Tynan's Anger

Image via WikipediaWhich blog has the best commenters on the Internet? It’s not Deadspin or Gawker or any other Gawker Media blog. Those blogs have arguably the funniest commenters, but the real purpose of blog commenting is to enhance the discussion created by the original blog post. Instead, the best comments on the Internet come from one of the Internet’s most unlikely proactive bloggers: Roger Ebert. The Chicago Sun-Times film critic and longtime television star constantly poses difficult, challenging propositions on his blog, and consistently gets some of the most enlightened, reasonable responses. Most of Ebert’s comments sound more fitting for a college-level film class or expert panel discussion than an internet blog.


What makes the intelligence of Ebert’s comments all the more amazing is the relative lack of a filter Ebert puts on them. Comments are moderated for spam, but all the blog requires is a name, an email, and an optional URL. The standards to avoid getting filtered out are shockingly minimal; there are numerous angry rants mixed in with the enlightening comments. Ebert also posits very controversial questions, such as a set of rules for film critics. Perhaps most notably, he launched a debate over reviewing a movie that he stopped watching after 8 minutes. Those kind of tactics would normally produce all sorts of flame mail, especially considering the weakened authority of the mainstream media film critic as a result of blogs. Ebert’s comments, however, have enough Dear Roger, Dear Mr. Ebert, and even Dear Sir openings that it sounds more like The Economist than the blog stereotype.

Through reading the comments on Ebert’s blog, as well as its sister blog, Jim Emerson’s Scanners, I’m convinced that all bloggers can learn a thing or two from Ebert’s success. Ebert has put considerable craft and care into constructing his blog, and Ebert’s blog can be taken as a model for inspiring intelligent, reasonable blog comments in the future. Here are some ways the Ebert model can benefit us all:

1. Have authority on and off the web. For film snobs as casual fans alike, Ebert has been one of the faces of film criticism for decades. Unlike most movie bloggers, Ebert has a extended track record that goes back decades before the Internet and blogs ever existed. Whether it's due to nostalgia from his fans, the clout of his resume, or his pure skill and knowledge, Ebert and his authority makes people feel like they need to treat him with respect online. Ebert has also struck a chord with the blogging demographic by crossing the generational gap. It’s one thing for someone to make their name writing on the Internet. But when a writer from a previous generation devotes himself to new media, his popularity on the web skyrockets. It’s the same phenomenon that makes any story of a 106-year-old blogger almost guaranteed to hit the Digg home page every time.
2. Write well, and with respect. When former New York Times sports columnist Murray Chass started writing online, he refused to call himself a blogger, and spent a significant portion of his early “online writing” bashing the entire concept of blogging. As a result, Murray Chass was seen as a cranky old fart essentially writing Get Off My Lawn blog posts in denial. Most importantly, these “online articles” weren’t all that good. A general rule for blogs—and writing in general—is that hastily written rants will not win you a respectful, insightful audience. Usually, it will lead to even more offensive speech in comments. Ebert, however, takes his blog extremely seriously, and has never once questioned the legitimacy of the writing he is doing online. If he has ever done something he considers unfair in his blog, he has corrected himself. Furthermore, as Ebert has noted himself, the fact that he has lost the ability to speak in real life may have made his writing better. For years, the majority of people who knew of Roger Ebert only knew his television persona. Now, people are getting to know him for his gifts in writing, an area where he has surprisingly been underrated.
   
3. Always be interested in what your commenters have to say. One of the best qualities of Ebert’s blog is that just about every blog post is poised as a question to his readers. Ebert’s open-ended questions are the perfect utilization of his authority to promote discussion online. It wouldn’t all that out of line to argue that Ebert’s blog has produced some of the best critical discussion of the film you can find anywhere in the past year. That only works because Ebert’s posts are specifically designed for commenter feedback. His particular style leads to more intelligent feedback precisely because it is so open to that feedback. It’s one thing to have authority and blog: Murray Chass has authority, as do NPR blogs or New York Times blogs. But those blogs don’t get the same kind of intelligent comments—the kind you could hear in a classroom as well as a web forum—because they don’t treat the reader like a peer. Ebert's blog does.
   
4. Find time to recognize and praise your commenters—even the bad ones. Of course, very few of the people who comment on Ebert’s blog are Ebert’s peer, both in terms of status and skill. No doubt many of the comments he gets are hurtful, or often just plain stupid. But Ebert has still maintained excellent blog comments because he has repeatedly and overwhelmingly praised his commenters. He has cited other bloggers who recognize the strength of his comments (which he now includes in his blog's sidebar), and talks repeatedly about how the commenters on his blog have given him personal satisfaction. Ebert’s blog is a success story of the blogophere, and part of the reason for his success is that Ebert makes it so his readers want to maintain a the high level of discourse Ebert praises his commenters for, whether or not they always meet that standard. It’s hard to respond nastily to someone who is being so nice and respectful of your right to comment.

