I told you that in confidence
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Mickey 17 was a blast. I love Robert Pattinson. Give me more Robert Pattinson goofy voice movies!!! I will be there, day one
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I think theres a difference between ātasteā and criticism as a social and economic phenomenon vs a more cleanly artistic one. I mean hamilton is ābadā because the actual material of it is dog shit, not because of the context and community around it - or at least these arent the same thing. Pitchfork poptimism and indie rock guy shtick is bad because the ācriticismā it produces is dull and insight-free and serves to marshal a community of appreciators rather than being illuminating in and of itself. Am I way off here? We read Keats criticial writing in sophomore year or whatever and he was right in 1802 and is still right today imo, or at least Iāve never really intellectually developed beyond that. My bad maybe. Again - Iām not arguing for some kind of New Critical self-servingly blinkered perspective just that you need cart+horse I think
not even the Brenda Lee version of āJingle Bell Rockā?
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Heās never actively listened to music by a woman/put it on for himself to listen to 
I used to love their pans. Now it seems like they put out one big pan yearly and play nice with all the rest
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I appreciate you sharing all that especially about the Celine Dion thing @Hunter
My godās honest reaction to all of that about Celine was being absolutely gobsmacked at the author being so convinced he has better taste than everyone else that he wrote a damn book about it. The arrogance of that is absolutely off the charts
A man hunched over a typewriter, furiously hammering away at the keys, "these RUBES like this womanās songs 
"
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Iāve stayed out of this conversation largely because Iāve suffered through similar ones multiple times in the past and have become wary.
I think critical appraisal of all works is always valid. I also separate my thoughts on things I think are āgoodā (I like them) and things I think are āwell madeā (positive critical appraisal). Often these sets overlap, but not always. Iāve mentioned something similar regarding my feelings around games in general on these boards also ā I strongly feel that āfavouriteā and ābestā are two different things.
The conversations Iāve had in the past I disliked were because people could not (or would not) accept this distinction, which usually devolves to something along the lines of ābut {arbitrarily large number} of people like it, how can it be bad?ā or ābut it sold {however many} copies / tickets / etc, so it must be goodā.
ie, I think Oppenheimer (and most of Nolanās oeuvre) is dogshit, yet it remains popular and even highly awarded. I think Wim Wendersā Until The End Of The World is brilliant, although it was a commercial failure and poorly received at the time. It currently sits at 6.8 on IMDB.
No, you are spot-on.
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it can be a little unkind to rag on pitchfork type stuff bc they all make -$1000000/hour and get fired every two weeks, but in addition to just at the sentence level often being annoying, itās the approach to criticism where youāre setting up context for āappreciatingā something without doing much honest work to do that well. To talk specifics: pitchfork moved to Chicago and has often engaged in this kind of hagiography disguised at criticism of music from there, which to someone like me whose family was gentrified out (and Polish people had the much easier end of this vs the Puerto Ricans in the same neighborhood for whom it wasnt as simple as selling the house to real estate developers and moving to the suburbs) of the parts of the city that get eulogized on behalf of say for example rich kid Liz Fairās personal feminist journey, you know rings a little annoying. Whatās this mythology about rough parts of town where there was apparently nothing of note until a wilco record? I mean other than entire generations of families and communities. But personal resentments aside itās this elision of material reality to build up your own subjectās importance on favorable terms that I dont think you can really call honest criticism.
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lol remembering perhaps the nadir of pitchfork in Chicago (so far anyway) when I guess they thought it would be cool to do an interview with Chief Keef at a gun range, so they brought him out there but it violated his parole or something and he got locked up again. And he was like 16 at the time. This is a child what are you idiots doing good lord. Have to leer at the culture though I guess
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The book began as an entry in the 33 1/3 series, where an author pitches/is assigned an album to review at book length. They are short, pocket-sized books, usually 100 pages or so. His book on Celine Dion was more of just a straight album review (pan) but was so popular that he expanded it out into the much longer version that I linked above
re: Pitchfork - Iāve had a mildly positive view. At least a few writers I like have contributed or been staff writers at some point. There are little bits of writing Iāve liked and kept. But Iāve read them less and less (weāre down to yearly check-in territory) since the Conde Nast acquisition.
