I don’t have much to say about the latest film criticism obit, this time from Anne Thompson at Variety. Well, okay…I have a couple of things to say.
Number one: Although I love Pajiba, I don’t see them fulfilling the role of champion for under-the-radar new releases. A champion for forgotten/overlooked/misunderstood catalog titles, yes, and deflater of misbegotten studio marketing-fueled wannabe blockbusters, for sure. But scroll down their front page right now, and the “smallest” film you’ll see reviewed is Flawless, a Magnolia release starring Demi Moore which Dustin Rowles compared to the experience of a former smoker lighting up for the first time in five years: “the first few puffs are exhilarating, but then the headache sets in, and then you wish you’d quit puffing away before the tobacco left a taste of ass in your mouth that you still taste the next morning.”
Pajiba reliably gives each release they cover the treatment it deserves, but they don’t have a mandate to cover everything. They’re an indie site with limited resources, and they’ve chosen not to devote those resources to panning for untapped art house new release gold. Which is understandable––seeking out and heralding worthy festival films and smaller releases can be an arduous process and in terms of traffic, it’s often totally thankless––but when I think of sites that could realistically fill the void created by an absence of adventurous print critics, dedicated to, as Thompson puts it, “influenc[ing] readers to seek out small releases,” I think of Reverse Shot or The House Next Door long before I think of the site that devotes 800+ words to why David Zucker “should crawl up into the fetal position and abort himself for allowing Superhero Movie to see the light of day.”
And then there’s David Ansen.
…Read more
Last night’s Oscars threw me for some loops, especially the winners for Best Foreign Language Film (The Lives of Others beating out Pan’s Labyrinth?) and Best Cinematography (Pan’s Labyrinth over Children of Men?). Alan Arkin’s Best Supporting Actor win was just a mildly pleasant surprise, especially since I was the only one in a family pool of 11 to pick him. Melissa Etheridge winning in the Best Original Song category with her piece for An Inconvenient Truth, beating out three nominations from Dreamgirls, was pretty clearly a political move (not necessarily a partisan move, but political, nonetheless). But does anyone really care about the Best Original Song category?
As I was scanning other blogs and sites this morning, I found a few post-Oscar pieces especially worth looking at. Pajiba writes in today’s post that although they’re not interested in big awards shows…
Mostly, we just provide this post so that our readers have a space to bellyache, though it’s hard to get too worked up about anything in last night’s show. In fact, the biggest complaint we have was that the 79th Oscar telecast offered so little to kvetch about.
Pajiba’s post and some of its comments (there are lots and they’re kind of fun to sift through) also brought up some suggestions on how to make the Oscars program shorter. Not surprisingly, everyone has an opinion.
GreenCine Daily also has a day after post worth checking out. And HairyLime on Spout wrote a “Post Oscar breakdown” that was followed by a couple interesting comments. Let us know what you liked, hated, and were bored or surprised by on Oscar night.
