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.

Hey Entertainment Weekly...Fuck You!

EIMER NOTE: My buddy Mac opened up the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly to the title: THE TROUBLE WITH THE OSCARS. That said, he didn't seem too happy with what the magazine had to say. I haven't personally read the article, but I think Mac's got some great points in the following diatribe against the article. Enjoy...

I don't know if anyone has seen the latest edition of Entertainment Weekly, but at first glance it looked like a nice recap of the Oscars.

But the cover read: THE TROUBLE WITH THE OSCARS.

What the fuck?

They totally pissed on the Academy Awards because it had the lowest television ratings in history and they said it was boring because none of movies nominated (save JUNO) made a lot of money at the box office.

Do you know how bad this pisses me off?

First of all, I thought this years' Oscars were as good as ever.

Jon Stewart is one of my favorite Oscar hosts. Plus, the movies nominated this year were fuckin' good!

It's not the Academy's fault that the general public doesn't always go see the BEST MOVIES out there. The best thing about the Oscars is that it helps those movies that don't make a lot of money get more attention.

So, just because the Oscars had lower ratings doesn't mean the show was a disaster. It really doesn't mean shit! Besides advertisers, who gives a 'squirt of piss' what the fucking tv ratings were anyway. Not the true film fans. Which, by the way, is who the Oscars were created for.

People need to know this: TV is a Cancer on movies. If movies follow a direction dictated by television, then terminal illness for movies will follow. There are two different type of people: Movie people and TV people. Sometimes TV people think that they are movie people because they watch movies on television.

V people think that if a movie doesn't make a lot of money at the box office, it must not be any good and they can't understand why these movies get nominated over the ones that make the most money. They have another award show for that and it's called the fuckin' People's Choice Awards! AND NO MOVIE PERSON WATCHES THAT!!!

At least no one with any self diginity.

Entertainment Weekly's first suggestion to the Academy was to nominate more popular movies.

Does anyone know how fucking stupid that is?!

I almost cancelled my subscripttion right then. I don't think Enteratainment Weekly should be giving any lectures to the Academy. I had no idea the egos at that magazine have inflated that much in eighteen years. I have faith in the Academy that they will never nominate movies based soley on box office numbers.

So, I have only one thing to say to Entertainment Weekly and to all the TV people out there who don't know shit about movies and will continue to say terrible things about the Oscars:

DON'T FUCKIN' WATCH THEM YOU STUPID ASSHOLES!

I'LL DRINK YOUR FUCKIN' MILKSHAKE!

Milan A. Cargould

EIMER NOTE: Thanks for the post. I couldn't have said it better myself, Mac. And you know how much I love to use the word fuck! I think people (creative people) get into the movie industry with hopes to scratch their creative itch and tell a good fucking story. And you would hope they've seen all the great classics as well. I think as long as there are 'dreamers' and 'movie lovers' in the world, there will continue to be great films. Great thinking person's films. And that's what I think the Academy Awards continue to do...celebrate substance over splash. Either that, or we're going to turn into the movie Idiocracy and go to the movies to watch a big ass fart for two hours.