They say film critics are the
fabric that holds society together. Now, while I can't fully confirm the
validity of the adage, there is no doubt that reviewing films is a
really fun job.
Our sponsor, Christopher Ball, is helping Ron and I learn the tricks of the trade. Mr. Ball is a film reviewer for Cleveland’s Plain Dealer, and we met on Friday at Panera; he critiqued what we had done so far and he gave us advice for the future.
Leading up to our meeting, Ron and I were busy reviewing. We watched “Rope,” a 1948 Hitchcock mystery, “The Neighbors,” a recently released comedy starring Zac Efron, and the first season of “Orange is the New Black.” On Friday, Mr. Ball read our reviews gave us invaluable feedback on what we did right, and more importantly, what we did wrong.
He also gave us some advice. He explained how he decided which movies to watch, along with his reviewing process. He always watches with a pad and paper in hand, to jot down any thoughts or quotes that might be helpful for his review. Also, he sometimes doesn’t even watch the whole film and writes his review based off the first half alone, which seems like a risky strategy to me, but he’s confident that he learns enough about the movie.
Mr. Ball is setting us up to watch a pre-release screen of “Blended” with Adam Sandler this Wednesday. It’s official release date is the 23rd, but critics often are able to see movies before their release to make sure their reviews are finished in time. We’ll be reviewing Blended and I hope it’s great!
Our sponsor, Christopher Ball, is helping Ron and I learn the tricks of the trade. Mr. Ball is a film reviewer for Cleveland’s Plain Dealer, and we met on Friday at Panera; he critiqued what we had done so far and he gave us advice for the future.
Leading up to our meeting, Ron and I were busy reviewing. We watched “Rope,” a 1948 Hitchcock mystery, “The Neighbors,” a recently released comedy starring Zac Efron, and the first season of “Orange is the New Black.” On Friday, Mr. Ball read our reviews gave us invaluable feedback on what we did right, and more importantly, what we did wrong.
He also gave us some advice. He explained how he decided which movies to watch, along with his reviewing process. He always watches with a pad and paper in hand, to jot down any thoughts or quotes that might be helpful for his review. Also, he sometimes doesn’t even watch the whole film and writes his review based off the first half alone, which seems like a risky strategy to me, but he’s confident that he learns enough about the movie.
Mr. Ball is setting us up to watch a pre-release screen of “Blended” with Adam Sandler this Wednesday. It’s official release date is the 23rd, but critics often are able to see movies before their release to make sure their reviews are finished in time. We’ll be reviewing Blended and I hope it’s great!
Sometimes when I get bored, I go on RottenTomatoes to read film reviews to see what movies might be worth watching. I find a lot of times that some of the reviews aren't as detailed as I would have expected, but once in a while I stumble across such an incredibly detailed review of a movie that I simply have to read through the entire thing before watching the film. I think it's really cool that you're learning the ins and outs of film review. In my experience reading reviews as well as watching the film, the main caveat that I would give is that you have to make sure you don't come across as conceited or arrogant in your review, while still endeavoring to convey an accurate and genuine review. After all, the point of the review is to convey to the audience/readers the opinion of the reviewer on the movie in a way that can be received and considered by the community. I find that if certain reviews are too inflammatory or harshly criticizing, I tend to disregard the review if the other reviews comparatively are better. So obviously as a reviewer you should give your true opinion, but be aware of the context, lest your opinion be invalidated by the readers.
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