print criticism is a greater sense of freedom, in terms of both content and style. There's no need to pitch an editor, or worry about adhering to a house style. Looking for an impassioned appreciation of Arnold Slang? You got it. Detailed coverage from a small, experimental film festival? Done. Film bloggers also tend to be more upfront about the subjective nature of their writing, and often you'll find the personal skillfully intertwined with the critical, which is less common in traditional print outlets. This, combined with the interplay that arises between critic and audience via comments has unquestionably changed the landscape of contemporary film criticism. Girish Shambu, Lisa Rosman, and the anonymous Self- Styled Siren are perfect examples. On a personal level, Benten Films wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the relationships established and opportunities afforded to me as a result of the blog.

As the popularity (and sheer number) of film blogs grew, the response from many paid critics was knee-jerk dismissal, while clinging to the same tired stereotypes; bloggers desperately need editors, they don't think before they write, this is opinion not criticism, etc. An established New York critic admitted to me a certain amount of bitter envy, for when he was coming up in the ranks, there were no outlets in which to express his opinion, nor means of finding an audience short of landing a job as a critic. That a blogger can, with little effort, find readership in the thousands must be somewhat vexatious to the old guard, particularly in a time when both readership and paid positions are on the decline.

At the same time, the profusion of online critics has given rise to some disconcerting trends that go far in providing fuel for the detractors. In an effort to increase readership, some bloggers will intentionally court provocation by tearing apart a classic for no purpose other than the linkage and pages upon pages of negative comments. (The old adage that there's no such thing as bad publicity seems tailor made for the Internet.) Even more troubling is the critic who feels the need to play the contrarian and/or trade in snark; lobbing semiclever witticisms replete with PoMo posturing in lieu of any critical method. Lacking a proper sense of history, they are to criticism what Diablo Cody is to screenwriting. These squeaky wheels are masters at drawing attention to themselves, and some have managed to parlay their shtick into paying gigs, both online and in print. That such types can find work in a time when many qualified critics with years of experience are being sent packing is indeed cause for alarm.

While it's tragic that media conglomerates are cutting critics left and right, either through buy-outs or outright dismissals, it makes sense when your only concern is the bottom line. The sad truth is that film critics matter far less today than they did years ago. I grew up a child of the film industry, and can recall just how important those Friday reviews were. At one time, strong praise for an art-house film in The New York Times or The New Yorker almost guaranteed its success, whereas a pan would more than likely have a detrimental effect. Not anymore. Fewer people seek critical opinion, especially when they've been bludgeoned by aggressive (and effective, as it turns out) viral marketing campaigns that extend far beyond traditional means, and editors are conscious of this fact. Why pay salary and benefits for a single critic when you can hire three free-lancers for less money, and syndicate their 250- word minireviews to boot? The good news is that we haven't lost these critics-many have set up sites of their own, and have quickly become hosts to some of the most substantive and respectfully contentious dialog in the film blogosphere. Blogs from Glenn Kenny, David Bordwell, Dave Kehr, and Michael Atkinson (to name but a few) find these critics writing in a somewhat more candid, unrestrained tone. The comment threads on these sites (where it's not uncommon to find Kent Jones or Jonathan Rosenbaum chiming in) have done quite a bit to further bridge the gap between bloggers, critics, and other cinephiles. Yet few (if any) are making money through their sites, which only gives credence to Matt Zoller Seitz's recent prognosis that film criticism may soon become more a devotion than a means of employment.

If that is indeed the case, what does the future hold for film criticism, particularly if only a select few can call it a profession? What steps can be taken to ensure its survival in the age of the capsule review? The first step is for all sides to throw down their arms, for pulling rank and taking jabs at each other is purely counterproductive. The argument that paid equals professional is all but dead, as is the traditional hierarchy that places old media over new. Collectives, such as The House Next Door (started by Seitz, now ably run by Keith Uhlich), have helped foster a sense of democratization by encouraging submissions, while at the same time maintaining a level of responsibility and professionalism that rivals any of the better film magazines. Yet the question remains- can this model be converted into something commercially viable, and do so without having to sacrifice content or quality?

Andrew Grant is a film blogger (www.filmbfain.com), film critic, and President of Benten Films (www.bentenfilms.com), a DVD distribution company that he runs with fellow critic Aaron Hillis.

