Reactions to story from In The Company Of Glenn

• 

  Thumbs down. No stars.

  http://www.metafilter.com/71513/Thumbs-down-No-stars
  154 days ago in MetaFilter | Community Weblog · Authority: 2,974

  What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Movies by Armond White. Premiere.com critic and cineaste blogger, Glenn Kenny responds. Movie reviewers across America lose their jobs. Hachette Filipacchi follows suit at Premiere.com. Kenny blogs about The

  • 

    What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Movies

    http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink/what-we-dont-talk...
    154 days ago in Jerz's Literacy Weblog · Authority: 45

    A thoughtful post about the fate of film criticism. Much of this boils down what happens when film criticism leaves the world of print journalism and adapts to the TV -- not only in the content of the review but the context of celebrity/insider/gossip in
• 

  An appropriately gray Thursday

  http://www.filmbrain.com/filmbrain/2008/05/an-appropriatel.h...
  155 days ago in Like Anna Karina's Sweater · Authority: 101

  The gray skies over New York City today, combined with a far worse than usual bout of seasonal allergies left me feeling sluggish to say the least, and finding both the strength and motivation to get any work done was next to impossible. Then word came
• 

  Critics Watch: Glenn Kenny Out At Premiere

  http://blog.spout.com/2008/05/08/critics-watch-glenn-kenny-o...
  155 days ago in SpoutBlog - A Daily Movie News Blog · Authority: 1,061

  Another week, another dose of frustrating news about the state of film journalism. This morning longtime Premiere film critic (and occasional SpoutBlog commenter) Glenn Kenny used his blog to announce that his position at Premiere.com is being
• 

  #29 - Glenn Kenny

  http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2008/05/29_glenn...
  155 days ago in The Hot Blog · Authority: 138

  Another one bites the dust. He self-obits.
• 

  Another One Gone!

  http://talkingmoviezzz.blogspot.com/2008/05/another-one-gone...
  155 days ago in The Moviezzz Blog · Authority: 64

  Premiere's Glenn Kenny, one of the great film bloggers of today, just announced Premiere isn't continuing with his blog. From all my linking to his posts, you can probably tell he was a favorite of mine.
• 

  Critics Watch: Glenn Kenny Out At Premiere

  http://flixer.com/node/1934
  155 days ago in FLiXER | Inside The Entertainment Industry · Authority: 8

  Another week, another dose of frustrating news about the state of film journalism. This morning longtime Premiere film critic (and occasional SpoutBlog commenter) Glenn Kenny used his blog to announce that his position at Premiere.com is being
• 

  What Has Happened to the World of Movie Reporting?

  http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/what_has_happened_to_th...
  151 days ago in Movie News, Reviews, Trailers and More at RopeofSilicon.com · Authority: 539

