C is for critics
You remember them, right? Take a gander at the list that Sean P. Means of The Salt Lake Tribune has been keeping since 2006 regarding laid-off, bought-out or retired film critics; you’ll notice that while the number is now up to 44, close to half that total—21—have been put out to pasture since last January. It’s been open season for think pieces and hand-wringing (“Do Film Critics Matter?”), with everybody from seasoned veterans to the guy who runs ReelyGreatReevooze.com weighing in. The question is less whether film critics are irrelevant, but rather, what form Film Criticism 2.0 will take. In our utopia of utopias, the good critics will evolve and embrace whatever form rises from the ashes, following in the footsteps of the print critics who’ve helped make blogs a viable form of spreading/sharing cinephilia (kudos, Jim Emerson, Dave Kehr, Glenn Kenny, Carrie Rickey and David Bordwell); the blathering fanboys and middlebrow mediocrities will perish, as well they should.

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