Reviews and Recommendations
Posted By Russ Emerson on December 15, 2005 at 4:05 am
[Updated and revised.]
One thing those of you who have read my occasional TV, DVD, movie or music reviews might have noticed is that I don’t do in-depth reviews of anything after viewing or listening just once. Usually, that’s because I don’t partake in entertainment in order to write a review. I simply try to enjoy it.
Add to that the fact that I rarely actually go to the movies, and I don’t buy, willy-nilly, every CD that comes out, nor do I watch the “popular” TV shows. Most of them are utter dreck. (Well, I do watch NCIS and CSI and its variants. Good stuff, but I don’t ever expect to write reviews of them.)
Nonetheless, there is quality entertainment to be had. One aspect of quality, per se, is the ability to stand the test of time. Perhaps that’s why the CDs I occasionally buy were usually released a few years before I buy them.
Sometimes, however, the label “instant classic” really does apply. Something need not be twenty or more years old to have demonstrated qualities that will let it hold its own in the future. By way of example, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, which is now just two years old, is one such film. I recommended it here, and received some very good feedback. It is, I think, a film that will be eminently watchable for generations to come.
So if you see an in-depth review of mine, it will probably not be something that aired on TV last night, it probably won’t be something you can still go see in the theaters, and it probably will not be something currently on the Billboard top-100 list. Probably not.
Furthermore, I don’t intend to review too many things I would not recommend. My time is too valuable to me to waste becoming familiar enough with something I don’t like, just to write a full review. If there’s something don’t like, I’ll say so and move along.
Rather, I intend my reviews to be justifications for my recommendations. (Again, refer to M&C.) If I recommend something, you can be sure I either already own it, or it’s in my shopping basket — putting my money where my mouth is, you might say.
All that having been said, I expect my next reviews to be of the 1996 movie That Thing You Do!
BRING ON THE REVIEWS! I like your take on things.
I do disagree with your stance on bad movies. I often revel in reviewing the things that truely stink. Sometimes punching the things you hate is more fun than kissing the things you love.
Well, it’s not so much that I wouldn’t review a stinker, as much as it’s my unwillingness to see it over and over to the point of familiarity, to be able to analyze the specific stench.
So, yes, if I encounter something horrid, I’ll say so – but I won’t watch it three or four times.
I am reminded of Dorothy Parker who reviewed books in her New Yorker column Constant Reader.
Her entire review of “Winnie The Pooh”?
“Tonstant weader fwow up!”