A very comprehenvis response and I won't ask you to delve into the whole issure much more but, while I have someone who obviously knows a lot about the current state of criticism from an insider's perspective - do critics today have the same freedoms as they did in Kael's day, or are they more straightjacketed by their newspapers? This may be a naive question but I'm just wondering to what extent critics have to 'tow the line'. I'm sure there must be many who'd never dream of bowing to commercial pressures but there do seem to be so many that are usually very positive, almost cheerleaders for big releases. Is there a clear deliniation between critics who are "soft" and those who can be considered "serious"?
Robert Koehler <[log in to unmask]> wrote: The personalities were perhaps larger in the 60s (Simon, Kael,
Sarris, MacDonald, etc) but they weren't necessarily better critics than the
ones working today. Again, I suggest anyone with access to variety.com to
peruse reviews from the 60s, and compare them to the ones written now; the
leap forward in every way is obvious. This is even true in a highly troubled
daily paper like the LA Times, which is pockmarked with bad reviews; but
compared with the LA Times in the 60s and 70s, they read comparatively like
masterworks. There isn't space here to discuss what the problems are and
where they lie, but the landscape is also far from a wasteland.
Robert Koehler
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