The Gutting of the Cinematical Brand

[Updated post with audio below. Original post follows.]

The first paid online writing gig I ever applied to was for a movie blog called Cinematical. In April 2007, I wrote an application to then-Managing-Editor Kim Voynar at the Weblogs Inc. website, before the huge blog network was acquired by AOL. A week or two later, I sent a follow-up e-mail to Kim, who said she’d never received my application, and also that there were no openings available for the site.

I didn’t let the sweet, sweet sting of rejection stop me, though. I wrote for a movie website called CHUD, and in late 2007, I began podcasting with two fellow movie nuts. Our podcast was later acquired by /Film, which I currently call my online film home.

Still, I’ll always remember the prestige and joy that that Cinematical held in my mind. In a time when “blog” was a word that wasn’t nearly as widespread as it is today, Cinematical seemed like the perfect blend of edginess and respectability, of energy and expertise. Even the name seems to roll of the tongue and signify how fun and lively writing about movies can be. The site has had its ups-and-its downs over the years, but under the guidance of people like Erik Davis, I felt like it really came into its own in the past year or two.

That’s why I was apprehensive when I first heard in September that they’d be merging with moviefone, another AOL property. From AOL’s perspective, the move makes complete sense. Why maintain two separate movie-related properties when you can achieve synergies by merging them together? And Cinematical still remains intact, with many of the same voices and the same great content (the URL Cinematical.com still functions but directs to a Moviefone branded landing page, along with the Cinematical branding underneath. The effect is mildly confusing).

Still, I was dismayed this week when I saw movie advertisements quoting people from Cinematical as being from “Moviefone.” In my opinion, this is the clearest sign that Cinematical, as a brand, is on the decline (Just the other day, Olivia Wilde also identified the site as Moviefone, when thanking it for its glowing Tron Legacy review). Again, I understand completely why AOL would want this to be the case. EVERYONE knows what Moviefone is (didn’t we all see that Seinfeld episode with its delightful parody of the ubiquitous service?), and having that immediate name recognition has to help when you’re printing out posters or airing commercials. Unfortunately, few outside of our world know what Cinematical is (ditto /Film). The fact that Cinematical’s brand can be unraveled with one sweep of the corporate pen is a chilling reminder of the dangers of having a corporate overlord, although I can’t say it’s that much easier roughing it as an independent site.

While I know that the folks at Moviefone put out great content, that name will never mean the same thing to me at Cinematical does. Back in the day, it was on the frontier of a revolution surrounding the way movies are written about and covered. And it stood for so much of the good stuff that warms my heart and energizes me.

It will be missed.

Update: I have spoken with Cinematical editor Erik Davis about this post to get his perspective. Here’s audio of our conversation:

Food Blogger S. Irene Virbila Is Unmaksed, Photographed, Ejected from the Premises

The LATimes has the fascinating story of S. Irene Virbila, the restaurant critic for, well, the LA Times. Apparently, Virbila was at a restaurant called Red Machine when the managing partner of the restaurant, Noah Ellis, approached her, photographed her, refused to serve her and her friends, and then posted her photo on the internet. This was particularly destructive because Virbila had worked hard to maintain her anonymity for many years:

Times Food editor Russ Parsons said Virbila contacted [Ellis] after the incident and was upset by it. It was humiliating to be confronted in such a manner, Parsons said, and Virbila felt violated to have her picture taken without her permission. But mostly, he said, “She was upset because she has worked extremely hard for more than 15 years to maintain her anonymity in the L.A. restaurant scene.”

Parsons said that a truly anonymous restaurant critic is increasingly rare in a world that revolves around instant communication and a camera is as close as your cellphone. Some media outlets say true anonymity is impossible and, as a result, no longer try to go to great lengths to hide a critic’s identity.

To be fair, Ellis explained his motivation thusly: “Our purpose for posting this is so that all restaurants can have a picture of her and make a decision as to whether or not they would like to serve her. We find that some her reviews can be unnecessarily cruel and irrational…”

It’s interesting to see the parallels between food critics and film critics. Most film critics have never felt the need to hide their identity, primarily because historically movie studios couldn’t exactly “serve” film critics in the direct way that food establishments serve food critics. These days, all-expense paid junkets and set visits probably create just as many conflicts of interest for film critics, if not more, than catered parties for food critics. But food critics AND film critics from major newspapers are on the decline anyway, because it’s just hard to compete with the massive throng of unrelenting, unpaid, free workers that comprise the internetz.

