Tom Watson

Sunset Time for a Cultural Experiment

Over at newcritics.com, it's time to close the front door, turn off the lights 'round the bar, hang up the closed sign, and walk out the back way for the last time. This little group culture blog, which began as an experiment in the winter of 2006-07, is putting its xml to rest and moving on. No heavy heart accompanies the closure; newcritics.com was never more than a nifty digital hang-out for a squadron of bloggers who wanted a convivial crowd to shoot the breeze with over conversations about film, television, books, music and the like. In that way, it fullfilled its promise brilliantly.

"That newcritics crowd," as it was known in some corners of the cultural blogosphere, came together original over politics at the old roundtable in the back of the Algonquin Hotel, grew via Wordpress, and convened virtually around esoteric filmfests, live-blogging Mad Men, and arguing about old Stones records. What a great group, especially the core of regulars: the gracious and fab M.A. Peel, who was most nearly my partner in organizing this temporary salon, the prolific Lance Mannion and the generous and witty Blue Girl, musicologists Jason Chervokas and Dan Leo, the serenely cinematic Siren and the erudite Robert Stein, the culturally agile NYC Weboy and the peripatetic Neddie Jingo, book maven extraordinare Maud Newton and comedy guru Dennis Perrin, Kathleen and Manny Maher (the Nick and Nora of our set), and the TV fashion bloggers Claire Helene and Jennifer Krentz, rock and roll wild men Tony Alva and the Viscount, the caustic Brendan Tween and film fanatic Chuck Tryon, to name just a few of the more than 50 bloggers who posted over there (not to mention outside linking support from Vanity Fair's James Wolcott, a fan of the cultural scrum, and a hearty group of regular commenters).

What a crowd! And it was a privilege to invite them to newcritics every week for a couple of years, and kick the cultural zeitgeist around the saloon for a while. I loved it. But the party's moved on. To Facebook and Twitter and other venues. What we did there was for and of its time - entirely worthwhile, but always time-limited and impermanent. A long conversation, but one with an end.

When I wrote CauseWired last year, I included a brief description of newcritics.com in the book, because I'd gained valuable insight into online group dynamics, and because I saw that conversation itself as a cause worth supporting. I still think it is - but it's also clear that it will happen elsewhere. In some ways, the glory days of personal and immediate blogging have passed newcritics by; but in another sense, it's really just part of a continued evolution in social media. The conversations I'm having on Facebook and Twitter with some of the very same people who used to hang out at newcritics are every bit as good as the ones we had at this particular web address.

So let those conversations continue. And thanks for stopping by. [Note: we'll keep the archives up for a bit, then my guess is the site will go the way of all flesh. Comments are still on, but require full registration, so I don't expect many. I'll see you all at the next roadhouse.]

Vampires, Derrièrists, Leno, the Hold Steady and the List of Lists...

Quiet since our summer filmfests and the final Mad Men episode, the blogging precincts around newcritics are beginning to crawl with middlebrow cultural criticism again. As usual, the posts are as varied as digital snowflakes,  blustering unsolicited from the bleak December sky as a reminder that even in hard times, the best minds are still working to turn over cultural snowmen. We'll always have words, even if we won't have retirement, eh? Some highlights worthy of more notice and further conversation:

Jon Swift returns triumphant to the school of film criticism he invented last year, inspired perhaps by the Steinbrennerian "fannies in the seats" motif of mass entertainment. "While derrièrism was once an esoteric school of film criticism championed by a few forward-thinking critics, this year it has triumphed," he writes. So get off your ass, read it - and comment.

Jay Leno's new "it's 10 p.m. - do you know where your rimshots are?" usurpation of the old Carson late-night ethic comes in for some harsh words from nycweboy and his commenters.Cheap programming in a PVR-YouTube world? What do you think?

Soon-to-be cinematic author Chuck Tryon takes on the idea of year-end lists and what they mean to those who make them, in advance of his own best-of list, of course. Chuck centers his observations around the totemic The Dark Knight: "...the battle over TDK, which likely won’t be on my list of media faves, fascinates me because of the degree to which investments in popular culture run deep. Favorites matter. We find solidarity with others who share similar tastes." We do indeed.

Praise rumbles like the bridge pick-up on a vintage Telecaster from music critic Jason Chervokas, who inducts The Hold Steady into the pantheon of rock greats with a review worthy of Jon Landau, circa 1975. Jason has seen the future of rock and roll - and it's the Hold Steady: "I’ll remember 2008 as the year I fell hard for a rock band, falling in love with a band like I haven’t since I fell in love with the Clash as a teenager. That band is The Hold Steady whose 2008 album, Stay Positive, is the best rock album I’ve heard in 15 years and maybe longer."