Granted, based on rule #1, it would be hard for just anyone to start a blog and acquire the same level of comments. But by catering to your niche and following the other guidelines, most blogs can eventually develop a level of discussion much higher than what we’re seeing now.

Labels: Blog, Chicago Sun-Times, film criticism, Gawker Media, internet comments, Murray Chass, roger ebert

You Got Yr Link Bomb is meant as a cross between the Will Cordero Memorial Linkpunch and the Week in Review post of the Gawker Media blog of your choice. Hence: links featuring commentary with heavily regulated snark. These links did not get the full Tynan's Anger treatment, through no fault of their own.

---

• Mark Ravenhill, the Angry Gay Man of the '90s who once committed Tynan's Anger blasphemy by lambasting the Angry Young Men of the '50s, comes out with a pretty interesting argument against playwrights reading their plays aloud as good editing practice. Playwrights, Ravenhill says, understand dialogue better in their head, and reading it aloud makes dialogue sound worse than with an actor reading it. That is if you're a good playwright, but you don't have enough clout to have actors read it offhand, and you are as neurotic a reader as I am. I guess it makes sense, though it may just be Ravenhill's attempt to counter what every playwriting teacher teaches just cause he can. How provocative!
• Sarah Palin and McCain have started a disturbing trend by equating science funding with earmark spending. With McCain, this tend is probably just macho military hatred of nerds. But according to Slate, in Palin's case, it's a sign of her anti-intellectualism and Fundamentalist Christianity. While it still must seem ridiculous to the rest of the world that this approach has any legitimacy in the U.S., the good thing is that it seems to be on the way out. The evangelical/Fundamentalist Christian hatred of science, which just 4 years ago seemed like half the country, now seems like a smallish minority. Of course, as Richard Hofstadter would tell you, that should change back to anti-intellectualism in the next 20 years—maybe twice.
• Kenneth Turan is now the only full-time film critic at the Los Angeles Times. Carina Chocano announced that she was one of the staffers canned in the latest editorial purge. Now, at the major paper in the capital of the American film industry, there's only one full-time critic and a bunch of freelancers. True, the L.A. Times has got perhaps America's best critic in Turan, but this is a depressing development all the same.
• Tracy Morgan is a human roller coaster, but it's worth it for the material he produces on 30 Rock. At this point, all Morgan has to say is "Liz Lemon" and I'll burst out laughing. Other than the schmaltzy ending, my only major complaint about Thursday's 30 Rock premiere was that they didn't find more time for the Tracy and his porn video game subplot. The More Mozart/Salieri parallels, the better.
  
• Please, please, please, Sam Mendes, don't screw up Preacher. One of the best comic book series of the last 25 years, the one that got me into comic books in the first place, is finally hitting the big screen after a failed attempt at an HBO series. Mendes's Road to Perdition adaptation remains underrated, which particularly upsetting when you consider how ridiculously overrated American Beauty was. Preacher was a more comic book-y comic book than Perdition, so there's a lot of room for Mendes to either grow as a director or fail fantastically. But hey, it's less impossible of an adaptation than Watchman...
• The DMCA turned 10 years old this week. Everyone admits that the Clinton administration bill has shaped digital media to what it is today, just as everyone admits how infuriating and controversial the bill's details have been over the last 10 years. If I'm right, history will judge the DMCA to be as important as something like the GI Bill or the Homestead Act. Some day there will be an entire genre of a new arts media about the flame wars in the Old Web. Can Second Life be considered a 51st state?
  

Labels: 30 rock, angry young man, comic book movies, dmca, film criticism, los angeles times, mark ravenhill, preacher, sam mendes, science wars, tracey morgan

(This review was initially published on Blogcritics)

If you're trying to find a label for Sixty Six, you may have a harder time than it at first seems. The movie could easily be reduced to coming of age story in the mold of Simon Birch and Almost Famous. It could also be deemed an ethnic comedy in the vein of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and The Brothers McMullen.

While Sixty Six is both a coming of age story and an ethnic comedy, in this case, the ethnicity happens to be Jewish. That gives the film access to about a century’s worth of conventions, cultural signifiers, and stereotypes associated with everything from the Catskills to the cabaret. Sixty Six, however, appeals to none of those stereotypes, and discovers a Jewish world virtually unheard of in any generation of cinema.

