I love writing and reading reviews. It started with film reviews. Reading Donald Clarke’s scathing review movies in the Irish Times when I was younger was a formative experience. Often I find myself enjoying the critiques more than the movies! I’ve developed a soft spot for restaurant reviews as well.
During the pandemic I set up an Instagram page to start sharing food reviews, just for fun. They’re not serious at all, I write them in a very tongue and cheek fashion and often try to incorporate what is happening in my own life in them. I love being honest about my own biases and having controversial takes about something as simple as ice cream flavour, I find it leads to some really fun discussions!
Who are your favourite critics? Do any of you here write reviews for fun or even for a living?
The Guardian is a pretty good one for film critiques alright! I’m not sure if I’m very familiar with Mark Kermode’s critiques in particular, I’ll have to check him out! I remember not agreeing with a lot of what Peter Bradshaw wrote, I think we have wildly different outlooks on cinema haha.
In terms of youtube channels, have you ever watched Every Frame a Painting? It’s wild to me that they’re available for free online. The people who made the videos (it’s no longer an active channel) have gone on to work in the film industry. I learned so much about staging and editing from those video essays. I highly recommend it! It gave me a lot of visual literacy and made watching and rewatching films very interesting.
Yeah unfortunately my German wouldn’t be at a level where I can listen to podcasts featuring in depth discussion about films. But apart from the official The Last of Us podcast, I’ve never considered listening to podcasts about film/TV. Do you listen to any in English that you could recommend?