  I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the current state of movie news reporting and conversation. When I first started RopeofSilicon.com in 2003 there were a handful of sites I felt actually added anything to the world of film. Looking around the Internet now I think there may be only three or four actual websites (not blogs) that continue to give me anything outside of Variety and Hollywood Reporter word-for-word regurgitations, interview transcripts without any depth and the occasional advertorial agenda piece. Moving onto the world of blogging it is sort of a mixed bag as you get some blogs that just steal content from other sites and post it as their own (I have actually found entire articles of mine other places), blogs using exclamation points as if their Tourettes is entirely uncontrollable or the occasional blog that offers up a little of both along with some engaging original content. What's a blog and what's a website? Well, that is actually becoming a line that is extremely blurry. When I started RopeofSilicon I never saw it as a blog. Is it a blog now? Some may say it has become a version of a blog considering items such as shorter posts or trailer notices certainly don't count as articles, but I consider them more as a sticky note on a larger canvas. If you think it's a blog, that doesn't bother me... I certainly am not any kind of expert on anything more than my opinion. To me blogs are defined as the hot bed of Internet gossip and rumor mongering. Take a little bit of that, add the incessant need for first look images, misspellings and ego-driven mania and you have your typical blog. Throw in passion and you have your genre blog. Throw in hatred and you have your passionate ego-driven spite blog. Like I said, it's a mixed bag. However, there is a difference. Blogs are supposed to be all of these things. People don't look at blogs for "expert" opinions. Blogs don't look at themselves as experts on anything outside of being huge fans or passionate haters. This is fine. That is what they are there for. They are the shock jocks of the online sphere. They are tabloids with a little bit extra. Love 'em or hate 'em, they have a right to do whatever they want. Don't like 'em? Ignore 'em. BUT! Yup, there is a but... But we can't just ignore them can we Ms. Hollywood. No, Hollywood has a love/hate relationship with your typical blogger. "What did they say is going on with The Lovely Bones? Go get 'em!" We have all witnessed studios shutting down a variety of websites recently. I can think of three of them off the top of my head. Yes, they actually had these sites SHUT DOWN! What happened next? The love. Set visits, exclusive material and so forth. Hollywood can't seem to make up its mind. Guess what though. That's okay. We don't expect Hollywood to do anything more than just do their thing, which is sporadic at best. However, my curiosity isn't about Hollywood at all. It's about the film media. The people that write about movies as a profession, not as passionate bloggers that have found a career in page views and unique visitors. I am talking about the people that have spent their entire lives studying the art of film and watching every back room B-movie in an effort to sound smarter than the next guy. You know, the folks that everyone used to turn to when the weekend box-office result was a sign of a good movie, not just a good trailer. Well, as you may have noticed these informed types have started dropping like flies. Just last week Premiere.com let go of their ace critic Glenn Kenny. Industry bloggers such as Anne Thompson, Jeffrey Wells and David Poland weighed in on Kenny's demise. They seem bewildered and frustrated. How can this be happening? Poland's post almost appears as a notch in the bedpost labeling it "#29". Who was #28 and all those before him/her? I can't remember, but suffice to say the folks that have been writing about movies in the past for major outlets are being picked off and Poland is none-too-happy about it. So, what happens when the big boys hunker down and turn the "news" from the blogs into actual news? Well, in Poland's case you get pissed! Jeff Wells didn't get too bothered. I found over at CHUD, Jeremy approached it calm and coolly expressing his own individual concerns. I didn't see anything on Thompson's blog. What am I talking about? Well, the three "articles" I just mentioned are all in reference to Michael Cieply's article at the "New York Times" titled "Indiana Jones Is Battling the Long Knives of the Internet". The article basically brings up the news that a couple of early negative reviews of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull popped up on AintItCoolNews.com and Cieply began to ponder the impact it may have on Indy's chances after a 19 year absence: [A] better gauge of success is likely to be the extent of online sales in the few days after the film screens at Cannes - and after many reviewers have weighed in. I didn't really think Cieply's article was all that big of a deal and felt Poland in particular was making way too big of a deal about the fact that the "Times" was using an anonymous AICN source and passing negative news off. Poland wondered, "Does it get any stupider than this?" and "What is the news value?" I think it does have value, especially should Indy tank. It begs the question: What kind of impact does the Internet actually have on movies? It's an important question, and the "Times" isn't the only one asking it. I realized this was a slightly bigger story than I originally thought when "USA Today" didn't simply reprint Cieply's article, and Scott Bowles posted his own titled "'Indiana Jones' gets mixed reviews on the Web". Do these AICN user reviews matter? Especially considering they aren't even from the actual sites posting them. Instead they are from a random moviegoer no one knows or can even compare tastes with. Chris Aronson of 20th Century Fox tells USA Today, "They're going to turn out regardless, to see what's been done with their favorite movies." Can't say I disagree with that sentiment, but I actually think this entire ordeal brings about an even larger question: If "major" news outlets such as "USA Today" and the "New York Times" are going to source user reviews from AintItCoolNews.com for their stories, what makes them any better than the blog/website that actually hosts the review? I think this is what aggravated Poland more than anything. By using the AICN user reviews as legitimate talking points, both "USA Today" and the "New York Times" are giving these opinions weight Poland doesn't believe they should have. On top of that, it seems to be lowering the major news outlets to the level of the websites and blogs in Poland's eyes. He says in his post: Paramount and all the studios in open or shady business with AICN and others who run this shite. I guess this is the same cynical calculation you use so often. Milk the geek sites as best you can and hope the occasional rapes don't hurt too much. Meanwhile, threaten and manipulate real journalists who are just trying to, say, make Alt-weekly deadlines. You've been aggrieved here, but it is hard to rev up too much sympathy when the guy trying to manipulate the fire gets burned. Shady? Come on Poland, where are your sources now? However, this made me wonder, will the major news outlets soon begin their own gossipy movie blogs in an effort to combat the growing opinion supported in the already saturated blogosphere? Will the old school idea of a movie critic soon die? Personally I have never thought much about movie critics, and I don't really consider myself one. Before I started RopeofSilicon if a movie looked good I was going to see it. If it won the Best Picture Oscar I was probably going to check it out. Now days it is different for me. Normal marketing buzz, Internet widgets, film stills and movie trailers that give away the entire plot of the movies they promote don't interest me. Instead I go to my typical sources and nibble at bits and pieces of their opinions until I am satisfied. I have actually grown more interested in the blogging of film critics rather than their actual reviews. After all, recently I saw YouTube videos embedded in a pair of Variety and Hollywood Reporter articles, one of them reporting on Paula Abdul's lapse on "American Idol". I don't think either of these outlets can claim supremacy over the bloggers of the world any longer, how long until the "New York Times" falls right in line? I actually don't want to see it happen. I want the "Times" to keep their elevated ego elevated. I want the studios to show preference to certain outlets. It creates a pecking order. It demands these "higher ups" stay on the ball and present fair and truthful opinions that we are supposed to hold above our own. I like knowing there is something I can learn about an industry I love. Should the folks that help shape the industry, and feed the buzz for films I otherwise wouldn't see, begin to die out I think it hurts us all.
• 

  The Blog Sleep

  http://dvdpanache.blogspot.com/2008/05/blog-sleep.html
  149 days ago in DVD Panache · Authority: 69

  There are thousands of stories in Print City, this is one of them... The Front Row district of Print City is notoriously rough, but lately the obituaries have been longer than a director's cut of a Bertolucci film. While the average lifespan is criminally low -- most people don't survive to see their third anniversary -- recently a few heavyweights have gone belly-up before their time. Looking

Advertise on Technorati

Advertise on Technorati