Shit Movie Reviewers say

Top10 Epic Fails of 2011 for the Film Press :

1. "One thing I truly believe is that real critics and real cinephiles should have absolutely no track with common sense" (Adrian Martin Ph.D) PURE BULLSHIT (BRAINWASHING)
2. "We should give the audience the tools to quit their jobs so they can devote their life to cinema" (Chris Fujiwara) PURE BULLSHIT (DELUSION)
3. "Meek's Cutoff is a waste of everyone's time, effort and money" (Neil Young) CENSORSHIP OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION (DICTATORSHIP)
4. "As I get older, I find I'm suffering from a kind of culture fatigue and have less interest in eating my cultural vegetables, no matter how good they may be for me..." (Dan Kois) ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM (COMPLACENCY)
5. "The [Cannes] festival is something of France's answer to the Oscars (more so than the Césars, its annual film awards) and a modest bulwark against Hollywood hegemony." (Manohla Dargis) MISCHARACTERISATION (DELUSION)
6. "Being a contrarian can be staying in your own personal comfort zone, of your taste, and your likes and dislikes. And I think that's indeed a danger. It can be something that is very self-indulgent." (Cristina Nord) INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY (BRAINWASHING) 
7. "There is always someone worse off than you. Watching starving peasants, or people in terrible dire straits, you leave the cinema and you think ' Well maybe things aren't so bad' In a way that's confirming you in your comfort zone" (Neil Young) SOPHISTRY (BRAINWASHING) 
8. "[..] Il n'en va pas de même dans la critique. Celle-ci a une longue histoire de « copinages »" (Independencia) INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY (BRAINWASHING) 
9. "Therefore, 'film school' -and the attitudes and stigmas commonly associated with it- does not necessarily require a new kind of analysis, for no new kind of analysis can exist for a sensibility that has been heretofore hardly been analysed." (Ricky d'Ambrose) GRANDILOQUENCE (MANNERISM) 
10. "That's right, when all else fails, denouncing this or that film festival for failing to measure up in some way or other works everytime. All you have to do is invent some expectation or obligation that said festival level failed to meet, add water, and voilà! And let's face it, everybody likes a good fight as long as they're not the punching bag. You think I'm joking, I'm not joking." (Gavin Smith) PETTINESS (COMPLACENCY) 

This is not reasonable nor responsible to declare such things in public, this is undermining an already moribund film culture.

After 60 years of Film Criticism history, what people write today must be at least as smart as what has been learnt and written in the past, or not written at all. 

Movie reviewers need to take themselves less seriously... 

and take Cinema more seriously.

If the journalists in your favourite newspaper, your favourite reviewer, your film teacher, a book written by a film scholar start to sound like the above bullshit without an hint of sarcasm, shame or remorse... then run away, run as far as you can! And learn to think by yourself, teach yourself to detect self-serving egos talking out of their asses for the sole purpose to occupy the public conversation even though they have nothing to say.

N.B. see links for the context of these quotes! 

Theatrical Ad (ironic)

Movies shan't ruin your personal fun again ! Because the customer is always right. (sarcasm intended)

Related :

• American Fatalism (Ebert) 
• Deficiant Subjectivity 
• Dan Kois syndroma 1-2
• Overlong Entertainment 
• "Boring" is not a critical argument / Long and boring art movies (Guardian)
• Boredom (Charney) / On being bored (Phillips)
• “La Peur de l'Ennui” (anonymous Cahiers reader)
• “L'Ennui / La Noia / Boredom” (Alberto Moravia, 1960)
• “A Philosophy of Boredom” (Lars Svendsen, 1999)
• “Time-Stilled Space-Slowed: How Boredom Matters” (Ben Anderson, 2004)
• “Boredom” (Jahsonic)

American Fatalism 3 (Ebert)

"6. Lack of choice. Box-office tracking shows that the bright spot in 2011 was the performance of indie, foreign or documentary films. On many weekends, one or more of those titles captures first-place in per-screen average receipts. Yet most moviegoers outside large urban centers can't find those titles in their local gigantiplex. Instead, all the shopping center compounds seem to be showing the same few overhyped disappointments. Those films open with big ad campaigns, play a couple of weeks, and disappear."