Finally, the weboy returns with an appreciation of HBO's slick vampire lustfest True Blood that revels in its soft core erotic and American cultural fangs: "You don’t just need a shower after it to wash off the oversexed goings on, but to wash away the vicarious thrill of feeling superior to the lower class."

So ignore your 401k and put a parental block on CNBC, will ya? Dig into the cultural snark, make your own year-end list, and hang out for a while with the newcritics down the block.

Mad Men and Women

The season-ending episode of Mad Men beckons us tonight, our last weekly window into 1962 for 2008 - the final glimpse of the strangely disconnected world of Sterling Cooper, with its various plot lines lying askew like a pair of untied Chuck Taylor high-tops. How those strands are relaced tonight will determine how the series lopes into the mid-60s, and where its center of gravity lies - in trippy faux existential crisis on the beach in LA or in the trenches of the New York ad wars.

M.A. Peel hosts our final run at newcritics tonight, and she finds both of those competing worlds in crisis:

The end of season two of Mad Men finds us all in crisis.

Crisis. It’s a very powerful and distinct word in the English language. It’s married to certain other words: the Cuban Missile Crisis (more about that later), the Energy Crisis of the seventies, the Savings & loan crises of the eighties, today’s Wall Street Crisis, the generic midlife crisis and spiritual crisis.

As we prepare to leave Don and the gang at Sterling Cooper, this is what we find:

Betty is in crisis from being forced to acknowledge Don’s cheating; Roger’s crisis is the classic midlife variety, with a woman younger than his daughter; Freddy Rumsen’s is the crisis of midlife unemployment; Pete Campbell has had several, from the death of his father to that of elusive parenthood; Joan’s is the most horrific—sickening proof her fiancé’s abusive nature—and not running from it.

And then there’s Don.

Read more from Ms. Peel - and add your comments. We'll be live-blogging all the Sterling & Cooper mayhem later on. Be there tonight @ 10 EDT - AMC and www.newcritics.com.

Shut Up and Deal: That Lemmon Song Tonight

Over at newcritics, Lance Mannion will continue our New York-oriented Wednesday Night at the Movies film fest with a tribute to The Apartment, my favorite Jack Lemmon flick and that's saying something. Join me, the Sireen (as I like to picture the Bogie of Sierra Madre calling her) and Sir Lancelot - along with the brilliant Lemmon, Fred MacMurray (as the heavy), and the bubblicious Shirley MacLaine - starting at 9 pm EDT at newcritics. (I'll note Bush speaks at the same time - er - stick with Lemmon and co).

A couple of other programming notes whilst I'm at it:

I'm in the middle of blogging the annual Clinton Global Initiative for onPhilanthropy.com - you can follow reports by me and Susan Carey Dempsey here. And my report on meeting President Clinton to discuss the economy is posted over at CauseWired.

'Just another run-of-the-mill Wednesday. The calendar's full of 'em.'

Huge news for cinema fans. The estimable Self-Styled Siren is bring back Wednesday Night at the Movies at newcritics, with a little help from the film fest's founder Lance Mannion and yours truly. It kicks off two nights from this one, and the theme is movies about New York. Here's the sked:

September 10: People-watching - Rear Window.
September 17: Ambition -- Sweet Smell of Success.
September 24: Drudgery (loneliness) - The Apartment
October 1: Romance - Desperately Seeking Susan
October 8: Resilience Double Feature - Serpico and The 25th Hour

Some thoughts from our festival director:

The idea is to focus on the films' relationship to their New York settings, but that certainly doesn't begin to cover all the thematic ground and the conversations will probably range a great deal further than that.

I can't wait. The list above was pared from a couple of dozens titles we kicked around in the planning, and it's a good one with a wide range of actors, directors, decades and genre. Anyone who took part in the virtual festival Lance hosted early this summer knows we're in for a treat - special guests, arguments over arcana, joyous critiques. I may have to refresh my memory on a couple of these so I'm off to fire up my Blockbuster account. Rear Window kicks it off, though - no need to order that one; I haven't watched that one above a dozen times, hence the title of this post. See you Wednesday!

