David Carr reported yesterday in The New York Times that several newspapers across the country are laying off film critics. He starts off the article with comments from distributors who seem to lament the loss though the tone of the article overall seems to be a snide commentary on online film writers, or maybe I’m projecting?

The paper owners claim poverty and in the age of instant syndication, why can’t they make it work with a handful of national critics? After all, your 21s, Drillbit Taylors and Leatherheads are the same no matter where you see them, right? Welcome to the Clear Channel phenomena where local voices are purged in favor of corporate homogenization in the name of profits.

Carr’s article claims that, what David Poland and S.T. VanAirsdale call “serious films,” which seems to mean independent and foreign films from the context of the article, will suffer at the box office for lack of print film critic champions. It seems to me that there are a lot of issues wrapped up in this discussion and unfortunaly Carr’s article barely scratches the surface. Eugene Hernandez opened another discussion forum on his blog, rightly, particularly since indiewire is cited as one of the spots where folks can go online to find movie news.

Tim Sternberg’s wife was working in India and while visiting, he stumbled onto a story–an aging father and his son who project old films into a darkened box for poor kids to watch–that he wanted to film. As is often the case with creative folks, he bounced ideas off of friend Francisco Bello who was also captivated and traveled to India to help Tim capture the story. “It was a classic ‘go for it’ moment,” said Sternberg. “We connected to the subject matter but we made it quickly and somewhat by the seat of our pants.” Read the entire article>>

Thanks to AJ for pointing out the POV blog; I remember some staffers telling me they were going to implement one, but sadly I never got an email about the launch. Some of my favorite doc folks are posting, including Simon Kilmurry. He posted a great response to David Poland who writes on The Hot Blog, about the WGA nominations for best documentary writing, “has anyone outside of the WGA seen the top doc vote-getter, The Camden 28?”Kilmurry’s response:

What Poland’s post raises, I believe, is the more problematic issue of equating box office success with the importance of a documentary—a crude measurement. Let’s get real here, the vast majority of docs have a very limited box office appeal. I can’t believe that other WGA nominees made millions at the box office—despite how much I might admire The Rape of Europa and the excellent No End In Sight. Most of them make little or no money. (As far as I’m aware, the WGA does not take box office in account in their awards, God bless them.) Read the whole article 

I’ve been slow in reading and posting lately and part of that is being busy but part of it is also boredom with what people are writing about film. Awards are great because they raise awareness among new audiences about great films that they may not have seen - The Camden 28 is a great example of that. It’s a wonderful movie. It revisits a 1960s act of civil disobedience and asks the participants to relay those events, which they do. The film is conventional in style but it is so inspiring to see the story of people who were willing risk their own liberty to send a message to the government, as that doesn’t seem to be happening now, despite widespread dissatisfaction with the actions of our government… but I digress. The issue is that so many writing about film are only focusing on box office, and seemingly ignoring anything film-related that doesn’t have to do with theatrical release.