*** SECOND EDITION FEATURING NEW MATERIAL, NEW MOVIES, AND NEW REVIEWS! PUBLISHED MARCH 2013 *** So you want to be a film critic and review movies for a living? Veteran film critic Christopher Null teaches you, step by step, how to break into the business with the lessons he's learned from more than a decade in the industry. Five Stars! will teach you all you need to know! - Understand movie history and the mechanics of filmmaking - without the film snob jargon! - Learn how to write a review, step by step - Get into every movie for free and never pay to go to the movies again! - Get free DVDs - before anyone else! - Break into professional writing in newspapers, magazines, and online - Learn how to approach editors - from the experts themselves - Build an audience for your work - Interview celebrities and hang out with the stars! Five Stars! is the only book on the market that shows you exactly how to become a professional movie reviewer, step by step! It's an absolute must-read for any aspiring film critic! 264 pages - packed with essential information!

Entertainment Weekly's controversial critic of more than two decades looks back at a life told through the films he loved and loathed. Owen Gleiberman has spent his life watching movies-first at the drive-in, where his parents took him to see wildly inappropriate adult fare like Rosemary's Baby when he was a wide-eyed 9 year old, then as a possessed cinemaniac who became a film critic right out of college. In Movie Freak, his enthrallingly candid, funny, and eye-opening memoir, Gleiberman captures what it's like to live life through the movies, existing in thrall to a virtual reality that becomes, over time, more real than reality itself. Gleiberman paints a bittersweet portrait of his complicated and ultimately doomed friendship with Pauline Kael, the legendary New Yorker film critic who was his mentor and muse. He also offers an unprecedented inside look at what the experience of being a critic is really all about, detailing his stint at The Boston Phoenix and then, starting in 1990, at EW, where he becomes a voice of obsession battling-to a fault-to cling to his independence. Gleiberman explores the movies that shaped him, from the films that first made him want to be a critic (Nashville and Carrie), to what he hails as the sublime dark trilogy of the 1980s (Blue Velvet, Sid and Nancy, and Manhunter), to the scruffy humanity of Dazed and Confused, to the brilliant madness of Natural Born Killers, to the transcendence of Breaking the Waves, to the pop rapture of Moulin Rouge! He explores his partnership with Lisa Schwarzbaum and his friendships and encounters with such figures as Oliver Stone, Russell Crowe, Richard Linklater, and Ben Affleck. He also writes with confessional intimacy about his romantic relationships and how they echoed the behavior of his bullying, philandering father. And he talks about what film criticism is becoming in the digital age: a cacophony of voices threatened by an insidious new kind of groupthink. Ultimately, Movie Freak is about the primal pleasure of film and the enigmatic dynamic between critic and screen. For Gleiberman, the moving image has a talismanic power, but it also represents a kind of sweet sickness, a magnificent obsession that both consumes and propels him.

Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, and Roger Ebert were three of America's most revered and widely read film critics, more famous than many of the movies they wrote about. But their remarkable contributions to the burgeoning American film criticism of the 1960s and beyond were deeply influenced by four earlier critics: Otis Ferguson, James Agee, Manny Farber, and Parker Tyler. Film scholar and critic David Bordwell restores to a wider audience the work of Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler, critics he calls the 'Rhapsodes' for the passionate and deliberately offbeat nature of their vernacular prose.

The New York Times film critic shows why we need criticism now more than ever Few could explain, let alone seek out, a career in criticism. Yet what A.O. Scott shows in Better Living Through Criticism is that we are, in fact, all critics: because critical thinking informs almost every aspect of artistic creation, of civil action, of interpersonal life. With penetrating insight and warm humor, Scott shows that while individual critics--himself included--can make mistakes and find flaws where they shouldn't, criticism as a discipline is one of the noblest, most creative, and urgent activities of modern existence. Using his own film criticism as a starting point--everything from his infamous dismissal of the international blockbuster The Avengers to his intense affection for Pixar's animated Ratatouille--Scott expands outward, easily guiding readers through the complexities of Rilke and Shelley, the origins of Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones, the power of Marina Abramovich and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.' Drawing on the long tradition of criticism from Aristotle to Susan Sontag, Scott shows that real criticism was and always will be the breath of fresh air that allows true creativity to thrive. "The time for criticism is always now," Scott explains, "because the imperative to think clearly, to insist on the necessary balance of reason and passion, never goes away."

Provides an insider look at the world of criticism, celebrity interviews, and the movies. Explains how to make it in the industry while also examining the many pitfalls that come with writing about film for a living.

How to Be a Film Critic in Five Easy Lessons addresses the serious matter of the increasing gap between the published opinions of professional film critics and the reception of popular film by traditional movie-goers, especially millennial movie fans. Recent reactions to the low grades emanating from Rotten Tomatoes, the iconic film review aggregation site, have inspired various constituencies to call for significant changes, including some major studio CEOs, some actors, and the readers of reviews themselves. A new generation and breed of film critics is needed, not raised to please baby boomers or Generation X movie fans, but younger viewers who make up 30% of ticket buyers. This study examines all this and offers five categories of film reviewers plying their trade as models of consistency. New critics have to start somewhere, most often in college film classes, and deciding what type of critic one wants to be begins here.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic assembles and introduces more than one hundred essays and articles about film, with entries by and about movie stars, famous directors, industry executives, and critics. Tour.