Source: I'll tell you why movie revenue is dropping... (Roger Ebert; 28 Dec 2011)

He starts on a good note : the box office results are over-hyped (positively and negatively) to add drama to the industry and stir attention away from REAL issues. But then, his assessment of the situation turns to an individualistic distress about the audience lacking pampering treatment... as if THIS was the number 1 problem explaining the disastrous diversity awareness crisis on American screens.

He reports and supports the decades-old complaints among American audiences seeking excuse for not watching movies on the big screen : 

1. event-spectacle : see Long Tail consumers
2. tickets too expensive : is money the problem that the USA has and other countries in the world don't have to explain audience laziness??? The percentage of household expenditure for a theatre admission is 12 times lower than in the 40ies, which was the all-time largest cinema audience in USA history! (see:  Cinema admission pricing in the USA (1929-2002))
3. noisy auditorium : the concept of a quiet audience is a very recent invention in cinema history. People used to talk during Silent Film projections. Even with the Talkies, theatres used to be non-stop screenings back-to-back all day long, people coming in and out at any point of the film's duration. If these disturbances didn't prevent the 40ies to be the LARGEST audience of history, then today's audience sure can handle it without recoiling at home.
4. concession stand : as if anybody FORCED you to BUY food when you go consume cultural goods. Can't you just wait 2 hours before stuffing your face again? Do you buy popcorn at the library, at the opera, at an art exhibition too? That's proof you treat Cinema as leisure (consumer-oriented) instead of culture (artist-oriented).

So that's what stops American audiences from supporting "big screen exhibition"? Petty little selfish complaints... The resolve to access film culture isn't very strong if that's enough to make you give up. Stop crying like a baby and grapple the bull by the horns, it's up to you to stand your ground and reconquer the serenity of a public space destined to cultural education! 

Do you think that un-subtitled foreign films stopped the original cinephiles at Langlois' Cinémathèque? Wooden seats, sitting on the floor, standing up at the back... Poor sound quality, truncated silent film reels... Having to watch alternative films projected in the staircase of the Cinémathèque... Having to wait 2h for a midnight supplementary projection because the previous one was sold-out... and, OMG, no fucking concession stand!!!

If you want your country to own a film culture it deserves, you need to WORK HARD for it, to get out and FIGHT for it. Earn it. Win it back. If the French can do it, there is no reason why the American cinephiles or cinephiles from any country couldn't do it as well. The wealthy American market should be a safe haven for non-commercial artists, precisely because Hollywood already makes much more profits than any other market on Earth. France cannot afford to support foreign cinema at the expenses of French cinema, yet we do it, we pay for it. It wouldn't cost anything to the Hollywood multi-billion industry... and they don't even bother supporting World Cinema! What a shame! You've profited from world audiences for over a century now... don't you think it's time to GIVE BACK a little?

Writing about films that are invisible is a luxury you can indulge in a protected market like France, because films get distributed COMMERCIALLY there. Didn't you notice that for decades, whatever the navel-gazing choir-preaching press-niche published wasn't enough to open up Hollywood's stronghold on commercial screens? 

Writting is not enough if your local commercial market actively SUPPRESSES indie screenings, foreign blockbusters, critically-acclaimed foreign cinema, because the studios are scared shitless about losing 5% of their box office revenues to non-commercial films with low competitive value. This is scary indeed!!!

Nobody cares about your popcorn diet... GET THE BEST ARTISTS OF CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA SCREENED IN AMERICAN THEATRES! NOW!!! And whine about your own selfish comfort in the theatre later... when cinema is no longer in danger of extinction. Get your priorities straight!

Related:

• France supports the big screen / La cinéphilie originelle expliquée aux néos
• Cinema admission pricing in the USA (1929-2002)
• Skimpy Specialty Distributors / Second Class Film Distribution
• American Fatalism (1-2)
• Voluntary Engineered Apathy
• Project: Validating Indulgent Movie Fandom 1-2-3
• Deficient Subjectivity

