But it's interesting to me that this is sort of the default opinion that people have of critics (I remember a while back, the restaurant critic for Las Vegas Weekly told me that I was well-suited to being a movie critic because I "like almost nothing"), and that there's such a negative connotation to "hating everything," or rather to having exacting standards. I've probably given more negative than positive reviews in my time on Area 108, but I've also praised certain movies multiple times. Of course, it's not the good reviews or even good movies that people remember as much. I'm guilty of it, too, in that whenever someone asks me to recommend a movie for them to go see, I seem to always be able to think of the movies I hated more readily than the movies I liked. And hating movies is fun, because it leads to writing creatively nasty reviews, while writing glowing reviews is often more challenging and less liberating.
Meanwhile, my friend Tony Macklin, who writes reviews for the Fayetteville Free Weekly in Arkansas, has a local Gawker-esque blog obsessed with his work, writing a weekly deconstruction of his reviews titled, of course, "Tony Macklin Hates Everything." Like me with my theme song and feedback from radio listeners, Tony is greatly pleased with the recognition, and of course any response, good or bad, means that people are taking notice of your reviews and caring about what you say, which is wonderful. I just got another piece of hate mail last week on my year-and-a-half-old Million Dollar Baby review, and it's nice to know that what I wrote is still grabbing people's attention. (I should realize, however, not to trifle with Joss Whedon fans.)
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Uh-oh. We've been lumped-in with the Nick Denton crowd. Is that a compliment? Probably we should take it as one, seeing as how Gawker Media rakes in millions of readers and we average about two a day. Hmmm...maybe we can con Denton into purchasing our pathetic little site....
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