Patrick Goldstein, who has been banging the “critics are irrelevant!” drum for awhile, yesterday devoted over 600 bloggy words to shaming one critic in particular for daring to be critical. An excerpt:
It’s an open secret in indie Hollywood that no one wants Manohla Dargis to review their movie, fearing that the outspoken critic will tear their film limb from limb. It’s the ultimate backhanded compliment, since what they really fear is Manohla’s persuasiveness — that she’ll write a review whose combination of vitriolic snarkiness and intellectual heft will actually persuade high-brow moviegoers to drop the film from their must-see list.
…Read more
We all freaked out when famously blog-hostile reporters Peter Bart and Patrick Goldstein recently got on their knees and started their own blogs, but really, the weird part was that these guys were so insistently anti-blog to begin with. They’re both big on railing against critics, and their alleged impotence when it comes to influencing the audience (to reject industry product); they both act like for a professional critic to offer an assessment on a Hollywood film is to somehow throw handcuffs on the potential ticket buyer’s ability to exercise free will (to consume industry product). Well, what are blogs, if not a space where the audience shrugs off those and other types of handcuffs in order to trade notes on their consumptive desires and experiences? You’d think they’d be an industry booster’s dream.
All of that’s a long lead up to the fact that I don’t know exactly how to parse this blog post by Goldstein, in which he once again beats the “who needs critics?” drum, and uses his blog to annoint Hollywood producer Avi Lerner as the “out of touch” review slinger’s populist replacement:
…Read more
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
