The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), in a somewhat desperate grab for better TV ratings, expands the Best Picture category from five to ten nominee slots; a scorned pop idol, ridiculed for years by the media, is mourned with unbridled adulation by the public; Michael Bay's TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN steamrolls to ecstatic Twitter reviews and a record-breaking first weekend at the box office, in spite of four out of five (critical) doctors not recommending it.
Taken together, these three recent events represent a new threshold of just how firm a grip the texting, Twittering, Facebooking masses have on the current of pop culture. Essentially, film critics - a rank and file already decimated by rounds of newspaper layoffs - have been rendered just a little bit more irrelevant by the triple whammy of AMPAS, the shadow of MJ and MB.
Read More »