I think twitter stans are absolutely insane about Pitchfork though and that makes me take the siteās side reflexively.
I disagree, but interestingly, the reasons I disagree with you are informed by similar experiences that you mention in your following paragraph.
I pretty much tune out any time someone starts throwing around the words āobjectively goodā to describe art - usually bolstered by its popularity as evidence for how itās āobjectivelyā good. I see the process of describing something as āwell-madeā as an effort to appeal to objectivity where there isnāt any. Whatever features allow a person to describe something as āwell madeā are still informed by their subjective experiences - usually their subjective interpretation of what others like/want out of that object.
e.g. Someone could say āmy favorite Coen Brothers movie is The Big Lebowski but the best Coen Brothers movie is Fargoā and itās a completely nonsensical sentence because it tells you nothing about the distinction between the two. You could ask for that person to explain but then youāll get not just what their subjective opinions of each movie are, but their subjective opinion on how to distinguish āfavoriteā from ābest.ā Another person could tell you their āfavoriteā and ābestā Coen Brothers movies but the way person B interprets that distinction can differ from how person A interprets those words.
The only movie Iāve seen from that list is Grand Budapest Hotel. Iām a sucker for his films in the same way Iām a sucker for Salinger stories. Iām exactly the target demographic. Middle class kids that fantasize about being savants that canāt stop getting in their own way.
Iām going to put the others on the list.
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One billion percent agree with you on this. I only observe this sort purposeful diminishing of oneās own opinions (āI like this but I recognize itās not good goodā) in very sort of high minded (positive) spaces like IC or very art-focused places and I feel like itās an instinct borne out of self āprotectionā. Every space has orthodoxies and a sort of communal, in-group ātasteā that it takes a lot of confidence in oneās own taste to not feel browbeaten by. Someone who posts here in IC who watches and bounces off of a thread favorite would probably feel compelled to say, āWhat a good movieāIāll have to watch it again to really understandā instead of saying they really didnāt like it per their own taste
Taste is wicked personal and wicked subjective, whereas critics and Criticism have sort of carved out a niche whereby people are convinced that critics and Criticism can be āCorrectā instead of just that particular personās personal taste reflected in writing.
Imo, everyone should strive to examine and refine their own taste and push their own boundaries within that taste, since pushing-and-testing the limits of oneās own perspectives is I think always valuable! But at the same time everyone should strive to have the courage of their own taste and be unafraid to say they didnāt like something artistically beloved and/or commercially popular and be able to express why
I think the Middle Way of, āI didnāt like it but it was still good like, objectively, somehowā is a bit stifling
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it is happening again and I just give up never talking about this again
Has anyone here seen the movie Freakdance?
I think Pitchfork varies wildly based on the individual reviewers. Thereās a handful of contributers there currently who I think are as good as anyone writing in music in decades, but thereās no shortage of bad writing there either. I think itās leagues better than how it was during the Brent DiCrescenzo era where they were writing incredibly self obsessed stuff about indie rock albums that not even they would recognize a year later
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yes not really fair of me to overgeneralize across a heterogeneous group of dozens of writers. I will say the problem Iām describing still persists to the present though. But apart from having an axe to grind just meant to speak to the topic at hand and point out that to the question of what material is worthy of serious consideration: I think the answer is anything and everything, just depends what you can get from it. And using pitchfork as example of I think regularly doing the inverse in trying to make something āworthyā of appreciation rather than just doing the real criticism. I mean I think itās a problem with popular music writing in general Robert christgau has been doing an annoying shtick for like 60 years at this point
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I feel about Christgau the way I suspect a lot of folks here feel about Ebert lol
theyāre both big Wussy fans
Crimewave (1985) Vs. Crime Wave (1985)
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