Why we need movie critics. - By Erik Lundegaard - Slate Magazine

Links (3)

Great Moments in Movie Marketing: Hellboy vs. God
Published 7/2/2008 at Vulture
... Boy, so he's okay in our book!" Wack or Dope?: The Observer's J. Gabriel Boylan writes thoughtfully about white kids and rap, circa 1994, and asks why The Wackness didn't explore its own cultural appropriation a little more. Illin'. ("Verb, variant of ill. Doing things that can get you in trouble, i.e. vandalism, doing drugs, etc.") [NYO] Movie Critics Actually Matter: Math proves it! [Slate] New Times Blog About Saddest Family in World: We love ...

A Unified Theory of Movie Stars
Published 7/4/2008 by Graham (noreply@blogger.com) at Movies et al.
... Over at slate.com, Erik Lundegaard has attempted to prove that people actually listen to movie reviewers. He fails to do this. What he does prove is that movies that get good reviews tend to have a better per-screen average than movies that don't get good reviews. But you don't need critics for that - just word of mouth. In other words, assuming the critics are good at their jobs and actually identify the movies that are pretty good, and the people also tend to go to movies that are pretty good (which I think they do) then you don't need critics. ...

Apparently Positive Reviews Do Lead to Box Office Success
Published 7/4/2008 by Sean at Film Junk
goodreviewsboxoffice.jpg The debate has raged on for years over whether or not film critics matter anymore and whether reviews actually have an effect on the box office success of a movie. Judging by the disparity between some of the biggest blockbusters from the past few years and the terrible reviews they received, it would seem that the two are not in any way related. However, the crack staff over at Slate recently sat down and did some fiddling with numbers and came to the conclusions that positive reviews do, in fact, matter. Now granted, statistics are pretty easy to ...