Transformers (2007) - Critics Reviews - Yahoo! Movies

* Yahoo! Movies converts each critic's published rating into a lette If the critic's review does not include a rating, Yahoo! Movies assigns a grade based on an assessment of the review.
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Celebrity Deathwatch: Pauline Kael, Movie Critic, 82

http://www.cnn.com/2001/SHOWBIZ/News/09/03/kael.obit.ap/index.html Kael, grande dame of film reviewing, dies September 3, 2001 Posted: 8:09 PM EDT (0009 GMT) GREAT BARRINGTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Movie critic Pauline Kael, a brash, witty champion of artistic quality who thrashed both facile commercialism and self-indulgent pretense from her lofty perch at The New Yorker, has died. She was 82. Kael, a resident of Great Barrington, suffered from Parkinson's disease. Perri Dorset, a spokeswoman for the magazine, said Kael died Monday at her home. David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, said that Kael broke down barriers between low and high cinema in her reviews, delighting in both the sublime and the profane. "She shaped American film criticism for generations to come and, more important, the national understanding of the movies," Remnick said. She turned "The Current Cinema" into a leading fixture in The New Yorker, one of the most influential magazines among the nation's cultural elite. Physically petite but headstrong in her opinions, she became one of the 20th century's most important and recognizable film critics. She called the movies "our national theater" and helped establish the reputations of such filmmakers as Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman and Steven Spielberg. Her 1969 essay "Trash, Art and the Movies," written for Harper's magazine, was named in 1999 as No. 42 on a New York University survey of 100 examples of the best journalism of the century. She wrote her first review in 1953 for a San Francisco magazine, panning Charlie Chaplin's "Limelight" as "Slimelight." Over the years, her work appeared in Film Quarterly, Mademoiselle, Vogue, the New Republic, and McCall's.
Category: Film Critic Pauline

CBS's Nuclear Revival

Email to a friend | Printer friendly Action Alert CBS's Nuclear Revival 60 Minutes' critic-free boosterism 4/18/07 On April 8, the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes aired a segment about the "resounding success" of the French nuclear power program, suggesting that "emission-free" nuclear power might offer an easy solution to the problem of climate change. The report protected this dubious assertion from skeptical scrutiny by failing to quote a single bona fide critic of the nuclear industry. The segment was titled "Vive Les Nukes," which gave a good indication of the slant it took. Describing it as "an efficient means of producing large amounts of carbon-free energy," correspondent Steve Kroft announced at the top of the segment that nuclear power is "a technology whose time seemed to come and go, and may now be coming again." The notion of a nuclear power renaissance was bolstered by CBS 's choice of interview guests—the program spoke only to nuclear power supporters (in France and elsewhere), thereby allowing their rhetoric to go unchallenged. Guests on the segment were French energy official Pierre Gadonniex, French nuclear industry executive Bertrande Durrande, White House deputy secretary of energy Clay Sell (Bush's "point man on nuclear power"), French nuclear executive Anne Lauvergeon, MIT nuclear researcher Andrew Kadak and David Jhirhad of the World Resources Institute, described as "an environmental think tank in Washington." Jhirhad was the only potentially balancing source, but he is quoted only to make Kroft's point that "even some environmental groups are taking a second look at nuclear power." This is an emerging line in much of the corporate media (e. g., Washington Post , 4/16/06 ; New York Times , 2/27/07 ), though the actual number of green groups embracing nuclear power is quite small. The World Resources Institute receives contributions from several energy companies and other major polluters, information that would have been useful for CBS viewers in evaluating Jhirad's claim that the nuclear industry's "safety record has been pretty good." The segment's one-sided sourcing was made all the more problematic when the White House's Sell claimed that "no serious person can look at the challenge of greenhouse gases and climate change and not come to the conclusion that nuclear power has to play a significant and growing role in meeting that challenge worldwide." Of course, "serious people" do question precisely that--and CBS should have interviewed them. Excluding such sources meant excluding important information. While France's nuclear power is portrayed as widely popular, CBS failed to mention large protests held across the country on March 17 ( Agence France Presse , 3/17/07) against construction of a new nuclear plant. Nor, in touting the massive nuclear reprocessing plant France has built in Normandy, did the show refer to the radiation it releases into the English Channel ( NIRS Nuclear Monitor , 3-4/00 ) or the cluster of leukemia cases occurring around the plant ( British Medical Journal , 1/11/97 ).
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Music critic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Music critic From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation , search A music critic is someone who reviews music (including printed music, performances and recorded music) and publishes writing on them in books or journals (or on the internet). Some music critics also write books analyzing musical styles and discussing music history, thus verging on the field of musicology . Many composers of classical music were also notable writers on, and critics of, music, including Hector Berlioz , Richard Wagner and Robert Schumann . Amongst modern practitioners of the classical music tradition who also write (or wrote) on music may be included Alfred Brendel , Charles Rosen , Paul Hindemith and Ernst Krenek . In the realm of rock music (as indeed in that of classical music) , critics have not always been respected by their subjects. Frank Zappa declared that, "Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read." In the Guns N' Roses song " Get in the Ring ", Axl Rose verbally attacked critics who gave the band negative reviews because of their actions on stage; such critics as Andy Secher, Mick Wall and Bob Guccione, Jr. were mentioned by name. See also
Category: Music Critic