Regarding My Credentials. SPOILER ALERT: I have none
So far no one has challenged my right to express my idiot opinion on cinema through Soylent Screen. But I anticipate that some day, someone will, probably a member of the Christian Bale / Hugh Jackman fanfic porn club, will take me to task.
Movie critics tend to overeducated bookworms, studying the most esoteric corners of the art of film for decades just so they can scribble about the latest turd pinched from the buttocks of Hollywood. Do you think Roger Ebert wants to waste precious time telling you that Rob Schneider movies suck? He was a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Chicago before he realized he could make more money trademarking his thumb than with an advanced degree. Joe-Bob Briggs, writing under a pseudonym, has published papers comparing the French New Wave with German Expressionism, and Gene Shalit founded his own clown college.
(whoops, shouldn't have bolded those last words--had a rhythm going)
So it's only fitting that I explain my background. Where, you might ask, do I get off, telling you that one low budget time travel movie is worth seeing, while a special effects blockbuster about a mission to the sun is a piece of crap?
I matriculated (five syllable word there) at the Massachusetts College of Art. The first film class I took laid the groundwork for my sensitive approach to criticism. There I viewed Un Chien Andalou (1928), an experience that informed me that henceforth all art films should be perceived through the filter of ones' own fingers covering ones' own face*. Many years later I got up the courage to take more film classes, gaining exposure to the works of Orson Welles and whatsisname who made Lolita (1962). I truly enjoyed those classes, and sincerely wish that I'd gone to them frequently enough to get credit for them. Alas, instead I took a 15 year leave of absence, and eventually got my art degree by taking science classes.
One of these men was my Evolutionary Biology professor. If you've seen my hair, you know I'm just jealous.
Of course, in my day job I take care of animals. In this career I have learned important facts such as "monkeys sound like birds and birds sound like monkeys," and keeping frogs in captivity is really just a labor-intensive system for drowning crickets. Knowing a lot about animals doesn't really help with film criticism, but it does make for more informed nitpicking. In The Day After Tomorrow (2004), wolves escape from a zoo, and immediately pursue human prey onto a docked ship. Real wolves would run scared shitless into the nearest thing that looked like woods, and consider eating maybe in a couple days. In King Kong (all of them) the giant gorilla falls in love with a tiny blonde woman, kidnaps her, and climbs the tallest building in the city. A real giant gorilla would be more likely to defecate and then eat it, to the delight of the schoolchildren.
What I'm trying to say is, I have no right whatsoever to review films. That is why I am so appreciative that I have the opportunity to do so, and that you continue to read this stuff. Or as my friend g_weir said, you're writing these things anyway, why not post them?
*I do a pretty good job singing "Debaser" on Rock Band, though.