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"[I]f done properly film criticism should maintain a safe distance from film-making because, just as good taste is the enemy of art, so intimacy and cosiness are the enemies of honest criticism. In an ideal world, film critics would have no friends amongst the film-making fraternity. In fact they would probably have no friends, full stop. Nor would they nurture any ambition to become film-makers themselves.
Nope, a good film critic should, by their very nature, be ... an unwanted outsider to whom nothing is owed and from whom nothing is expected by the people who actually make movies. So, when Z-list British 'actor' and 'personality' recently became the latest in a long line of affronted luvvies to threaten to beat me up for mocking his rotten films, I felt a sense of pride that I was still able to provoke such a violent reaction. This is just part of the job: if you're honest about the parlous state of some movies, then you have to be ready for the people who make those movies to start bleating about how they're going to kick your head in for being mean and disrespectful about their craft. In this particular case, said affrontee actually devoted three pages in his newly published autobiography to repeating his widely viewed YouTube promise to 'put something right across [my] faakin canister' for laughing at his risible Dick Van Dire cockney-geezer shtick. It's a threat he continues to repeat ad nauseam; even as I write, I see Dick has once again told the press that he will headbutt me and break my 'faakin nose' because I 'don't take [him] seriously as an actor'.
Luvvies are like this, even the mockney ones. To be fair, this particular drug-snorting Groucho-club habitué was probably upset at having recently torched his career by publicly advising a fan to cut his ex-girlfriend's face (a joke, apparently...) thereby becoming the only person ever to get fired from Zoo magazine for being too sexist."
-- Mark Kermode
Nope, a good film critic should, by their very nature, be ... an unwanted outsider to whom nothing is owed and from whom nothing is expected by the people who actually make movies. So, when Z-list British 'actor' and 'personality' recently became the latest in a long line of affronted luvvies to threaten to beat me up for mocking his rotten films, I felt a sense of pride that I was still able to provoke such a violent reaction. This is just part of the job: if you're honest about the parlous state of some movies, then you have to be ready for the people who make those movies to start bleating about how they're going to kick your head in for being mean and disrespectful about their craft. In this particular case, said affrontee actually devoted three pages in his newly published autobiography to repeating his widely viewed YouTube promise to 'put something right across [my] faakin canister' for laughing at his risible Dick Van Dire cockney-geezer shtick. It's a threat he continues to repeat ad nauseam; even as I write, I see Dick has once again told the press that he will headbutt me and break my 'faakin nose' because I 'don't take [him] seriously as an actor'.
Luvvies are like this, even the mockney ones. To be fair, this particular drug-snorting Groucho-club habitué was probably upset at having recently torched his career by publicly advising a fan to cut his ex-girlfriend's face (a joke, apparently...) thereby becoming the only person ever to get fired from Zoo magazine for being too sexist."
-- Mark Kermode
