Emerson links

Haven’t been surfing film websites as much as I’d like to, but here’s some stuff I recently read. First, two wonderful posts from Jim Emerson’s Scanners blog, about the many misconceptions surrounding movie criticism: “The death of film criticism has been greatly exaggerated” and “Nobody knows criticism”.

A movie audience that has no use for film criticism, doesn't understand it or realise that it has nothing to do with predicting box-office success or failure, and even less with predicting what you will think of a movie (most critics don't know you), can hardly be expected to understand that movie reviewing is only incidentally a consumer guide. The majority of film critics I know never even think about influencing audience behaviour. They're critics because they like to write about movies.

*Sigh* I wish more people would try and understand the last two sentences. And here's Emerson reacting to a Los Angeles Times poll asserting that movie critics are less influential now:

One of my favourite propaganda techniques – used in politics, journalism, criticism, you name it – is to present evidence (or, better yet, opinion polls cited as if they constituted evidence) refuting something that was never true – or even widely thought to be true – in the first place. It's a form of genius, really – like the opinion polls asking Americans if they believed Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, presented as though it could be made true if a majority felt it was. (There's another term for this technique: Fox News.)

Also, an older site, Jeeem’s Cinepad, with articles about his movie obsessions. Recommended: “An indepth and critical survey of plumbing in the movies”, featuring some of the great bathroom moments in film history.