> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/12/07/DI...
>
> Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Stephen Hunter recently berated the
> "insidious influence" of Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic on the
> critical establishment.  From a december 21 online chat:
>
>
> Washington, D.C.: Having just seen "No Country for Old Men," I was
> suprised to find it no more than a polished potboiler. Yet it's making
> many best-of-year lists, sometimes at the top. You were one of the
> very few critics not to join the hosannahs. What do you think accounts
> for the over-the-top reaction to it on the part of so many others?
>
> Stephen Hunter: I would subtract the word "polished" from your
> assessment, but otherwise I agree. As for why the crits went nuts over
> it, I can only make a contribution in one little area (eschewing
> conspiracy theories which I don't believe in) One insidious influence
> on criticism that, as far as I know, hasn't been mentioned anywhere is
> the arrival of critic collection and analysis websites, like
> Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. So whereas before, critics' takes were
> never gathered; to find out a consensus, you had to go to each
> website, a lot of work. Now in two or three keystrokes it's all there,
> calibrated, and nobody, I'm guessing, really wants to be in the 2 per
> cent who is out of consensus. So there's an unconscious pressure for
> confomity, particularly when movies get advance raves (as did "No
> Country" on the non-Ebert Ebert show). And thus a very few movies
> benefit extraordinarily from the pre-release spin. Does that make
> sense to anybody?
>