The good and the very bad news this morning:

On the plus side, Criterion has announced that it's going Blu-ray, with "Chungking Express," "The 400 Blows" and "Contempt" amongst its first releases in the format. /film has the announcement.

On the minus, and this is an incredible downer, Glenn Kenny at Premiere writes that

I've just been informed that my position at Premiere.com is being terminated. What this means for this blog is still up in the air; I've got meetings this afternoon in which such things are to be negotiated. In any case, I now join the ever-growing ranks of film critics without staff positions.

These days, it seems you only need a fistful of fingers to count the staff critic positions still around. Sorry to hear it, Glenn.

[Photo: "Chungking Express," Miramax Films, 1996]

+ Criterion Collection Goes Blu-Ray (/film)
+ The end of an era (Premiere)

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Tags: Blu-ray, Criterion, Glenn Kenny

At the New York Times, David Carr looks over the damage left from this latest round of film critics ankling their publications or having their publications ankle them.

"For those of us who are making work that requires a kind of intellectual conversation, we rely on that talk to do the work of getting people interested," said Mr. Rudin, who produced "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood," two Oscar-nominated and critically championed films last year. "All of the talk about 'No Country,' all of the argument about the ending, kept that film in the forefront of the conversation" and helped it win the best picture Oscar.

On the upside, the AP reports that Roger Ebert will return to reviewing films after Ebertfest in April.

[Photo: Dodo reconstruction at Oxford's Museum of Natural History, from Ballista, Wikipedia]

+ Now on the Endangered Species List: Movie Critics in Print (NY Times)
+ Ebert to Resume Writing Movie Reviews (AP)

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...and Nathan Lee at the Village Voice becomes the latest film critic to bite the dust. The Reeler quotes Lee:

In great Village Voice tradition, I was abruptly laid off today for "economic reasons." My employment at the paper ends immediately: someone else, alas, will be tasked with specifying the precise shade of periwinkle frosting atop the cupcakes in My Blueberry Nights.

And so I am, as they say, "looking for work," though presumably not as a staff film critic as such jobs no longer appear to exist.

There's some critic in-fighting in the comments; it's not a sandbox in which I want to play, but I'd like to say that as much as Mr. Lee's writing style rarely agreed with me, at least he obviously loved and was knowledgeable about film.

+ Lower Your Voice: Nathan Lee Laid Off For "Economic Reasons" (The Reeler)

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Two days ago New York Daily News film critic Jack Mathews announced his retirement (via Movie City News) as of the end of Oscar season, after which he'll head to Oregon with threats that he'll be devoting his time to "that long-gestating novel about the college co-ed considered by many to have been the Zodiac's first victim (it was a murder I covered as a cub reporter) and to the breeze of the Pacific." While it remains to be seen if he'll be replaced, and by whom, Defamer is reporting the troubling news that the Detroit Free Press has bought out its film critic Terry Lawson, and has no plans to bring in a replacement, which makes the paper "the most highly circulated newspaper in the country (daily readership = 320K) without a full-time, in-house film critic."

By our research, all of the other Top 20 newspapers in the United States have at least one major, well-known critic (yes, even the Arizona Republic). However, The Freep's move clearly signals that there's a changing tide in the amount of importance (and budget dollars) local newspapers allocate to coverage of the movie business. The Freep appears to be content to run wire reviews for new releases (they seem to favor the criticism levied by the Orlando Sentinel's Roger Moore) and, from what we've gathered, readers don't seem to mind much, either. After all, there's clearly no shortage of film criticism available on The Internets. And while movie reviews have probably never been enough to make someone throw down their two bits to pick up a copy of the Friday fishwrap, it still saddens us that there's not enough room in the budget of a Top 20 newspaper to send someone to the movies a few times a week.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be critics.

+ 30 Year Movie Journalism Vet Jack Mathews Heads To The Coastal Farm (Movie City News)
+ Exclusive: Detroit Free Press Becomes Largest Newspaper In The Country Without A Full-Time Film Critic (Defamer)

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