President Barack Obama, at the end of his funny, barbed and self-mocking White House Correspondents speech, graciously thanked the assembled press corps for doing their jobs --even when he disagreed with them--and recognized that their profession was under duress. He wished them well as they reinvent journalism.

At lunch last week, one studio marketing exec and I were puzzling over Time, Newsweek and EW. And as I ponder my own future, I am aware that writing for print gave me not only an editor and a deadline that forced me to focus serious time on a column, but gravitas as well. The blog just isn't the same. When it's in print, it means more. To everyone. Said studio marketer doesn't mind Patrick Goldstein's daily rantings online. It's when they wind up in print in the LAT that she gets upset. Is this attitude? Habit? The fact that holding something tangible in your hand makes it more important? Print still does have an advantage (along with serious advertising dollars), if folks can only figure out how to make it dovetail economically with the faster online world.

People take many blogs and online publications seriously, from The Daily Beast (where editors and deadlines still apply) to WSJ.com, where you can find Kara Swisher's All Things Digital blog. She recently interviewed Sharon Waxman, whose online pub The Wrap is trying to compete inside the trade space. Waxman asserted at a recent Fest of Books panel that the trades "never break a story" and "there's no place to go for the essential information you need if you are in the business of TV and movies." Really? She waxes on:

Meanwhile The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, suggests that newspaper reporters and editors have been chasing the wrong goals, fame and glory, instead of serving their readers.

It may be possible for a small online outfit to survive on trade ads. The question is, how does a bigger concern pay their overhead when the print edition goes away? This Observer piece undermines these serious queries in favor of more entertaining catfights between Nikki Finke, Sharon Waxman and Anita Busch. Oy. UPDATE: Movieline and Vulture respond, with yummy artwork.

As for giving Joe Flint the LAT Company Town blog (what about their own Claudia Eller, who comes from the trades and can duke it out with the competition better than anyone?), I still don't understand why any self-respecting newspaper wants to compete with Finke's Deadline Hollywood. (BTW, she's compelling to read and gets traffic but not much advertising.) There's good journalism and there's good blogging and she does the latter: put it up and see if it sticks and if it does, take credit for breaking news (if it doesn't, alter and bury it).

Variety and The Hollywood Reporter still provide a valuable service for the entertainment community. The trades confirm or deny what many folks have heard to be true. They remove rumor status. They tell working people who's going where, what the deals are, what performance numbers mean. They review content. First.

A new model for their future can be found. The question is, will the execs who make good money at the top of the company pyramid be able to think outside the box and imagine the trade of the future and then figure out what it takes to get there, knowing that it must be smaller and leaner? Cutting content is not going to work, nor will the old "if they advertise, we will cover" approach.

Preserving past glories? Not an option.

[Photo montage courtesy Vulture]

The new metric in journalism is online traffic. While the movie stars may not pull them in at the boxoffice like they used to, write a story about a star, and the traffic will come.

It didn't matter if Lions for Lambs sucked: Time still ran a story about Cruise, Redford and Streep. And this week the august New York Times ran a feature about overweight movie stars pegged to Russell Crowe's State of Play weight gain. New York's Vulture and the LAT's The Big Picture swiftly blogged back--adding a photo of Crowe's streamlined new look for Robin Hood.

The Daily Beast editrix Tina Brown cannily harnessed the traffic spike potential of Michelle Obama (is she "the new Oprah?" trumpeted her headline) and Susan Boyle in her weekly column. More than 30 million YouTube views later, why did the beetle-browed Britain's Got Talent singer hit the zeitgeist with such force? Because of Google Trends.

That's right. The new journalist m.o.: check out the most-searched item of the day. One new website is devoted to that very purpose. Every morning, EPK (not "electronic press kit" but, "Everything Pop Kulture") assigns its (low-paid) writers to report on the searches of the day, insuring heavy traffic. This methodology is widespread across the Web, insuring that what has already been written about today will be repeated, commented upon and enlarged tomorrow. Expect more on the following topics in days to come:

1. megan mcallister 2. philip markoff wedding 3. five dollar dinners 4. julie chen 5. daniel andreas san diego 6. baby mammoth 7. philip markoff megan mcallister 8. ben and jerry s locations 9. william parente 10. craigslist killer

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out a way for today's beleaguered journalists to stay employed. Forget about that Pulitzer. Don't pass Go. Find that celebrity hook or hot trend. Fast.

The ex-Defamer troops got the new Movieline website up and running pretty fast. It looks like they're responding to the day's news and doing short-form enterprise reporting. The embargo date on State of Play is tomorrow, btw. They've posted a review. And some Twitter feeds. Well, it's a far cry from Premiere.com, which has a habit of sending out breaking news alerts days late. How many of these sites do we need? Which ones do we have to read? Will we stick with our confirmed habits (MCN, LAT, NYT, Vulture, Variety, Hollywood Wiretap, Hollywood Elsewhere) or add new ones (The Wrap, The Daily Beast)? Something's got to give.

Careful what you wish for. Snarky blogger Nikki Finke has won a huge following. Now her targets are fighting back. Rod Lurie has his say at The Wrap, which is reporting healthy initial traffic after two months.

Freelance critic Elvis Mitchell talks about the state of film criticism.

Life Magazine is reincarnated online as a photo archive.

Pristine Wolverine is leaked to film pirates.

Bloggers are often successful because they know how to get attention, to market themselves. One example of a PR natural is Diablo Cody (Juno), who came to fame via her Pussy Ranch blog. These days the Oscar-winning scribe seems to be neglecting her MySpace/United States of Tara blog in favor of tweeting; she already has more than 28,000 people following her on Twitter. She also gets regular exposure via her regular column in EW, and recently landed a fashion layout with her screenwriter gal pals in the NYT.

[Photo of Diablo Cody and screenwriter chums courtesy of The New York Times]

Wired quizes readers on their knowledge of Internet Blowhards, from Wired's own Chris Anderson to Tech Crunch's Michael Arrington.

Then there's the real Blowhard, Michael of 2Blowhards.

As Variety's Peter Bart and Cynthia Littleton point out, speed and snark don't necessarily bring accuracy in reporting in the blogosphere. Au contraire.

Meanwhile Variety's Michael Fleming catches tireless Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke squelching her own rumor.

Once in a rare moon you see a film made by a master auteur at the top of his game. At the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day, Mike Leigh and I took the gondola up the mountain to see Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments. We both came out of the theater enthralled, agreeing that it was one of the best films we'd seen in years. It's a crowning achievement. Troell earned four Oscar nominations for his third film, 1971's The Emigrants, starring the young Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow, including Best Picture, followed by its sequel, The New Land. The director is revered in Sweden, where he has worked deliberately in films and television over the decades.

IFC picked up this tough period drama--based on a true story--about a poor, uneducated woman (Maria Heiskanen) with a lunky husband and a large family who learns how to take photographs. Operating his own camera, Troell creates visual poetry. This heartachingly beautiful film opened in limited release Friday.

Here's the review from the LAT's Kenneth Turan, the NYT feature on Troell, and the trailer.

On the media recession front, I learned from Greg Hernandez in the press bleachers at the Oscars that he was losing his job at the Daily News. Well, he wasted no time launching his own blog with a gay celebrity focus, Greg in Hollywood. Here's how he did it--in one week.

The New York Times has finally figured out that it's dumb to shut down their movie blog, The Carpetbagger, which has been pegged to media columnist David Carr writing in the guise of amateur Oscar-watcher The Bagger. In past years, when Carr quit the seasonal gig, the blog went dark, which I always thought was a crime. Especially in this competitive age, blog traffic is hard-won and foolish to lose. For the moment, this impersonal NYT staff blog has replaced Carr, who lent a marvelous pulse to The Carpetbagger. Most people want to find a personality, a reason to check out a blog. Aggregation might hold the space for a while. But the numbers will, inevitably, dip.

Here's the NYT's explanation for what they are doing:

As you may have noticed, The Carpetbagger – which began life as a seasonal blog during the annual movie awards season – did not go dormant after the recent Academy Awards, as it has in previous years. Instead, The Bagger has become a year-round blog, focusing on Hollywood and the entertainment industry, a place where you can come for regular doses of news about movies, the people who make them and the business of getting it all done. There are other changes, as well. While Carpetbagger began as a blog hosted by David Carr – a New York Times reporter and media columnist who assumed the Bagger persona during awards season – the year-round Bagger will be fed by the entire entertainment and media corps of The Times, particularly the paper’s chief Hollywood correspondents, Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes. David will continue to appear from time to time, as will others from The Times. And the Bagger will continue to kick into highest gear during awards season – but now it also will be a place to come every day of the year to learn about what’s happening with the movies. As always, we are grateful for any tips to carpetbagger@nytimes.com.

Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke insists that she is a journalist/dominatrix--not a blogger. I am tired of bloggers not wanting to cop to being bloggers.

Finke should celebrate her blogger status. Because that's why frightened Hollywood folks tumble over themselves to give her scoops--hoping that they will be rewarded with favorable coverage. Finke's DHD is well-read by the entertainment industry because it's a blog. While trained as a journalist, Finke embraces all that is bloglike. For some reason, she wants to hang on to a traditional journalist identification via her LA Weekly print column-- which she assembles from the best of her blog.

Finke has a fearsome set of blogger tools.

1. Answer to nobody.

No one tells Finke what to write. There is no boss to threaten, no higher authority or boy's club member to appeal to. The studios, agencies, guilds and producers negotiate with--and feed--Finke. She is as powerful as any media-monger since Walter Winchell (the model for Burt Lancaster's gossip columnist in Sweet Smell of Success).

2. Keep it fast and loose.

Finke likes to throw her material up as soon as she gets it, and then add, fix, and tweak throughout the day. And she proclaims her scoops. (While Finke asserts that new rival The Wrap does not break news, Wrap editor Sharon Waxman, of course, blogs back that, yes, she does.) But there are only so many hours. Some DHD stories wind up more reported and refined than others. Some are left pretty raw. And some of the Guild reporting, especially, goes on a bit long for industry outsiders.

3. Lay on the SNARK!!!

Finke throws out plenty of attitude and opinion, as bloggers do, lecturing the Academy on its OSCARS CRISIS via live-snarking, etc. During the Harvey Weinstein vs. Scott Rudin fracas over The Reader, Finke posted reams of insider emails leaked to her by interested parties. Readers scarf up Finke's breathless urgent BREAKING NEWS!!! drama and no-holds-barred Anne Coulter-style nastiness. (Finke herself is thin-skinned and protects herself from misrepresentation by blasting back with threatening emails to offenders' bosses.)

4. Post frequently.

"I check Nikki five times a day!" one publicist confesses. That's because Finke is tireless, obsessively posting 24/7--until she runs out of steam and collapses from exhaustion. Bloggers know no bounds. Smartly, Finke keeps her strong editorial voice separate from the LA Weekly's ad sales department.

Deadline Hollywood Daily, by any definition, is a successful blog--and Finke should own it.

As some of you may have noticed, over the past few days there have been some discrepancies between "Recent Comments" posted and comments appearing on the blog. TypePad writes: "Some users are experiencing issues with the comment form on their weblogs. We are working on this currently."

Humph. Please bear with us as we try to get this resolved.

Many of us are addicted to GreenCine's daily blog, written from Berlin by David Hudson. He's moving blogs--if not location--taking over the IFC Blog--and I hear he'll get considerably more money. Typically, these sites underpay so egregiously that they lose good people. Here's Hudson's farewell.

Cinephiliac film freelancer Aaron Hillis (Premiere, IFC, Village Voice, LA Weekly) will replace Hudson as a freelance blogger, starting January 1. Hillis plans to build on Hudson's following, but won't attempt to duplicate his exhaustively obsessive daily aggregating. Hillis will do it in his own way and add more original content. And Hudson will bring his inimitable erudition over to IFC.

So in this case, I suspect, more will be more.

So the cutbacks continue across the entertainment industry and journalism. It's depressing to watch one's colleagues worry about their jobs as they struggle to survive the brutal combo of the crashing economy and the transition to the Internet.

Nowhere is that more evident than at the LATimes, which is looking to add a new job amid all the downsizing: an entertainment editor capable of wrangling the disparate cultures of the combined Calendar, Business and online staffs. I don't envy that person, whoever it is.

That's because the print people look down on online people, the calendar has an entirely different approach to covering the entertainment industry than the business section--and more than ever there is pressure on everyone to file more and more stories. The Big Picture columnist Patrick Goldstein has adapted to the faster pace of blogging with commendable zeal, but has wrestled with his slower print brethren over stories. In one case, one LAT business writer was furious when Goldstein insisted on going forward on his blog with a story that had been in the works for weeks--and even used their specially created art.

Survival of the fittest right now may favor the fastest.

Once upon a time, Nikki Finke and Sharon Waxman were pals. So there's a possibility that this latest rumble in the jungle over a supposed "secret SAG meeting" when stars were brought on board to support a possible strike is intended to build Waxman's traffic. UPDATE: Or, Patrick Goldstein suggests, Finke may be feeling some competition.

