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Death to Film Critics, Long Live Film Critics
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Everyone's a critic. This, we know, and now more than ever. But professional critics – who get paid to be arbiters of taste – are facing a tough time with the rise of the Internet.
Newspaper columnists, bloggers, and even critics themselves are all convinced the old four-eyed film critic is obsolescent, made
irrelevant by a populace that gets its news and opinions from the 24-hour-a-day blogosphere.
But if film criticism is dying because of the Web's
growth – and with shrinking pages devoted to the subject in print newspapers,
it certainly seems to be the case – there is also a reverse trend: the
intensification and expansion of film criticism online.
It may not be of Pauline Kael-type quality, but
film culture may be thriving now more than ever, with websites like
daily.greencine.com, reverseshot.com, mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com,
moviecitynews.com and venerable critic Dave Kehr's own davekehr.com cultivating
an impassioned online community. Whether any of these people are making a
living at it is a different question altogether.
