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Every Week, the Editorial Page with one-quarter byte... This week's Two Bits are best titled : "Is That your Second Answer?"With this, the premiere editorial of this web site, I thought tackling the most likely question is a good start : What was the driving force behind me making an entertainment review site...especially with so many of them already available? Good question. Worthy of a good answer. The initial driving force of this decision stems from the dimming quality of such reviews in even the most respected off-the-shelf publications. Their critics allege that they are so much more superior than other critics, because their opinion is "professional" ..."working for us, the consumers." This promise is requiring larger and larger leaps of faith each year. Gone are the days when they reviewed a movie based on how much they liked the movie. Lately, it's more important to praise "art films" --a borderline oxymoron, if there ever was one-- and the term entertain is thrown out the window. It has come to the point where any horrid film can throw out the "art film" trump card and survive; if the film stinks, it's an artistic statement. The end result is a once-respectable profession that has lost its edge. Granted, everyone is entitled to an opinion; mine as well as any critic's. However, a "professional" critic's opinion is often considered more important than our own (perhaps undeservedly, at times). As a result, they get perks, and we do not; a luxury they sorely take for granted. We don't have newspapers or magazines paying for our movie tickets. We're not invited to free sneak preview screenings. We aren't given cool feebies with a movie logo on them, to attempt to sway our review (a stunt more successful than most critics dare admit). We, by contrast, pay for our entertainment. We therefore rely on alleged "professional" critics to tell us what movies to spend our hard-earned money on. There is a major amount of trust here, and this trust is getting harder to offer each year. Why? Because some published reviews are far different from word-of-mouth reviews of a film (i.e., what we think). One such critic, just last year, gave the same stars (two and a half) to The Haunting as he did The Mummy, and even The Matrix(!). That same year, he gave the Oscar-nominated Cider House Rules a lower rating than Dudley Do Right (!!!). Granted, again, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, yet...eesh, movie bombs rated as highly as Blockbusters and/or Oscar-nominated films? Come on, now. At least the above critic doesn't review software, which is four times the price of a movie ticket (and even that is a kind estimate). With or without the above critic, such "professional" software reviews are often even worse. Most glossy magazines for such multimedia (as a rule) merely go into auto-pilot, heralding whatever title paid for the highest-priced, glossiest, multi-page ad. One magazine (again, nameless, to be polite) hit a major snafu over the holidays, praising Gabriel Knight III as one of the best adventures of the year. The problem? They never even played the game yet (!) They merely assumed (insert "assume" joke here) that the final product would deliver the goods. It didn't; an opinion they had to meekly admit, in an understandable retraction. While said magazine can merely say something like "oops," what is the consumer to say...? This consumer says...enough. Film reviewing is never an exact science. "Is that your final answer?" is best left for that cool quiz show, and not when looking for an opinion of what products to buy. As a result, I would never ask for anyone, anywhere, to hold my opinion as the best of all others. That's silly. However, I am much like any typical consumer, buying products right off the store shelf. When I see a movie, I have to pay for the ticket, especially if I choose one of those snazzy, new theaters with "stadium seating." Such a review, I feel, is as accurate to a consumer review as can be. As a result, such a web site deserves to be your final second answer...and a second opinion is a very good thing.
Oh well; enough for one editorial. Until next time!
I'm Techtite, and these are My Two Bits...
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