Regarding the news that Michael Phillips and A.O. Scott have been hired to replace The Two Bens as hosts/dueling critics of At the Movies, at first there didn’t seem to be much to say other than what everyone else was saying — basically, “Yay! A rare victory for intelligence/maturity/old-fashioned film criticism values!” I like Anne Thompson’s headline on her post on her new indieWIRE blog: Disney/ABC Replaces Lyons and Mankiewicz with Adult Critics Scott and Phillips. That about sums it up, no?
And yet, it’s undeniably of note that, here in on the margins of pop culture where we have conversations about things like film criticism, a return to something like the old way of doing things is met with such relief. This morning I read several blog posts and whatnot about the changes going on at the New York Times. The paper’s culture editor, Sam Sifton, is replacing Frank Bruni as their lead restaurant critic. At one point Sharon Waxman was reporting that Trish Hall, an editor of a few NYT food and lifestyle sections, had been tapped to take Sifton’s old job, but Sharon is now backtracking on that. Still, the swap of Sifton for Bruni is enough to open up a dialog about the idea that arts reporting and food criticism exist on enough of a parallel that the same person could qualify for both jobs, and thus the issues plaguing one kind of criticism would be spoken of in the same breath as the issues of the other.
Reading food blogger Josh Ozersky’s take on the NYT swap, I was struck by how easily his language could apply to our sphere, at least up to a point. A lengthy excerpt:
NBC has canceled Reel Talk, the Saturday morning movie chat show starring Jeffrey Lyons and Alison Bailes (formerly of IFC’s “At the Angelica”). Never exactly a stoker of the flames of the zeitgeist, Reel Talk is probably most familiar to New Yorkers, who have for the past year or so been exposed to a repurposed form of the show screening as part of the loop of noise blaring out of flat screens in the back of taxis. Because this show was useful as a repository for fluffy pull quotes for indistinguishable studio films with the consistency of oatmeal, but was otherwise considered by most people who actually care about movies to be generally unwatchable, the sort of indignation (righteous or otherwise) that accompanies the firing of most name film critics will probably not surround this story. Though Bailes and Lyons have at least temporarily lost their livelihoods as well as a platform from which to influence moviegoers, it seems unlikely that anyone will bemoan the cancellation of Reel Talk as yet another blow to the already crippled culture of film criticism, because Reel Talk’s contribution to film criticism mostly sucked.
But still … what are the chances that the network would replace the bad move critics show with a good movie critics show, or any critics show at all? To say that they’re slim would seem to be overly optimistic. This leaves Lyons’ son Ben as the default prince of TV film criticism, by virtue of the fact that he and his partner Smart Ben are the only TV film critics who still have a show. How long do we give At the Movies before it too falls in the face of total consumer disinterest, thus rendering the post-Ebert era of advert slush branded as criticism mercifully dead? Or will the zombie corpse of At the Movies continue on indefinitely, feasting on brains already softened like ripe bananas, each needlessly hyperbolic, context-oblivious pullquote hammering another nail into the coffin of public film debate?
Behold, Roger’s Little Rule Book, Ebert’s lengthy, biting, and hilarious list of dos and don’ts for professional film critics.
All of Ebert’s suggestions are good, although I especially like the one about “No posing for photos” with famous people (”No movie star ever wants to do this. They may smile, but they’re gritting their teeth”), with the exception made for “real photos of you really with a movie star…taken at a real event by a real other person unknown to you who didn’t ask anyone if he could take it.” But also, as Gary Susman notes at PopWatch, most of the Rules seem to directly reference Ebert’s At the Movies replacement, Ben Lyons.
After reading Anne Thompson’s post on the dismal reception given to the youth-baiting rethink of At The Movies starring Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz, I decided I had better watch The Two Bens’ first episode online to see what all the griping is about. It actually starts off rather well: Mankiewicz is totally qualified for this job, although it’s a bit of a wonder he was even hired, what with his TCM-honed, “I am going to explain this very slowly because my viewers may be aged” manner of speaking. But then he tosses it to Lyons, who says something completely incoherent about Burn After Reading being “almost like an exercise in drama,” and then they cut back Mankiewicz, who struggles to croak out, “Yeah, that’s an interesting point,” whilst swallowing his own testicles. At that point, I stopped.
Interestingly, another thing that I wasn’t able to force myself to watch all the way through this week also had to do with the sorry contemporary incarnation of the former gold standard for televised movie reviews.
Anne Thompson reports that Ben Lyons (son of Jeffrey, E! channel regular, sometime boyfriend of the quiet one from The Hills) and Ben Mankiewicz (grandson of Herman, The Youngish Guy who hosts Turner Classic Movies on the weekends) are expected to be announced as hosts for the movie review show that will replace Ebert and Roeper. In her report, Anne directs a great, deadpan joke at Lyons: “Last year, he hailed I Am Legend as ‘one of the greatest movies ever made.’” Except it’s not a joke, and it’s not funny anymore.
Fox Atomic has bought a pitch about “an ambulance-chasing personal injury lawyer” from Sacha Baron Cohen. Borat/I’m Alan Partridge writer Peter Baynham will do the script.
Universal will start producing video games in-house, beginning with an adaptation of Wanted. Meanwhile, Paramount is working on developing three games based on modern classics aimed at teen girls: Clueless, Mean Girls and Pretty in Pink.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Behold, 
Anne Thompson reports