J. Hoberman

The Village Voice

1) The Internet has impacted on film culture, just as it has on all other aspects of culture. For me personally, it functions mainly as a technology of information. I use the Internet for research - Googling phrases and/or visiting IMDB scores of times every day- and, in general, my searches are more driven by specific movie than individual critic. There aren't all that many critics that I read on a regular basis-although it's certainly easier to find them online. The blog I visit most often is GreenCine Daily, which is really a means for gleaning information or opinions on whatever movies I'm interested in. Basically, I'm a print guy. I love newspapers. I love their social function-and as a work place in which everyone contributes to a larger project. Before 1 loved movies I loved books and 1 still love them as objects. For me, a book is thought made material.

2) On the one hand, blogs are spontaneous and unedited; on the other, blogs are spontaneous and unedited. The strengths and weaknesses are identical-wild enthusiasm, outrageous rhetoric, ad hominem attacks. To the degree that film critics are self-important narcissists, those traits are only amplified by the Internet. I'm impressed by the seriousness of certain online journals (Senses of Cinema) and Web sites (Moving Image Source) but I'd rather read an essay on the page than the screen. Rants, however, are preferable on the screen. I suppose that if Proust were alive, he'd be a mad blogger. As someone who writes for a living (and might not otherwise), I'm amazed that people have the time and energy for their blogs.

3) Some people are better suited to message boards than others. I'm not much of a joiner. For me, a message board is a BYOB virtual cocktail party. You can lurk around eavesdropping until you get drawn into a conversation-then you might wish you never had or that you could go off somewhere for a private chat. It may be that communication is overrated-at the very least, it's time-consuming and addictive, although maybe not as much as computer games. As I said with regard to newspapers, I'm more interested in projects than communities.

4) Kallay's assertion predates the Internet. James Wolcott said the same thing after Pauline Kael retired twenty years ago. I think that whatever stature and authority film critics have exists mainly in their own minds-and those of other critics, academics, and cinephiles, as well as a few overly sensitive or underappreciated filmmakers, It's also a factor of venue-with very few exceptions, critics are the institution for whom they write. That's a challenge for the Internet critic. Of course, the traditional film critic is a hostage to the fortunes of two declining cultural forms, popular cinema and the print media. The real issue is that the movies have lost their stature and authority. I'm still susceptible to a Utopian sense of technology-but remain skeptical. I really thought that cable TV would let a thousand flowers bloom, that super-8 talkies and slide shows would democratize film production, and that music videos were going to be a whole new art form. I appreciate the Internet's potential for new forms of criticism involving linkage to or the incorporation of illustrational material. Perhaps I'm not looking in the right places but, outside of academic lectures, I haven't seen too much of that. The dispersion of dis- mis- and actual information aside, the most radical effect of the Internet has been its destruction of intellectual property rights. That's not necessarily good for writers but to the degree that I'm an anarchist I have to appreciate it.

J. Hoberman has been reviewing films for The Village Voice for thirty years. His books include Vulgar Modernism, The Magic Hour, The Red Atlantis (all Temple University Press), and The Dream Life (The New Press).

"On the one hand, blogs are spontaneous and unedited; on the other, blogs are spontaneous and unedited. The strengths and weaknesses are identical-wild enthusiasm, outrageous rhetoric, ad hominem attacks."-J. Hoberman

Dave Kehr's Web site is one of the most highly regarded among those writers contributing to this Critical Symposium.

Kent Jones

Film Comment

The Internet has made a significant contribution to film culture simply because it's allowed people from around the world to communicate with one another. When Jonathan Rosenbaum says, "I live on the Internet," I take him to be claiming citizenship in a community of shared passions and curiosities, free of economic imperatives or disputes. In other words, a utopia. It seems to me that criticism plays a secondary role in the composition and functioning of this community, in which someone in Bangkok can get excited by an Alexei Guerman film and instantly share his or her enthusiasm with someone in Canada. Isn't this the realization of Jean Baudrillard's "ecstasy of communication?" There is a compulsion to communicate, visible on any given day of the week in any city around the world as armies of people walk down the street or ride public transportation with cell phones or BlackBerrys in hand, chattering, texting, and emailing away. If I don't see this phenomenon in the dire terms outlined by Lee Siegel in Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, I do agree with him that it allows people to feel connected and comfortably solitary at the same time. Good? Bad? Something is always coloring our visions of ourselves and our fellow men and women.

