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one thing you find out as a historian type is that lists can be good.
other peoples' lists can be better than yours because you didnt make them.
other peoples' lists can be pillaged for information
critics are other people who make lists
they make lists and suggest them to a readership (no readership=no critic)
critics are usually more representative than they are interesting.
it works best if they are representative of the demographic of the space they work for.
no-one has to take what they say terribly seriously--they function anyway to talk about films they like and because they are representative that the imaginary median of their readership might also like.
why would you take seriously what a critic actually says?
i mean, who actually relied on siskel and ebert to inform their judgments?
leonard maltin? o and there's someone even worse--a horrible little man with glasses.
the only time i read what they say closely at all is if there is a huge list of films in a weekly paper. but even then, its mostly about the paper and its line--you can skim what the critics say and they reliably confirm that most hollywood films are not worth going to the theater for tho some are worth watching on a television while laying in bed but then again so is static.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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