Woodstock Film Festival - Film Criticism & Journalism - Oct. 3, 2009

Film Criticism & Journalism
Woodstock Film Festival
Saturday, October 3, 2009

Is the issue of where film criticism and journalism going still an important and relevant topic? Absolutely. Should it be constantly beat over the head with a stick? Not necessarily, as there are lots of other interesting topics that could be explored on a panel discussion. Some of the usual suspects and a few new ones made up what could have been yet another tedious panel, however Aaron Hillis’ questions brought up even more questions and points from the panelists themselves offering a bit of a healthy and professional debate, and lots of underlining in my notebook, so this was one of the best film criticism and journalism panels The Film Panel Notetaker has covered. Please enjoy highlights of this discussion below.

Moderator:
Aaron Hillis – Editor of “GreenCine Daily,” and writer for the “Village Voice” and “LA Weekly” among others. He is also the Vice-President of Benten Films.

Panelists:
Godfrey Cheshire – Filmmaker (“Moving Midway”) and film critic
Owen Gleiberman – Movie critic for "Entertainment Weekly”
Karen Durbin – Film critic for “Elle” Magazine
Eric Kohn - Freelance film critic and entertainment journalist
Karina Longworth – Editor “SpoutBlog”

Hillis started by asking everyone how they got into film criticism:

- For Cheshire, he started writing for an alternative paper in Raleigh, NC, then moved to New York City where he worked for The New York Press, which he said was good back them, and he won’t make that claim now. Now Cheshire is making films, and still writes a column in the monthly North Carolina Metro Magazine.

- Gleiberman has been a critic with Entertainment Weekly since its inception in 1990. Before that, he wrote music reviews in his college paper in Michigan. He found it difficult to write words about music, and easier for the visual medium of film. He landed his first job at the Boston Phoenix, noting that a lot of great film critics came out of the Boston scene such as David Denby. In the last two months, Gleiberman has become an online blogger in addition to his print duties at EW.

- Durbin said one of her first jobs was as the politics editor of The Village Voice in the early 1970s. She was involved with the Women’s Liberation Movement, and wrote essays from the feminist perspective. She took over the film section in 1980 and tried to make the film section a more collaborative process with then Voice critic Andrew Sarris. Durbin brought in critic J. Hoberman, who eventually became the paper’s lead critic. In 1989, she was invited to be the Arts editor of Mirabella Magazine until the publication went under in 2000, and she was later hired at Elle Magazine, which never had a film critic before.

- Hillis said he works between print and online. One of his first gigs was writing for Premiere Magazine. He points out that it’s interesting that there are people now who only write professionally online.

- Kohn said he grew up in Seattle, WA., and went to NYU for Cinema Studies. He writes for indieWIRE, New York Press, and other places as a reporter and critic. He mentioned that despite so many writers/critics struggling to make ends meet, there are so many options now.

- Longworth who grew up in Los Angeles, was interested in film by default and wanted to be an actress until she discovered punk rock. She would read magazines like EW and Premier, and would even writes book reports about them to her dad. She went to art school and thought she’d be making films. One day in a bar in the East Village, she met a guy who asked her if she’d write for a new film site called Cinematical, where she became the editor, until it was bought by AOL. She went to SXSW and wrote down lists of companies that didn’t have a film blog, and approached one, Spout, where she works now.

Hillis said that for better or worse, film critics are cultural gatekeepers. The big change came when the Internet came about and anyone could put their opinion out there, and who’s to say their opinion is more or less valid. Film critics are just opinions or voice boxes. Does anyone agree? Gleiberman disagrees that the big change was with web critics. Any critic who writes well about films, he’s excited to read, but there is a sense of fragmentation, not just within film criticism, but everywhere, ie. arts criticism, political writing, etc. Gleiberman said he gets asked a lot of it’s if his craft is threatened in some way? Maybe yes, he answered. But there was a version of this question he would get asked even before the Internet, is film criticism threatened by the nature of the movies themselves…movies like Transformers or chick flicks or movies touting consumer products?

So, are critics really relevant in that kind of landscape, Gleiberman asks? His answer – maybe not. If that’s true, that’s because the movies themselves are becoming less relevant. More big and noisy, but less relevant as art. But he also said a movie doesn’t have to be a piece of art to make film criticism relevant. He said what’s more threatening is that they are all struggling to write meaningful pieces about a popular art form…the middle ground of movies that are really terrific and popular at the same time is fading.

Durbin said she doesn’t entirely agree. Even though Elle Magazine is a long-lead publication, she still goes to festivals and looks for indie movies to write about. She reviews five or six movies a month, because of this timeline, there are all these movies she can ignore. She can’t write about films she doesn’t like, because she only has two pages, unless there’s something morally outrageous. She points out that Gleiberman’s favorite movie at the Toronto Film Festival was Up in the Air (which was also the closing night film of the Woodstock Film Festival). Gleiberman said that we’re in a moment now where it’s going to be harder to make movies like Up in the Air, but when they come out and they’re as good as this, it’s their jobs as critics to write about these movies with a certain depth. That is the purpose of criticism.

