Narrative Folding

Brad Pitt as Jesse James in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007).

Nick and I have both mentioned the term "narrative folding" on this site and in other contexts and we're often asked "what does that mean?" The short answer can be hard to describe because the man who we borrow the term from is Ted Goranson, an MIT grad and scientist who is not always easy to understand. His blog, and accompanying links to his thousands of IMDb comments, can be found here. The term "Metafilm" is more common for what we're discussing, but this is generally used only to refer to films whose story is about film. In addition to this, Ted's term includes what is often referred to as "intertextuality" when it's used in a text context.

James Berardinelli reviews XMO:W (with commentary)

This past week we put up our most recent audio podcast for X-Men Origins: Wolverine. We criticized the movie's bizarre plot, tone issues, and lapses in budget, but still found the movie to be at least decent (more than I'd say for X3: The Last Stand).

We've also singled out lazy and/or incompetent film critics in the past, including James Berardinelli, one of RT's "top critics" who is pretty representative of basically everything wrong with Rotten Tomatoes system of rewarding mediocrity. James also reviewed X-Men Oranges: Tangerine, and while some of his basic assertions are similar to ours, he manages to say it in such a way that I thought I'd give some of the choice bits, with commentary. James' full review is here, although be warned, his site appears to have pop-up issues.

Rex Reed: Bad For Everyone

Rex Reed of the New York Observer has been an outspoken advocate of the decline of quality criticism and the rise of the uninformed "my opinion is equally valid" Internet culture that has arrived on the scene to review film in the past 15 years. In a way, he's right: I already addressed the problems of film criticism here, in a different rant. But unfortunately Reed's own criticism is typically a poorly written caricature of a snooty film snob, to the point that it's hard to tell whether any given snooty pseudo-intellectual nonsense quote is actually from him or made up. So I made a game of it! Try to guess which of the following quotes actually come from Rex Reed or me, making things up while holding my pinky in mid-air so I can emulate Reed's style.

Video Game Movies: A Post-mortem

With YSM's first themed month in the bag, Dobson and I decided to offer our thoughts on video game movies as a whole. See us discuss, among other things, fanboys' dismissal of all things different, critics' dismissal of that which they don't understand, and Pixar's hit film Cars!

Armond White and Endangered Critical Thought

We've mentioned New York Press critic Armond White in passing, focusing on how he uses his impeccable vocabulary to call films "dung-like." Armond has become something of a pariah in the film community, praising films like Norbit while deriding popular new releases like Toy Story 3 and The Dark Knight. Roger Ebert called White a "troll" and each of White's reviews on Rotten Tomatoes generates more user comments than all other critics put together. In a sense, Ebert and company are right: Armond is a troll. He frequently goes to ridiculous extremes and inflammatory language to generate interest in his articles, and, by extension, the newspaper that employs him. But what's alarming is that Armond may be the last true film critic in that he actually attempts to speak intelligently about the movies he watches and as a result is either dismissed or attacked by a film culture that promotes fanboy-ism and star ratings over intelligent discourse.

James Berardinelli: Bad for Everyone

I used to think there was nothing worse than a bad film review. A critic's only task is to watch a free movie and write 500 interesting words about it. Many fail at this very basic task. Rotten Tomatoes pariah Armond White seems content to comment on everything except the film. The result is a muddled mixture of pop culture musings and undeserved vitriol, as if a thesaurus threw up on a Spin Magazine by way of a sanitarium. Despite White's curmudgeonly misguided reviews, they are at least interesting to read. He knows the English language and uses it to its full potential, primarily by calling movies "dung-like" or misinterpreting song lyrics.

However, there is something worse than a bad film review: an irrelevant one. For every bad review there are 50 mediocre ones floating around the Internet, eager to offer their own unique take on the plot synopsis and star rating system. By some twist of fate, a few of these white noise reviewers have become relatively popular. The whitest of the white noise is James Berardinelli, founder of ReelViews.net and Rotten Tomatoes Top Critic.

Yes this is the biggest picture of him I could find.

The Nostalgia Critic: Bad for Everyone

Our astute, genius-level intellect readers no doubt recognize that we're not the only game in town when it comes to campy, cheesy, or otherwise bad movies. Probably the biggest game in town right now is the "Nostalgia Critic," a character, a web-site and practically a brand-name created by Doug Walker to cash in on a whole generation of people with warm, fuzzy memories of crappy movies. It's unfortunate that Nostalgia Critic sucks. Don't believe me? See for yourself.

Please note that you don't have to watch this if you don't have 15 minutes of your life to waste.

First of all, he's doing this backwards. His motto: "I remember it, so you don't have to," sets out his faulty mission statement in an easy to remember sound byte. His whole deal is mocking something you remember or at least know of but haven't seen in two decades. He makes jokes about how bad a movie is without really reviewing it, and the goal is apparently for you, the reader, to not watch the movie. That's stupid. We here at Your Stupid Minds want people to watch bad movies, to love bad movies, and to laugh at bad movies. But please don't post 15 minute videos of yourself mocking the bad movie while showing off your improv skills.

What really bugs me in a review like the one posted above might not be what you think. Yes, his jokes are bad, and despite like ten jokes about how gay He-Man is, most of his videocaptures really aren't any more homoerotic than Star Wars. It's not the incredibly lame attempt at political humor. It's not even that he has the name of the movie wrong and feels the need to explain that He-Man, in fact, had a cartoon. Seriously as much as I don't respect Ben Lyons, at least he doesn't give us FIFTEEN MINUTES of him driving home while he talks about movies he just saw.

No, what bugs me is how this guy feels like he has to be the star of the fucking show. Instead of laughing at the movie's shortcomings, we're supposed to laugh at this douchebag's capering? Why on earth does this guy feel the need to add sound effects, canned laughter, and pictures of John McCain for what's being called a "film review"?

Even more insufferable are all the other characters this guy plays: in "Bum Reviews," Doug plays Chester A. Bum, a loud, wig-wearing guy whose 'jokes' consist almost entirely of incredibly clichéd non-sequiturs. In "Ask That Guy," he plays an upper-class, loud guy whose 'jokes' consist almost entirely of clichéd non-sequiturs. There's a pattern here, but I can't quite grasp it.

I get that all of these creations are characters created by Doug Walker to give him some measure of celebrity on the Internet, but what bugs me is that he's done it at the expense of movies I like.

But even that would be forgivable if he was actually funny. But he just isn't. Try to sit through this. I dare you.

It's just painful to see him try to play a different character but then immediately fall back into his nostalgia critic voice, but without all the editing and gimmickry that attempts to hide his total inability to deliver a joke. This thing was only about six minutes but it felt like roughly infinity minutes because it was so goddamn awkward and flat-out bad. It was so bad even his private cheerleading squad recognized a misfire. Bad movies are the crutch this guy uses to hide his inability to entertain, and by making fun of them with himself as the feature attraction he's made a series of unwatchable, shitty reviews based on campy movies. Frankly, campy movies deserve better.

Don't get me wrong: making fun of bad movies is great. We all have fond memories of MST3K, but the robots and the human were in the audience, they weren't the goddamn stars.

To summarize: The Nostalgia Critic sucks. I'm glad there's a popular outlet for cheesy, campy, and otherwise bad movies, but I wish it was actually good. I'd settle for watchable.