Skimpy specialty distributors

"[..] The notion that distribution is a hard-headed enterprise is correct. But the assertion that this leads to real competition is ludicrous - it ensures market domination by US producers. For all the blathering to the effect that US audiences have no interest in foreign film, in addition to university screenings across the thousands of US colleges, there is a vast array of small companies striving to meet the needs of this supposedly non-existent demand.
Decisions about the number of prints are also important during the final promotional effort for exhibition. combined with the advertising budget, prints often raise marketing costs to 50% of a feature film's total value. From a marketing perspective, the investment is justified, because more prints mean more opportunities for poster displays and for the film's title to occupy available marquee space, much like a billboard announcing a new product. Release strategies, therefore, usually include considerations of an optimal volume of prints as part of a single marketing event with advertising ad other promotions. Major distributors usually opt for wide US release, with 1,000 or 2,000 prints distributed and advertised on a nationwide basis, including '100 theatres in Los Angeles and 80 theatres in New York'. Wide releases have come to 'represent about 3/4 of total box office revenue'. In contrast, speciality distributors use a method called platforming, in which they release prints in 3 to 5 key theatres in Los Angeles and New York to build awareness through the local press and then 'platform' their films to other cities. Limited releases are those that do not appear beyond 2 or 3 major cities."

Global Hollywood 2 (Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, Richard Maxwell, Ting Wang; 2005; BFI)

Related:

• High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood (Justin Wyatt; 1994)
• Movie Marketing: Opening the Picture and Giving it Legs (T. Lukk; 1997)
• "Old-World Moviegoing: Theatrical Distribution of European films in the United States" in Film Journal International (Elisabetta Brunella; March 2001)
• October 2011 releases USA 
• Dissecting American Distribution / GQ vs Hollywood (Harris) / Second Class Film Distribution
• USA quarantine year's best films
• Slow release / Weak's Cutoff : No Cinephilia
• Long Tail Consumers

USA quarantine year's best films

This is what some 92 American movie reviewers believe ARE the best films of 2011 (or more exactly the ones that American distributors agreed to buy last year, which is a different matter altogether). This is not a selection imposed to them by the European elite, they chose these willingly and ended up with this consensus. Even if American critics love to remind that there is hardly 15 or 30 great films made every year, that would deserve to be shown in festivals... they still want to show they can name 50 films when year's end come.

Apparently the American distributors don't agree with the movie reviewers. If these are the BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR, distributors do not think they deserve a better exposition than a couple of screens to meet/build an audience.

We're not looking at the full list of obscure, elite foreign films, indies and artfilms shown in American festivals... These are the 50 very BEST ones, amongst those deemed "commercial" enough to be released by American distributors and exhibitors. Why even the very best doesn't get a special treatment?

There are 7 or 8 blockbusters (Contagion, The Rise of the Planet of the Apes are Best of the Year material? really???) because they wanna show they are close to the taste of the masses. American criticism is popular criticism. And, of course, all these titles with a "blockbuster release" are ALL Hollywood movies! The foreign title with widest distribution is French : The Artist (no subtitles issue, and a story ABOUT Hollywood!) on 472 screens. 

Although, these populist flicks are not quite at the top of the poll. The highest one barely makes the top10 and is targeted at KIDS! Obviously the American consensus is a lot more elitist than what they declare all the time in the media. 40 out of the 50 best films received a distribution inferior to 500 screens in a country of 40000 screens and 311 million population! 30 out of 50 best films got less than 100 screens !! 17 got 10 screens or less !!! 

30 films of the TOP50 are QUARANTINED on less than 100 screens nationwide each !!!

Even in France (with 7 times less available screens), 100 screens is a weak distribution for a successful art film (see below, The Tree of Life got 350 screens, and A Separation over 250!). So the vast American market should be able to attribute MORE screens than France to comparably successful art films!

From the top10 (You haven't seen 10 films better made than the ultra-academic A Dangerous Method???) : half of the 10 BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR had less than 20 screens !!! WTF are the American exhibitors doing??? Where are the art-film friendly art houses in the USA? There might be 20 or 50 art houses throughout the entire US of A willing to screen "niche" films with low audience potential, for the sake of the art of cinema, for the sake of world culture, for the sake of THE BEST 2011 FILMS IN THE WORLD... is that all? Is this a joke?

