Got this via email from Ravi Kiran, who clearly is giving me a hint about quitting, too 😛 :
From the Web (FTW) #6: The New York Times’s AO Scott on quitting film criticism after 23 years
Posted on March 26, 2023
Subscribe:
RSS feed
21 Responses “From the Web (FTW) #6: The New York Times’s AO Scott on quitting film criticism after 23 years” →
1 Trackback For This Post
-
From the Web (FTW) #6: The New York Times’s AO Scott on quitting movie criticism after 23 years - showbizztoday →
March 26th, 2023 → 14:22[…] LikeLike […]
LikeLike
Leave a Reply
Baradwaj Rangan 
brangan
March 26, 2023
As for me, not being confined to Tamil cinema — having to review something in Tamil every week — has aired out the old brain. I now choose what I want to review.
The other day, someone said they would have loved to see me roast AGILAN, which is apparently very bad. But I’d rather do something else with that time 🙂 Like review BHEED, which I really enjoyed thinking and writing about. It’s not about BHEED being a “perfect” film — just a film that gives you some meat, some sense of having watched some kind of “cinema”…
Of course, I still have to do the big films, which end up being disappointing more often than not… Still, that’s not every single week! 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
brangan
March 26, 2023
Oh yeah, and being able to do cross-country interviews — with people as varied as Rima Das and Nani — has really helped me love my job again.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Anu Warrier
March 26, 2023
Good for you. 🙂 Glad to see so much content, even if ill-health precludes me from catching up with all of it. I still haven’t caught up with your podcasts yet.
LikeLike
brangan
March 26, 2023
Thanks Anu. Hope you feel better soon.
LikeLike
hari prasad
March 26, 2023
Tbh , instead of reading a really good , detailed review on a movie that you really like , people are really interested in seeing reviewers rip apart a really bad movie or even a movie that is loved nowadays.
They are more than ready to watch you troll the shit outta The Legend than seeing you appreciate a DaDa or the new Sasikumar movie , Ayodhi.
Maybe it is because of the rise of the roast culture here.
LikeLike
Vikram s
March 26, 2023
BR, it’s been a joy for us ever since you got liberated from the artificial constraints your earlier role imposed on you. It’s clear that you are enjoying the sheer variety of interactions you are able to pack in, as you say, from Rima Das to Nani.
Don’t even think about the retirement word for the next couple of decades at least…. Weren’t Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael at it for a long time? And so would you I am sure 🙂
Lot of love and deep appreciation for what you do.
LikeLiked by 1 person
hari prasad
March 26, 2023
No!!!
LikeLike
Rahini David
March 26, 2023
As for me, I much prefer it when you review a movie you loved rather than something you didn’t. That isn’t my usual taste in reviews. I generally love a rant review. But with you I love a gush review.
LikeLiked by 1 person
musical v
March 26, 2023
Do what you want to do. It will be best for you. Without experimentation, we stagnate.
LikeLike
Madan
March 26, 2023
That was a great article, thanks for sharing and thanks to Ravi Kiran for emailing it to you. I don’t remember that he posted this on his feed but maybe he did and I missed it given it moves faster than a news cycle!
Loved this:
“It’s more that the behavior of these social media hordes represents an anti-democratic, anti-intellectual mind-set that is harmful to the cause of art and antithetical to the spirit of movies. Fan culture is rooted in conformity, obedience, group identity and mob behavior, and its rise mirrors and models the spread of intolerant, authoritarian, aggressive tendencies in our politics and our communal life.
But I will always love being at the movies: the tense anticipation in a darkening theater, the rapt attention and gasping surprise as a the story unfolds, and the tingly silence that follows the final shot, right before the cheers — and the arguments — start.”
It sort of sums up the strange dichotomy I find between the actual film watching experience and the social media discourse. Other than the few who couldn’t keep their hands off the phone through the film, I have never had an unpleasant experience with other movie goers in the darkness of the cinema hall and in fact have shared laughs many times with people I don’t know and cannot see. But cut to the conversation on social media and it’s a totally different world. Makes me wonder if they are even the same set of people. They HAVE to be and yet…
” Samuel L. Jackson, a stalwart of that universe, tweeted that it was time for Avengers fans “to find A.O. Scott a new job. One he can ACTUALLY do.” That was a dozen years ago. Better late than never.” – Heh, nice to say even Hollywood guys, even someone like Samuel to boot, can be as entitled and rude as our Bolly crowd.
LikeLike
Madan
March 26, 2023
This essay Scott’s article linked to is also brilliant. A lot of the things Godfrey Cheshire predicted didn’t come true, chiefly that cinema halls would stop relying only on showing feature length movies and would even fill up the time with livecasts of sports events (then again, is this already a thing West-side?) and even though he even predicted streaming, he didn’t seem to contemplate its possible impact on movies-as-a-big-screen-experience. But a lot of the things he said did.
https://www.nypress.com/news/the-death-of-filmthe-decay-of-cinema-DFNP1019991230312309999
“Typically, people now watch tv as if in a group, even when alone, and view movies as individuals, even when accompanied by others. That is, they’ll talk, hoot, flip the bird at the tube, but sink into mesmerized solitude before the movie screen. Digital may well turn that around. People wanting to watch serious movies that require concentration will do so at home, or perhaps in small, specialty theaters. People who want to hoot and holler, flip the bird and otherwise have a fun communal experience?courtesy of Oprah or Scream: Interactive, say?will head down to the local enormoplex.”
