'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

[Lemmy Caution]

An IMDb review of Atonement:

2 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
As gay as Brokeback Mountain, 1 January 2008
Author: dan-frederiksen from Denmark

To just call this a chick-flick is hopefully an understatement or an insult to women and it might be ironic to classify it as gay when it's about heterosexual romance but it most certainly is. In all fairness I only watched parts of it and flipped through it but that's as closely as someone of my caliber can ever be exposed to it. I endure the minimum comment length criteria of IMDb so that others can avoid this drivel that is currently rated at 8.2.
...
(skipped the middle part)
...
It is slow, dwelling and set in a very boring English upper class pre WWII country side manor littered with all the caricature homosexual traits like fondness for plays without purpose, drama, auto destructive tendencies, destroying the things of others to get attention for themselves, manipulation, dress up, etc. Poison served in a nice cake.

This review obviously tells a lot more about the reviewer than the film.
"Someone of my caliber" -- funny stuff.

[tavernier]

Was that review written by John Simon?

[Steven H]

Wow, that Atonement review is just a train wreck. I had to read it twice and I think I literally winced.

[greggster59]

Has anyone seen this? I hope that Eddie baby keeps his promise and stops buying DVD's if HD-DVD goes off the market. What a moron!

[forweg]

Beautiful review of Tokyo Story from Netflix:

I first saw this movie 28 years ago when I was at university and found it profoundly moving, but, I had drunk much saki that day. Watching it again, it must be one of the most deficient works of cinema. With hardly any dialogue and exquisitely drudging cinematography, it deals with the tragedy of not fulfilling your passion. It is not conventionally stimulating or even entertaining, It requires a depth of feeling and involvement to the level of Buddhist contemplation, much like having a "numb head", which for me, is extremely unrewarding. Shukishi Hirayama's acting is a tour de force of the art of deflated craftsmanship, portraying someone who is a successful and talented member of society, an aristocrat, but also deeply unfulfilled and intensely boring. This guy is so boring he must stare at the wall all day. The lesson is, by cutting off our deep urges, even whilst fulfilling our "duty" to society, we are only miserable. I take this as a personal challenge to not deny these in myself so I eat sushi and visit Geishas on a regular basis. I notice one of the reviewers was offended by the homosexual theme. That too is a challenge to go beyond our limited morality to realize real compassion for that character, who is sometimes pathetic, other people and ultimately for ourselves. In all, not recommend for people under 25 or those with an energetic outlook on life.

[davebert]

Has anyone seen this? I hope that Eddie baby keeps his promise and stops buying DVD's if HD-DVD goes off the market. What a moron!

If you're going to plagiarize from someone, it might as well be from the best! DVD Beaver has always been about screenshots and tech, anyway... the day I read it for thought provoking reviews of anything is the day I can think of a humorous end to this... thing...

Yeah!

[greggster59]

DVD Beaver has always been about screenshots and tech, anyway... the day I read it for thought provoking reviews of anything is the day I can think of a humorous end to this... thing...

Agreed. But this guy's stuff is very funny: "...Mobsters often feels like a teenybopper enterprise. Clearly, Christian Slater, Patrick Dempsey, Richard Grieco, and Costas Mandylor were selected for their roles in part because of their handsome visages." and :The movie respects the fact that people cared very much about appearances during the first half of the 20th Century."
Wow!

[Svevan]

What exactly went on, then, behind the scenes that caused a rift between Feng and Tooze? Seems like there's a LOT of bad blood.

[davebert]

I dunno beyond what he posted, but I would love to see further catfights.

And anyway--this has been raised before--but how the fuck did Feng pull off an MA? I know from just having worked my way through the BA program in Cinema Studies that you can be pants-on-head retarded and pull through just fine, but I assumed the grad programs were a bit more selective.

[tavernier]

Apparently not.

[domino harvey]

And anyway--this has been raised before--but how the fuck did Feng pull off an MA?

I know we like to give the benefit of the doubt, but based on his blogging, I think we can pull out the ol' adage of "It's easy to lie on the internet."

[sidehacker]

I don't really go to DVDBeaver to read about the new David Fincher movie and I doubt I'm alone. Anyway, it seems that anyone who reads Eddie's blog is probably a Beaver regular to begin with. Actually, I'm pretty sure his whole fanbase is made up of people making fun of him. Oh well.

[domino harvey]

Code: Select all

Favorite Music

    * Bourne Trilogy soundtracks

[the dancing kid]

And anyway--this has been raised before--but how the fuck did Feng pull off an MA? I know from just having worked my way through the BA program in Cinema Studies that you can be pants-on-head retarded and pull through just fine, but I assumed the grad programs were a bit more selective.

Not to be too much of an elitist, but his degree is from Chapman. It's probably rare for an internet DVD reviewer to have a graduate degree in cinema studies, so I can understand why he advertises it in his profile, but I don't think Chapman is considered that great a program. It seems more geared toward producing film critics and entertainment news types than scholars, which is probably a viable goal given its location, but I don't consider it representative of graduate cinema studies. I never considered their program when I applied.

On the subject of MA degrees, I think the only MA programs that are hard to get into are the ones at schools where you need an MA to apply for the PhD. NYU, Iowa and UCLA are all like that. I think Wisconsin might be as well. The field seems to be drifting in that direction though, so I wouldn't be surprised if more schools required an MA in the future. It's an easy way for them to bring in more money, but I think there's also a feeling that undergraduate programs do a poor job of preparing students for graduate level work, so the MA can act as a stepping-stone of sorts.

[Jeff]

II know from just having worked my way through the BA program in Cinema Studies that you can be pants-on-head retarded and pull through just fine, but I assumed the grad programs were a bit more selective.

Not really. This was brought up in another Feng-riddled thread as well, but the vast majority of MA programs in liberal arts disciplines aren't particularly selective or especially difficult. I have an MA (not film-related), and I'm wearing my pants on my head right now.

[arsonfilms]

The other thing to point out is that in some film schools, a "film studies" degree is what you wind up with if you're creative output is so lousy that you're rejected from more advanced classes. Not every school, mind you, but its a vague enough field of study that its an easy place to bury students who aren't up to snuff but not bad enough to flunk. I briefly skimmed over Feng's review of Mobsters, and nobody who writes that the production values "are exceptionally high" and that "plot-wise, the script is dense and intricate" without any follow up can be of a particularly critical mind. I've read freshman level Media Studies 1 papers with more insight than this guy. He's grasping at straws just to build a word count, at which point can he really be surprised that Gary deleted his content? I almost feel sorry for the guy, if he's devoting his time to badly written reviews of insignificant work.

[MichaelB]

I almost feel sorry for the guy, if he's devoting his time to badly written reviews of insignificant work.

I can't claim to be an expert on his reviews (for one thing, he generally doesn't write about stuff I'm interested in), but I've always been weirdly fascinated by this parenthetical comment at the start of his Eastern Promises review (which in turn is the first piece on his entire blog, thus amplifying its impact):

(I’m not counting the director’s re-make of The Fly, which was clearly a populist effort rather than what Cronenberg’s reputation promises.)

Several things strike me about this:

1. He's already admitted that Eastern Promises is "his first exposure to David Cronenberg", therefore he has already disqualified himself from being able to speak about the rest of his work with any authority;

2. Since he hasn't seen any other pre-2007 Cronenberg films apart from The Fly, how can he judge how much it has in common with his earlier work? (In actual fact, as the rest of us all know, it's a "Cronenberg" film through and through, regardless of its budget, name cast and intended audience);

3. This man claims to have a postgrad degree in film. Presumably, unless his supervisor was completely inept, this meant that he had to maintain minimum standards of academic referencing - so wouldn't this at least make him think twice before making sweeping statements that weren't properly sourced? (Clearly, it would be unreasonable to expect him to use the Harvard Referencing System and festoon his blog with footnotes, but that doesn't mean that he should have no standards at all).

But, above all:

4. The entire parenthetical sentence is completely unnecessary. It has nothing to do with Eastern Promises, has no point to make besides trumpeting its author's ignorance - and removing it in its entirety improves the paragraph in every way.

[tavernier]

You've just summed up Feng in that last sentence.

[jbeall]

Damn! MichaelB's post pretty much dissects one example (among many) of Feng's pretentious stupidity, so I won't pick at Feng anymore. However, I want to add as someone in academia (albeit as a grad student myself), an MA doesn't mean a whole helluva lot.

Undergrad education has really taken a turn for the worse, especially recently as some of the institutions responsible for accreditation attempt to apply "No Child Left Behind" principles to higher ed.

A couple of years ago, I showed Do the Right Thing to my class. One student approached me afterward with a bewildered look on his face and asked me, "So Sal is the bad guy, right?"