Kohn debated Gleiberman’s question of whether movies are becoming less relevant, saying this isn’t quite as new as Gleiberman portrays. Kohn referred to a panel discussion he saw that Durbin was on a few years back that then The Reeler editor, now with Movieline, S.T. Van Airsdale moderated, who asked could a film that was shown on something like YouTube qualify to be in a critic’s top 10 films of the year list? This year, when he compiles his top 10 list, Kohn will put a movie on it that was posted on YouTube called Sita Sings the Blues. Kohn said it’s harder for voices to stick out, but only within this “pre-existing hierarchy.” Online critics especially are leaving that tower. The art form is surviving, but we have to look in the right places for them.

Hillis moved the discussion to the bloggers, who don’t have the space limitations that print critics do in newspapers and magazines. Is there a new role for the film critic online? Longworth said films like Transformers or even Up in the Air don’t really need her at all, because people will go to see them no matter what. What she tries as much as possible to do is write about movies that do need her. Her job is not just to review what’s out there, but she’s made it her thing to find things that people don’t know about, or if they do know about them, why they care about them. Kohn said that film criticism could be expressed in many ways. If you’re a reporter, you can advocate film and express criticism in that way. Being a film festival programmer is also a unique way of selecting a film you think is good.

The Incredible Shrinking (Expanding?) Film Critic Profession @ SXSW, March 14, 2009

The Incredible Shrinking (Expanding?) Film Critic Profession
SXSW Film Festival
Austin Convention Center, Austin, TX
Saturday, March 14th, 2009
Notes by Erin Scherer


Moderator:

Gerald Peary, Director: For The Love Of Movies, Film Critic for The Boston Phoenix

Panelists:

Marjorie Baumgarten, Senior Film Editor/Critic, Austin Chronicle
Shawn Levy, Film Critic, The Oregonian
Karina Longworth, Spout.com
Scott Weinberg, Cinematical, FEARnet

"What is the current state of film criticism?" Is the question moderator Gerald Peary sought to answer in this panel. He opened the panel by saying:

"It's in the best shape that it's ever been in, because there's so many critics, critics for every taste. There are more good critics now than at any point in American history, but at least in the print world, there are critics getting kicked off right and left. It's a shrinking, shrinking world in which many critics who have had their jobs for many years are being laid off, and the papers are disappearing, all part of being the end of the print world."

Peary recalled the story of a "art film" distributor calling him, ranting that "ten, fifteen years ago, every major city had a solid critic who everyone trusted. A "soft critic" who liked art films. Nowadays, the critics are writing for other critics, and not the general public, and web people have no influence at all."

Scott Weinberg commented that if the distributor had to rely on reviews to sell their movies, that they were probably not a very good distributor, then added:

"The question that irritates me is, "What is an art film? Is Benjamin Button an 'Art Film?' Is Slumdog Millionaire an 'Art Film'? Guess what? Friday the 13th is an 'Art Film'! Some people created it, it's a piece of art. I don't get these designations."

Much of the panel was devoted to the impact of the web on film criticism.

Both Weinberg and Karina Longworth responded to the distributor's rant that web critics lack relevance by mentioning that filmmakers actually want to have their films reviewed by bloggers like themselves, if mainly for publicity. Longworth stated that she was often "drowning" in requests for reviews.

In the past, it was much more difficult to obtain press credentials, due to the lack of legitimacy of blogs and irresponsible web reviewers.

"A lot of times, people are writing reviews to get invited to the next junket. Those sites I have a problem with--the sites that are only helping the marketing along without any honest insight or negativity," Weinberg said.

With more festivals and events willing to let bloggers in, Karina Longworth has seen the status of the web critic improve over time. "That was a big problem, in like, 2005. Now, not so much. Cannes is the only one that won't give me press credentials as a blogger."

Weinberg mentioned that "What I think is cool about the blog world is that the more CNN mentions a blog, the more people like Karina and my fellow bloggers earn more respect as columnists, bloggers, and writers. Right now, I think it's still anybody in in the basement with a keyboard can write, "I LOVE The Watchmen, LOL."

Yet the future is a little more bleak for print critics: Shawn Levy, Marjorie Baumgarten, and Peary all commented on the shrinking size of their reviews: they used to be able to print 800 to 1,000 word reviews; now they're lucky to print 500. Peary pointed out that as newspaper critics have cut their staff, film critics are often among the first to be cut. Peary cited an article from Variety that mentioned that 28 Critics have lost their jobs over the past several years.

Even with the opportunity of everyone and anyone to review a movie on the web, Longworth and Weinberg do not feel threatened.

"It's not just anybody writing," Longworth stated. "There's a difference between going to the movies casually, and writing a blog post about it, and someone who is dedicated, whether it's something they do in their free time, or as a profession. There's a process of natural selection: people who have something to contribute become a major part of the discussion very quickly."