“As “serious” movies are increasingly consumed at home, this group’s worldview will have more influence on theatrical production and programming than it already has. For one glimpse of the movie future, imagine a world that regards Adam Sandler as a combination of Cary Grant, Orson Welles and Bertrand Russell.” – Har, hardy, har!
And by far the best stretch of the essay:
“The whole experience of the Sundance generation suggests this: If you have 100 people making movies, you’ll get maybe three or four great ones. If you have a thousand people making movies, you’ll still get three or four great ones. A rising tide of democratized “access” mainly seems to result in a bilious upswell of mediocrity. In fact, it’s far more reasonable to assume that digital technology’s greatest impact on the movies will happen not at the least expensive levels of production but at the most expensive.
Think Jurassic Park, and then imagine the computer-generated dinosaurs crowding out the flesh-and-blood humans. Such a transition will comprise the next epochal change in movies (it’s been underway for some time already), one that essentially has nothing to do with digital projection but will be greatly facilitated by its arrival. Put simply, more and more movies will be composed of computer-generated imagery (CGI). In some, that imagery takes the form of artificial backdrops or effects surrounding the human actors; in others, everything about the film will come from the computer.”
LikeLike
musical v
March 26, 2023
https://deadline.com/2023/03/film-critics-quentin-tarantino-movie-peter-bart-1235308214/
LikeLike
Madan
March 26, 2023
Reading the reviews Scott linked, I am confused that he is confused about WOWS. One can be fascinated – at a remove – by evil without glorifying it. But OTOH I agree all the way with him on Joker. “Are you kidding me” is right (er, IMO).
LikeLike
Madan
March 26, 2023
That’s a strange article by Peter Bart, guess he is best buddies with Scott, NOT!
Especially this: ” ‘The audience necessary to sustain original work is narcotized by algorithms or distracted by doomscrolling’
Which seems like a good reason to pass the torch.”
Hmmm, is he actually denying the role of algos today in pretty much all the entertainment we consume? Even if you wanted to seek out something different, you have to fight the algos. Either Bart does not understand this or he does not care.
If the latter, given that the Anglo-American media world is busy lamenting the 20 year anniversary of the war they helped create, let me say that Bart is an awful lot like the same folks who cynically cheered on a war they should have known and probably knew would not end well.
Out of curiosity, I scrolled through the comments and a couple of them too noted that this was a rather nasty hit-job by Bart. I quote from one:
” Replace passion about culture with cynicism, novelty, self-gratification and micro-amusements, where no public sits together and no byline critics (or journalists, for that matter) can trouble your line of sight… That’s a diminished culture, even a poisonous one.”
Yes, and there’s plenty evidence of it already if one cares to look.
LikeLike
Ravi K
March 26, 2023
Came here to see if you had taken the hint, Baddy, but alas you’re still here 😉
Seriously, though, I hope the Indian fandoms (or the films themselves) never sink to a point where they drive you away from criticism. So far you’ve survived the Ajith/Vijay rasigan hordes!
I can understand why Scott wouldn’t want to deal with putting his opinions out there into the public, especially on movies with rabid fandoms. They want critics to agree with them and legitimize what they like as Art. It would be great if these folks were into better films or considered that the criticisms might have a point, but I would be content if they simply enjoyed what they enjoy without craving anyone’s seal of approval. The sore winners in the fandoms are mind-boggling. Their films dominate the box office and discourse, and studios bend over backwards to cater to these people, but it’s not enough for them! It might be a relatively small group of people in the larger scheme of things, but they are loud and annoying enough to be hurtful.
I’ve genuinely enjoyed some films and music that even I would admit aren’t great, but I’m not going to demand that anyone else affirm my tastes.
Social media allows people to forget that actual people will read what they type. They’ll talk online in a way that they would never dare talk to someone in person. And it encourages a “hot take” kind of discourse. People engage with posts they disagree with more than ones they like. Discord = clicks
LikeLiked by 1 person
hari prasad
March 26, 2023
Like people would just laugh it off when you ask silly questions like ” Can I get the model along with the lingerie? ” on the internet , but try asking that to a sales boy / girl , he/she would hit a Stone Cold Stunner.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Karthik
March 27, 2023
I am with Rahini. As much I love a good roast (like this Sagaptham review which is really one for the ages), if it were a choice, I’d choose your gushing review of a little known movie any day.
If you can now choose what you want to review, then more power to you!
As a member of the audience, I can’t really come around to “the state of the movies is bad” in A O Scott’s selfie interview. His last line is where I see myself:
the movies themselves — enough of them, as always — are pretty good.
LikeLike
YouTubers channels vs TV channels
March 27, 2023
It us much easier for a person sitting in a western country to switch jobs as it is quite uncommon in their culture for people to switch over/start new jobs, whereas in India even if a critic wants to stop and do something else, how feasible is it economically? In a country of a billion people there are more ppl than jobs so the least a critic can do is to bear the bad movies – it is not a tough job. I would never hire a person who finds watching movies in an AC hall tough for any other job cause there’s no other job this person could find easy.
LikeLike
Abhirup
March 29, 2023
Please, Sir, don’t quit, ever. And though I would much rather read your reviews than your interviews (not insinuating the latter are unworthy; just stating my preference), glad to hear that interviewing keeps you invigorated.
LikeLiked by 1 person
vsrini
April 2, 2023
@Youtubers channels vs TV channels:
“I would never hire a person who finds watching movies in an AC hall tough for any other job cause there’s no other job this person could find easy.”
Right and you’re a paddy farmer toiling under the hot Sun to earn your keep.
LikeLiked by 1 person