Screenings for Critics

I turn on the radio in the car and the big news item of the day is Ford dropping car production by 20%. I guess this qualifies as bad news. Although not implicit in the story, it basically means that car manufacturing workers are basically getting screwed again. More job cuts, pay cuts, and cut cuts (in worker's wrists). It also qualifies as good news because they're mostly cutting SUV and big truck lines because people can't afford 10 miles per gallon.

This story might seem disconnected from the idea of screening films for critics, but I thought it was actually a neat parallel to the film screening situation (more and more movies nowadays aren't being screened for critics). Mike D'Angelo gives pretty much the most clearheaded take on the whole ordeal. He basically says that, simply, people don't really pay attention to the critics, except for small art films, so it's a waste of time and money for the studios to even bother with costly screenings. The only justification would be to make the critics happy (although I'm sure most critics are happy to not have to see Final Destination 3). Just like the only real justification Ford has to keep making SUVs is to give its workers a job. Of course, this doesn't really excuse the studios (for making crappy movies) or the car companies (for cutting jobs while giving CEOs hundred million dollar bonuses), but it does speak to the reality of the world today.

One point I'd like to add to D'Angelo's is that, while critics aren't very good at affecting the box office of dumb horror and action flicks, they are good about affecting the buzz on other types of movies. But I think what most people miss is that critic reviews are just one cog in the machine. There's also festival reports, articles, blog buzz. The film publicity machine is populated with parrots. A one sentence blurb in a festival report (like say "Marie Antoinette underwhelmed Cannes audiences") can turn into the generally held perception of a movie once it's been repeated by a hundred publications ("Marie Antoinette, biggest bomb of the fall movie season,") By the time the critic who wrote the blurb gets around to actually stating his feelings in depth when writing her/his review of the movie come release time, the bad buzz snowball is too loud to be heard over. It's why publicists get paid so much.