I'm a little depressed this morning to read a couple of inflammatory responses to
Simon's Blu-ray review of The Blind Side, which I could have let pass by themselves but there's been this growing feeling amongst the comments you guys are leaving lately that my writers at Obsessed With Film aren't telling it like it is. You compare us to sheep, just going with the crowd, not sticking our balls out there, etc - and I'm getting sick of it. It's bullshit of course but it has me annoyed nevertheless. The reason it depresses so much is that it makes me question everything I've been trying to achieve with this site over the years. If you guys truly believe that we are going with the crowd in some sort of street cred crusade then obviously I've failed with what I'm been trying to achieve. I'm a big fat failure. Every single article on OWF is written in a personal manner with heaps of feeling and opinion. You can check out our 8,000 posts, ranging from news stories, long-assed reviews, personal essays and features. We usually go way more in depth than the average site and WE NEVER publish fluff pieces to keep the studio's on our side. We don't post their press releases or post trailers/images for anything that we don't want to talk about and we call bullshit when we see it. A clear example is what happened last week with
The Expendables... We actually had a one on one interview lined up today with
Sylvester Stallone. YES, fucking Sylvester Stallone, a living icon of cinema but Rob felt like he couldn't go through with it because HE HATED The Expendables so much, he didn't want to go to the junket and say anything good to Stallone about it. What other site would turn down a Stallone interview on that basis? Have you ever heard that,
ever? Every other site would have made sure a positive review went live, full of ass-kissing and embarrassing brown nosing. Not Obsessed With Film. Our review of The Expendables could potentially be damaging to the relationship we have built up with Lionsgate over the years but I posted it anyway because that is how one of my writers felt about the movie and that feeling had to get out there. In a way, we are the opposite to
John Ford's 'Print The Legend' stance. We are more like
Robert Redford in
All The President's Men, we are not satisfied until the truth is out there, no matter what the costs may be. Ford knew this deep down too of course. He knew that
Jimmy Stewart was
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and not
John Wayne.
Regarding The Blind Side. I absolutely loathe that movie. It stands for everything I hate about modern day cinema, but I'm not going to tell Simon what to write in his review. It's a well written piece, and I understand why he enjoyed it but it doesn't mean I have to agree with him. In fact, me publishing his review surely shows that I desperately want my writers and their opinions to go online - no matter if they fit the general consensus. There's no such thing as a collective OWF feeling. We all have our own individual opinions. And just because I hate a movie, or Mike hated a film - doesn't mean Simon has to. Something I try and do with the home video releases is spread them out amongst a different writer from whomever saw the theatrical release to see if we end up with dueling thoughts on a movie and in the case of The Blind Side, we did. It's fun, and I enjoy it when two people don't agree on a movie. Isn't it why we watched Siskel & Ebert back in the day? We don't sell out. We say what we think about the movies,
always. It's the one rule we have around here and the one mantra I tell all new writers to abide when they join us. I tell them 'write what you think' and I've never pulled someone's review from going live because I didn't agree with it.
Never. We used to have a quote around here and I'm going to reinistate it somewhere; "
A man goes to the movies. The critic
must be honest enough to
admit that
he is that
man." To say we go with the crowd is worrying to me, because it's just simply not true. But if I've projected that feeling then in some ways I've failed.Our review of The Expendables was one of the very first on the web we went live at the Embargo. We had no idea how the coin would fall until the following morning, so it certainly wasn't written with a collective idea in mind. My favourite movie of last year was
Public Enemies. I didnt even see it make many means Top Ten lists. The year previous one of my favourites was
Elegy. What? Yeah how many sites gave that movie the coverage we did? I really enjoyed
Robin Hood this year. Most didn't. I didnt go crazy over Avatar, and neither did Mike. One of my top three favourite movies of all time is
Vanilla Sky. I don't have to justify my feelings to anyone.