James Berardinelli
| James Berardinelli | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 1, 1967 New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States |
| Occupation | Film critic |
| Period | 1993–present |
| Subjects | Film |
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www.reelviews.net |
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James Berardinelli (born September 1, 1967) is an American online film critic.
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[edit] Personal life
Berardinelli was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey and spent his early childhood in Morristown, New Jersey. At the age of nine years, he relocated to the township of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He attended the University of Pennsylvania from 1985 until 1990, obtaining both a Bachelor of Science and Master's degree in Electrical Engineering. After graduating he worked for Bellcore company, now Telcordia Technologies, and spent the next 15 years working "in a variety of fields, including fiber optics, video testing, and software systems."[1] In 2004, he married one of his longtime readers.[2] In 2010 he announced publicly that he and his wife were expecting their first child.[3]
[edit] Career
As a child, Berardinell did not spend much time in theaters, and as a teenager saw only five or six movies a year. He did not become interested in cinema until he was in college. In 1991, the year before he started reviewing, he saw about 30 films. The number increased to 180 in 1992, when he wrote reviews for his own use.[4] Starting in 1993, when he started publishing his reviews in Usenet, he began seeing between 220 and 250 theatrical releases per year.[5] In 1997 he became an accredited film critic[citation needed] and now estimates that he has seen more than 7000 films in total.
Berardinelli has more than 3,300 full-length movie reviews posted on his own ReelViews website, as well as being a frequent contributor to Rotten Tomatoes. He has established an average of about 300 reviews a year since the site was inaugurated in January 1996. According to Berardinelli, his website receives 70,000–80,000 accesses per day.[6]
Fellow film critic Roger Ebert has written positive comments about Berardinelli,[7] even writing forewords for the ReelViews books. In Ebert's review of Saving Silverman, he termed Berardinelli "the best of the Web-based critics."[8] Although he has also been called the best-known of web movie critics[9] a 2004 news story stated that "he and other online film critics continue to struggle for respect."[10]
Berardinelli also writes ReelThoughts, a weblog; he usually writes a few entries a week. Frequent topics of his columns include DVD technology, the film industry, film piracy, and censorship. He often criticizes the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board and the inconsistency of the ratings system, deriding them for, among other things, affixing "R" ratings to films for arguably mild artistic nudity, while simultaneously deeming intense and graphic (but bloodless) violence to be PG or PG-13 material.
Berardinelli rates films for his website on a star basis, between zero and four stars. In addition, the use of the half-star rating is also applied. There are several films that, to date, have received no stars.
Berardinelli's favorite directors include Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Akira Kurosawa and Alfred Hitchcock. His all-time favorite film is Patton. Recent films which he named among his 100 best films include The Departed, currently #82, The Dark Knight #85, and Munich #91.[11]
[edit] References
- ^ ReelThoughts
- ^ ReelThoughts
- ^ ReelThoughts
- ^ "They're Film Geeks, Because 'Freak' Is Just Too Weak", Philadelphia Inquirer, July 30, 2000.
- ^ "In Online World, Everyone Can Be A Critic", South Florida Sun-Sentinel, June 17, 1997, http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1997-06-17/lifestyle/9706160115_1_internet-life-review-http. Reprinted from the Los Angeles Times.
- ^ ReelThoughts
- ^ Ebert's Review
- ^ Ebert's review of Saving Silverman
- ^ "Ebert Offers His Oscar Predictions", The Ledger, March 19, 1998, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=kfkSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Jv0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6720,6219067.
- ^ "Invasion of the Web Film Critics", Wired, February 28, 2004, http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2004/02/62453.
- ^ http://www.reelviews.net/fullsearchresult.php?searchstring=1&searchtype=10
- James Berardinelli (2003), "ReelViews : The Ultimate Guide to the Best 1,000 Modern Movies on DVD and Video" ISBN 1-932112-06-5
- James Berardinelli (2005), "ReelViews 2: The Ultimate Guide to the Best 1,000 Modern Movies on DVD and Video, 2005 Edition" ISBN 1-932112-40-5
[edit] External links
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