The critical terrain of the Internet, thus far at least, is based in the immediate satisfaction of this compulsion. Someone has a position and they're able to make it instantly known, on a blog or their own Web site . This, for me, raises important questions about writing and civility. What is writing? Writing is rewriting, structure, argument, refinement. Is there a difference between criticism and writing? Of course not. Anyone who thinks there is, and there are many who do, is fooling himself or herself. There is a great deal of good writing on the Internet-from David Bordwell, Quintin, Lisa Rosman, Adrian Martin, the various contributors to Senses of Cinema, among others. But apart from the fact that you read it on your computer screen as opposed to a printed page, there's no property unique to the Internet that makes it special. The difference is one of dissemination. Internet criticism is instantly available all around the world and it is free.

Those who make claims for the greater democracy of the Internet are, I think, responding to the legions of writers in print who fail to work as hard at their writing as, say, Farber or Agee or Kael or Bazin worked at their writing, and who thereby misuse their authority and visibility. This mood of frustration with print criticism, even as it is dwindling away, is fully justified. Yet there are a great many bloggers who make the rhetorical leap of equating all print criticism with arrogance and abuse of power. The Internet affords opportunities that print journalism simply couldn't: it gives the member of the reading public multiple opportunities to "make their voices heard," so to speak. Is this a good thing? Of course it is. But, in a sense, the Internet also blurs the distinctions between the writer and the reading public. This, it seems to me, is neither inherently good or bad, but simply a new wrinkle. And here is where the question of civility enters. What kinds of obligations does democracy carry? On a very basic level, none at all. "It's a free country," as we used to say on the playground. But if we're exchanging ideas and opinions, don't we owe it to one another to respond thoughtfully from the privacy and solitude of our own homes? Aren't we obliged to behave on the Internet as we would in public? Don't we owe it to our fellow bloggers to read every word they've written with great care, as opposed to simply picking out the offending phrase or choice of words and going on the attack? And what happens when someone begins with a position that's carelessly thought through and argued in the first place? Does that give us the license to respond in kind? I don't think so. I've seen a number of scenarios played out around these issues, and some of them have been quite painful to witness- misunderstandings, dismissals, rejections, attacks followed by wounded defenses. The most interesting exchange I've had was with a man who mischaracterized something I wrote about Pauline Kael. I responded as carefully as I could-or so I thought, since I began by mischaracterizing something he wrote about Nathan Lee. Unfortunately, this was followed by a post from a friend who congratulated me for "demolishing" this man's thinking, something I had neither the intention nor the inclination to do. This was followed by a fascinating response from the man himself. He unleashed a tirade against me, but what was most interesting was the overall impression he conveyed that I had intruded on his territory- in other words, he wanted to feel free to attack me, without having to suffer the indignity of responding directly to me. Why couldn't I have just stayed in the comfort of my elitist stateroom, and resisted the urge to stroll below decks and spoil the party in steerage? At which point, a fellow critic chimed in under one of his many Internet pseudonyms with the judgment that my response was both hysterical and overlong, and I opted out. In his essay on Ezra Pound in The Gift, Lewis Hyde wrote, "It is an easy power play to take a man's ideas and, instead of saying 'You're right' or 'You're wrong,' say 'You're crazy.' It impugns the status of the thinker and cuts off the dialogue." Which is exactly what happens all too frequently on the Internet.

There is no "new" form of criticism on the Internet. There is only a new delivery system (which occasionally yields some interesting byproducts: on many Web sites, you often begin with one topic and through a thread of associations arrive at something completely different), increasing the visibility of nonprofessionals, and a new way for readers to respond almost instantaneously. As a "conversational forum," it leaves a lot to be desired-you miss nuances, subtleties, and, more than anything else, you miss the chance to breathe the same air and share the same space as your interlocutor. On this point, I am in full agreement with Siegel. Since we're talking about cinema, I believe that Godard is a genuine pioneer in this regard. His peculiar form of public discourse, a monolog that appears to be a dialog, anticipated the most questionable aspects of blogging by decades.

I'll close by sharing my enthusiasm for two Web sites. Dave Kehr's site is the model of a good Internet forum: readers who share information and enthusiasms and passions, who occasionally disagree but take the time to clarify their positions. For criticism, it's difficult to improve on David Bordwell's blog.

Kent Jones is editor-at large at Film Comment and associate programmer at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. He is the author of L'Argent (British Film Institute) and Physical Evidence (Wesleyan University Press).