Shocker: The New York Times Does Not Apply The Same Journalistic Standards To Its Wedding Annoucements Page

Remember that NYTimes wedding announcement that detailed how the newlyweds broke up their previous marriages to be with each other? And how lots of people considered that to be tasteless?

Jeff Bercovici did something that the New York Times apparently couldn’t be bothered to: he contacted the jilted ex of the woman in the story. And let me tell you, that guy was not too happy about his family’s dirty laundry showing up in the paper:

The primary story here is not that interesting…People lie and cheat and steal all the time. That’s a fact of life. But rarely does a national news organization give them an unverified megaphone to whitewash it.

So let me get this straight. The New York Times does not bring the rigorous fact-checking might of its organization to bear on wedding announcement stories? Scandalous.

My Tentative Top 10 Movies of 2010 (Revised)

I had the chance to visit my old professor, Austin Sarat, today. As usual, he asked me to give him some film recommendations. Here’s the e-mail I sent him, which features a tentative list of my top 10 films of 2010 (feel free to compare this with the previous list I made in August [hence the “revised” in the title of this post]. Damn, there’ve been a ton of great films in the past few months!). Tune into the /Filmcast this Sunday for my final list:

***

Professor Sarat,

So good to see you today, and glad to hear you and the family and the academic career are going well. Do check out the materials I gave you. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Here’s a very tentative list of my Top 10 films of 2010, with links to Amazon Blu-Ray listing where appropriate:

1. The Fighter
2. The Social Network
3. How to Train Your Dragon (for the kids)
4. Animal Kingdom (you will probably find this film boring, but I really enjoyed it)
5. Mother
6. Inception
7. The Kids Are All Right
8. Toy Story 3
9. Black Swan
10. The King’s Speech

Other movies that I enjoyed, but that you might not necessarily enjoy:
Catfish – a fascinating documentary about how people construct their identities online these days
Exit Through the Gift Shop – another great documentary, this one about the nature of modern art, as told by graffiti legend Banksy
Winter’s Bone – regarded by many as one of the best films of 2010

Let me know if you find anything worthwhile here. And let’s keep in touch!

Sincerely,
David

Copying an Entire Article Can Still Be Considered Fair Use

Techdirt reports on Berkeley law professor Jason Schultz’s amicus brief, in which he explains why reproducing an entire article within your article can still be considered fair use (and thus, legal):

Indeed, the Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit, and this Court have all found the use of entire copyrighted works to be consistent with the fair-use doctrine. Those rulings recognize that copyright law balances two important public interests: promoting creative expression and encouraging the use of copyrighted works for socially beneficial purposes.

Looks like I should start cutting-and-pasting more frequently for my blog posts…

For a good primer on fair use, especially as it relates to bloggers, check out Rachel Sklar’s detailed analysis.

Movie Websites Are in a Race to the Bottom

Nick Nunziata, editor-in-chief at CHUD, has written his take on how the role of movie websites has changed over the past decade or so. It rambles a bit, but there are some genuinely good insights about how studios have been increasingly selective about who they grant access to and how they distribute their information to the masses:

There are amazing reps at the studios who have legitimate relationships with some webmasters that aren’t a front and are actual relationships. The same goes for a lot of the filmmakers, though there are a few big names who are ‘friends’ with webmasters mainly as a means on promoting their product. It’s a weird, ever-changing dynamic but it works. It works because the smaller film companies still have a more natural relationship with the internet. The studios have won the war but the sites have won the key battle: Shining a light on the great movies. There’s always room for the balance to exist as the websites find the gems that aren’t getting forty million dollar ad campaigns. But I think we as a whole have become marginalized.

There’s also a great deal of thinly-veiled contempt for sites (which I assume includes /Film) whose purpose is, at least partially, aggregation:

The thing I’ve noticed now (it’s good to get the point in paragraph six, FINALLY) is how many of the sites are covering stuff that previously would have had no place in our editorial visions. Viral videos. Homemade spoofs. Minutia that is at best tangentially connected to what the sites are intended for. The kind of things we’d typically run on our message boards or link from our Facebook accounts. There’s a part of me that feels it’s cheap and beneath many sites (and we’re guilty from time to time with stuff in our ‘Watch it Now’ section) but it’s also survival. It’s just plain survival. It’s cheap content and people respond to it, a fact that incenses me.

