The Screengrab

Earlier this week, our own Paul Clark took a few well-deserved shots at Entertainment Weekly’s list of 100 New Classics. At Some Came Running, Glenn Kenny offers up a (weak) defense. “Let's begin with a fundamental fact: lists are bullshit. Lists are such blatant bullshit that any magazine person will admit to you that they're bullshit. Some might need to have had a couple of drinks first, others might be more effectively cajoled by having you complain for the millionth time in the course of a conversation about how your own favorite cultural artifact was left off some list or another, but they'll admit it… ‘Glenn,’ I hear you asking, ‘if lists are such bullshit, why do magazines and websites do them almost all the frickin' time?’ Well, because lists are putatively ‘fun.’ People notice them, argue about them. They take them fairly seriously, pretty much regardless of what their sources are...oddly enough. For a magazine in particular, a list is a potential goldmine of publicity. It gets your product noticed. TV news, radio outlets, they LOVE lists.” As list-lovers ourselves, we can’t argue with this – our weekly top 10 (or 15 or 20) offerings are inevitably our most popular posts, and just as inevitably attract the most “Hey bozos, you forgot Ernest Scared Stupid!” type comments. Heck, that’s why we do ’em! Try as we might, though, we can’t actually find the part where Kenny defends the EW list. Maybe it’s in code.

At Scanners, Jim Emerson offers his own take on the list.

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As regular readers of this column know, we like to single out blog posts that bring a fresh perspective to these pictures we call motion; finely crafted, passionate posts that allow us all to see cinema through new eyes. But more than that, we love a good pissing contest.

This latest one began with another lamentation over the position of the modern film critic – otherwise known as the unemployment line. A piece called “Where Have All the Film Critics Gone?” from The Brooklyn Rail quoted several notable film bloggists, like Matt Zoller Seitz who said, “I think we’re fast approaching the point where criticism will become, for the most part, a devotion rather than a job.” And then there was Michael Atkinson, who wrote on his Zero For Conduct blog: ““[T]he existence of full-time staff film reviewers is a nutty aberration in the history of periodical publishing…I’d love to see every magazine employ an army of full-time culture reviewers, and pay them millions, but it doesn’t make very much sense, for the simple reason that it’s not truly a full-time job.”

That didn’t sit well with Glenn Kenny, who recently lost his own full-time job with Premiere.

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Last week we began with the shuttering of In the Company of Glenn, former Premiere editor Glenn Kenny’s shop on movie blog row. As it turns out, Kenny has wasted no time in opening up in a new location: Some Came Running, named after the Rat Pack movie you need to see right now if you never have. “I'll be posting like mad shortly, as this blog will be one of possibly several outlets for which I'll be covering Cannes. The reorganization of staff at Premiere coming at this particular time put even more of a whammy on my head than it might have otherwise, but I thought I'd best get myself out there anyway. Stay in the game, as it were (Jeff Wells will be proud of me, I trust), although what I'd like more than anything at the moment is a bit of a rest…First, though, I post to thank everyone who rang in with compliments, concern, and coverage in the wake of my termination. I felt a little like Tom Sawyer at his own funeral...except far more moved, and incredibly grateful.”

The PopMatters blog Short Ends and a Leader offers a manifesto of sorts, an Open Letter to the Online Critic.

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What will happen to “In Other Blogs” when all the other blogs disappear? There’s probably no danger of that happening anytime soon, but another week brings another one of our regular sources to an end, or at least an uncertain future. In the Company of Glenn, Premiere film critic Glenn Kenny’s hangout, is now in limbo as Kenny has lost his job. “I've just been informed that my position at Premiere.com is being terminated. What this means for this blog is still up in the air; I've got meetings this afternoon in which such things are to be negotiated. In any case, I now join the ever-growing ranks of film critics without staff positions. I very much hope to keep this blog going...and get some good freelance work, quick.”

Beyond the Multiplex laments this turn of events, along with other doom and gloom for indie film fans.

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Well, it appears that it's Changed Title Week here at Trailer Review, first with Monday's Starship Meet Dave, and now this one, which was originally titled In Bloom. It was under this title that the film premiered to lukewarm reviews at last year's Toronto Film Festival...

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Friday's AP report that Arthur H. Bremer, George Wallace's would-be assassin, was being released after serving 35 years out of his 53-year sentence for good behavior brings out the best in Glenn Kenny, who responds with a curious point you could probably make in the blogosphere without getting angry, ill-informed letters: Bremer's the biggest pop culture influence you never thought about. "Paul Schrader's revelations about the creation of the screenplay of Taxi Driver show us that the screenplay and, by extension, the film, would never have existed had not Schrader melded his own personal torment with the diaries of Bremer," Kenny notes, going on to draw out how that, in turn, might have inspired John Hinckley's far more warped, Jodie Foster-worshipping attempt on Reagan — and how Bremer is probably unaware of how his attempt (generally remembered after successful assassinations on more beloved types like Robert Kennedy and MLK) has warped the culture. I'd go Kenny one better — without Bremer and Hinckley, we lose the assassin-as-scorned-fan template. If you haven't seen The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford yet, now might be a good time. — Vadim Rizov