Critics are dead! Long live the critics!

I just read another one of those obits for movie critics . What with the movie studios withholding more and more films from advance critical screenings, the recent blogoshphere shepherding of “Snakes on a Plane” and Kevin Smith’s much-publicized dressing down of broadcast “critic” Joel Siegel , people are taking glee with what they see as the death of the movie critic.

Place your favorite four-letter profanity here. That’s my reaction.

Look, the only people worrying about this whole process are, one, those who hate the idea that critics have some sort of grand stage from which to spout their opinions and, two, the critics who take themselves way too seriously.

As for that first one, I was once among their number. I can remember reading Pauline Kael and getting angry because I both disagreed with her and because it seemed as if she were saying that I was stupid to think she was wrong. Truth is, if I didn’t write reviews for The Spokesman-Review and debate movies weekly on Spokane Public Radio , I might still feel that way.

Then again, I might not. Because the way the modern world is, we all have access to an audience via the Internet. Any person with online access, the ability to type and money to see the latest films can tell the world what he/she thinks. I’ll probably be writing about film (and everything else) until my cold, dead fingers fall from my MacBook keyboard.

I see this only as a good thing. I could care less whether people agree with my views. They’re only my views, dictated by my personal tastes and the vast number of films that I have seen since first watching “Singin’ in the Rain” since 1952 (when I was just 5).

To me, criticism is a conversation. I think something, you think something, we both have our say and anyone listening gets to make up hi/her own mind. We can be wrong about facts (does Sam Jackson utter the f-word seven or nine times in “Snakes On a Plane”?), but there are no right or wrong opinions.

So be gleeful with the “death” of film critics if you want. Or mourn the loss of their “influence.” Nothing changes the fact that the person who can make the best case, who has the best ability to express that personal opinion, is the one who is most likely to be read.

And if you can get your audience to read you, you’ve already won. Because even if they disagree, they’ve had to use their brains to do so – which, to me is the point: I don’t want you to necessarily agree with me; I just want you to take the time to look past Hollywood’s often pathetic marketing manipulations and make up your own minds.

The enemy here, if there even is one, aren’t “critics” or those who hate them. It’s the people who put out crap such as “Christmas with the Kranks,” call it creativity and bank of our being too stupid to know the difference.

Below: Samuel L. Jackson gives us exactly what the title promises in the surprisingly fun “Snakes on a Plane.”

Associated Press photo