michael atkinson Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Bridgette Williams is Senior Editor of GuideLive.com, an online entertainment resource site operated by the Dallas Morning News. She's also an inveterate underwear shopper. Lately, though, she's found more and more DVDs in her shopping basket along with her six-pack of plaid panties. She puts it into personal perspective: "Women have one Thing we look for when we're in a store, mall or on a website that may carry it. For me, it's lingerie. ... It's not that I need more unmentionables, it's just that you can never have too much, especially if there's a sale. ... I'm looking, no matter what I set out to buy." She admits that she hardly ever watches them.

For a man's perspective, GreenCine Daily recently pointed to the "aha" moment in the life of film critic Michael Atkinson: "I no longer buy DVDs, and am very stingy about buying books (whereas I used to be a slut). I don't think I'll live long enough to see and read everything I already have." As I commented at his blog, "for me, just seeing a book or DVD on a shelf can bring back memories of what I read or saw, like hearing a song from my youth or seeing my childhoood home." When I need to relax, I shop for DVDs. I adore the idea of always having something new to watch. Of course, as a result of my spending habits I also watch my DVDs while sitting in a $10 camp chair.

What about you? With so many DVDs now bargain priced, do you find yourself tossing one or two into your shopping basket, even if you didn't set out to buy any? Do you watch all the DVDs you buy? Or do you confine yourself to renting or borrowing what you want to watch?

The bees have been buzzing for a couple days now with word that the Village Voice, once one of the great bastions of print film criticism, is gutting its film staff. Critic Michael Atkinson was given the boot a couple days ago, and now film editor Dennis Lim has also been shown the door, leaving only J Hoberman (pictured, right) to hold down the film criticism fort at the Voice. Gawker wrote up Atkinson's firing earlier this week, with a scathing indictment of the shakedown going on at the Voice, noting that the old guard is being replaced with an awful lot of friends of Voice EIC David Blum. Anthony Kaufman is mourning, especially, the loss of Lim, who, as Kaufman notes, has been a champion for independent film over the years. The IFC Blog wrote up the Voice makeover as well, bemoaning the loss of one of the few reliable print outlets that bothered to cover indie film . And David Poland, natch, has a write-up on the sackings as well.

As interesting as the string of firings over at the Voice are to follow -- including the rather shocking canning of Robert Christgau, the Voice's venerable top music critic -- what's really going to be interesting is to see what happens there over the next few months. Will the old vanguard of Village Voice critics be replaced with more generic voices writing across publications? Will the Voice's coverage of independent film be silenced as a result of the turnover?