I hate to sound snarky, but I don't quite understand the point of A.O. Scott's piece today in The New York Times. I know that it was positioned as an essay on the return of Roger Ebert to print criticism - and also, circuitously, on the state of modern film criticism in general. (Unless you haven't heard, it's going through a disturbing upheaval.)
Nevertheless, these two points never congealed. I've no idea how the article was pitched but it emerged in print as a formless hybrid - an unreadable mishmash which, in the end, said absolutely nothing.
I am more than a little appalled at the amount of space alotted to it by the Times. That kind of newspaper space - which underlines the "importance" of the piece (an importance which, frankly, just wasn't there) - is precious in these sad days of fading dailies.
And it's difficult to fathom that this sloppy, indulgent essay actually passed through a series of editors at the Times.
Any thoughts?
(Artwork: The New York Times' A.O. Scott)
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Anyone interested in perusing some 2060 of my film reviews, dating back to 1994, can do so by simply going to RottenTomatoes.Com
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