Coherent language within feasible space—words to write by, even when the prose is no longer bound by linear rhetoric and finite column inches. The demise of that tradition of film criticism would really suck.But it's not like film criticism reached its heights immediately after the development of the medium. It took a long time to get to Pauline Kael, James Agee and Roger Ebert. It's far too early to determine that the internet has killed that tradition permanently, and I'd argue that experiments like the New Yorker's Front Row blog and The Atlantic's Culture Channel, and my Lord, Roger Ebert's amazing online presence are experiments that are figuring out how to harness the energy and immediacy of the web into products that are well-written, thoughtful, and personal in the ways that the best criticism can be. The internet's upset all journalism and writing professions. Film criticism is not necessarily more or less a victim than any other disrupted disciplines. And it's no further from, or closer to, solutions.
Translating the Screen
I started to pull material for block quotes from Thomas Doherty's polemic on the decline of film criticism in The Chronicle for Higher Education, then realized it was going to be most of the article, so I'll just tell you to go read it. It's quite good, and quite provocative. That said, I think it makes a very, very common mistake in criticism of web-based writing: saying that it's dominated by amateurs with little technical knowledge and little interest in prose style; as yet unmonetizable and unrecognized by the academy is not actually a convincing case against a form that's still new. Sure, I agree with this: