The End of TV as We Know It…and Why it is Being Greeted as a Liberation

So I happened to stumble across a TV Guide from a few months ago with Andy Samberg on the cover. The headline was “The Future of TV” (I know, a cold chill just ran down my spine, too). Actually, this is misleading. TV Guide actually ran two separate articles in this issue, one about Samberg [...]

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Symposium: …and CUT.

First off, I am offended at your two’s vocabulary. If you were an experienced film writer such as myself, you’d know never to use the word “movie.” I don’t mean to caricature John’s argument, but I’m sure it’s what he’ll claim afterward. It seems to me that John is arguing that a film’s quality is [...]

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Waiting On Line

Very often, norms and customs arise for good reason.  They tend to provide an efficient solution to a problem. Waiting on line (as we New Yorkers say…an interesting topic in its own right) provides order in an otherwise chaotic situation. But there are some instances where customs are downright inefficient and we get stuck in [...]

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Symposium: Defending Objectivity

Since I’m only responding to John’s post now, I will do a line-by-line response. John says: “The “objective” judgments he mentions, that involve thinking “hard and rationally” (as if subjective judgments don’t), are: “You could say that Movie A’s theme was better developed than Movie B’s, or that the dialogue in Movie A was less [...]

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The Sports Revolution: The Wall-Less Stadium

Let me set the scene for you: A very strong, and fairly slow, man is at the plate. He swings his bat and breaks it as the ball flares out to left field. It goes over the fence for a home run. Let me reset the scene for you: That very strong, and fairly slow, [...]

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Symposium: Objectively Good?

First of all, I’m putting a moratorium on discussing the quality (or lack thereof) of Saving Private Ryan, a movie NONE of us have evidently seen, and so none of us are really equipped to discuss. Moving on, Josh concludes his discussion of the subject by saying, “I don’t pretend to know some objective equation [...]

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You say it’s your birthday…?

When you were a child, do you remember the sense of exhilaration you used to feel the morning of your birthday? I was always extremely confused when my older relatives would express a lack of enthusiasm when their birthdays came around: “How could you not be thrilled??? It’s your birthday, Grandma!!!” As people get older, [...]

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Symposium: Movies and Objectivity

In response to the excellent ratings and reviews of “Saving Private Ryan”, Tim claims that “These two scores represent a reasonable enough cross-section of viewers and critics to call this film great”. Tim then issues me a question, asking, “It’s obvious that there’s not complete objectivity in film, and that no one film will entertain [...]

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Symposium: Entertainingly Bad?

Tim asked, “What is the relationship between a film’s quality and the feeling it evokes in its audience?” He called this “a broad, intimidating, and largely unanswerable question.” Well, here is the answer: There is no difference between a film’s quality and the feeling it evokes in its audience. Full disclosure: the concept of the [...]

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Symposium: The Function of Film

Josh’s complaint that Up merely made him feel good instead of forever altering his weltanschauung prompted me to consider a deeper question: What is the relationship between a film’s quality and the feeling it evokes in its audience? This is a broad, intimidating, and largely unanswerable question—at least not within the space of this blog. [...]

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