Friday, July 10, 2009

Has Entertainment Weekly Jumped the Shark?

EIMER NOTE: A while ago, my buddy Mac, who has contributed a number of articles to this page, published this post on Eimer Debris about a year ago lambasting Entertainment Weekly.

Turns out he's completely through with the magazine. I'll let you read his thoughts below:


Entertainment Weekly now officially sucks!

I am cancelling my subscription to the so-called pop culture magazine called ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. At one time. EW was a great resource for movies, music, and books. That was about ten years ago.

I've been reading Entertainment Weekly since 1991 when Al Pacino was on the cover sporting a pair of cool-as-hell shades. This was right around the time I really started to get into movies and great actors like Al. So I started buying evey issue after that until finally I got a subscription that I have kept for the last seventeen years...until now.

Somewhere in the past 5 to 10 years, EW has shifted away from serious movies and focuses more on crappy reality TV. Television is in the toilet right now if you ask me. There's only about a dozen shows that are good enough to be called 'must-see tv' and most of them are on HBO. But EW writes about it as if we are in the golden age of TV with shows like American Idol and Project Runway.

And the books that they praise are mostly stupid memiors from female writers who sleep around with a ton of men and then write detailed stories about what assholes we are.

The actors and actresses they cover are mostly models who get away with acting via their good looks. Two weeks ago Ryan Reynolds was on the cover wearing nothing but a couple floaties and a snorkel. The week before, Megan Fox was on the cover with her legs spread. That girl couldn't act her way out of a paper bag! They loved Adam Lambert of American Idol because they thought he might be gay. You know who might be gay? Entertainment Weekly, that's who!

What pisses me off the most is their critics of movies. Owen Gleiberman at one time was a fine movie critic. Someone I enjoyed reading and agreed with 65% of the time. But I think his co-worker is starting to rub off on him. Lisa Schwarzbaum is the other film critic of EW and could quite possibly be one of the worst critics since Ralph Novak of People Magaizine or Michael Medved, who only adores movies that are about magical fairies or princesses. Just by reading her reviews, I can tell that Lisa Schwarzbaum doesn't know shit about movies!

And in a recent video in which the two of them pan Michael Mann's new movie 'PUBLIC ENEMIES', I'm convinced that Owen Gleiberman has lost his integrity as a film critic becuase the editor at EW and the rest of his bosses are now influencing his reviews.

Because PUBLIC ENEMIES is a great fuckin' movie!

One sidenote: Dave Karger is the only writer left at that magazine that I still like a lot. I will continue to read his articles on ew.com.

EIMER NOTE: I wholeheartedly agree with Mac. However, I often visit ew.com to read Jeff Jensen's detailed plot summaries for LOST and all other LOST news. But that's about it. Maybe EW has turned into Watermelon Bubbalicious Bubble Gum - very sweet in the beginning, but a slightly nasty aftertaste after you chew it. Maybe Premiere magazine is the last vestige of great movie reporting. Maybe we're just turning into grumpy middle-aged men.

Thanks again for submitting Mac.

2 comments:

(M)ary said...

someone gave me a subscription to EW as a gift several years ago. i hated it! don't get me wrong, if i am in a doctor's waiting room, i will pick it up, but in my mailbox every week? c'mon! i would be so busy reading about "entertainment", i wouldn't have time go to a movie or watch tv.

Eimer Debris said...

I hear ya (M)ary. I can get all the movie information I need off of two, maybe three, movie and television websites. The rest I hear from word-of-mouth at work, check it out and make up my mind based on my own tastes.