Tag Archives: critics

Twilight tops People’s Choice awards | Film | guardian.co.uk

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Director Chris Weitz (left), actress Kristen S...
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I’ve been reading a lot of lists of the best films of the year recently and quite a few films have been common to many top tens. Twilight: Eclipse, however, is not one of them. It is exactly the kind of film that many critics are somewhat sniffy about (with the exception of Mark Kermode, who nonetheless didn’t find room for it in his top five). It is massively popular with audiences, however, and did superbly at the People’s Choice awards this week. This is a useful article for AS Film students for FM2 Section A when considering the role critics play (or in this case, don’t) when audiences consider what films to see.

Unlike the Oscars, the Golden Globes and Baftas, People’s Choice prizes are decided by members of the public, a staggering 175 million of them. Voters chose to hand The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, the third instalment in the teen vampire romance saga, awards for favourite film, favourite drama and favourite on-screen team. Star Kristen Stewart was named favourite movie actress.

via Twilight tops People’s Choice awards | Film | guardian.co.uk.

Toy Story 3 set to be 2010′s best-reviewed film | Film | guardian.co.uk

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Following on from my previous post about Toy Story 3 topping the worldwide box office for 2010, it also looks like it will prove to be the best reviewed.

FM2 sometimes features questions on to what extent critics affect the success of a film, so this pairing could prove useful for discussion. This is not to imply, however, that good reviews was the sole reason for Toy Story 3′s remarkable performance. As any philosopher will tell you, correlation does not mean causation.

Toy Story 3 set to be 2010′s best-reviewed film | Film | guardian.co.uk.

The Irina Palm d’Or: And the loser is … | Film | guardian.co.uk

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A new critics blog The Irina Palm d’Or has been launched to celebrate the worst in British cinema, with a name inspired by Irina Palm.

“A gobsmackingly awful British film – awful in the way that somehow only British films can be,” wrote the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw. Neither were cinemagoers much enthused: in its opening weekend, Irina scraped together a mere £582. Yet something about the film endured in the minds of those present at its press screening, and, this year, Irina has lent her name to a new critics’ blog commemorating the more bizarre, if not downright unfathomable, aspects of British cinema.

Pleasingly, Danny Dyer appears to be well represented.

via The Irina Palm d’Or: And the loser is … | Film | guardian.co.uk.

Kermode: documentary fiction and The Arbor

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Mark Kermode gives his opinions on The Arbor, an interestingly constructed documentary that uses actors to lip sync to audio recordings of interviews. I’ve not seen it yet, but the critical community has been divided. On the surface, it appears to have something in common with Waltz With Bashir and looks like being interesting for the Spectatorship & Documentary section of FM4.

Charlie Brooker: Why I’m calling time on Screen Burn | Television & radio | The Guardian

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The only TV critic worth reading, Charlie Brooker, has announced he is to quit that role. For years I’ve spent more time reading his criticism than watching the shows he wrote about, but at least he told me about stuff I would have hated too.

So why has he quit? Well, things have changed:

Since I started writing the column, back in August 2000, TV has changed beyond all recognition. Big Brother, The Wire, 24 and Friday Night With Jonathan Ross came and went. Doctor Who, Noel Edmonds and Battlestar Galactica returned. Celebrity humiliation became a national sport. Johnny Rotten fought an ostrich. Timmy Mallett drank a pint of liquidised kangaroo penis in front of Ant and Dec; Jade Goody received her cancer diagnosis in a Diary Room. Ambitious US drama serials with season-long story arcs enjoyed a renaissance. The Office, The Thick Of It, and Peep Show popped up. Stewart Lee got a BBC2 series. The cast of The Inbetweeners sprouted sex organs. Glenn Beck occurred.

The way we watch changed, too: from peering at a cumbersome box in the corner of the room to basking in the unholy radiance of a 52-inch plasma screen buzzing quietly on the wall. The images leapt from SD to HD and now 3D. Time itself began to collapse as YouTube, Sky+ and the BBC iPlayer slowly chewed the notion of “schedules” to death.

At the start of the decade, I was receiving shows to review on clunky VHS tapes. By around 2005, roughly half the offerings arrived on DVD. Now online previewing is the norm. In five years’ time, most shows will probably come in the form of an inhalable gas which makes visions dance in your brain.

His own status as a TV presenter and hero to curmudgeons across the nation is another factor:

And writing a TV column over the past few years has felt progressively weirder, as I’ve gradually, simultaneously, become one of “them”: one of the many faces that flit across your screen, gently spoiling your evening.

You will be missed.

Charlie Brooker: Why I’m calling time on Screen Burn | Television & radio | The Guardian.

Wanted: whoever killed Sex and the City. So we can shake your hand | Stuart Heritage | Film | guardian.co.uk

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This Guardian article considers the role critics have apparently played in ensuring that there is not a Sex and The City 3 movie. For those not paying attention at the time, although it did quite well at the box office, the second film had a spectacular mauling at the hands of numerous critics, both male and female:

Wanted: whoever killed Sex and the City. So we can shake your hand | Stuart Heritage | Film | guardian.co.uk.

And, as a commentator points out, it did inspire one of the finest Mark Kermode rants in a long time: