Movie Critics Are So Gone With The Wind

Movie critics need to go and find a new career.

It’s over. No-one wants them anymore or cares.

Brutal, but that’s the new world.

Today, leading movie industry Bible, Variety, laid off its two best-known critics, longtime chief film critic Todd McCarthy and chief theater critic David Rooney. Variety calls it an “economic reality.” True, but why are critics not the mainstay of an entertainment magazine or section anymore?

As Los Angeles Times puts it today, also with brutal honesty:

“Virtually every survey has shown that younger audiences have zero interest in critics. They take their cues for what movies to see from their peers, making decisions based on the buzz they’ve heard on Facebook, Twitter or some other form of social networking.”

It notes how irrelevant the critics are becoming, even for older audiences.

The conservative Wall Street Journal’s famous critic moved from page one of the arts section, to page three and now you may find him somewhere on page five.

Other critics elsewhere have moved completely off any page.

Today word of mouth about movies happens before any marketing blitz can take effect.

The low budget horror Paranormal Activity,” camcorder shot for a mere US$10,000, somehow made US$100-million-plus at the box office, when it normally would have gone straight to DVD and be seen by a few cult movie buffs. It had no star actors, came out of nowhere but had a scary enough trailer and catchphrase.

But the real impact happened when people saw the first screenings and texted and tweeted and facebook’d that this was a movie you needed to see.

The movie makers now have, justifiably or not, enough money-making cred to consider asking famous horror director Brian De Palma for the sequel. Of course, a similar low budget and quickly forgettable movie Blair Witch in pre-social media days discovered how the web alone could be used to generate interest in a movie. But back to the poor old critic.

The sad fact for them, not us, is that the internet has given us all an easy and quick voice and respect each other’s opinion, not someone who has been crowned The Critic. I

follow blogs and people on twitter, whose opinion on music and movies I respect. I check the “community” rating on movies, games and music on sites like movie’s Rotten Tomatoes and metacritic as a guide to what the critics would call the dumbed down masses think.

Thanks to that mass public opinion, I have caught several enjoyable movies in the last year that the high and mighty critics rate poorly and think is beneath them to praise.

We’ve become bored with waiting for days for  the paid critics to digest something and then we have to wadie through a thousand word essay, sprinkled with clever-dick obscure references and pseudo-intelligent plays on words.

Today, I picked up the printed programme for a film festival about to hit my town and gave up trying to work out what each movie was about. I’m sure there were a few I would like, but the programme is a cryptic crossword.

Let me pick a movie at random from the programme.

This one  is a must see for its

“daring proposition in an era that frantically insists upon marketable conformity. This makes Gentlemen Broncos as daring as the latest work of Hess’ other American Eccentrics peers Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson. In Gentlemen Broncos, sci-fi’s poignant charms even coexist with churchgoing – note the quilt hanging in Benji’s bedroom of Jesus riding Barney the dinosaur. It’s all part of our authentic and poignant cultural mess.”

If only critics would learn the art of communication all over again so I can understand a) what the movie is about and b) whether I might like it.

Oh hang on, I know where to find it. On twitter. From people like you.