Re: Critics : Thu Jul 25, 2013 1:50 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

Ah, I see where you're going wrong, you mistakenly think critic=negative. It's not. It's from the Latin criticus, which is from the Greek kritikos, meaning "able to discern or judge".

A critic whose professional job it is to produce such reviews is meant to be able to judge something, from a position of knowledge. It could equally be a favourable judgement as an unfavourable one.

I'm not thinking that at all.

I'm suspecting that critics gain notoriety and readership by bashing rather than offering genuine criticism. If a work is bad then it should judged as bad. But not judged as bad and then the artist hit with a brick.

Re: Critics : Thu Jul 25, 2013 2:24 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote: :? Not sure what's funny. Brief comments by Januszczak here. Seems very reasonable. Even less sure what it has to do with the thread. I don't subscribe to the Times so I can't read his article. But from the wikipedia entry he was writing in his article about a German 70's band and he is quoted as saying they "cocked a notorious snook at the music industry in the late 1970s by giving away their music on blank cassettes and getting their fans to design their own covers". That suggests that they are a real band and they actually did that. The famous art critic writing in the Sunday Times that they did that suggests that they did it too. After all, he's the famous art critic writing "from his position of knowledge". His argument that, "Nobody can know about every obscure electro-noise band that ever recorded an album" is true. But if you're a knowledgeable art critic and writing about it as if it actually happened shouldn't you actually know whether it happened? If he's duped into believing that happened, might he be just as easily duped that a pile of trash is art when the truth is that it's just a pile of trash?

Ferocious Aardvark wrote: :? Not sure what's funny. Brief comments by Januszczak here. Seems very reasonable. Even less sure what it has to do with the thread. I don't subscribe to the Times so I can't read his article. But from the wikipedia entry he was writing in his article about a German 70's band and he is quoted as saying they "cocked a notorious snook at the music industry in the late 1970s by giving away their music on blank cassettes and getting their fans to design their own covers". That suggests that they are a real band and they actually did that. The famous art critic writing in the Sunday Times that they did that suggests that they did it too. After all, he's the famous art critic writing "from his position of knowledge". His argument that, "Nobody can know about every obscure electro-noise band that ever recorded an album" is true. But if you're a knowledgeable art critic and writing about it as if it actually happened shouldn't you actually know whether it happened? If he's duped into believing that happened, might he be just as easily duped that a pile of trash is art when the truth is that it's just a pile of trash?

Re: Critics : Thu Jul 25, 2013 2:25 pm  

Can't see it myself. Surely a critic who was permanently and stubbornly negative would be shown the door in five minutes? Surely if a critic was always "bashing" then everyone would know what they did, so it would be pointless? Do you have at least one example of such a critic?

Re: Critics : Thu Jul 25, 2013 3:15 pm  

Most of these newspaper critics get freebies or goodie bags from companies behind the product in return of a favourable review.

When it comes to films, Kermode is very good, as was Barry Norman. What Film making background Jonathon Ross or Winkelman have, I don't know, but suspect its very little.

As for reviewing a film to watch, I firstly look at the films poster. If it says, " from the producer/ director of ..." I avoid it.

Re: Critics : Thu Jul 25, 2013 3:28 pm  

toast wrote:

As for reviewing a film to watch, I firstly look at the films poster. If it says, " from the producer/ director of ..." I avoid it.

You'll be fooked if it's subtitled won't you?

Re: Critics : Thu Jul 25, 2013 4:55 pm  

Not at all, most films I watch are foreign and I can get by in French and German.

Best film I've seen this year is The Berlin Files. Would love to see the Suns film critic reviewing that one.

Re: Critics : Tue Jul 30, 2013 7:54 am  

toast wrote:

Most of these newspaper critics get freebies or goodie bags from companies behind the product in return of a favourable review.

When it comes to films, Kermode is very good, as was Barry Norman. What Film making background Jonathon Ross or Winkelman have, I don't know, but suspect its very little.

As for reviewing a film to watch, I firstly look at the films poster. If it says, " from the producer/ director of ..." I avoid it.

Film making prior to becoming a critic, about as much as Kermode and Norman, I believe. I don't know much about Winkelman, but in all honesty Ross is pretty damn knowledgeable about a lot of film, regardless of what other things people think about him.

Re: Critics : Thu Aug 08, 2013 8:49 pm  

Watch the film and make your own mind up , be a lion not a sheep