Glenn Kenny

somecamerunning. typepad.com

1) "If cinephilia is dead, then movies are dead too," Susan Sontag wrote back in 1996. Cinephilia wasn't dead, it was undergoing a mutation; a mutation that miniaturized and privatized it, in a sense, while at the same time blowing it out. Between DVDs and other- some still emerging-video formats and the Internet, cinephilia went- and is still going-virtual. So I think that Internet criticism is in the process of making a significant contribution to film culture, yes. Among other things, it speeds the discourse and whets appetites. The tools the Internet provides do make a difference- just the fact that it's easy to get screen grabs or put up clips is a huge thing. Shot-by-shot analyses are far more common on Web sites and blogs than in most periodical-published criticism for that reason, I think, and that certainly adds a new dimension. Has Internet movie criticism yielded its own Bazin? I don't know, but if it has, he's probably David Bordwell.

2) Filmbrain, David Bordwell, Girish Sambu, Cittetrix, Jim Emerson, Jonathan Rosenbaum, fames Rocchi at Cinematical; Dave Kehr, for the comments threads as much as anything else; Self-Styled Siren is, I think, the blog I'd point to if I were asked to justify blogs- movie blogs or blogs in general. Karina Longworth at Spout, Allison Willmore at /FC are good with both the opinion and newsy items. Of course I read the trade blogs, Anne Thompson's in particular. Jeffrey Wells is for better or worse sui generis.

I like a blog that has a strong individual voice, knows what it's talking about, and has a sense of humor; beyond that, I don't really care if it's by an amateur or a professional. Again, Self-Styled Siren can write rings around a large percentage of professionals in any specialty.

The House Next Door is a great multiwriter site that manages to host a bunch of strong voices, although I'm not crazy about every single one of them. I suppose that's part of the point.

Strengths and weaknesses of critics' blogs? I really am not sure I understand the question. Relative to what?

3) I think there's a great deal of potential there, but currently the Edenic qualities of the Internet are a little overrated, yeah. That said, my own experience in blogging has helped me find and communicate with a lot of kindred spirits who give me hope for cinephilta. With few exceptions, the dialogue I have with my readers in comments is incredibly productive. It was also enlivening to have put up a couple of posts last year on my Premiere blog speculating on the ending of No Country for Old Men and to have the thread on that extend to... well, I think people are still commenting, as there are links to the post on the official No Country Web site. So there's that.

And then there are trolls. It's like anything else, really.

4) Define traditional. Define stature. What or who are we talking about? If it's Peter Travers, that's one thing. If it's Peter Wollen, that's another.

Anne Thompson wrote about teaching a class somewhere and how her students didn't read movie critics because they didn't "trust" them. This sounded to me like about the most ass-backwards rationale I had ever heard. I grew up reading pop-culture criticism in Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Creem, and the thing about this stuff was that it was fun to read-whether I "trusted" any of it never entered into it. But if I was looking for a critic to use as some sort of consumer guide, I'd find one I enjoyed reading who had a sensibility close to my own. For music, back in the Seventies and Eighties, that guy was John Piccarella-we were both aficionados of a kind of squirrelly, slightly cerebral guitar rock. But again-first and foremost was that I enjoyed reading the guy, just as I enjoyed reading Robert Christgau, with whose taste my own did not correspond quite as closely.

But we're getting away from the question here. A lot of the time, when I hear my fellow colleagues wax rhapsodic on Pauline Kael, I get the feeling they miss not just her voice but an era wherein a film critic was something of a big shot, could successfully dress down David Lean, all that sort of thing. That power began to diffuse long before the Internet became significant.

Is it regrettable or salutary? Neither. It just is. My perspective is, finally, the same as that of Kingsley Amis: "[I]mportance isn't important. Good writing is."

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic at Premiere from 1998 to 2008. He now blogs at http://somecamerunnning.typepad.com.

"My own experience in blogging has helped me find and communicate with a lot of kindred spirits who give me hope for cinephilia. With few exceptions, the dialogue I have with my readers in comments is incredibly productive."-Glenn Kenny

Robert Koehler

Variety

1) We're at a point where it's too early to judge if Internet criticism has significantly contributed to film culture in, I would add, a permanent and meaningful way. But it isn't too early at all to observe that it has moved and affected film culture, and that we're living through a time when the first movements are being felt. This is why any comments on criticism on the Internet have to be provisional; we won t have a clearer sense or its impact for at least a few more years.

