Just wondering what everyone thinks of music critcs and movie critcs in general?

Hate them. I'll decide for myself if something is good or not.

I totally agree.

I actually don't consider any critic's opinion worth anything unless they have:

Recorded and released and promoted several of their own cds and have performed their own music live

or

Written, produced and acted in their own films

or at least have had some direct experience DOING the things they criticize

In my book, the level of seriousness at which I listen to someone's opinion is directly related to these things

You're both wrong

do tell....

They are people with opinions. Sometimes they have something interesting to say. Sometimes they don't.

Of course it depends on the people.
There are critics with a solid formation on music/cinema and the can argument their opinions (Many people study cinema but few can direct for it's too expensive)

I personally like to know what informed, educated people think about a movie or a CD though ultimately I will form my own opinion.

You can't say a CD is bad because the singer looks like a pig, Cloudy

the key is to get familiar with the critic's personal taste.....they can be helpful tools in making purchase (or viewing) decisions.....

These days I like to find out for myself, even if I end up paying for something I don't listen to all that often.

If you take critics in your favorite magazines too seriously, you can end up missing music that suits your needs.

Most music critics and their opinions are driven by the economics of the record industry. That's why a lot of debut albums are given good reviews and once an artist gets a few albums into their career theyll get less attention and worse reviews. Of course this could reflect the quality of the music but often than not it's a case of finding something else to rave about. Of course 20 or so years later you'll get the usual "neglected on release" "lost classic appreciated today" bullshit.

If i want to find an honest review of a new album i'll go to allmusic.com. I don't really trust the rest.

WildheartXXX said:

Even allmusic has some off reviews.

CinisterCee said:

It's not perfect but at least they try and justify why they don't like it or rate it. Stephen Erlewine is a very good music journalist. I'd rather read his reviews than anyone elses.

WildheartXXX said:

You'd find interesting what they say about Coldplay, Keane, Travis and family

I think many of them deliberately latch on to obscure works that are hard for their readers to find or see, as if to prove their superior knowledge. Most of the time, it only proves their pretentiousness.

WildheartXXX said:

Stephen Thomas Erlewine is on crack. Absolutely adores Jennifer Lopez, has it in for Mariah. There's some disconnect there.

Wow, you guys are real critic haters. If a critic is good, I love them, I'm devoted. Critics help me grab onto a work and think about it in my own way. I don't always agree, but I enjoy the process of thinking about it. A great critic can articulate subtle emotions and interpretations that otherwise remain a bit foggy. While they may not be musicians or directors, they can be skilled writers and perceptors -- interpretation is an art in its own right. The reason critics talk about obscure stuff (which is a good thing, imo) is that they watch/listen to so much, the obscure stuff becomes much more interesting than the mainstream -- their taste becomes more refined. It's also their job to alert the public to what's out there because most of us don't have time to comb through it all.

But I agree, a great critic is hard to find.

Don't depend on them for anything music related. Music is too relative.

Now if I read several bad film reviews, I'll avoid the flick.

I like some critics, others not so much. Some crtics I admire as much as any of my favorite writers. To name a few:



Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) is an amazing jazz critic. Author of Black Music:

[i]This scintillating collection by Amiri Imamu Baraka, published in 1968 under his birth name Leroi Jones, covers a wide range of jazz writings from 1959 to 1967. Baraka's engaging and prophetic portraits of Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Bobby Bradford, Cecil Taylor, Thelonious Monk, Roy Haynes, Don Cherry, and John Coltrane (whom he called "the heaviest spirit") beam with an electric and fluid language that mirrors those artists' speed-of-light improvisations. In "Jazz and the White Critic," which blasts white critics who judge jazz by European, rather than African American, standards, Jones wrote, "As Western people, the sociocultural thinking of 18th-century Europe comes to us as history and legacy that is a continuous and organic part of the 20th-century West. The sociocultural philosophy of the Negro in America ... is no less specific and no less important for any intelligent critical speculation about the music that came out of it." His analysis of the burgeoning avant-garde scene in "Apple Cores #1-6," "New York Loft and Coffee Shop Jazz," and "The Jazz Avant-Garde" accurately depicts the artistic promise and peril of that period in the words of a literary genius who was there and helped create it. --Eugene Holley Jr.[/i]



Lester Bangs was a brilliant rock critic. Check out Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung : The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock'N'Roll.

Until his death in 1982 at age 34, Bangs wrote freewheeling rock 'n' roll pieces for Creem, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice and London's NME (New Musical Express. As a rock critic, he was adept at distinguishing the commercially packaged product from the real thing. Written in a conversational, wisecracking, erotically charged style, his impudent reviews and essays explore the connections between rock and the body politic, the way rock stars cow their audiences and how the pursuit of success and artistic vision destroys or makes rock performers as human beings. This collection (which includes no Rolling Stone pieces) covers "fake moneybags revolutionary" Mick Jagger, John Lennon ("I can't mourn him"), David Bowie "in Afro-Anglican drag," Iggy Pop, the Troggs, Lou Reed, Van Morrison, Chicago, the Clash, many more.

