Variety published three separate but similar “Top Stories” Sunday (one - two - three) on the topic of blogs and how certain bloggers (mainly Nikki Finke, pictured) exhibit questionable journalistic practices. What seemed at first to be an excessive, behind-the-times and otherwise forgettable trio of articles has today (and initially last night) become a topic of discussion for many film bloggers, including some who were mentioned in these Variety pieces who felt the need to respond.

My personal response is primarily, as I said, one of disregard. But here’s a quick commentary: I enjoy Finke and others as I might have appreciated Louella Parsons or Hedda Hopper decades ago — with a grain of salt. The fact that some bloggers are taken more seriously for their rumors and faulty reporting styles than, say, any one of the hundred other fanboy movie blog sites out there is the problem of the reader (especially the one who’s a Hollywood player), not the writer.

Though the timeliness of Variety’s blogger-hating trilogy comes on the heel of recent errors and conflicts involving Finke and others, there’s no more necessity in such articles as there would be for a trio of stories about the trustworthiness of Fox News. Don’t read the blog, don’t watch the channel, don’t read the trade magazine if you don’t like their content.

Anyway, I’ve given my two cents; read what others have to say after the jump:

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When I read that Patrick Goldstein, author of the L.A. Times column The Big Picture, was launching a new blog under the auspices of the paper, I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. I think the exact thought that popped into my head was something along the lines of, “Oh hey! He likes to package pseudo-populist opinion as though it’s unimpeachable fact––he’ll fit right in!”

But the rest of the internet is, like, freaking out. Shoutcasting the story as “BREAKING” news, FishbowlLA went on to relate that the Times plans to put “Goldstein’s knowledge and sources to work in a blog that brings responsible journalism to the faster-than-pulp pace of 24/7 online entertainment reporting.” Finally, a “responsible” corrective for our chaos!

But all meta-commentary on this issue of international importance pales in comparison to the hundreds of words put forth by Jeffrey Wells. …Read more

eFilmCritic has compiled their annual Criticwatch list, designed to shame the most offensive quote whores in film criticism, and they’ve given top honors for “an incredible amount of supercilious douchebaggery” to Pete Hammond, the MAXIM critic whose reliably, absurdly positive blurbs appeared on a whopping 88 film campaigns in 2007. Hammond, a Criticwatch veteran from way back, has long been considered to have few peers in the quote whoring game. As Erik Childress writes:

Hammond is more than just a cancer on the film critic profession. He’s the poster boy for everything that’s wrong with an American media preaching to the lowest common denominator and a vocation that receives its most vocal criticism from outsiders when it’s actually doing its job of criticizing…

We have announced in the past that we have no plans to give Pete Hammond his own award name – because that will take away his pre-determined advantage to winning it each year. If he can aspire for 88 quotes in 2007, who knows how far he can go in 2008 & beyond. I will amend that statement though. The day Hammond is eliminated from our discussion; such a day when we no longer see his name on a film ad – I promise, here and now, to offer him his own memorial award.

That day might arrive sooner than later. Towards the end of the post (which also includes a full Top Ten countdown of the year’s biggest blurb whores and minute calculations on the emptiest/most overused blurb language of the year and is basically a sterling example of the kind of inside baseball nerdiness that I can get lost in for an entire afternoon), Childress notes that while the gang at eFilmCritic were compiling this document, they got word that Hammond has been fired.

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Check out this creeptastic quote from Lou Lumenick, lamenting Juno‘s failure to win the New York Film Critics Circle’s vote for Best Screenplay:

I do regret that erstwhile stripper Diablo Cody will not be joining us for the awards on January 6. She sure had my vote.

Gross, right? If the guy really thinks Juno was the best screenplay of the year, he’s entitled to that (wrong) opinion, but then what does it matter that Cody is an “erstwhile stripper”? As it stands, it reads like Cody got Lumenick’s vote not because she wrote the best screenplay, but because she’s more likely than the Coen Brothers to do something sexy at the awards ceremony (and/or, Lumenick is more likely to enjoy fantasizing about it). At best, it’s a stab at Friar’s Club-caliber comedy that does nothing to dispel the notion that these critics circles are too old, white and male for their own good.

As if it wasn’t gross enough to think that Juno’s critical success could be the product of a bunch of journalists wanting to hang out with a sometime stripper, and all the “once a sex worker, permanently a whore ie: maybe she’ll get naked during our interview” bullshit that entails, it’s almost worse to think that these dudes are, like, patting themselves on the back for spreading the urban legend about The Stripper Who Actually Had a Brain. And this is, remember, all in service of a movie that was essentially made for young girls. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of vomiting to do before the HFPA takes this line of thinking to its inevitable conclusion.

The Guardian published a long, bizarre story yesterday on Dennis Hopper. The story seems to have been spun out of a brief meeting over chocolate cake at the Serpentine Gallery in London (which, as author Stuart Jeffries puts it, “has managed to seduce Hollywood’s most enduring screen psychopath to greet guests to its [annual] fundraising party”), and is thus suitably heavy with Hopper’s musings on art. But there’s one very strange paragraph right in the middle, in which the actor/filmmaker/photographer/Ameriprise shill responds to a question about his involvement in a heretofore-unannounced franchise film:

[Hopper] certainly isn’t in the mood to discuss any of the half a dozen films he is due to appear in this year, a roster which is due to include a performance in Speed 3, even though I have plenty of questions about that. Surely his character Howard Payne died in a decapitation incident in the last reel of Speed 1? “It’s a river of shit,” he tells me pleasantly but firmly, “from which I have tried to extract some gold.”

I’m sure no one would be surprised to hear that Hopper (who long-ago abandoned any allegiance to hippie ideology and now considers himself a Republican) would take a role sheerly for the “gold.” I also wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the geniuses who brought us Speed had come up with a way to bring Howard Payne back from the dead. What is a little surprising, is that this topic would come up casually in an interview, considering that there’s really been no legitimate indication that Speed 3 is actually being made.

For starters, it’s *not* one of the half-dozen films on Hopper’s slate, as per his IMDb profile–in fact, there’s no IMDB entry for Speed 3 whatsoever. There’s been no item about a third Speed movie on any reputable blog or in either of the major Hollywood trades. The *only* source I can find that backs up the idea of a third Speed is an unattributed item tacked onto the end of Hopper’s Wikipedia profile, which reads:

Jan DeBont, director of Speed and Speed 2: Cruise Control, has enforced Hopper’s contractual obligation to star in the third and final installment of the trilogy Speed 3: Highway to Hell, ressurecting [sic] the legendary character Howard Payne. Shooting begins this October. Speed 3: Highway to Hell is set to release in the summer of 2009.

So tell me if I have this right: a Guardian reporter went into an interview with Dennis Hopper, quoted a mysterious unsourced (and poorly spelled) Wikipedia entry, got a “no comment”, and then ran the no-comment it as if it confirmed the Wikipedia non-story? Is that even legal?

The Trials of Darryl Hunt is on the short list for the Best Documentary Oscar. It’s far more than a courtroom drama, it’s the real story of an amazing man and the community around him refusing to play the roles society placed on them: Criminal, rapist, murderer. The accounts of Darryl Hunt’s various trials over twenty years are jaw dropping.

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