The most direct way in which film culture and criticism have been affected is through the hugeiy beneficial imprint of globalization, which is surely the most misunderstood and absurdly demonized phenomenon of our time. Due to the Internet's global connections, the ways in which film lovers armed with a region-free DVD player (a beautiful product made in response to globalized demand, first spurred by fans of Asian/ H.K. genre movies) can now access and purchase films from around the world in an instant-films that were either not accessible in a preDVD world (when the market demand prompting restoration and recovery of film titles didn't yet exist) and were virtually impossible to see in any form unless you lived in a major film center-has affected both the culture and criticism. A site such as Masters of Cinema, which tracks current and upcoming DVD releases in all regions of great art cinema and reports on important developments in film culture, may not be strictly a place for criticism, but it's proven to be an immensely useful tool for those engaged in writing about film history and the cinema happening right now. I'm also pretty certain that the pre-Internet era couldn't have produced a site like Rouge, which is designed with the Web in mind and observes cinema from a certain international perspective that combines the Web and a view of things from Australia. (I would add that this is true of the Senses of Cinema site, also based in Australia, also quite global.) A site like Rouge illustrates how Internet criticism goes far beyond merely "supplementing" print-based criticism, but makes a distinct contribution.

We're now in a phase where many more sites, some of them created by individual critics and scholars (those by Dave Kehr, David Bordwell, and Jonathan Rosenbaum-ones that I visit regularly-are fine examples), suggest entirely new forums for criticism that are completely independent of, and very often superior to, what's available in print. To take my case for the beauty of globalization and its impact on film culture a step further, just observe how the global approach has visibly affected English-language print journals such as Film Comment and Sight & Sound-once much more inward and nationalist in perspective-and it happens at the same time that younger, emphatically international journals like Cinema Scope and Letras de eine have developed into strong cinephilic voices. (Putting aside its current multipronged troubles, Cahiers du cinema's web expansion and new availability in English and Spanish reflects this same film critical/cultural globalization, made possible only because of the Internet.)

There are more hacks among bloggers than there are fish in the sea-I believe that may literally be the case at this point-but among the good ones, I like to read Quintin's and Flavia's incisive, strong, and amusing entries on lalectoraprovisoria.wordpress.com, Doug Cummings on filmjourney.org (Doug is a member of the Masters of Cinema circle, and his site is where I occasionally blog myself) and Karina Longworth's nicely written entries at Spout.com. To mention a few sites for interesting criticism which tend to be overlooked in the conversation, 1 would note d-kaz.com, chainedtothecinematheque.blogspot.com, Brazilian sites such as revistacinetica.com.br and critic Jose Carlos Avellar's escrevercinema.com and programmer Roger Alan Koza's ojosabiertos.wordpress.com. Also notable are sites that tend to blend what might be seen as certain bloggy writing with more formal criticism, such as cinematalk.wordpress.com

2) As for the blogs I like to read, see above. As for blogs' strengths and weaknesses... this comes down to the writer's concept of what a blog is and what it should do. Blogging is blissfully free of rules and codes, which means it can attract messy thinking, but also creative and punchy writing-or longer musings-that traditional print can't accommodate. Blog reviewers tend to be, though not always are, the bottom feeders in the film critical ecosystem; I'm thinking especially of the school spawned by Ain't It Cool News, which prizes badly written snap judgments by fanboys on commercial movies. To me, they're worthless since they're so poorly argued and written, yet they have had logistical impact, proving to be a real problem for determining print (and Web) dates for reviews at Variety, which, like all major trade publications, aims to review films at the earliest possible date, meaning, as close as possible to the film's first public screening anywhere in the world. (At the same time, I do enjoy the subversive effect that blog reviews have had on the studios' mania for controlling information-as a part of the Web's overall expansion of information liberty, this has been a delight to observe.)

Like every other kind of reviewing/critical writing, blogging can produce either empty notions or worthy ideas. While some bloggers, especially those hacking away at the American festivals, don't so much write as typewrite, others don't simply post their purely raw musings. Whether at Spout or in Quintin and Flavia's bloggings (to cite a pair), a certain self-editing has quite clearly preceded the posting. It's also, and always has been, the case that some critics are simply able to write well at a much faster pace than others, and for those who can, blogging is a natural form. I know that in my own festival blogging experiences, my tendency is to resist writing instantly, since this can often result in faulty readings. Rather, a few hours' worth of mulling, even another film or two seen subsequently, a meal, a conversation or lively encounter, a cup of coffee, all and any of these help the process of delivering a blog entry that retains freshness and immediacy with the essential weight of analysis and critical thinking. My blogs therefore tend to read not as blasts or rrtiniposts, but worked-out though not extremely refined miniessays; either form, or something in between, can qualify under the blog banner. And because of my own practice, developed by trial and error over time and in collaboration with a cinephilic Web site such as filmjourney.org, I tend to prefer blogs written by informed critics with a voice, and not well-intentioned movie geeks. Geeks aren't without their moments, and their obsessions and specializations can be fun; usually, though, their sheer interest isn't balanced by good writing, and their reference points tend to be quite limited.

The primary weakness of the (in English) dominant fanboy bloggers is that their diet of cinema is so restricted and codified, resulting in work that suffers enormously from a nearly complete lack of knowledge or interest in international film tendencies. They're of essentially the same ilk as junket and quote-whore critics who watch and write about little more than American blockbusters. (These are people for whom a viewing of Atonement equals a weekend-long marathon of radical art cinema.) Since they lack the ability to draw upon film history, and since they effectively write in a reinforcing echo chamber of bloggers and readers who maintain the same strict viewing habits, their writing has no chance of expansion, reflection, internal revolution- precisely the sort of dynamics necessary to a vital critical practice.

3) Perhaps they're overblown, although I have witnessed several valuable exchanges of information and debates on both the U.K.- based Film/Philosophy forum site and at a film by, which amasses a wonderful and often strongly opinionated group of cinephiles. (Neither site, incidentally, is actually dominated by film critics, with Film/Philosophy overpopulated by many jargon-heavy academics.) I know that the exchanges on Preminger that I've read over the past couple of years on a_film_by have prompted me to revisit early and late Preminger with fresh eyes, and I know that I'm hardly alone in this. Sometimes, the sense of community is all too real, and reminds that being in a community can often mean watching individuals in all- out conflict with one another. (The term "community" doesn't automatically equate with a peaceable assembly.) Some of the nasty spats among academics at Film/Philosophy are pretty amusing to witness, as the Ivory Tower intellectual is brought down into the mud with a fellow poster who disputes his/her view of Laura Mulvey or the all-holy Deleuze. Amidst the verbal noise and smoke, useful information can be gleaned, as can revealing cultural and political biases-biases the posters are often not aware they're exhibiting.

4) On its face, Kallay's claim is dubious at best, so are much of the gloom-and-doom pronouncements that are fashionably awash in our various artistic/ political/economic cultures at the moment. The dominant mood is toward the dour right now; this will pass when most realize that we've been too gloomy. (This is the case in nearly every aspect of life 1 can think of right now, historically an indication that the mass opinion is wrong.) Without knowing the full context of her statement, her fear of the "traditional" film critic losing "stature and authority" sounds at least partly based on the fear that print-based, newspaper journalists have of losing their jobs. This is real, since the traditional newspaper business (where, presumably, "traditional" critics reside) is in a permanent state of decline, with many jobs (including those of arts critics) being eliminated. Conditions will force newspapers, not the most nimble entities around, to change, and this was predictable as early as the mid-Eighties. I recall a conversation that 1 had with my Los Angeles Times theater critic colleague Sylvie Drake in 1986, when I noted that in a decade or two, we won't be reading our news on paper, but on screens. Sylvie was skeptical, but then, so was almost every fellow newspaper person 1 discussed this with at the time. It was difficult for many to foresee the tremors and structural changes that the Web would trigger in the newspaper world, but anyone who had closely watched developments in the digital universe (I worked for the first Apple user magazine in 1980-81 and saw the personal computer/Silicon Valley revolution first-hand) could envision enormous changes. Change engenders unease, unease engenders fear, fear engenders irrational conclusions. Kallay's film critic, assuming he/she is at a newspaper, must adapt to life on the Web, or fade away. This shouldn't be difficult, since writing is writing, and film criticism is film criticism, whether it exists on paper or on a screen.

