Added by Mr. Saturn on 14 Jan 2012 07:38

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Favorite Critics

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Film Critics and Historians

Best Aggregate Critic's Site : They Shoot Picture's Don't They? Top 1000 Films (Listal) (minimal view) and top 250 directors (Listal)
Best Aggregate User's Site : Rateyourmusic, RYM'S Top 100 Films on Listal
Other Noteworthy Sites:
British Film Institute's Sight & Sound Top Ten Poll of directors and critics (Listal).

If you want sites for cinephiles or academics instead, the sub-reddit TrueFilm has many good sites on its sidebar.

Film Documentaries

Critics I'm unfamiliar with - Agee, Truffaut, Bazin, Marian Keane

8.8

Martin Scorsese

His favorite films
Documentaries: A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies and My Voyage to Italy
Martin Scorsese has made significantly less criticism than the other people on his list, but he is a very great film historian and critic.

Mr. Saturn's rating:

7.6

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert's blog
His favorite films
His reviews are on Roger Ebert's website

Almost the first day I started writing reviews, I found a sentence in a book by Robert Warshow that I pinned on the wall above my desk... it helps me stay grounded. It says:

A man goes to the movies. A critic must be honest enough to admit he is that man.

That doesn't make one person right and another wrong. All it means is that you know how they really felt, not how they thought they should feel. - Roger Ebert

Mr. Saturn's rating:

7.6

Peter Bogdanovich

He's a cinephile/director with interesting opinions.

Mr. Saturn's rating:

7.8

Kevin Brownlow

Kevin Brownlow helped preserve film history and he made great documentaries about silent cinema.

Mr. Saturn's rating:

8.3

Jean-Luc Godard

His favorite films
Documentary: Histoire(s) du cinéma: Toutes les histoires

As a critic, I already thought of myself as a filmmaker. Today I still consider myself a critic, and in a sense, I’m even more of one than before. Instead of criticism, I make a film, but that includes a critical dimension. I consider myself an essayist, producing essays in the form of novels or novels in the form of essays: only instead of writing, I film them. - Jean-Luc Godard, 1962

Mr. Saturn's rating:

7.3

A.O. Scott

his Favorite Films

Mr. Saturn's rating:

6.4

Andrew Sarris

Andrew Sarris helped popularize auteur theory with his essay Notes on the Auteur Theory, influenced by critics from Cahiers du Cinéma, like Truffaut and Bazin.

His favorite films

His favorite film texts

Mr. Saturn's rating:

8.2

Pauline Kael

Pauline Kael is a film critic iconoclast, unafraid to champion pop culture, not only high culture, and to attack cinema's sacred cows. She's famous for writing Circles and Squares, an attack on what she saw was the rigidity of the auteur theory.

She has everything that a great critic needs except judgment. And I don't mean that facetiously. She has great passion, terrific wit, wonderful writing style, huge knowledge of film history, but too often what she chooses to extol or fails to see is very surprising. - Woody Allen

Her Favorite Films

Mr. Saturn's rating:

Donald Richie

Donald Richie is a film historian who specializes in Japanese cinema.
His favorite films

Mr. Saturn's rating:

7.3

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum's blog
His favorite films

I think there is a very good film critic in the United States today, a successor of James Agee, and that is Jonathan Rosenbaum. He's one of the best; we don't have writers like him in France today. He's like André Bazin. - Jean-Luc Godard

Mr. Saturn's rating:

Peter Cowie

Peter Cowie is a film historian and film critic who provides commentary on many Criterion DVDs.
His favorite films

Mr. Saturn's rating:

7.1

Susan Sontag

I enjoyed her Notes On "Camp" and plan to read more.

Mark Cousins

His Favorite Films
Documentary: The Story of Film: An Odyssey

Cinematic revolutions: the ideas that drove movies should be consumed alongside The Story of Film

Mr. Saturn's rating:

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Game Critics

Best Aggregate Critic's Site : GameRankings
Best Aggregate User's Site : Listal
Other Noteworthy Sites:
Joystiq (Gaming News)

Greg Kasavin

He stopped working for Gamespot. He wrote the game Bastion.

Mr. Saturn's rating:

8.5

Mark Bussler

I enjoy Classic Game Room for funny, thoughtful, and diverse reviews.

Mr. Saturn's rating:

Chris Franklin

Like Extra Credits, Errant Signal focuses on the gaming medium, however there are some reviews for specific games and the greatest emphasis is on playing games, not developing them. Errant Signal doesn't edge away from provocative stances, nor does it revel in it. It's very interesting, and the show is geared towards regular game buffs without being too conceptual.

Mr. Saturn's rating:

James Portnow

Extra Credits provides interesting game criticism centered on game design.

Mr. Saturn's rating:

7.3

Yahtzee Croshaw

Zero Punctuation: His first 200 reviews are on YouTube

I made a list of his favorite games here.

Because I dislike his self-aggrandizing condescension towards his viewers, which isn't very funny, I nmostly stopped watching his show.

Mr. Saturn's rating:

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Music Critics

Best Aggregate Critic's Site : Acclaimed Music
Best Aggregate User's Site : Rateyourmusic, RYM'S Top 100 Albums on Listal
Other Noteworthy Sites:
Pitchfork is an excellent music site, just for their year end best-of lists alone. Their reviews usually aren't the pretentious adjective-filled rants people make them out to be.
Pitchfork's decade best lists on Listal :
Top 100 Albums of the 70's by Pitchfork.
Top 100 Albums of the 80's by Pitchfork.
Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1990's (1999)
Top 200 Albums of the 2000's by Pitchfork.
AllMusic (More variety of albums than Pitchfork and shorter reviews)

7.3

Robert Christgau

The self described (but well appointed) 'dean of Americ rock critics' says a lot in his brief one paragraph reviews. Robert Christgau's reviews are on his website.
His current blog focuses only on albums he enjoyed (I think B+ and above albums).

Mr. Saturn's rating:

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TV Critics

Best Aggregate Critic's Site : If you know of one, please tell me.
Best Aggregate User's Site : IMDB
- You can select multiple genres if you want films with multiple specific genres (like a comedy/drama), and if you want films from each genre you'd need to use the & symbol instead instead of a comma in between the film genres.
Other Noteworthy Sites:
AV Club (episode reviews)
Metacritic (aggregate season reviews)

8.6

Charlie Brooker

Charlie Booker really likes The Wire (my favorite show).

Charlie Booker writes for The Guardian and is a versatile critic. He criticizes TV, film, society, and sometimes video games.

I added his favorite games list to Listal.

Mr. Saturn's rating: