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Hi Jonathan. What do you think will be the end result of cinematic universes, particularly the Marvel Universe and the recently announced "writing room" for future Transformers films? Do you think they'll change mainstream film completely or slowly fall apart?

JonathanRosenbaumAMA:
I have no idea because I have zero interest in these films.

Where's Michael Mann to name-drop Henry James again?

Any idea what has happened to David Thomson? I enjoyed his articles for The New Republic, but suddenly he was gone. I haven't heard his opinion of films by filmmakers he likes like Inherent Vice, Under the Skin etc.

I heard he vanished in a gaseous cloud of his own pomposity...

Any chance he's strictly writing books these days? Looking at Amazon, I see he published Why Acting Matters earlier this year an has another title called How to Watch a Movie coming out next month.

Professor Wagstaff wrote:Any chance he's strictly writing books these days? Looking at Amazon, I see he published Why Acting Matters earlier this year an has another title called How to Watch a Movie coming out next month.

Jesus Christ, it never ends with that guy.

From the publisher's description:

You've been watching movies for most of your life. But often you're not quite sure what you think, or why.

Nothing like talking down to your readership, I guess. Sometimes maybe but "often"?

How to Watch a Movie ... is a reminder that seeing isn't just for the dark - it is our essential link with life.

What? This sentence is reminiscent of some of what I've read of Thomson's writing: ornate statements that sound important but say little. Earlier this year I tried reading his The Whole Equation and got partway through chapter 2 before giving up (and giving the book away). The convoluted sentences that conveyed very little information quickly got to be too much to take. And when writing about something like the casting couch, a film historian should separate fact from rumor and innuendo and show that some actual research has been done. Instead we get repeated musings about, er, "swallowing" and a disgusting aside about the supposed origins of lip gloss. If I wanted to read a sordid blend of fact and fiction, Kenneth Anger already covered it a hundred times better and more entertainingly than that.

The LA Times blurb used by the publisher calling him "the greatest living film historian" is pretty funny given the context: the review it comes from (of Have You Seen...) starts out:

David Thomson is, without doubt, the greatest living film historian, archivist and professional fan, as any reader of "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film" will surely agree.

Oh, surely. Then the next sentence is:

Whether Thomson is also a great critic is not so clear.

Even though the reviewer is extremely sympathetic to Thomson, he ends up concluding that the book is often extremely frustrating and padded out to fill a thousand pages.

He had a dreadful column on actors in the Independent on Sunday in which he seemed to show more interest in box-office grosses than mundane things like technique.

It doesn't take long to find a clunker line in a Thomson piece; here, in his review of Gone Girl and The Blue Room, it's the very first one:

"Here are two films about murder and marriage—do they go together like a horse and carriage?"

:-s #-o

Is David Thomson the one who lusted after Nicole Kidman quite famously?

Infamously. He obsesses about her nude scenes for pages but anticipates the inevitable "hideous" wake-up-screaming moment when she ages out of the "nymph" phase of her career and becomes an adult (somewhere around the age of 40 by his estimation) but assures his readers that "this book was conceived and composed while she was still hot and hittable."

It's been reported that Condé Nast has purchased Pitchfork.

As you may remember, the Dissolve was actually a Pitchfork-owned and operated site. Perhaps there's a connection between its closure and this sale?

I mean if a company is trying to sell itself, it will, pardon the crude language, shed "unnecessary" fat.

That's what I figure - at the time, they were likely in negotiations, and unless they were doing something that defied common sense, dropping The Dissolve was probably done to help the sale.

Who are some of the critics and film writers you respect most? Whose reviews do you look forward to reading when a new film that looks interesting comes out?

I've commented on OutlawVern's website for 2-3 years now. I don't read every single thing he reviews, and the kinds of films he's more known for reviewing aren't totally my cup of tea (he's published a book about Steven Seagal's work), but of the films I've seen I liked what he's had to say about them.

I like Mark Kermode a bit too, mostly in his banter with Simon Mayo.

Given that Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian has been giving out five stars like confetti recently, best not to rely on his word too often anymore.

thirtyframesasecond wrote:Given that Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian has been giving out five stars like confetti recently, best not to rely on his word too often anymore.

This is stupid. Sometimes outliers occur. This may be an outlier year for him in terms of five star reviews.

Rex Reed 10 Best of 2015

This has got to be one of the safest, most boilerplate lists I have ever seen. http://observer.com/2015/12/rex-reed-th ... s-of-2015/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It does read as if it is for your consideration but I wouldn't read too much into one off lists. There's the odd year where I'm surprised by just how much my preferences tally with the Oscar contenders, then others where you can barely find an English language film amongst them.

For what it's worth, I understand The Assassin is his #11.

thirtyframesasecond wrote:Given that Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian has been giving out five stars like confetti recently, best not to rely on his word too often anymore.

Or best to ignore star ratings altogether. I don't know Bradshaw's views on them, but a great many critics loathe having to give them because they know full well that a great many people will use them as a substitute for the actual review.

A quarter of a century ago, one of my jobs involved filleting reviews for "money quotes" to use in ads and posters. Thankfully, the current practice of just moronically reproducing star ratings hadn't yet begun, so there was an actual art to it (especially if the film had a lukewarm or even negative critical reception).

TMDaines wrote: For what it's worth, I understand The Assassin is his #11.

All is forgiven.

MichaelB wrote:A quarter of a century ago, one of my jobs involved filleting reviews for "money quotes" to use in ads and posters. Thankfully, the current practice of just moronically reproducing star ratings hadn't yet begun, so there was an actual art to it (especially if the film had a lukewarm or even negative critical reception).

I guess that is also where a good, fair review stands out, as even a generally negative piece might still throw out a few points that could be picked out to work as positives to the right audience! Or at least suggest that a film has aspects that make it worth watching to form your own opinion and join in the debate on!

On pirated dvd's in China, they sometimes put quotes about a film on the back cover pulled directly from IMDb or some other website. Including distinctly negative reviews. One of the my favorites was a quote in large white letters at the top of the back cover of Elf: "Curiously Flaccid"