There seems to be a disproportionate amount of vitriol spit at a director who is so well regarded in so many circles. We seem to be in a more or less bland era of mainstream American filmmaking where some of the most celebrated and decorated directors are ones that are almost invisible from a visual standpoint. You have someone like Sam Mendes whose films do not appear to possess one single discernible characteristic. Even worse is Ron Howard, whose films’ only linking attribute is constant and egregious manipulation. And then there’s James Cameron who could easily be described as spectacle over substance, though has no signature traits to hang his hat on. Yet these are the directors that win Oscars, make huge profits at the box office, and while they receive their share of criticism, it doesn’t compare to the amount that’s heaped on Wes Anderson who has the courage to stick by his visual world even when a movie flops financially.

Video games are art, just not in the way we would traditionally think of or perceive. Perhaps not a high art, but art nonetheless. It is true that no video game has ever been considered to be on par with any great work of art, and I believe none can be deemed as such, for now. It’s a young art form. And I’m sure that if Roger were asked that same question with regards to film, when movies where merely nickelodeon pieces, he’d say the same thing.

For Kot, “A good piece of criticism should both educate and illuminate, in addition to entertain, and that’s something that can’t be done in a day, let alone a few hours. It’s exciting to see people weighing in on the Radiohead album immediately after hearing it for the first time, but that’s not really criticism—it’s more like a first impression.”

Serious criticism on the writer began “in a more democratic vein” than the study of Pynchon and other precursors, Kelly wrote. He pointed out that in Wallace’s case, the kind of close reading of the author’s texts, “traditionally the preserve of academic engagement, has in great part been carried out by skillful and committed nonprofessional readers, who publish their findings in the public domain of the Web.”

If I have a criterion for choosing the greatest films, it's an emotional one. These are films that moved me deeply in one way or another. The cinema is the greatest art form ever conceived for generating emotions in its audience. That's what it does best. (If you argue instead for dance or music, drama or painting, I will reply that the cinema incorporates all of these arts).

This book is perhaps the funniest book I have ever read. Stewart Lee has consistently been one of the funniest comedians in the country and his apparently arrogant yet always self-deprecating style has been brilliantly realised on the page. He shows a thoughtfulness and integrity that puts previous controversies about his work into context and also provides a fascinating peek behind the subjects of his stand-up set to reveal complexity, planning and yet more humour behind them.

Ryan Holiday: In 1920 Upton Sinclair self-published arguably the first ever structural criticism of the corrupt and broken press system in America. Not only did he self-publish it but he refused to copyright it, hoping to pass through the complete media blacklist a book like this faced. It's not only fascinating but a timeless perspective. Sinclair deeply understood the economic incentives of early 20th century journalism and thus could predict and analyze the manipulative effect it had on The Truth. Today, those incentives and pressures are different but they warp our information in a similar way. In almost every substantial charge he leveled against the yellow press, you could, today, sub in blogs and the cable news cycle and be even more correct. In fact, the reason that most newspapers could escape this criticism is that over the last 50 years they have instituted many of the important changes he asked for.

For me, the end of October is always slightly tinged with dread -- provoked not by Halloween spooks, not even by election season, but by the advent of something called NaNoWriMo. If those syllables are nothing but babble to you, then I salute you. They stand for National Novel Writing Month.

The web makes it rather hard not to have opinions. The constant rush of new information, media and art means that the way we situate ourselves in life – which is to say, the way we position ourselves in relation to the culture around us – is constantly undergoing change, in part because it is constantly under attack.

Rockism is often suspicious of the use of computer-based production systems. Rockism places value on the idea of the composer and performer as an auteur; authentic music is composed as a sincere form of self-expression, and usually performed by those who composed it. This is as opposed to the notion of manufactured "pop" music, created in assembly line fashion by teams of hired record producers and technicians and performed by pop stars who have little input into the creative process, designed to appeal to a mass market and make profits rather than express authentic sentiments.

Will Leitch on his (varied!) interactions with Roger Ebert.

"I've mentioned from time to time the "shot at a time" sessions I do at film festivals and universities, sifting through a film with the help of the audience. The e-mails I receive indicate this is perceived as some kind of esoteric exercise."

"That success is in the eye of the unsuccessful would seem to be the great unspoken dilemma dogging critics asked to consider the work of the rich and famous author and inspirational speaker Malcolm Gladwell. No matter how well intentioned or intellectually honest their attempts to assess his ideas, the subtext of Gladwell's perceived success, and its implications for their own aspirations in the competitive thought-generation business, obscures their judgment and sinks their morale."