Now, if by "traditional," Kallay means the typical critic that delivers weekly coverage of widely released commercial movies-no matter the medium-then I welcome their loss of "stature and authority." Particularly if this means a shift of authoritative stature toward critics who cover a wider range of the film world beyond the tiny portion that represents what is deemed "popular." (In this regard, the middlebrow critics in the newspaper world are afflicted with the same problem as the blogging fanboy hacks and junketing quote whores-they regularly fail to see the films that matter.) Web vs. print vs. something else-this is no zero-sum game: Readers of serious, thoughtful film writing will seek it out in a greater range of media, reflecting the increasing number of choices that (globalized) technology has ushered in-just one of a few nice reasons why we're too gloomy. If I were to choose to work as a critic in the era of Kael v. Sarris-or, as I prefer to think of it, the era of Stanley Kauffmann-the era of Bazin or our current era of a thousand flowering critical views, I will take ours in a heartbeat. Whether in print (and I'm thinking here mainly of film journals) or on the Web, a far more adventurous and creative critical environment, with extremely interesting writing, can be found now than in the days when a Kael or Sarris dominated the conversation, and when access in all ways to international cinema was considerably more limited than it is today. In other words, a climate with critics such as Olaf Moller, Francisco Ferreira, (onathan Rosenbaum, Quintin, Kent fones, Diego Lerer, Jim Hoberman, Richard Brody and Christoph Huber as well as what I would call "critical programmers" like James Quandt, Berenice Reynaud, Nicole Brenez, lavier Porta Fouz, Mark Peranson, and Thorn Andersen is one that I want to live in, especially when I see younger, serious critics emerging all over the place, from Toronto to Manila, as conversant on Lav Diaz as they are on Ford. (And see the connection between the two.) The fact that 1 read many of these critics online (sometimes with Babelfish helping with Chinese-menu-style translation, but no matter) as much as I do in print underlines the fact that the Web is helping make film criticism stronger, more interesting, more accessible, more vital, and more difficult to corral and define. Which are more reasons not to be gloomy.

Robert Koehler is a film critic for Variety, Cinema Scope, and Cineaste. A former theater critic for The Los Angeles Times, he has also written reviews, articles, and essays for a number of publications, including Cahiers du cinema and Die Tagezeitung. His occasional blogs on cinema can be read at FilmjourneY.org,

"The Web is helping make film criticism stronger, more interesting, more accessible, more vital, and more difficult to corral and define. Which are more reasons not to be gloomy." - Robert Koehler

Kevin B. Lee

Shooting Down Pictures

The (to my mind, overblown) debate over online criticism and its contentious relationship to more conventional forms of film discourse says more about the fragmentation of the film community than about the relative value of its different venues. When, in just a few years, the volume of criticism has expanded to mindblowing quantities, how can anyone attempt a blanket statement to charactenze what's out there when no one can possibly keep up with everything worth reading?

At this year's Moving Image Institute, no less an icon of the film critic Establishment than Andrew Sams acknowledged that online criticism was where the vitality and innovative thinking that characterized his own groundbreaking writing of the Sixties could now be found. He aiso expressed bewilderment at the overabundance of content and a lack of knowing which sites are worth his while to investigate. This, I think, is a much fairer critique of online film criticism than the broadside dismissals I've seen in print or heard in person, which are symptomatic reactions to the same vertiginous sensation of content overload. For established critics accustomed to their opinion holding court, it's a radical landscape shift amounting to an existential crisis. Hell is other critics. For them, three simple words apply: get over it.

Solving this problem of online content navigation and aggregation concerns me insofar as it would allow older critics like Sarris (who still types his reviews on a typewriter) to connect with his Internet successors, a linkage that could only benefit the future of film criticism. The closest thing I have for a silver bullet (especially for those who can't manage an RSS feed aggregator such as Google Reader) is the GreenCine Daily (http:// www.daily.greencine.com), the fruit of David Hudson's countless hours crawling the Web for worthwhile cinema-related content, which he summarizes and links for the ease of cinephiles everywhere. While there are dozens if not hundreds of other sites worth mentioning (my own RSS aggregator tracks 112 sites and blogs), I feel comfortable singling out GreenCine Daily for praise because it does such a marvelous job at spotlighting everyone else.

Still, one Web site can only do so much to bring disparate sites together into a semblance of a community. A beauty and a challenge of the Internet is its spawning of virtual film communities collectively embodying a stunning array of cultures and interests, while also leading to enclaves of specialists engaged in lengthy threads of minutiae. While interests of all kinds are part of what is necessary to push the boundaries of cinema culture, the propensity of some online discourse towards a kind of tunnel vision and loss of perspective bothers me. One thing that I've learned from my time spent online is that even the most respected and established critics can become embroiled in petty bickering and trifling discussions as much as anyone, poring over the trivial, mundane details of a film over dozens of posts.

For me, movies always have to come back to the world, whic

Source: Cineaste

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