I’m glad it’s such a slow news day. Now I can concentrate on something that blew up on a few of the blogs last night: discussion/debate of the new FTC disclosure rule for bloggers, particularly as it relates to James Rocchi and others’ recent trip to Bora Bora on Universal’s dime.

Rocchi’s MSN piece about his Couples Retreat junket experience is a good read, but it doesn’t really convince me that a lenghty excursion to French Polynesia was worth his, the studio’s or our time in any way. But I’ve always felt weird about junkets. The few I’ve been to made me extremely uncomfortable, especially when there’s food and drink offered (I always decline since I suspect one day the world’s publicists will decide to poison the world’s film critics in a further attempt to rid the industry of negative reviews).

I don’t really have much to add to the discussion since I no longer review films or interview celebs and I always prefer to see movies with a real audience instead of with spoiled critics attending their third or fourth free press screening of the day. And unlike a lot of movie bloggers, I can’t use the t-shirt swag since I’m too thin for XL, which is typically the sole size available with complimentary clothing.

Honestly, I’m okay with the FTC regulations, as they benefit consumers, particularly those too dumb to tell when a site is professional and ethical and when it’s a lame freebie free-for-all like Blogcritics (which I admit I unfortunately used to contribute to before getting paid to blog). However, I’d much prefer an agency that would come around and regulate websites that “hire” and “employ” unpaid writers. Maybe if any of us could get a wage — not to mention a respectable wage — we wouldn’t keep pretending this is all a fun hobby, a la autograph collecting and fan fiction.

And on that note, I have one more point related to one of the blog posts quoted in this roundup. I’ll go on the record with others and defend Cinematical for being one of the few sites remaining that regularly pay all writers in a timely fashion — and for those not living in expensive NYC, they pay decently, especially for a time when adshare models are so popular. It’s true that I left that site a year ago in protest over a temporary financial practice by AOL, but in the past year I’ve had so many requests to contribute unpaid to numerous movie blogs out there, and I’d take Cinematical any day over any of that nonsense.

I’ll quit writing now before I get in or make trouble, but as always these matters can be best contemplated with the old idiom, “you get what you pay for.”

Check out what some bloggers have to say on the topic after the jump. And be sure to read the full posts I’ve quoted from, as well as the comments — many from other bloggers. It’s an interesting discussion going on.

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Above: the nearly five minute trailer for the new incarnation of At the Movies, starring A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips. Of note for the strenuous attempt to imprint the notion that this pair is all that those young, recently fired guys named Ben were not. Actual titles used on screen within the first minute of the trailer: “Two accomplished critics”; “Serious reviews”; “Serious journalists.” The trailer also allows Philips and Scott to casually run down their list of professional credentials, and then goes behind the scenes of a photo shoot producing a very serious promotional shot of the two critics sitting at a big shiny table. It’s all very, very serious. Which is awesome.

Obviously it’s ironic to criticize a critic so aggressively, but that’s just what people love to do to infamously contrarian New York Press film critic Armond White, who seems to be getting his worst scrutiny yet over his negative review of District 9. The comments and campaigns against him have been going on all week, but now that Roger Ebert has gotten himself involved, it’s a bigger deal. Especially since Ebert first defended White and then took it back. Yet his initial statement that White is “the ideal critic” who “is often valuable because [his opinion] is outside the mainstream” remains on Roger Ebert’s Journal to contractrict the change of mind.

It’s also a bit ironic that this is all because of a movie about creatures who’ve been segregated against. Would District 9’s fanbase prefer to ghettoize critics who disagree with them? Should there be websites and free weeklies that have “Populist Critics Only” guidelines? I don’t want to side with or against White, becuase there’s no need to, what with freedom of speech and press and everything. I will admit that when I began writing film reviews many years ago, I looked up to White more than anyone and even gave myself the nickname “The Film Cynic” (which I still use for my Twitter moniker at least), because I was a more negative and cynical person back then, and also, I honestly admit, because I thought it’d help get me controversially noticed.

