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That makes this thread even sadder.

Jeff wrote:

hearthesilence wrote:Wow, I didn't realize he had earned his own thread. Just him, Armond White and Jeffrey Wells, correct? Fine company.

I miss Carney's Mail Bag so much. Would legit pay for his web hosting just to enjoy getting pissed off at all of his new nonsense

Does Carney use his Mail Bag to hide all of Mark Rappaport's films now?

zedz wrote:

oh yeah wrote:I also can't stand these critics or reviewers who have such impossibly high standards that they only award 5 or 10 films (out of 1,000+) a perfect score.

I've yet to see a perfect film, but I find this habit of grading / scoring the art you consume completely alien anyway, let alone something so important that you should worry about how other people do it.

For me it's just kind of a mindless OCD tic; I acknowledge it's a bit silly and rather meaningless but I still rate most films I see. That said, I can't stand when rating gets turned into a kind of full-time hobby and/or replacement for any actual discussion about films, as on every IMDb board ever.

Anyway, it's not so much the fact that D'Angelo only has given a handful of films perfect scores as it is that, for instance, the 100th-best film he's seen (out of probably thousands) only gets an 87/100... I just find this kind of extremely disciplined, high-standard approach to rating/evaluating films strange. Often times these people kind of bask in their strict little rubrics, too, and it becomes a weird and constraining obsession of its own. Constantly thinking of what one might rate a film while watching it must be awfully distracting and annoying yet I'd bet it's a sensation very familiar to many younger critics.

This is going to be a self-indulgent post but at least it is on the topic of conversation here.



Here's my ratings distribution curve on IMDb for the 1766 films or TV shows that I have watched in recent years since developing an interest in cinema - I really didn't watch much films growing up. I never saw the appeal until I started watching stuff like Die Ehe der Maria Braun and Ladri di biciclette that was on my recommended reading list for German and Italian at university.

I actually grade more granular than IMDb allows and go from DUD to ***** in 1/4* increments, which is the Meltzer system that many use for rating professional wrestling matches! To transpose to IMDb, I just round down to the nearest half star. ***** > 10, ****1/2 > 9 etc.

My scale would be roughly as follows:

***** - Perfection (13 films)
****3/4 - Almost Perfect (25 films)
****1/2 - Masterpiece (137 films)
**** - Great
***1/2 - Good
*** - Decent
**1/2 - Fair
** - Mediocre
* - Bad
DUD - Atrocious (8 films)

I don't think it is that odd to only have a very few select films be worthy of your highest praise, whether that is quantified or not.

My ratings are never going to be representative of cinema as a whole, because the majority of what I watch is well review or of interest. I'm not a professional review having to trawl through all the chaff, so there's good chance that I will deem what I watch to be good.

Also a Mike D'Angelo fan and while I can't deny that some of the pull quotes in this thread are ridiculous, I'm still surprised at the hate. Criterion Forum and Mike's letterbox are two places I go to when I want honest criticism rather than cheerleading.

Welcome to the forum, Mike.

It's not the scores he gives but the substance of so many of his comments that I find problematic.

I just find D'Angelo's style rather boring, sort of like any other smart-aleck "I'm too good for this" online film blogger. In comparison, Armond White is at least occasionally entertaining and his florid, ranty run-on sentences are... unique.

The end of an era, as Mike writes the final scenic route on the ending of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Seems fitting that the coda to Layla was playing on my computer as I read the opening paragraphs of that column.

Did he specify anywhere why he is ending it? Other than fatigue?

D'Angelo has some extremely specific sore spots that arise when he engages with comment boards. He apparently went to film school with Harmony Korine, and gets his hackles up whenever anyone praises his former classmate. He also has hinted that he has an inside track with Rian Johnson, and takes credit for some unspecified changes to the Looper screenplay. Knowing Johnson's gf Karina Longworth and her distaste for bullshit artists, I wouldn't be surprised if D'Angelo is no longer in Johnson's orbit. Of course, that doesn't negate the possibility that he'll claim to have written all of Chewbacca's lines in The Last Jedi.

Yeesh, isn't D'Angelo deep in his 30's? He sounds remarkably immature.

The Dissolve made sure to include bylines on its main page, so you knew which critic was behind each link. This made avoiding D'Angelo exceedingly easy. However, the AV Club is designed so that every click is a game of potentially unpleasant roulette. Will I get Iggy and his movie-drunk playfulness, Alex Dowd and middle-of-the-road journeyman analysis? Nope. When D'Angelo's name appears I get the hell out of there. Fast.

dda1996a wrote:Did he specify anywhere why he is ending it? Other than fatigue?

AVC has cut back substantially on freelance assignments in recent weeks, so it may not have been his idea.

Reverend Drewcifer wrote:He apparently went to film school with Harmony Korine, and gets his hackles up whenever anyone praises his former classmate.

That isn't the first time I've heard of this re: former Korine classmates, though (I wish I had a link to wherever that is, but this sadly is relegated to being just anecdotal). Apparently he was exactly the grating enfant terrible provocateur that you'd expect him to have been.

Perkins Cobb wrote:

dda1996a wrote:Did he specify anywhere why he is ending it? Other than fatigue?

AVC has cut back substantially on freelance assignments in recent weeks, so it may not have been his idea.

The pop culture site cutting back on the essential ingredients as film and music, making room for hard-hitting journalism as Donald Trump steak habits and videos that the internet is all craving!

Dead or Deader wrote:

Perkins Cobb wrote:

dda1996a wrote:Did he specify anywhere why he is ending it? Other than fatigue?

AVC has cut back substantially on freelance assignments in recent weeks, so it may not have been his idea.

The pop culture site cutting back on the essential ingredients as film and music, making room for hard-hitting journalism as Donald Trump steak habits and videos that the internet is all craving!

Don't forget nonstop nostalgia features about pop culture from 20 years ago, most of it about material initially aimed at small children

What kind of a loser posts about nostalgia on the internet

It's one thing to post about it, it's another to dedicate so much of a space that posits to be about current-era popular culture to it. It'd be one thing if there were a consistent effort to brand The AV Club that way, but as Dead or Deader pointed out, it's a total jumble right now.

I did like that Double Dare oral history, though. I am only human.

I hate his response and the unfunny meme and outrage reactions of Twitter to it. Thanks the Internet!

This shit is why no one fucking likes cinephiles.

Steady on there, old chap. Must we all be damned for the sins of Mike?

That's something you can surely take with a heavy dose of context. Cinephiles come in all shapes and sizes and levels of pretentiousness.