The Internet has fatally wounded big c criticism. Big c criticism got its first major wounding in the mid-nineties with Independence Day. Then it got hit again with Armageddon. So it was down and bleeding and couldn’t defend itself—if it’d known how—for the death blow of social networking. Also, also, there was all the critic shake-up after Siskel died and so on and the New York Times changing then becoming irrelevant, which I’ve always blamed on them going with the three critic route instead of just platforming Elvis Mitchell.
It was the late 1990s or early 2000s, film had time to be better for that move.
Instead, we’ve got what we’ve got.
When I started writing, blogging was blogging and writing was writing. They were very, very separate.
I proofread writing, for goodness sake; I didn’t proofread blogging when I started and I don’t now… I’ve gotten better at spelling—or just found an accurately spelled vocabulary; some of those old posts are raggedy. I still find typos when I’m going through to update them. I’m doing Martin capsules. It’s a lengthy project but still fun blog tinkering, The most important aspects for being fun blog tinkering, in Capsules case, is getting to play with image manipulation. It also doesn’t require much new writing. I’m writing so much. It’s so much—four blogs, plus the Capsules micro-blog. If I had half a brain I’d start working towards consolidating the writing on The Stop Button and whatever else—video, podcast—on Visual Reflux. See, I had wanting to make my writing my blogging—meaning edit posts, meaning do drafts, meaning… proofread. But one of the great things about how and why social networking ended big c criticism is criticism’s never been better and there’s never been more of it. When Ebert brought in Richard Roeper, he broke the gate—seemingly unintentionally—and the gatekeepers have slowly lost power until now. Popular film got better faster than critics got about talking about better popular films. Even now there are some fundamental misunderstandings, with the old folks not listening when the young folks are right. Because the young folks know better. Right now some thirteen year-old out there has a better handle on my take on film than I do at 41. They’ve already got the algorithm. And they’ll have a better one next year while I’m catching up with the now twelve-year old who’s got it. It’s a different world and a better one for those differences.
Summing Up 