Critical Mass

I find it disheartening that Times film critic Kenneth Turan has crowned “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring� as his No. 1 film of the year (“The Year the Studios Let Us Down,� Dec. 23).

When Joe Morgenstern got equally effusive for the Wall Street Journal along with Bob Mondello on NPR, and critics at Time and Entertainment Weekly also raved on, I thought: “Why can’t a media behemoth make a really great work of cinematic art?�

As I sat in mute horror at “Fellowship’s� dreck, I realized two important points about the age of convergence: (1) Respectable critics can and will be bought. (2) Media conglomerates producing cross-platformed $350-million film trilogies are to culture (and critics) what chainsaws are to rain forests.

I counted four commercials and four New Line trailers preceding the film. Twenty minutes of advertising in front of a three-hour movie. This alienating experience wasn’t mentioned in Turan’s review. Perhaps he and other cheering critics enjoyed private screenings. Critics who won’t comment upon the state of delivery, the excessive cross-platforming or the creep of advertising into the overall cinematic experience are no longer valid to my experience of movies.

Unlike with “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,� if just one esteemed reviewer had railed that the emperor had no clothes, millions of the public’s hard-earned dollars could have been saved from AOL Time Warner’s portfolio.

When critics endorse rather than decry heinous, calculated media franchises, and put down small, philosophical films with interesting design strategies, as Kevin Thomas did when he trashed “Waking Life,� something terrible is happening in our culture and in our lives and in our newspapers.

For example, KCET (PBS) slots automotive and computer ads between all programming. Every channel click in Adelphia’s digital cable ($50-plus a month) kicks up an ad banner in the lower left corner. Yahoo and other Internet search engines “search� according to who has paid to place, and public radio station KCRW constantly uses product placement, whether it’s a free iPod (Apple) or the three-hour Saturday slot it gives to Spinner.com (AOL Time Warner).

An epidemic of monopolized culture is wiping out the arts before our very eyes--and no one is talking.

We need our own Frodo to fight the dark forces of commercialized culture. The pen and the lens are mightier than the sword. As the dragon creeps in the wood, our “critics� should at least shout “Dragon!� But when the critic is served from a can, so is the culture.

AARON LANDY

Filmmaker, Los Angeles