Finke says the meeting never happened; while she is likely to take the same guild-friendly approach that she did during the Writers' Strike, which worked well to spike her daily hits, she has excellent sources. While Waxman is playing a bit of catch-up and learning the blog ropes as she forges her post-NYT career, she is sticking to her story.

Since Hollywood and media folks like nothing better than a good catfight, this clash is picking up attention. (Here's Defamer.) Waxman's never gotten so many comments in her life.

On a more serious note, SAG plans to send out a strike authorization to guild members next month. It's hard to believe that anyone is contemplating another strike that could take place as early as January, timed yet again to threaten the awards season. UPDATE: This anti-strike petition is making the industry rounds.

MovieCityNews' Kim Voynar puts old media's mistakes into new media perspective. And David Poland surveys the Hollywood media landscape.

As the economy continues to crunch, the media world is downsizing. Maer Roshan's beloved Radar mag is no more; American Media tabloid mogul David Pecker has acquired Radar online as a celebrity-oriented rival to Harvey Levin's TMZ.

During Slate's latest round of cutbacks and editorial shifts, the online news site slashed Kim Masters' Hollywood blog. Slate wants more reviewers, she told me. One of the great entertainment industry reporters, Masters is still a full-time staffer for National Public Radio. She filed weekly Hollywood stories for Slate for a monthly fee. She's currently working on a reported piece for Tina Brown at The Daily Beast. Look for Masters to work something out there.

Fred Schruers is no longer filing the Hollywood Deal blog for Portfolio.com, another magazine/online venture that may or may not survive these troubling times. Ad sales are tumbling everywhere, with the economy. Here is Schruer's last post, on Paul Newman. While Schruers did some one-off reporting for a Daily Beast project, he has always excelled at long-form journalism (like Masters, he's a Premiere alumnus), and is hoping to set up a high-profile book project.

My old THR colleague Sheigh Crabtree is leaving the LAT. The last time we talked, she didn't know what she would do next. But she boasts a strong skill set: her cred is both print and online. Jeffrey Wells doesn't seem to get that Crabtree is an online animal. That will get her where she wants to go--if she chooses to stay in journalism. UPDATE: (She has sold a screenplay, for one thing.)

And as a sign of the times, the venerable Christian Science Monitor is abandoning its print edition next April in favor of an online version.

[Photos: The Daily Beast's Tina Brown, NPR's Kim Masters, Fred Schruers]

Ron Howard and Peter Morgan's film version of Morgan's play Frost/Nixon screened at the London Film fest at 10 AM Wednesday morning. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw has a mixed review. Like Peter Bart, he gives Frank Langella's Richard Nixon the upper hand over The Queen star Michael Sheen as David Frost. Guy Lodge, who is covering the London Film Fest for In Contention, posts his review.

Stateside trades were planning to post at 4 PM PST today, Wednesday, but look for them to go up sooner.

UPDATE: Here's Todd McCarthy:

"Frost/Nixon" is an effective, straightforward bigscreen version of Peter Morgan's shrewd stage drama about the historic 1977 TV interview in which Richard Nixon brought himself down once again. Like the other election year release about a modern Republican president, "W.," this one isn't out to "get" its much vilified subject as much as it tries to cast him as something of a tragic victim of his own limitations and foibles--tragic for the perpetrator and his country alike. Frank Langella's meticulous performance will generate the sort of attention that will attract serious filmgoers, assuring good biz in upscale markets, but luring the under-40 public will pose a significant marketing challenge. Universal release preemed Wednesday night as the opener of the London Film Festival in advance of Dec. 5 Stateside bow.

Here's an interview with David Frost.

Several bloggers address the Body of Lies boxoffice debacle in a number of different ways. Peter Bart says that the problem lies in its stars, like Leonardo DiCaprio, who don't know how to behave like identifiable brands. Patrick Goldstein suggests that today's stars aren't carrying their weight. And Stephen Schaefer suspects that Iraq War movies are musts-to-avoid.

We have plenty of gifted movie stars--and we need them. Movie stars can boost any movie--as long as they don't cost too much.

What was Warner Bros. chief Alan Horn thinking when he greenlit a $100 million Iraq War movie in this climate? He was ignoring the marketplace, blinded by movie stars. He thought he was making a bet on a damned good movie--so confident that he didn't take a partner. He assumed moviegoers like me would overlook the subject in favor of the stars. I showed up. But many other folks did not.

