{"id":1420,"date":"2010-05-18T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2010-05-18T19:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=1420"},"modified":"2012-06-13T14:29:26","modified_gmt":"2012-06-13T21:29:26","slug":"hate-mail-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/hate-mail-time\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Hate Mail Time!"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the subject of no respect<\/a>, let’s open the hate mail bag, shall we?<\/p>\n

<\/h6>\n

All film critics receive hate mail. It’s a hazard of the occupation. People take movies personally, and often get very, very upset when a critic doesn’t like a movie they liked. Or, conversely, when a critic does<\/em> like a movie they didn’t. It happens both ways. I suspect that most critics secretly enjoy hate mail, the more irrational the better. I know I do. <\/p>\n

Recently, as some of you may have noticed, I reviewed a little movie about blue Indians who ride dragons in a magical rainforest<\/a>. Personally, I thought it was kind of dumb, and said as much in the review. I think I did a pretty thorough job in the article explaining why I came to that opinion. Nevertheless, this stirred up some strong responses in our forum thread<\/a>, which you are free to peruse when you have the better part of a day to waste. Words like “terrible,” “insulting,” and (my favorite) “unprofessional” are bandied about a lot, as they always are when any even-remotely controversial review is published. <\/p>\n

For some people, having a discussion in a forum doesn’t quite satisfy the urge to lash out. They need to go straight to the source, and email the critic their contempt directly. Below are some of my recent favorites. <\/p>\n

I plan to write more in this blog about the point and purpose of film criticism at a later date. For now, I’m going to post these messages without further comment. (However, I must note that I gave the disc a perfect 5-star score for video quality in my review, and described it as, “the best-looking demo material yet released on Blu-ray.”) <\/p>\n

All names have been removed to protect the guilty. <\/p>\n

Your review is terrible. <\/p>\n

This is hands down the best blu ray movie ever produced, are you blind? Name one that is better. Picture quality, sound and story is fantastic in the blu ray format is the best I ever seen. I look forward the review on your sight, but this is way off base and I am many agree with me.<\/p>\n

Movie Buff not a critic\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In your review of the Avatar Blu-ray disc for the movie Avatar, you ask yourself, “How the hell did he pull this off? I can’t figure it out.” regarding James Cameron. Perhaps, this tip may help you find your answer:<\/p>\n

He pulled if off by creating a fantastic and beautiful story. If you would just get your head out of your ass and stop putting down brilliant work, you may just see the light. Why is it that most movie critics will only love and admire crappy, niche movies? If a movie is loved by “the people”, then it must be dumb and trivial, right?<\/p>\n

Thanks for helping me avoid yet another reviewer on the site. Now, all the movies you hate, I’m sure I will love (and vice versa).\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

white<\/p>\n

Why do you have an inferiority complex when it comes to understanding that white people are the backbone of this country, and were here from its beginnings. What place did you drop out of that makes you think that what you “believe” about movie plots has any relevance or importance All you actually convey is personal character liabilities when it comes to being a relevant human. You need to “shut up” when it comes to spewing your racial (white) ignorance as being “philosophical” or critiquing, because all you actually do is just make yourself dirty in the process.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is a pretty immature comment for a professional reviewer to make on any movie much less the highest grossing movie ever @ nearly 3 billion dollars. Anyhow I don’t have a problem with what he meant , however I am sure he could have worded it a little more professionally. I read your reviews here often but too many more like that one and I may have to take this place off my bookmarks.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For the record, I have also received literally dozens of supportive emails from people expressing agreement with my review, and thanking me for voicing the same feelings they had while watching the movie. I’ve also received a few notes from people who were civil and respectful in their disagreement. But those aren’t nearly as entertaining, are they? <\/p>\n

I’ll write more on this topic later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the subject of no respect, let’s open the hate mail bag, shall we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1419,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,140],"tags":[156,287,290,277,84,90],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1420"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36510,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420\/revisions\/36510"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}