"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Saturday, February 19, 2005

Why I still review movies: Scenes from the mailbox
Posted by Jill | 10:06 PM
I've been reviewing movies online since 1997, which makes me kind of a golden oldie among online reviewers, with people like Rick Ferguson (the original Film Geek) and the GirlsOn gang having long since bitten the dust. Through sheer longevity, I seem to have gained a certain amount of reputation in this strange little universe, which I guess is sort of like being James Dale Guckert without the prostitution. I Say I Am A Critic, Therefore I Am.

Oh, sure, I've had a couple of reviews published in a local startup magazine that went bust after four issues because the guys who ran it were simply using it to promote the publisher's God-awful movie about junkies and gangsters, but that garnered no pay, and no perqs other than a press pass to the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival -- which I hope to get on my own this year.

These days, I find blogging comes much easier. Doing film reviews is like pulling teeth sometimes. But what makes it worthwhile is reader mail. I don't get much of that, mostly because I have an e-mail form on the site designed to foil spammers (since I've already had one e-mail address stolen by them) and most people are too lazy to find it. But since I'm one of the few people in the universe who thought Million Dollar Baby was, in the words of The Cranky Critic, "a highly polished turd", I expected a barrage of hate mail.

I didn't get it, but I'm going to share two e-mails I did get, which demonstrate what's so wonderful about movies: They truly prove that comedian Pat Paulsen was right: One man's junk really IS another man's prune danish.

Perfect review. As a produced screenwriter, I wish I could serve up hash like this and be taken seriously. The critics are so happy to not have a typical ending to a Hollywood movie that they're falling all over themselves to praise an untypical, and poorly conceived story.



Re: Your review of Million Dollar Baby.

Pardon me, but you're an idiot. This is simply the best examination of the nature of guilt, forgiveness and redemption I've seen since, well, Unforgiven. You must have put on a stupid hat the day you saw this amazing film.
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