Reply #63: Your absolute statements are increasingly ridiculous.

[Codeine]

A critic can be an intellectual, though as in any field of endeavor most are not. A critic may indeed be an artist of the written word, like Hralan Ellison with his television reviews. A critic can certainly be an academic, as there is an entire area of academic study devoted to film theory. And your assertion that a critic is not a scholar is laughable, as the great film critics are living repositories of knowledge regarding film canon.

Micheal Medved and Joel Segal are no more representative of film criticism and the art therein than Dan Brown or Tom Clancy are representative of the art of the novel. There is a world of film critique that extends well beyond thirty seconds on your local newscast or the pages of USA Today.

Of course critics are largely buffoons, just as film makers, painters, writers, car salesmen, and DU posters are largely buffoons -- the human tendency is always toward buffoonery. One must use some critical analysis to discover the wheat amidst the chaff. A good film critique can be golden, a star that guides his readers to treasures they may have missed while also pointing out those instances where the Emperor has left the house in his birthday suit.

And, for the record, I absolutely loved the first of Nolan's Batman films, and I'm planning on seeing the new one in the theater despite Edelsteins's negative review. But a blanket denunciation of the art of film criticism is beyond absurd.