Blurb Whore Overachiever of the Year
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 2:04AM Top Ten List O' the Day: Peter Travers.
I don't know how many of you watch Rachel Maddow on MSNBC but during Herman Cain's brief presidential campaign she began to treat it, hilariously, as a piece of performance art i.e. This just can't be real! I feel much the same way about Rolling Stone's Blurb Whore Legend Peter Travers. I don't mean to fixate on him as much as I do -- every year I marvel for the same reasons -- but I grew up reading and loving his reviews and only later, as I began to read more film criticism did he come to embody the Film Critic as Film Publicist problem. The man can definitely turn a phrase which is why if he wasn't making the presumably big bucks he makes at Rolling Stone, he'd surely be a highly paid ad man.
But this top ten article made me laugh so much. It's performance art. It has to be. He begins with Drive and literally the first words are...
Screw Oscar..."
After which comes a top ten list that includes not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven, not eight but literally all the contenders you'll see on anybody's Oscar prediction top ten Best Picture charts barring the unscreened 'Extremely Loud'. Which is to say that The Artist, The Descendants, Moneyball, Midnight in Paris, Hugo, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and The Tree of Life... are all accounted for. To make sure he's covered all the Oscar bases there's a three way tie at #10 between War Horse, The Help and Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2. Seriously.
I bow down to one of the greatest pieces of year-end list-making performance art that film criticism has ever seen. Peter Travers, you are genius.
Best Picture, Blurb Whore, Oscars (11), Year in Review, magazines
Reader Comments (13)
It's not nearly as bad as last year. Drive, TTSS, Tree of Life, and Harry Potter are all in the #8-15 range yes, and he has all the top competitors, but if you look at last year his top ten list was exactly the Oscar Best Picture ten. Go back and look. The one movie on the cusp for the entire process that didn't make it (The Town)- not on his list.
It's fine that his taste is similar to an Academy member, but ... did he not like any docs this year? Animated movies? Foreign movies? Sheesh.
Like x 3. Great criticism of a critic. I wonder between Travers' list and New Year's Eve's screen play, which one has less point?
Jake, I think he is not similar to ANY ONE academy member, but he is similar to the collective sum of the whole academy, which either means he has no personality or he's not showing his personality.
He is the worst
The list is good for someone who doesn't follow the whole Oscar season to keep track, huh?
Although dislike the list, I can't really blame him. It says "10 Best Movies of 2011", hence the list is what he thinks are the 10 best movies of the year; not his personal favorite. (but I seriously doubt that his personal list is any difference than this list)
They should named it "The 2011 Movie Guideline for beginners", lol
I found this at the comment section from the site and I think this represents my feeling when critics are being inconsistent:
"I'm pretty annoyed with you right now, Peter Travers. I have been compiling a list of every movie you gave 3 1/2 or 4 stars to this past year. Margin Call you only gave 3 stars. Yet it is #8 on your last. When I had the chance to see the movie in the theaters, I instead chose to follow your advice and go for a 3 1/2 star movies not on your list: A Dangerous Method, Melancholia, Like Crazy, Marth Marcy May Marlene, The Skin I Live In, 50/50, The Ides of March, Higher Ground, Attack the Block, Cars 2, X-Men:First Class, Incendies, Meek's Cutoff, Hanna, Win Win.
Then, you chose to give The Descendants a 4 star rating, and The Artist a 3 1/2 star rating, but you say that The Artist is higher on your list than The Descendants?
After your top 10 list last year actually were the 10 best picture oscar nominees, I've been paying more attention to your reviews. But here, you have contradicted yourself in two different areas. I can't accept that from the person who is supposed to help me chose which movie to spend money on and go see, and which to wait for video. "
Is he, his own critics group trying to predict the Oscars? lol, I know the guy is a joke, but at least Drive is his #1. He wrote "Screw Oscar..." because he felt like a maverick against AMPAS for ONE* movie he likes that precursors are not paying too much attention.
*That happens so rarely that he must bitch about it.
He didn't use to be this bad, did he? I remember reading his review of "Dead Again" (which is one of my all-time favorite movies) not long after I saw the movie for the first time. He didn't much care for it, but even though I loved it, I found his reasoning sound, and there wasn't anything particularly blurb whore-y about it.
But now every review of his just makes me cringe, even the ones I agree with wholeheartedly.
Why he just can't come up with two lists beats me. One list could be his "Top 10 Movies to See If You Care About the Oscars" list which is what he has been doing. The other list can be more in line with his personal tastes (does he have them?), etc.
Mikhael's quoted comment is very telling, but I admit I do have the same problem. A film I gave a B on might find itself higher-ranked than something I've given an A- to. Why? Who know? Different factors. Time and further thought could've skewed the rankings or when I do make my rankings the B film left a more indelible mark than the A- film. It happens. Though I'm hesitant to actually give Travers the benefit of a doubt in this case.
I know it's way unfashionable to say this around these parts, but I love this guy. I love the way he writes. I love his idiosyncrasies. I love his soundbiteyness. I love the way he courts blurbs. I love the way he inserts himself into the text.
I know he comes from the opposite end of the film criticism spectrum to you Nathaniel, but, as someone who appreciates both styles, I like that there's room for Travers to be a major player too.
He definitely seems to cater to general consensus rather than adhering to his own personal convictions. He's really the antithesis of Armond White, in a way. Whereas White contradicts the general consensus JUST to draw attention, Travers agrees with it JUST to validate his choices.
Even his top 10 of the 2000's decade was a pretty suspicious list. He named There Will Be Blood the best film of the decade, which was a pretty common choice among critics, but he only had it at #7 on his top 10 for 2007. His #2 pick for the decade, Children of Men, wasn't even on his top 10 for 2006. I know that people can upgrade their opinions over time (as I do frequently), but it just seems odd that he jumped on the Children of Men bandwagon just as it started to gain attention as one the decade's finest films by others and paid no attention to it at all when it first came out. This was coming from a guy who had Dreamgirls as his #2 movie of 2006 when it looked like it was going to be a big Oscar contender and then suddenly changed his mind about it once the nominations were actually announced. I can't dig up the quote, but I remember reading in his analysis of the nominations that year that the Academy "didn't fall for the obvious bait" (not an exact quote) or something to the effect of that when discussing the Dreamgirls snub. I was thinking, "Yeah...but you did."
Incisive and true.