I was a little surprised by this statement, so I asked him how he'd arrived at this conclusion. Maybe the kid had an interesting interpretation that I (and countless others) had simply missed. His response: "Because when something bad happens to a character at the end of the film, that's how you know he was the bad guy." True story.

If this particular student could get into college, then let's face it: a couple of letters after your name doesn't mean what it used to; an MA in cinema studies doesn't mean squat. Also, I don't know anything about Chapman specifically, but Feng could have gotten a terminal MA simply because nobody wanted to work with him as a PhD student (sometimes failing an oral results in the awarding of a terminal MA, a nice way of saying "go the hell away"). However, if perchance Chapman's MA program is ridiculously easy to get into, I might apply... if they can teach me to stop wearing my pants on my head.

[the dancing kid]

To clarify my earlier post, I don't think the program at Chapman is really all that bad, but the way that Feng advertises his academic credentials has always irked me (particularly the obnoxious introduction to all of his reviews at DVDBeaver). The way that people here have let his foolish bravado influence their opinion of academic film studies is also disappointing. I don't think he is representative of the cinema students (or graduate students in general).

The other thing to point out is that in some film schools, a "film studies" degree is what you wind up with if you're creative output is so lousy that you're rejected from more advanced classes.

I don't think this is true. Most schools have separate degree programs for film studies (BA or MA) and film production (BFA or MFA). Students from each program are typically required to dabble in the other, but I don't think film studies is the "back-up" of film production. They way the curriculum is structured would probably prevent that, especially at the graduate level.

Also, I don't know anything about Chapman specifically, but Feng could have gotten a terminal MA simply because nobody wanted to work with him as a PhD student (sometimes failing an oral results in the awarding of a terminal MA, a nice way of saying "go the hell away").

Chapman doesn't offer a PhD. I assume that their MA is tailored toward the local economy based on the types of courses they offer and the faculty who teach there.

[arsonfilms]

The other thing to point out is that in some film schools, a "film studies" degree is what you wind up with if you're creative output is so lousy that you're rejected from more advanced classes.

I don't think this is true. Most schools have separate degree programs for film studies (BA or MA) and film production (BFA or MFA). Students from each program are typically required to dabble in the other, but I don't think film studies is the "back-up" of film production. They way the curriculum is structured would probably prevent that, especially at the graduate level.

I really have no way of knowing the circumstances of Feng's education, but when I was in college, you had to have a certain GPA to apply to the undergraduate thesis program. One other option was to take a non-thesis route within production, but the cinema studies track didn't have any particular requirements. Certainly some people chose cinema studies for its own merits, but a BA was awarded regardless of concentration, and cinema studies didn't have the same demanding requirements of the much more popular production track. It was a natural fallback for many who recognized that a BA is still a BA, especially to the managers at Starbucks.

How this relates to an MA is anyone's guess, but I think its been pretty well documented within this thread that a masters degree can be obtained without having the wherewithal to adequately review bad HD DVDs.

[Tom Amolad]

Has anyone seen this? I hope that Eddie baby keeps his promise and stops buying DVD's if HD-DVD goes off the market. What a moron!

Fascinating. The thought of that guy keeping a blog that other people actually read boggles the mind. I could never understand why Tooze let him post on dvdbeaver to begin with.

Come to think of it, I don't remember noticing, I guess there haven't been any new reviews of his for the last few weeks for me to skip. That's something to look forward to.

Tom

[domino harvey]

I still say he's lying. Is there an academic database where we can see if he really did write that thesis, because I call bullshit so hard-- and if it's true, I want to request it thru my university.

[the dancing kid]

I still say he's lying. Is there an academic database where we can see if he really did write that thesis, because I call bullshit so hard-- and if it's true, I want to request it thru my university.

WorldCat has it, so it exists. I don't think MA projects are typically made available through services like Proquest though. An MA thesis just isn't that big of a deal. They're basically an introduction to graduate level research, but you don't have to time to do anything really in depth that could contribute to the field. It's really just a chance to prove that you're capable of that level of work.

[davebert]

I'm toying with the idea of going and hiding back in academia after I climb out from under the current loan debt. I've come to realize that writing precisely-sourced, in-depth essays on film and pop culture is just not a strength appreciated by most job tracks. Didn't we used to have a college thread somewhere? I'd be interested to hear MA/PhD program stories that don't revolve around Eddie.