Horn was the same guy who banked on family film Speed Racer with the Wachowskis. And paid Jim Carrey full freight to star in the costly period drama The Majestic. I'm all for studio heads taking chances. Just not foolish ones. Because then it becomes more difficult for other people to take even smart, calculated risks.

[Photo by Richard Burbridge for the NYT Mag]

NYT columnist David Carr looks over Tina Brown's Daily Beast and finds much to admire:

The Daily Beast, backed by Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp, is an aggregation of the trivial and the momentous, the original and the borrowed. With a slogan splashed across its home page promising rigorous editing of the culture for complicated times — “Read This Skip That” — the Beast is aiming to be a smaller, less chaotic version of the World Wide Web itself.

There's plenty there. That's not the issue. It's more about the question of who has time? What do you give up to read this instead of something else? This morning, I did enjoy this interview with Wrestler star Mickey Rourke from Beast blogger Tom Tapp. I must add, however, that I took the time to post a photo...

I am shocked, shocked! Disney U.K. actually used IMDB fan comments in newspaper quote ads for the holocaust drama The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a movie that has positive enough advance buzz to warrant earning some decent professional reviews. U.K. critics are in a tizzy over this and I don't blame them.

One fashionable theory about the younger generation holds that they don't care what critics and people in authority think, and prefer to hear from their own peers about what is cool. In my researches into young moviegoer behavior, I have determined that while they do learn about movies from browsing on the Internet, many of them also check Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic to see what crickets think.

It's one thing to hear WOM from your pals on Facebook and another from complete strangers blogging at IMDB. And this from a culture where newspapers--and critics-- are still alive and well!

UPDATE: According to Daniel Battsek of Miramax Films, which is Disney's specialty distrib releasing The Boy in the Striped Pajamas stateside, in the movie's fourth week of release in the U.K., the pic went up 12 % (which rarely happens), and inspired the ad people to include some IMDB quotes to showcase some of the positive Web chatter. We said, "Let's get the WOM to speak for itself," says Battsek. Disney U.K. started out with conventional review quotes, of which there was no shortage.

Well, I guess that makes more sense.

While I think I'll skip the 99 Cent Chef's white wine tasting (Two Buck Chuck gives me a headache), I like his approach to promoting the Nuart's showing of Jean-Luc Godard's must-see classic Vivre Sa Vie this week. As Monty Python would say, the answer is pork!

Tina Brown's overwhelming new website looks a lot like Talk. And it looks expensive, too. With online sites, you don't get what you pay for. Less is more. This is too much content, all over the place. Politics, celebrities, blogs. There is an aggregating function, but it hasn't been updated all day. But do I want more content, more stuff to read? It feels like a static online site connected to a magazine. It doesn't feel like it's moving, linking, updating.

Kim Voynar, who recently ankled her gig at Cinematical, is joining David Poland's staff at Movie City News. Officially, her title will be features editor, but she'll be staying home in Seattle and writing regularly on her blog (Film Essent) and covering fests as well as helping out editorially. Poland may not realize what a strong addition Voynar is to his operation. The site could use a design upgrade, for one thing (whose couldn't?) and Voynar really gets how the too-competitive and clogged movie Internet space works.

A.J. Schnack is pro; Jeff Wells is con. Poland's paying her more than Cinematical ever did. End of story.

Kim Voynar, one of Cinematical's top critics, has returned to her old Seattle haunts and has finally ankled her post as managing editor and film festivals editor for Cinematical (which exploits its contributors with microscopic pay). She will continue to feed her own Film Essent blog.

Before Aaron Sorkin started writing his movie about the creation of Facebook for producer Scott Rudin, he decided he'd better get himself a Facebook page. So he got a researcher to do it. New York Magazine's Vulture got Rudin to confirm that Sorkin is in fact writing the script. UPDATE: Here's Variety and more details at 02138.

Actress Bai Ling is a hoot, in person and on her blog, although she is taking the sharing of minutia in her life to a new level in this recent post, in which she asks her readers to help her decide what to order for dinner at Mr. Chow's.

I am in Maine, taking a stop at an internet cafe in Ellsworth before driving into The Silence.

You won't hear from me for a while, but the Variety team led by Peter Debruge and David S. Cohen will keep on blogging and there's still plenty of Comic-Con fodder to be plundered.

Back in a week or so.