Certainly White gets a lot of notice and publicity for his opinions, too, but the important thing is that he’s an interesting read, and not just for how against-the-grain he is. Even if he is ever intentionally anti-majority just to be anti-majority, he presents reasonable arguments and raises necessary points while doing so. Besides, does anyone really want to live in a world where everybody likes District 9 or Up or The Dark Knight and where nobody has anything fresh, smart and positive to say about Transformers 2? How boring that world would be.

That’s my two cents. Check out a few other film blog responses to the White blackballing after the jump:

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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:

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Leave it to Michael Bay to turn something already big into something bigger. No, I’m not talking about the “life-size” IMAX version of Optimus Prime. I’m referring to the gap between critic and general audience tastes, often referred to as the “critic-audience divide.” We’ve already seen it get worse this year via terrible yet popular movies like Paul Blart: Mall Cop, but given the $201.2 million grossed by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen over its first five days, we film writers are feeling the coming apocalypse soooo much more. Remember how last year we thought The Dark Knight made so much money so quickly due to the fact that reviews were so great? Eh, that probably wasn’t the truth after all.

Of course, a success like Transformers 2’s doesn’t exactly prove critics are worthless, only those who function simply as a thumbs up/thumbs down sort of recommendatory guide. Plenty of critics should continue to be worth reading if they’re otherwise good reads and create or allow for discussion without merely saying a film is good or bad. One of my favorite kinds of critic, for instance, is the kind that may turn me onto a film despite him/her having disliked it, as some scathing reviews of Transformers 2 have almost done.

A reader commented on my previous post about Transformers 2 with the claim that all our negative reviews helped the movie be so successful. If that’s the truth, maybe we should start using negative psychology and trash the great little films we really love. Or, we can just stop worrying about the majority audience liking different things as us and enjoy all the death threats we get from mainstream moviegoers when we disagree with them. Isn’t it often better for our sites’ traffic to stir up contention anyway?

Oh well, here’s another crop of critical whinery after the jump:
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Another blockbuster, another record broken. What’s the big deal? Well, the biggest deal might be that film critics are wasting their time reviewing movies like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, because a billion trillion negative words written about the blockbuster sequel couldn’t have kept it from breaking the Wednesday opening record. Grossing $60.6 million over a day and two nights (the figure includes Tuesday’s midnight show tally of $16 million), Transformers 2 knocked Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix off the throne.

I haven’t heard of anyone liking the sequel, so it’s very possible that word of mouth will keep the movie from making too much more over the weekend. But then again, if another one of my weekends is completely rained out, I’ll probably go see the thing just to see how godawful it is (this Best Week Ever post makes me masochistically curious to see it). The first Transformers was a total bore, so I’d be happier with elements as ridiculously terrible as racially offensive robots and parachute farts, as long as there was something interesting going on.

The only thing keeping me from rounding up a large posse for a MST3K-inspired viewing is the idea that buying the tickets will only encourage Paramount and Michael Bay more (how about a group of us goes and buys Star Trek tickets and then sneak into Transformers? Paramount can’t complain, since they’ll still get the money, only for a better film).

Check out the film blogs’ response to the record breakage after the jump:
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I may be one of the few film bloggers who enjoys the existence of Nikki Finke (you may remember I somewhat defended her earlier this year when Variety made its three-pronged attack). Of course, I appreciate her for the same reason I appreciate a lot of filmmakers I don’t necessarily agree with or like. And for the same reason that I’m glad Fox News exists. She plays by her own rules, doesn’t ever seem to hold back and doesn’t appear to care with whom she becomes enemies.

So, I for one was glad to hear the news that her blog, Deadline Hollywood Daily, was bought by Mail.com Media Corp., which also owns one of my other favorite film blogs, Movieline. Hopefully she isn’t reigned in at all now that she’s got a boss, though I can’t see why MMC would want DHD if they didn’t want the Finke everyone knows and doesn’t love.

It’s hard to tell if anyone else is as excited as I am to see how her transition goes, but those who’ve covered the story at least seem curious. Check out some bloggers’ reactions after the jump:

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On Friday evening at SilverDocs, I attended a panel on film criticism moderated by Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post, and featuring contributions from critics David Edelstein, Lisa Schwarzbaum and Amy Taubin, and filmmaker/documentary programmer Thom Powers. In his opening remarks, Kennicott positioned the panel as a referendum of sorts on “Wanted: Documentary Critics”, a blog post by Powers in which he posed the question, “Auteurism had Andrew Sarris. Abstract expressionism had Clement Greenberg. Punk rock had Lester Bangs. Where is the equivalent voice for today’s documentary scene?” I was surprised that the conversation that ensued mostly skirted the issue of “where” contemporary documentary film will find its defining critic, and was instead weighed down by argument as to whether or not this is a valid question at all.