Stax said:

Very cool. Since you brought out Amiri.


In this corner...



I love reading someone like Stanley Crouch both when he is and isn't writing about music. Knowing his musical bias going in, it's always a treat to read his justifications. On subjects other than music, Stanley is always an interesting read.


Excerpts from an 2001 interview with American Enterprise...

TAE: A former girlfriend of yours said, "I know it sounds extreme, but Stanley really does believe rap and rock and roll are the devil."

CROUCH: That was a bit extreme on her part. When people conclude that all is futile, then the absurd becomes the norm. That's the fundamental message of the Marilyn Mansons: He just looks like an idiot.

I was looking at this guy Snoop Dogg on MTV; the level of intellectual sluggishness that this man represents, and most of these rappers represent, is staggering to me. These people are so inarticulate, what they're saying is so pedestrian, their interests are so narrow, and their sense of style is so simple-minded--you have that peasant vulgarity that has nothing to do with class.

Louis Armstrong, who learned to be in exquisite dress, came from the bottom, and he's not a trash can. There's this obsession with the bottom being the best. So that's why, to get to the top, they want to act like they're at the bottom.

TAE: What's the difference between a kid who grows up admiring Duke Ellington and a kid who grows up wanting to pattern himself after Snoop Dogg?

CROUCH: What can Snoop Dogg do? He can't sing. He can't write. His ideas are so pedestrian. If there's an intellectual highway, there's also an intellectual subway. The only difference between an intellectual subway and the real subway is that the real subway actually goes faster than the cars on the street. In the intellectual subway, not only is it below ground, it actually moves far slower. So we're talking about somebody who's intellectually moving at the pace of a worm moving in very hard soil and somebody who's in a Lamborghini. That's the difference between Duke Ellington and Snoop Dogg.


http://www.findarticles.c...icle.jhtml
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

theAudience said:

Ahh, Stanley. Funny you mention him. He feels the same way about Amiri as he does about Snoop.



STANLEY CROUCH ON AMIRI BARAKA, "New Jersey's "Poet Laureate":

It was simple evolution: All whites - and Jews especially - should be murdered; then all Negroes who did not submit to his agenda; then all homosexuals; then all capitalists; then all who did not agree that the Western world and capitalism should be destroyed.

True, Jones began his career more than 40 years ago as a very talented Greenwich Village poet, essayist, playwright and novelist, a black bohemian with a Jewish wife and two children. But that LeRoi flipped out inthe late '60s, left his wife and children after deciding to become a racist black leader and sold out his talent in the interest of hysterical diatribes that have gotten neither worse nor better in the past 35 years. Consistency is all.

For those who would celebrate his writing, there is only one question. What good book has he written since 1965? What truly good poem? Or does one become a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and poet laureate of New Jersey just by staying alive?
[Edited 5/10/05 21:15pm]

Stax said:

I'm hip, which is why I said, "In this corner..."


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

theAudience said:

I thought that might be the case.

EMattP said:

Roger Ebert is THE only movie critic that I can try to take seriously. All other movie critics can just stay home for all I care.

And music critics? They don't know shit!!!

CinisterCee said:

At least I can listen to albums at The Virgin Megastore & Tower Records BEFORE I buy anything.

And don't forget about MP3s...OK I will not go there on this thread!

TonyVanDam said:

Yes, and then he gave The Cell four stars, Angel Eyes three stars, and Gigli two-and-a-half stars and wouldn't shut up about how it "almost worked" on his TV show. For once he looked like a total moron in front of Roeper. It was only then that I realized he was obsessed with J.Lo's tits.

VoicesCarry said:

he has a thing for ethnic woman that does tend to bleed into his reviewing of films....

but then he loathed that Woman Thou whatever movie..but you could see that it pained him to give it a bad review....Oh how upset he was when fans of the film started calling him racist..he posted a very long essay on it....never once did he mention that he is married to a black woman.. i was just hoping he would....

VoicesCarry said:

J.Lo has tits?!

I'msurprised anyone could see past that ass!

the worst critics are those shitty vh1 people. The ones on those lists they always do.

Critics are cool. We need criticism right? As for reading alot of reviews or whatever? I tend not to.
[Edited 5/11/05 8:01am]

TonyVanDam said:

B. Ruby Rich and Pauline Kael are excellent movie critics.

PEOPLE's Leah Rosen's a pretty good film critic.