Book Review Sections Are Being Cut Back For This???
From today's New York Times review of "Rush Hour 3":
There’s nothing new about any of this, yet it does bear repeating every so often, even in a movie review. Like a lot of big-ticket productions “Rush Hour 3” will flood into theaters this weekend (gobbling up more than 3,700 of the nation’s approximately 38,000 screens) and, because of its ubiquity and its brawny advertising muscle, will pull in a sizable chunk of change. Bad reviews won’t make a lick of difference to its box office, though franchise fatigue might.
The NYT is right. Reviews--good, bad, indifferent--will likely not cause any sort of difference in how "Rush Hour 3" performs. Only the individual moviegoer will decide if they've had enough of Tucker/Chan, or are up for another helping of gruel. So basically newspapers across the country will be devoting thousands of words and dozens of inches of column space to a "story" that will likely have no effect whatsoever. If there was a ratio of "words spent" to "influence," reviewing this movie would have to rank among the all-time lowest.
I'm not a fan of the "Rush Hour" movies, but I don't argue against their being made. They've grossed a bajillion dollars, so obviously a bunch of people out there like it. But all those words devoted to, basically, hot air? Wouldn't that space be better spent, you know, making a difference? Reviewing a book that might not otherwise get attention it deserves? Nope. We must blanket the earth with professional opinions of a Brett Ratner 'film'.
Because lord knows if we didn't, people might just not know about the darn thing.
From today's New York Times review of "Rush Hour 3":
There’s nothing new about any of this, yet it does bear repeating every so often, even in a movie review. Like a lot of big-ticket productions “Rush Hour 3” will flood into theaters this weekend (gobbling up more than 3,700 of the nation’s approximately 38,000 screens) and, because of its ubiquity and its brawny advertising muscle, will pull in a sizable chunk of change. Bad reviews won’t make a lick of difference to its box office, though franchise fatigue might.
The NYT is right. Reviews--good, bad, indifferent--will likely not cause any sort of difference in how "Rush Hour 3" performs. Only the individual moviegoer will decide if they've had enough of Tucker/Chan, or are up for another helping of gruel. So basically newspapers across the country will be devoting thousands of words and dozens of inches of column space to a "story" that will likely have no effect whatsoever. If there was a ratio of "words spent" to "influence," reviewing this movie would have to rank among the all-time lowest.
I'm not a fan of the "Rush Hour" movies, but I don't argue against their being made. They've grossed a bajillion dollars, so obviously a bunch of people out there like it. But all those words devoted to, basically, hot air? Wouldn't that space be better spent, you know, making a difference? Reviewing a book that might not otherwise get attention it deserves? Nope. We must blanket the earth with professional opinions of a Brett Ratner 'film'.
Because lord knows if we didn't, people might just not know about the darn thing.
posted by Jason Pinter at
10:41 AM
3 Comments:
Exactly! In general I think movie reviews are a waste of time. Wrote a blog on 'em actually. Basically, movies you like won't get good reviews and the ones you think stink to high heaven will get rave write ups.
The underlying problem is the same with newspapers and television news. Major media outlets want to increase reader/viewer-ship by reporting on what's already best known by thier audience: movies just like ones they've already seen, Harry Potter, Britney Spears/Lindsey Lohan/Paris Hilton.
Media used to at least make an effort to help us to learn, if not to teach. No more.
Well said.
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