The Tree of Life : the one "BEST FILM" elected this year by AMERICAN critics is an AMERICAN film, in ENGLISH, with HOLLYWOOD stars and only gets 237 screens (see Weak's Cutoff: No Cinephilia for detail). Considering the absence of cinephilia in the USA, this kind of score is reaching for the stars for an "art film", an "indie". Don't say the reason is that Americans watch movies at home now... or multiplexes would have shut down by now, and they still release The Rise of the Planet of the Apes on over 3600 screens nationwide! The problem is not a dramatic drop of movie-going population, or the lack of infrastructure  (there are 10 times more screens available per title released each year than in any European country). It's just that the American moviegoer does not watch art films at all. And the few art film lovers that do exist in the USA are quitters, they are the ones who stay at home, and download foreign films illegally (when they don't buy DVDs).

Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives, "SECOND BEST FILM OF THE YEAR", is projected in 5 lucky theatres! How many Americans can watch it on the big screen with only 5 art houses opened? Seriously?

A Separation, "FOURTH BEST FILM OF THE YEAR", which was a popular success in France (with over a million spectators so far), was shown on 3 screens... (UK's and France's populations are 5 times smaller) Come on! This film is a MAINSTREAM NARRATIVE movie with a wide audience appeal, how come is it considered more obscure in the USA than Uncle Boonmee????????????????? Wow, it was really worth it to wait 1 year since its Golden Bear at Berlinale 2011, to find the right spot on the releases calendar and get 3 measly screens at the end of the year when the year-end polls and Oscar nominations are already closed... (sarcasm intended) American distributors are fucking useless. 

Don't ever tell me again there is a cinephile niche in the USA. You have no clue what cinema at its best looks like when you see it. Making money is one thing. If 90% of the screens were monopolized by the major studios to milk the cash cow, we'd think that the USA is a profit-driven industry, that still has 10% for an art film circuit. That's not the case (see: October 2011 releases USA).
There isn't even 1% within the plethoric American movie market to show the BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR. They can't "spare" 200-500 screens (which would still be less than what a Hollywood flop gets) for each of the 10 best films of the year. So we can't even say that there is a "minority" of cinephiles within the American movie goers... they are statistically (and commercially) INEXISTANT. You're not supporting World Cinema, you're not pulling your weight in the global balance. Not even the least benevolent effort at home (and help artists make some money on the American domestic market) to show a modicum of "counterweight" to the global hegemony Hollywood imposes on the world... American cinephiles don't even feel sorry for the Hollywood hegemony crushing local markets abroad. They don't even make the effort to support the big screen out of pity, if not for their own pleasure of watching FILM ART as it was intended.

Meanwhile the American media is totally oblivious to this appalling situation, fatalistically believing that France is an exception, that it is humanly, logistically, commercially, physically impossible to do any better for art films than 5 fucking screens nationwide... Yeah right. Nobody expects the USA to do as well as France (OMG they don't have ENOUGH billion dollars to fund such a miraculous enterprise...), but at least do "good" in the American market context. I'm sorry but this chart up there is not good by any standards (commercial or philanthropic), it is a FAILURE of an hypothetical art film circuit (if there ever was one), plain and simple. 

And smart-ass movie reviewers prefer to take cheap shots at Major Film Festivals than to deal with their domestic market and get some effective work done, culturally and commercially, for a viable art film circuit. Can't they figure out by themselves that there might be some serious (possible) improvements to be done??? 

There was an attempt of audience-self-empowerment (or Twitter-empowerment) for the neglected indie American film Margaret last year. That's a start. An American-made film. And the excuse to rebel against Hollywood decisions to limit screenings, was motivated by the access for this film to the "Oscars nomination" process... Was it a coincidence? I would hope that they are capable to protest for GREATER films too, foreign films that are ranked higher on the list these very reviewers produced. If Margaret deserves an outrage, maybe Uncle Boonmee, A Separation, Mysteries of Lisbon, Poetry, Film Socialisme, Le Havre, The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu, Le Quattro volte... would deserve a more respectful distribution, right? Why nobody speaks up? Why nobody demands a descent number of screens for these masterpieces even if they don't run for the Oscars? I wonder what they believe is the responsibility of a film critic...


Related :

• To America everything foreign is SLOW / Foreign film-friendly audiences
• Slow release / Where the Sun doesn't shine / Free market for La Libertad
• Tickets sold by nationality (EU vs USA)
• Second class film distribution
• Dan Kois syndroma 1-2
• Without Festivals / Sans Cannes 
• Skimpy Speciality Distributors