{"id":2698,"date":"2019-03-20T19:22:24","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T19:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/?p=2698"},"modified":"2019-03-20T19:39:38","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T19:39:38","slug":"write-about-film-jeremy-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/write-about-film-jeremy-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Write About Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came of age in the 1980s when mainstream film criticism had been reduced to advertising-friendly blurbs, pithy sound bites and thumbs-up or -down value judgments.<\/span><\/p>\n

The critic\u2019s job during the Reagan era was to determine whether the week\u2019s new theatrical releases were worthy of one\u2019s time and hard-earned dough. As a precocious film buff with strong opinions, this simplistic, purely egocentric type of \u201creviewing\u201d proved irresistible. By the age of eight, I\u2019d adopted the buzzy lingo of Gene Siskel, Roger Ebert, Gene Shalit and Joel Siegel \u2014 TV personalities as much as writers \u2014 to convey my pre-adolescent assessments of the narrow cultural spectrum between <\/span>Tootsie<\/i><\/strong> and <\/span>Halloween III<\/i><\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I got older and more adventurous in my film viewing, I lost interest in the notion of criticism as a consumer report. It wasn\u2019t enough to know that David Lynch\u2019s <\/span>Blue Velvet<\/i><\/strong> is \u201ca one-of-a-kind stunner\u201d; I wanted to dig deep into its overt symbolism and dark themes \u2014 the elements that resisted clear-cut explanation. I sought out writers who could explain the craft of Brian De Palma\u2019s <\/span>The Untouchables<\/i><\/strong>. And when Spike Lee\u2019s <\/span>Do the Right Thing<\/i><\/strong> dynamited my world in 1989, I had to read every piece of criticism that struggled with a film that \u2014 to a white kid from Ohio \u2014 took place in a <\/span>very<\/span><\/i> foreign land. <\/span><\/p>\n

This lead me to Pauline Kael, Danny Peary, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Armond White and so many other brilliant\/challenging\/infuriating critics. (They’re not online, but you should seek out Kael’s reviews of Casualties of War<\/em><\/strong>, Last Tango in Paris<\/em><\/strong>, and Nashville<\/em><\/strong>.) In the early 1990s, I discovered the rec.arts.movies newsgroup on Usenet and spent hours chopping it up with other cinephiles. When I grew tired of working dead-end jobs in New York City in the late \u201990s, I enthusiastically backed my way into the profession \u2014 first via <\/span>Ain\u2019t It Cool News<\/span><\/i>, and later on sites like <\/span>CHUD<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>DVD Journal<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Collider<\/span><\/i> (which I co-founded). <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

LtR: Pauline Kael, Danny Peary, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Armond White<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Film courses at Ohio University gave me a foundation in formalist theory and a basic, hands-on knowledge of technique \u2014 and while I don\u2019t believe you need to go to film school to be a good critic, you <\/span>must<\/span><\/i> immerse yourself in these studies if you want your work as a critic to be at all worth reading. (On that note, I also took literature, history and political science courses at OU. The broader your frame of reference, the more you have to offer intellectually in your writing.)<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s value in analyzing films from a non-technical, socio-political perspective, but being able to identify thoughtful shot composition will allow you to distinguish authorial intent from run-of-the-mill hackery. And once you comprehend how much information \u2014 narratively and thematically \u2014 can be conveyed within a single shot, you\u2019ll understand why The Turin Horse<\/em><\/strong> was such a hit with critics. <\/span><\/p>\n