Sixty Six focuses on London’s East End Jews, a sector of Jewish life virtually ignored in film, save for a handful of appearances as gangsters' bankers (in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch the one Jewish character in the London crime scene wasn’t even Jewish). The film regards the Bar Mitzvah of Bernie Rubens (Gregg Sulkin), a diminutive, ignored outcast whose dream of an elaborate Bar Mitzvah is ruined by being scheduled on the same day as the World Cup Final. We’re expected to know from the start that England was destined to make the final, and that no one will subsequently show up to his big day, but the film’s plot works just as easily for an American audience who’s barely heard of Pele. So Sixty Six simultaneously has every precedent set and no precedent set, and the betwixt and between side of the filmmaking is readily apparent, though probably more so to an American than a British audience.

In terms of the style of comedy, the manic humor of Sixty Six is more akin to Malcolm in the Middle than Mel Brooks. If it does play with Jewish neurosis, is does so from what ostensibly seems to be an outsider’s perspective. Bernie’s obsessive-compulsive father Manny (Eddy Marsan) is played as a tougher, blue collar neurotic far removed from the American Woody Allen image of the anxious schlemiel who can barely get his work done. The jokes range from the borderline scatological, the Cockney smartass, the brazen flashback, and even a touch of British dry wit, but except for moments when Manny gives a speech listing the various illness of family members, there’s nary a hint of Jewish black sarcasm to be found.

Bernie, overwhelmed with the world and his family situation, resembles the 10-year-old stand-in for Woody Allen in Annie Hall. But everyone around him defies expectation. In additon to Manny, mother Esther (the surprisingly well-cast Helena Bonham Carter) doesn’t come close to the Jewish stereotype, and slick businessman Uncle Jimmy (Peter Serafinowicz) is a far cry from Seinfeld’s Uncle Leo. Notably, none of the major actors in the family are Jewish in real life. But is the lack of a sense of familiarity a product of the actors’ lack of understanding of Jewish identity, or is it a product of the cultural differences between English and American Jews?

That’s not to say the performances are disappointing, or that Sixty Six is a bad movie. Marsan, for one, is particularly noteworthy as the heartbreaking, sympathetic father who just wants to do the right thing despite all the misfortune and bad luck sent his way (though he’s far from perfect, even in his intentions). Carter, who’s acquired a reputation for playing weird, spaced-out roles, here plays the grounded, down to earth mother who can sense the strengths and weaknesses of everyone in her life, and is not afraid of pointing them out. Other than a commanding love of her son, Esther is nowhere near Sophie Portnoy. While he doesn’t quite have the range needed for the role, Sulkin, who ironically has a background in professional soccer, has mastered the facial expression of the desperation for attention that you can see on just about any socially ostracized kid who’s ever lived.

The movie is certainly flawed, but by no means painfully so. It’s quite a schmaltzy movie, and the cheese only increases as it goes along. The script has its fair share of stereotypical characters, is not above jokes that make fun of the blind or neighbors with freakishly large breasts. But the inevitable growing up that is demanded of Bernie still manages to be inspiring despite itself, and even the most hardened will struggle not to tear up a little. Although the film promises to be a story about growing up from traumatic childhood experiences, it ends up as more of a father-son bonding story than a coming of age. It’s a most unexpected final note after Manny virtually ignores Bernie for the first two-thirds of the film. If the film’s prime taste is cheese, it’s well-aged, fine cheese.

That the film took two years between its U.K. and U.S. premieres should be no surprise. Despite its charms, Sixty Six is far too Anglo-centric to make a serious dent in the U.S. Yet, it may not even appeal to those American intellectuals who love all things Blighty. Sixty Six is part of a new generation of multicultural British drama, one that first hit the U.S. with Bend It Like Beckham and has seen various incarnations such as My Son the Fanatic, Children of Men, and This is England. It reflects a culture that is questioning the very nature of Britishness, and represents a change of British values to something that more closely resembles the American. Combine this kind of unfamiliar England with the unfamiliar Judaism, and you have a movie that will be utterly baffling to American audiences.

The biggest question with Sixty Six is whether we’ll be seeing more films like this in the future. In addition to representing a new kind of British film, we’re experiencing a new kind of Judaism here in the U.S. As Jews get further and further removed from Ellis Island and World War II, a whole slew of generational eccentricities pop up. In the lighter realm, we get the hip-hop leaning New York drug dealer Luke Shapiro of The Wackness and the slackers of the Judd Apatow film, for which Judaism is more a vehicle for comedy than a source of cultural values. Yet, we also get the globally-minded Judaism of Munich and A Mighty Heart’s Daniel Pearl, where Israel plays an increasingly large role in the American eye.