[Grand Theatre, Ellsworth, Maine]

With Comic-Con looming, movie sites are pushing to get scoops on new movies of interest to the fan community. A sequel to 300, which broke big at Comic-Con, is a big deal.

Thus at the Saturn awards last month, after Collider.com got Zack Snyder to talk about a planned 300 sequel, word spread through the fan sites and eventually Variety tracked the story down and got official confirmation of Frank Miller writing a 300 prequel for Snyder to direct.

Here's how Variety handled the online coverage:

Another "300" has been rumored from the start, but last week Snyder and the original producing team stoked a frenzy online when they talked about it at the Saturn Awards.

This happens a lot.

This doesn't mean that Variety purposely stole the story, as Collider suggested. Variety's Diane Garrett actually nailed down more info.

It's not always cut-and-dry--sometimes everyone is chasing the same news and a given reporter may not be aware of what has broken online. A reporter isn't always tracking down where something broke first, just the story itself. "Sometimes when a publicist sees a story break online," asserts one major online site editor, "they try to place the story in a legitimate news source and they don't necessarily let anyone know."

The Collider protest led to several other sites joining a boycott of the Hollywood trade papers. Here are reports in Folio and MTV News, which spoke to Variety editor Peter Bart. He announced Variety.com's plan to create a blog of blogs:

“I think we’ll grow together. I really do and I think to some degree we want it. I would like to have us develop a blog of blogs, where we get a highlight reel of the best blogs that deal with the entertainment media. I think that will happen before long, and I think that would ameliorate some of these concerns.”

The fight for numbers now is so fierce that the site that breaks a story wants to get credit for it---via links and traffic. That is what is at stake. By the way, a host of mainstream outlets, online and print, rewrite Variety stories without always giving us credit, either. This is the way of the world.

NYT media columnist David Carr's memoir about doing drugs, The Night of the Gun, is due in bookstores this August. Carr is not only a terrific writer/reporter but Oscar season blogger as well (aka The Carpetbagger). Here's one chapter from the NYT Magazine. This is strong stuff:

I remember driving to a dark spot between the streetlights at the rounded-off corner of West 32nd and Garfield. Right here, I thought. This would be fine.

The Nova, a junker with a bad paint job my brother bought me out of pity, shuddered to a stop, and I saw two sleeping children in the rearview, the fringe of their hoods emerging in outline against the backseat as my eyes adjusted to the light. Teeny, tiny, itty-bitty, the girls were swallowed by the snowsuits. We should not have been there. But I was fresh out. I had nothing. I called Kenny.

Anna was out, and I could not bear to leave them home, but I was equally unable to stay put. So here we were, one big, happy family, parked outside the dope house. Then came the junkie math. If I went inside the house, I could get what I needed in 5 minutes, 10 minutes tops. The twins would sleep, dreaming their little baby dreams where their dad is a nice man, where the car rides end at a playground.

Carr's book inspires Jeffrey Wells to recall some of his own darker moments before he pulled himself out of some bad habits.

Snarky ecritic Mr. Cranky is retiring after 13 years of posting nasty reviews. Rising gas prices, increased web competiton and decreasing ad sales led to his decision to leave at the end of August.

The online movie critic space is crowded with folks trying to gain traction. Glenn Kenny, now blogging at Some Came Running, posted his Wall-E review at The Auteurs.

Here's a sample of Mr. Cranky's often too-purple prose, on the teen romance She's All That:

It's like emotional farting. You can actually see the fumes from this thing cascading off the screen like some computer-generated space anomaly overtaking the Enterprise as the audience sort of buckles from the impact.

And here's a segment of his last post.

Film critics, in general (myself included), are full of themselves. They believe that their opinions actually matter. They also believe that somehow there's a right and a wrong when it comes to film criticism. Mr. Cranky was started to thwart that notion by making fun of film critics and film criticism and pointing out that film writing could be subjective to the point of a critic who didn't like anything. Besides, if these junkets proved one thing, it's that most film critics could be swayed by nothing more than a plate of donuts (watching a group of largely fat film critics charge toward a free plate of food while in the midst of a junket in which they're supposed to form unbiased opinions of the film is its own form of hell). And if the Internet has proved one salient Mr. Cranky point, it's that anyone can be a film critic. The forums were put in place for just this reason. Mr. Cranky was the first site to invite the reader to challenge the film critic, in fact, to make that challenge a founding principle of the site.