Posted 6:46 PM by Gene

We've said it before, we'll say it again: Good movies deserve good critics: James Agee, Bosley Crowther, even Pauline Kael on her best days. Bad movies deserve bad critics, or preferably none at all. The alleged collapse of newspaper ad-blurbing speaks as much to the collapse of movies. While it may spare us some of the worst of the adjective spewing -- it does seem to have held Dick "GUNS CAUSED COLUMBINE!!!!!" Corliss in check -- it will also spare us good movies. But bringing back good criticism won't bring back an art form that is near death from so many other causes, not the least of which being a past surfeit of rotten reviewing.

And here is one unintended example why movie ad-blurbing SHOULD collapse:

Over the years, critics helped audiences appreciate the likes of Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane," Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde," Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris," Brian De Palma's "Dressed to Kill," Robert Altman's "The Player," the Coens' "No Country for Old Men" and Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood."

In short, it is hopelessly self-congratulatory and self-referential. In short, and also we have said before, it is masturbation with words.

(Via the usual ArtsJournal)