Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

Romy mourns as a Jacksonville ad-blurbist says goodbye to his readers -- and his friends. (No, his friends aren't his readers; his friends are some of the brilliant movies he's seen in recent years.)

We understand, on a surface level, why firing or reassigning movie ad-blurbists might be a bad thing. After all, the argument goes, the news product needs a diversity of opinions, and the ad-blurbists help provide diversity. The problem is few hacks think more alike than ad-blurbists, and when they do or can think it's through that patented oily smarmy know-it-all high-IQ cheerleading that at its worst is the verbal equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard. So firing or reassigning one "cri-TIC" will not prevent the hundreds, nay, the THOUSANDS of others from thinking alike, not the untold tens of thousands MORE of WEB typists practicing THEIR movie "cri-ti-CI-sm" by locking their step with the most prominent of the effete snobs. We say it again; this biz needs not more ad-blurbists, but fewer -- and that won't stop the mind-numbing conformity, or the continued destruction of the film trade by platitude.