In that kind of diversity, will films like Sixty Six, which address traditional Jewish issues more subtly and from a more unique angle, find a place in contemporary filmmaking? Paul Weiland, whose previous credits include work with the Mr. Bean television show and City Slickers II, is hardly a pioneering filmmaker. But whether he meant to or not, Weiland may be onto something new here.

Labels: eddy marsan, england, film criticism, gregg sulkin, helena bonham carter, jews, london, movie review, paul weiland, sixty six

No sooner do I get home from Vermont than do I see the trade papers' reviews of The Dark Knight, which I had completely forgotten came out this week. Both reviews are quite positive, with THR's Kirk Honeycutt seeing slightly more flaws in casting and plot development than Variety's Justin Chang gave it almost unqualified praise. I will now spend the entire week waiting to get a chance to see it. Hopefully I can make arrangements for Friday

Labels: dark knight, film criticism, the hollywood reporter, variety

In 2003, there was a movie version of The Incredible Hulk comic book saga that focuses heavily (some would say excessively) on the psychological trauma of the Hulk. New York Times head movie critic A.O. Scott called it "incredibly long, incredibly tedious, and incredibly turgid." Five years later, in part due to the response of critics like Scott, the franchise was completely reworked, with a heavier emphasis on Hulk smashing things. There was a passing, but acceptable amount of backstory. To A.O. Scott, this is the equivalent of "The Adequate Hulk," and his one-sentence summary reads, "There are some big, thumping fights and a few bright shards of pop-cultural wit, but for the most part this movie seems content to aim for the generic mean."

Look, I'm not trying to go on a witch hunt against Scott. I think overall he's one of the more responsible critics in the country, one who's not afraid to express his own priorities—even if they go against the grain—and also has a good grasp of the state of American filmmaking. But I find this kind of approach to criticism unacceptable. Here we have two poles of the same story: one Hulk heavy on psychology, another heavy on action (though both have a fair amount of each). Yet, neither is good enough for Scott, which begs the question of what kind of Incredible Hulk movie would Scott find actually appreciate.

In fact, his explanation for why he's hesitant towards the Hulk franchise expresses a fundamental misunderstanding of the appeal of the comic book movie:

“The Incredible Hulk” less interesting — clumsier, more brutish — than many of its comic-book-derived counterparts. Superhero movies depend not only on virtuosic special effects or action set pieces, but also, perhaps even more, on the psychological drama of existential division. The mild-mannered reporter is also the man of steel; the reclusive millionaire dons mask and cape to fight evil.

I don't know what psychological division is more extreme than mild mannered, likeable scientist and giant green angry monstrosity (rather Freudian when you think about it). Never mind that, for most fans of actual comic books, the Incredible Hulk is consistently listed as one of the most intellectually fascinating franchises. He's seen as one of the more psychologically complex comic book characters, where Bruce Banner, despite his relatively sweet, genuine nature, is forced to live in isolation for what he can become if he gets angry. He's seen as comic book's best criticism of the Cold War spirit: that by combining nuclear science, militaristic values and capitalism with humanity, we've forced ourselves to become an increasingly isolated society with the potential to become fatally dangerous against our will.

How Scott, one of the more theoretically astute major American critics, can miss this side of the Hulk is beyond me. As I have said earlier, I don't think even Orson Welles could make a Hulk that would fit Scott's standards. It's a critic's job to tell an audience how a work of art succeeded or failed in accomplishing its goals and point out what could have been better about its approach. What a critic should never do is dismiss the whole enterprise outright.

Labels: a.o. scott, film criticism, the hulk, the incredible hulk

Jeff Simon lambasts the glamorous lifestyle of the film critic, which apparently resembles the life of Paris Hilton. Has he been to a screening and looked at the personal appearances of the attendees lately? Also, what the odds that Rex Reed is the "movie critic [he[ recognized but didn’t know emerged from a large journalism factory in the company of a very attractive young woman."

Labels: film criticism, stupid, your medium is dy-ing

A.O. Scott had a great piece over the weekend on the return of Roger Ebert's written reviews, pointing out rightly that his writing, not his T.V. arguing, has always been his greatest strength. He even makes some choice observations about the state of film criticism that—gasp!— have not been repeated ad nauseum over the last 3 years:

Such attrition is hardly limited to movie reviewers, and it has more to do with the economics of newspapers than with the health of criticism as a cultural undertaking...

It seems to me that “Sneak Previews” and its descendants, far from advancing the vulgarization of film criticism, extended its reach and strengthened its essentially democratic character.

While he still feels the need to make a point about a glut of online critics, his point about newspaper economy and democratization are surprisingly insightful. I'm glad he didn't resort to the mother's basement line of arguing. That would just make him look silly. Oh wait:

Labels: a.o. scott, film criticism, roger ebert, your medium is dy-ing