Category: Criticism

  • Hating Will Shortz/Cleverness/”Ella Minnow Pea”

    “Everybody’s clever nowadays” -Oscar Wilde Clever is a difficult thing. It’s fairly easy to write something without being clever at all. We’re going to have to define our terms a little bit here: on it’s surface, clever is a synonym for ‘smart’— but when I hear the word, I tend to think of something that’s…

  • Roger Ebert/Criticism/”Ghoul”

    Roger Ebert was basically America’s critic for a large chunk of his career. He was an excellent writer, and had a canyon deep understanding of the medium he spent most of his time writing about. He was also a passionate and thoughtful critic: watch this clip of him arguing with Gene Siskel about the film…