Introducing: The Upstart Guide

A little more than ten years ago I began to coalesce a list of four star reviewed films from Leonard Maltin's annual Video Guide with the purpose of watching each film and writing a four or five page abstract about the experience. The goal was to create a new form of film criticism. The Maltin list provides a clear set of boundaries in terms of which films I would write about, but was never intended to be the basis of the content of the prose.

Furthermore, with the exception of the works of James Agee, Derek Malcolm, and Roger Ebert- which I did not and do not read with any sense of religious regularity- I avoid reading most, if not all, works of film criticism. Entertainment is a personal experience. Whether you watch a film, read a book, or listen to a piece of music- the experience you have is unique to you. You bring to this activity your own sense of worth, your own depth of knowledge, and your own perspective.

Whatever Maltin's reasons for giving these films 4 star reviews are his. I can tell you that I do not march in lockstep with his opinions. There are out of bounds films that I like just as much, if not more, than many of the films on the list. There are hundreds of important films that he rated below four stars that other critics would have rated higher.

Again, the rules are simple. His list and nothing else. His reasons for inclusion are irrelevant. The films will speak for themselves and I will speak for myself.

Finally, the goal of this project was not to sell products. This is a cynical and intellectually worthless pursuit all too often undertaken by those professional and amateur alike that feel that it is their job to promote products instead of sharing their experience with a work of art. This commercial drive has sabotaged all forms of the written word- from mainstream periodicals and newspapers to the Internet.

I find most web delivered film review content to be of the copy and paste variety, offering little if anything of value- least of which tends to be the scoring of films. Popular sites like ign.com reviews films and even episodes of current television shows and grades them with score between 1-10. It is my opinion that this approach is wanton and useless. What value does giving an episode of a TV show such as The Office a 9.0/10. What it shows is a complete lack of perspective, the drive to sell a product (entertainment sites are driven by advertising dollars), and a completely ego-centric view that if I, the reviewer, like something then it is inherently the best thing on the market. "Reviewers" like this are inherently lazy and their opinions trend towards worthlessness.

The road ahead for me is long. I will post a piece each Wednesday to show you what I'm doing with the Guide. Which films I'm screening, and how I might organize the book. Feel free to drop me a line, offer suggestions, or tell me how I'm wrong about something.