Critics never made or broke movies like PIRATES anyway. Familiar story with popular actors, well hyped by the studio, win out over original ideas every time.

Box office performance often skews away from aggregate critical evaluation because the audience because critics and viewers are investing their time at the movies for totally different reasons: the mass audience just wants an enjoyable two hours of entertainment, while the critic wants to be paid for reviewing the product in a way that enhances his credibility as a knowledgeable evaluator. The paying audience therefore has a stake in overlooking a movie’s faults, while the critic has a stake in highlighting them.

In the end, however, audience and critical views converge– check out the user-generated IMDB Top 100, which is really not that different from lists compiled by professional critics:

http://www.imdb.com/chart/top

There’s a few geek fanboy-oriented anamolies and it’s skewed to newer films, but both *Godfather* movies, *Casablanca*, and *Seven Samurai* are in the top 10. Not all that dissimilar to most critics’ lists, I’d think.

I think the role of the professional critic hasn’t changed. A good critic, like Dana Stevens or John Simon, informs through observation and a gigantic knowledge base, both of which an audience can’t be assumed to have. It doesn’t mean the audience is dumb, just that the critic is that much better. I like to think I know a lot, which is why I defer to those who know more.

This age where everyone is a critic should really work as a threat to bad professional critics, and should work to keep the conversation about the arts on themes that are relevant. Everyone being a critic should work in tandem with the existence of professional critics, but it can never replace the professional – I don’t know and never will know all of Richard Linklater’s movies, and I’m happy there’s someone who does and can give me an opinion that is informed and that I can evaluate on my own later.

The “long tail” probably means that a good critic should be solid on the basics, which are not as “basic” as many people think. It’s easy to watch old movies with Cary Grant and enjoy them; but for a good movie critic, the basics are Kurasawa and Hitchcock and Bergman. The “long tail” means they need to know the standards that were that much better; passing familiarity will not do. They probably also need to dig into older types of media and literature and art while keeping tabs on what might be good that’s coming out now.

This is not antiquarianism I’m pushing – it’s something more like, “a critic’s basis of knowledge should be as stable as possible, before he attempts to address something ‘new.’” I don’t think that’s unreasonable, as the number of ‘fads’ increases with the emergence of newer and newer media and uses for that media.

The final question raises the possibility of art as participatory. I think art has always been participatory. A painter that wanted the audience to be in stunned silence of his work did not do such a thing to make people dumber, but to inspire more in them. We’re more vocal in our participation now, and there are forms of art which utilize a more fluid notion of audience. But I think you’re hard pressed to say that art can wholly transcend the creator/witness divide. If it did transcend that dualism, there probably wouldn’t be any such thing as art.

I think the short answer to this, Jeff, is that (like the blogger v professional journalist debate) a “professional” critic just holds more weight.

I’d listen to a Times, EW, or Slate critic in a different way, because I know they have the history of their institutions behind them. Someone hired them (hopefully) based on some kind of sound judgement.

Again, it’s the same as news, and it’s why while newspaper readership may freefall, the companies behind them will survive so long as their name and reputation continues to hold respect. I might read 10 myspace blogs about how Pirates 2 “Rockz!” But if one “professional” at a media company I have respect for says it “suckz,” then you can probably guess who I’ll believe.

The real power of the internet, and where the everyman critic can carry more weight, however is on sites like rotten tomatoes or other places that gather statistics of reviews.

The most respected of “pro” critics could tell me how great he things movie A is, but if 157 people who care enough to write reviews collectively give a movie a 53% rating (as RT did for Pirates 2), then at the very least, I’m digging in to find out what some of those 157 people have to say. And if they consistantly disagree with that well respected “pro,” and I agree, then that professional critic soon begins to lose respect.

Once I’ve established where they stand on my taste scale, I can fairly accurately predict how much I’ll like a movie based on their opinion. For example, one criterion I have is this “artsy” vs “primal” scale. Most critics I’ve seen fall within the “artsy” scale. Based on where they fall on that scale and whether they liked a given movie, I’ll know whether or not I’ll like the movie.

As far as Pirates is concerned, to me it’s all about Keira Knightley, and most especially in the second half of the movie when she’s all tanned, her hair’s unleashed, and she’s kickin’ass and taking names. *melt*.

Sometimes people learn what a critic’s taste is like and then they can use that to decide on their own choices. This works best when a critic has likes similar to one’s own, but can also work when the opposite is true, if the person’s remarks are consistent.

Some critics are just clever writers and one reads the reviews just to enjoy the literary posturing. Perhaps this went on more in previous eras. No one read Mencken or Woolcott to decide what to see or read, just for the vitriol.

Imagine a world where this criterion was extended to journalism. If one does not love news, there is no value in one’s opinion on the quality — positive or negative — of the coverage of a given story. Sometimes it feels that the majority of press criticism would be disqualified by such an extension to the Jarvis “stopper” rule.

The implication of your question seems to be that, to paraphrase Mr. Incredible, if everyone is a critic, no one is. But I am more concerned about the demand side of the equation: what does it mean to be a critic (professional or otherwise) when the notion of a “canon” no longer resonates? If box office mojo is the only standard that matters, not only can’t popular movies be bad, unpopular movies can’t be good.

Just out of curiosity Jeff, do you remember which shows you thought were going to succeed/fail? What was your success rate, as it were?

This calls to mind a discussion I had with the staff tv writer for the local newspaper I freelanced entertainment features for. He flat out told me that his hatred of tv makes him the perfect person to review it. I laughed in his face in disagreement and proceeded to ask him how he could judge current programming if he had no real knowledge base of what had come before.

The guy was a real jerk, though, on many levels. This was the cherry on top of his sundae of jerkitude.