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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?

Happy weekend!

Today in The Assault On Film Criticism: two salvos from journalists who just don’t seem to get the online tools and communities that they’ve credited with having ar too much power. Since neither argument is new I would have ignored these stories individually, but together…

Let’s start with The Wrap, and the kind of story they seem to publish a lot of: 300 words, no news, hyperbolic conclusions. This one’s about FlickTweets, a new site that compiles Twitter updates from about movies — gasp! — normal people. The Wrap’s Maria Russo says the site “could be what helps studios and film critics, not usually the best of friends, find common cause. Both are under siege by the armies of critics at the movies these days packing iPhones and Blackberries.” Theorizing that FlickTweets “could be disastrous for the movie business,” Russo concludes by insulting the intelligence of just about everyone in The Wrap’s target audience: “it’s not clear that the studios — or film critics — could even come up with a defensive strategy.”

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A plaque was recently erected in front of Roger Ebert’s childhood home, and to further commemorate the occasion, the critic has put together a gallery of other film critic’s childhood homes. The house where I lived from ages 6-17 (and again for 6 months of post-college unemployment, a period marked by a lot of Real World/Road Rules Challenge watching and a desperate attempt to get a job as a PA at the E! network) is represented in the gallery, as are images of the domestic sites that spawned critics like Carrie Rickey, Joe Leydon, Mick LaSalle and more. My dad still lives in the house depicted, so when film criticism becomes fully extinct and I’m forced to move back home, my photo can be painlessly repurposed for a gallery of Current Squats of Destitute Former Film Critics.

Here’s what I would like to learn from a movie about film critics: What makes them pertinent to the needs of society? Has the self-empowering progress of the blogosphere endangered the future of the profession? Most importantly, what kind of a fascinating loon do you have to be to watch movies all the time?

You will find answers to none of these provocative questions in Gerald Peary’s For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, a light, impact-free survey of talking heads that adds absolutely nothing new to the general perception of the practice. Those viewers whose interest in watching critics talk about themselves parallels the curiosity behind, say, wanting to see an Asian elephant at the zoo won’t find themselves disappointed. (I can see it now: “Oh, so that’s what an A.O. Scott looks like…”) Everyone else may find the content lacking a much-needed edge.

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Only a handful of people were in attendance for last night’s world premiere of blogger/filmmaker Sujewa Ekanayake’s new documentary Indie Film Blogger Road Trip at NYC’s Anthology Film Archives. Apparently most fans and writers of blogs had better things to do, such as read and write posts on the internet. Because really, what is the point of watching a film about writers about films? The only thing more unnecessary and inwardly spiraling — obviously I’m guilty of it here — is blogging about a film about bloggers about film.

Even with the film blogosphere’s reputation for insularity Ekanayake’s doc has no purpose, because its subject matter and content are already well documented on blogs. And anything new that might be discussed, any new questions that might be raised would also be more appropriately written about on the web. The film’s largest offense, though, is that it doesn’t even seem to have an intended purpose. It does not actually attempt to offer anything new to the discourse on film blogging. Nor does it have any sort of cohesive thesis regarding any preexisting discourse. The doc is simply a series of long, mostly uncut interviews with film bloggers. It’s not even necessarily a sufficient profile of the film blog community, in a “Meet the Bloggers” kind of way.

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In the world of writing — not unlike that of sports or other businesses — those who can, do, and those that can’t, become film reviewers who take perverse pleasure in tearing down the efforts of those willing to put their names, talent, and oftentimes, hard-earned money, on the line to create movies crafted to elicit any number of emotions out of the viewing public. How easy it is to never step into that arena and take potshots at those who do.

From a Huffington Post piece by Douglas MacKinnon, titled Paul Blart: Mall Cop. More Real Than Reviewers

There are a number of really amazing things about this story:

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