I think Nunziata is primarily responding to the nagging feeling that the internet is both getting dumber, and making us dumber. It’s hard not to sympathize with this point of view; when some 20-year old is raking it in by posting a photo of a cat who looks like Hitler, while the 2,000 word essay/interview you just slaved over is getting 10 pageviews per hour, the whole of humanity loses something.

But I think Nunziata makes a number of wrong turns in this piece, even if they’re not made explicitly. First, there’s the unspoken conflation of film news and film criticism, a conflation that seems to occur time and time again in the discourse on this topic.

I have a great deal of respect for the concept that there are experts in certain fields, and that art and culture can be serious areas of study. And while I think we are all learning, some people have clearly been learning for longer than others. We should all revere film expertise, whether we disagree with it or not, and we should all respect the concept that some people may be more equipped to expound about film than others, and that there can be true cultural value in this act of expounding (even though I’d argue there’s still some value to throwing around lay-opinions).

But many film websites also choose to write about film news as well (/Film included), and the “news” moniker raises the parallel idea that film websites do “journalism.” To quote Maude Lebowski, I think writing about film news can be a fun, zesty enterprise. It can entertain people and stir up lively debate and discussion. However, only in certain instances should this be considered seriously as journalism. What those instances should be is probably worth another post. But will the world really lose out if it doesn’t know what your take is on ____ being cast in _____ movie? I’m not so sure.

What I’m trying to say is that film criticism is not the same thing as covering film news. And even though many websites do both, these two things should not be viewed as equals or equally valuable.

The second thing I take issue with is the implication (again unspoken – and maybe I’m incorrect in how Nunziata feels about this) is that there’s something wrong with aggregation. Setting aside the fact that some of the most successful websites on the internet started out as aggregators: I don’t know about Nick, but a lot of us got into this because we love films, and we love geeking out about them. Go to slashfilm.com and you’ll see film news and movie reviews, but also viral videos and posters. Sure, some of the latter might get more traffic than some of the former. But does that mean our site should be looked down upon? What I love about /Film is that, at its best, it restores in me the joy and excitement of movies. If that’s all that a site aspires to, does that make it worthy of scorn and derision? I say no.

Finally, there’s the idea in Nick’s piece that somehow, external forces have conspired to marginalize movie websites. But it is nowhere written that those with the best writing or the best ideas or the best content should expect to rise to the top. In the wild west of the internet, those that are most successful have been able to combine these elements with business and technological savvy, which allows them to reap page views and revenue. Just because you are old does not mean you have to be irrelevant. Likewise, just because you are the best does not mean you should expect that to be enough.

Update: Nick has responded to this post via Twitter:

Thus, I take back the relevant parts referring to /Film that I’ve written above. Any misconstrual is my fault, though I think that many of my points still stand.

Gaming The New York Times

Thomas Weber has written an account of how he used the Mechanical Turk to game the New York Times’ “most e-mailed” list:

What could have propelled a stale, bone-dry story to the top of the Internet’s importance arbiter? I can tell you: It was me. More precisely, it was a group of people under my direction who all, at my request, emailed that particular story within a relatively short timeframe to learn exactly what it takes to make the most-emailed list. How we did it—and how many people it took—reinforces a lesson of our viral media age: Even at the biggest newspaper website in the world, the content that is spotlighted as most engaging reflects the judgment of a group far smaller than the overall audience, and can even be gamed by those motivated enough to do so.

Just as interesting as his methods is the fact that he chose to publish the article at all. By revealing his methodology, Weber makes it increasingly likely that the Times will take action to prevent this kind of gaming in the future, hence rendering the specifics of his article irrelevant. And while the idea of the few dictating the consumption of the many is fascinating, haven’t we always known about this? Still, you gotta admire the brazenness and the methodology on display here.

Julian Assange’s Lawyers Upset About Leaked Police Reports

In a shocking lack of irony-awareness, Julian Assange’s lawyers are all upset that the Guardian published leaked police reports detailing Assange’s past sexual escapades. From The Australian:

Bjorn Hurtig, Mr Assange’s Swedish lawyer, said he would lodge a formal complaint to the authorities and ask them to investigate how such sensitive police material leaked into the public domain. “It is with great concern that I hear about this because it puts Julian and his defence in a bad position,” he told a colleague.

Not that Assange has any experience with putting people/governments in bad positions or anything.