Sopranos on Madison Avenue

M.A. Peel and I are stepping back into the pilot and co-pilot seats after a week off to attend to myriad social duties (our dance cards are pretty full, you know) and our weekly Mad Men live-blogging will continue at 10 EDT at newcritics.com. Indeed, the fab Ms. P already has her spiked heel on the nub of the thing with an update on last week's show: "...it was Betty’s day. From her horseback riding to being the show horse on Don’s arm, inquiring if the dinner at Lutece is one that she’s supposed to talk at or not." So true - and did I detect a little Carmela Soprano in the rewrites? Yes, yes - it begins to make sense. Get your own ideas and comments ready for tonight night at 10. And to make it even peachier, we've updated the comments system to the latest (much cooler) version of Disqus (with a big tip of the hat to Fred for recommending it). No more required registration, though it is suggested, and the full all-time newcritics comment trove is now backed up by that fine system. As delicious as a cocktail at Lutece. So - tonight at 10 pm EDT, with your TV dials set to TMC and your browsers set to newcritics.

While the Coins Lie in Wet Yellow Sand

M.A. Peel, my erudite and insightful partner in weekly live Mad Men blogging, sails into the night sky with Don Draper, high above Ossining (or perhaps Midtown) in anticipation of Sunday's second season, second episode gathering over at newcritics. Flight is on Ms. Peel's mind as she considers the early 60s - the Apollo flight John Kennedy didn't live to see, the orbital spin of John Glenn, and the poetic flights of Frank O'Hara. The series doesn't soar in either dialogue or plot, but it does achieve lift-off in television style - so much so, that we keep tuning in and gathering in our virtual dens to gab about it.

As Ms. Peel says: "We love/hate the show in the very best way." I think that's so, and another don of the newcritics quad, the voluble Lance Mannion, love/hates the show in fine fashion in a post that compares today's idea of New York in 1962 with TV's own portrayal of Gotham in 1962. Comparing Mad Men to Naked City, Lance observes: "The main difference is that the New Yorkers of Mad Men are a strangely narcotized bunch.  Their basic affect is ennui.  Mad Men is set in a nation waiting for Prozac.  The Manhattan of Naked City is full of hyper-active neurotics.  Even the cops and criminals are tortured and tormented by angst and nameless dreads.  Everybody's nerves are raw. Nobody can relax for a moment."

Which sounds to me like the TV-makers of '62 making a show about the actual New York of '08. In any case, join in our nameless dread of flat plot lines and forehead-slappingly obvious cultural references tomorrow evening at 10 pm EDT, with your dials set to TMC and your browsers set to newcritics.com. We'll see you there.

Return With Us to 1962

The world of Sterling Cooper has changed in two years, or so the creators of AMC's hit series Mad Men tell us as the series resumes Sunday night, a fictional two-year leap in storyline. In real life, too - over the past few months Mad Men has become a Golden Globe winner, an Emmy nominee, and the darling of television critics from coast to coast. Over at newcritics, we take a more jaundiced view of the the advertising business in the Roger Maris era - and of the series and its slow (some would say nonexistent) plot line. Yet, we will reconvene on Sunday evening at 10 pm EDT for our live-blogging of Don Draper and company - I'll take the first shift, and my partner in MM commentary, the fab M.A. Peel (who has a terrific preview up right now), will trade off on upcoming shows. Please be there with swizzle sticks aswim and Electrosizers set to full snark - Mad Men blogging is back!

Raising Some Dough for the Cultural Conversation

Hey there. Over at newcritics - our glorious group culture blog - we're officially in fundraising mode . Please give/pledge what you can to keep it all clicking. This is the first newcritics fundraiser and we will limit it to one week. Please feel free to email your friends, reach out to regulars who comment, and promote it on your own blogs! As you may know, we were maliciously attacked - but the site is back, it's on a spiffy new server that moves at least twice as fast, and we're all set for blogging. We're getting ready to live-blog the season premiere of Mad Men in two weeks - and yes, there are other film fests in discussions. So please help with the costs in whatever way you can. Will you chip in? I've created a newcritics campaign page here. You can use PayPal to make a quick contribution - or just make a pledge.  Thanks in advance!

Reminder: It's Movie Night

Don't forget tonight's kick-off edition of Lance Mannion's Wednesday Night at the Movies, Lance's virtual film fest over at newcritics tonight. We kick off at 10 pm EDT in the comments section of Lance's upcoming post on the first of five Oscar-nominated films from 1967, The Graduate. Watch the flick - or some portions on YouTube (the Cliff Notes of virtual film fests) or just plumb the depths of your movie-going memory. And ask yourself that age-old question: who's the older-looking "college student," Dustin Hoffman or Leo Gorcey in Hold That Line?  Rack up the Simon & Garfunkel platters on the turntable and check on the your plastics futures - but by all means, be there.