Overall, they concluded that the presence of film critics can help stimulate the conversation on films, especially ones that don't get wide releases. Critics have a breadth of knowledge on the subject they're writing about, and at their best, can function as a Consumer Reports for the potential ticket buyer (or badge holder).

As Karina Longworth established: "Our goal is to get comments. Our goal is to get people talking."

Natasha Vargas-Cooper: I'm a film critic for eonline.com. I have a question that we all get asked: Do you watch movies twice?

Baumgarten: Hardly ever. There's never the opportunity. Sometimes I'll watch a movie Tuesday Night, and have a review in by 10:30 the next morning.

Vargas-Cooper: Sometimes I get a comment like, "You need to see the movie again!"

Baumgarten: I'm not the Pauline Kael type of "I don't want to see it a second time. I don't need to."

Weinberg: There are so many films I haven't seen, so if I'm going to pop in, like Nightmare on Elm Street again, why not watch Peeping Tom again?

Q: I would like any of you to address the question of availability for audiences. You go to a film festival. You see ten good films, but if I don't live in a major city, or if the film is not released on DVD, your review may sound great, but I may take no action because I can't see it.

Weinberg: If you really like a film, we want you to be frustrated. We want you to send e-mails to the filmmaker and pester them and ask, "When can I see it?" We don't want to literally frustrate you, but if there's an independent film I love that might not go anywhere, I'll treat it like There Will Be Blood.

Longworth: I'm kind of in the habit of pestering people I know in distribution, so I yell at them about movies.

Q: In the last few election cycles, I have seen a maturation of political blogs. Some are hybrid, some are print and web, and some have been just web. But in the last four years, the blog of record has become a reality, as far as who's available to the sources, what sources make themselves available to them, and also being read regularly, I'm wondering where film criticism stands in its evolution.

Peary: I just talked to Michael Barker from Sony Classics, where he's going to places like The Huffington Post into having a film critic, which they don't have right now.

Longworth: They don't have their own freelancers. They don't pay anybody.

Weinberg: I was reviewing for like, six years before anyone paid me. I figured I was paying my dues, I was honing my craft.

Q: For the better part of 30 years, Americans had Siskel and Ebert on their television screens every week. You have political shows, you have sports shows, and every other sort of panel show. Why do you think we're living in an era right now where there are only two shows devoted to film criticism, and both of them feature members of the Lyons Family?

Peary: We live in a very philistine, very anti-intellectual culture, and that's impacted our film criticism. Film critics are looked on too suspiciously by most of the public: "Why don't you like movies? Can't you just enjoy a movie? Why do you have to criticize it?"

Levy: I don't think that it's a natural thing for television to have criticism.

Q: But sports shows have it all the time!

Longworth: That's an argument, that's not criticism.

Deal or No Deal: The Road to Self-Distribution, SXSW, 3/10/08

Moderator:

Karina Longworth, Spout.com

Featuring:
Stacy Schoolfield, Producer, Jumping Off Bridges
Kelly Sanders, Truly Indie
Sara Pollack, Film Manager, YouTube
Mark Halperin, President, Magic Lamp Releasing (absent?)

At the very beginning, moderator Karina Longworth laid out the premise of the panel: looking at self-distribution as the first resort, as opposed to the last resort.

Stacy Schoolfield was the first panelist to speak. After producing the movie Jumping Off Bridges, Schoolfield took the film to SXSW, expecting it to get a distribution deal. There was no initial distribution deal. Instead, what happened was that a mental health field professional saw the film and thought it would be appropriate to screen for her colleagues. Later, she called theaters in 26 cities and combed Lost fansites (Michael Emerson from that show appears in the film) to promote the film. She got the ultimate flattery when fans began to incorporate clips from Bridges into video tributes to Emerson. Eventually, Jumping Off Bridges got picked up by New Day Films, a distribution company specializing in educational films.

Sara Pollack, prior to her hiring at YouTube worked on a film titled Duane Hopwood, which only received a minuscule release despite debuting at the Sundance Film Festival, and having notable names like David Schwimmer and Janeane Garofalo star in it. Pollack believes that filmmakers are becoming wise to bad deals given by major distributors, and to the virtues of self-distribution. "You know your audience best," Pollack said.

Kelly Sanders works for Truly Indie, an offshoot of Magnolia Pictures. Truly Indie, like IFC First Take, is an outlet for brokered self-distribution. Whereas Magnolia would approach the filmmaker, it is the other way around with Truly Indie. Truly Indie only accepts 8-10 pictures a year, and if the filmmaker has a promotion idea, Truly Indie will work with the filmmaker. The filmmaker must pay Truly Indie a flat fee based on the cost of the opening.

Sanders believes that theatrical releases are still important, as they bring credibility to the film. Documentaries are usually the most successful in self-distribution, as people tend to read documentary reviews.

Overall, the panel was very encouraging. I got to introduce myself to Karina afterwards, explaining that I was the girl from "HOWL (For Lindsay Lohan)". Yippee!