Pete Bradshaw - WHAT IS THERE TO BE DONE?

[Twit 2]

The Sam Wollaston of film criticism.

This review features most of his highlights:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/14/frozen-2-review-sequel-jennifer-lee-chris-buck-idina-menzel-kristen-bell

It's like it's written by a robot gone wrong. A constant marvel of tortured syntax, bizarre vocabulary and extraneous detail. There's something to object to in pretty much every sentence. What a convoluted tit of a man. How in fuck is he a paid writer?

[Cuellar]

Can't believe he didn't stick to acting (that was him right?)

[BlodwynPig]

That is the worst thing ive ever read.

Crystal meth
Youtube fart parody
Voiced again again
Funny bits

Absolute disgrace of a man

[dissolute ocelot]

It's a funny job, film criticism. You have to respect anyone who'll sit through Adam Sandler movies and Ice Age sequels week after week and still write something other than "durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr", and he does fulfil a useful role in that I'm 99% sure any film he five-stars I'll hate, and vice versa. It's incredible that the super-woke Guardian entrusts most of its film reviewing to someone who appears to be the archetypal posh middle-aged straight white English male (I've no idea if he is all those things but he certainly like movies about them). Meh, moaning about film critics is nearly as boring as being one.

[Mister Six]

I thought you were exaggerating, but then I read it and these were the first two sentences:

Do you wanna build a franchise? Maybe Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck didn't realise this was what they were going to do in creating their sensational Disney animated musical Frozen in 2013, with its lethal Broadway-style show tunes written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez and scored by Christopher Beck.

Tenses all over the place, run-on sentence, awkwardly crammed in facts... I write some garbled shite on here, but that's because I'm usually hammering out posts while on a commute or getting a cup of tea at work. If I turned this in to an editor I'd be embarrassed. If it were printed, I'd be mortified.

[greenman]

These days he reminds me of....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr1lgfqygio

[Funcrusher]

He's always been completely and utterly shit - his arrival as replacement for the excellent Derek Malcolm was the beginnings of the Grauns steady decline. I've never been clear exactly what his credentials were to get the job. For the first several years his reviews were about fourth fifths just a lengthy synopsis of virtually the whole plot, with spoilers, as he seemed to have nothing to say about any film other than this is what happens in it.

[Twit 2]

Posh background are the main credentials for being a journo, especially at the graun.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I thought you were exaggerating, but then I read it and these were the first two sentences:

Tenses all over the place, run-on sentence, awkwardly crammed in facts... I write some garbled shite on here, but that's because I'm usually hammering out posts while on a commute or getting a cup of tea at work. If I turned this in to an editor I'd be embarrassed. If it were printed, I'd be mortified.

Jesus Christ, you're not wrong. That's appalling.

[Twit 2]

Latest vocab audit:

Squelchingly
Skittery-giggly
Siphon
Eggnog

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/15/last-christmas-review-emma-thompson-emilia-clarke

[TheBrownBottle]

Bradshaw's reviews are a joke.  95% regurgitating the plot (he usually - though not always - stops short at giving away the last 10 mins of a film), followed by 'I like/I don't like/I think it ok'.  Absolute dreck.  A profoundly lazy writer.

Edit: I've just realised that funcrusher had basically already said this. I'm leaving this comment up in support of his/her point, because it needs to be reiterated in case there's a chance that a member of the Grauniad editorial board reads the thread and realises that plenty of people know Bradshaw is the hackiest of hacks. 

[BlodwynPig]

Latest vocab audit:

Squelchingly
Skittery-giggly
Siphon
Eggnog

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/15/last-christmas-review-emma-thompson-emilia-clarke

The last paragraph made me self-asphyxiate

[BlodwynPig]

I bet he spaffs these out at coffee shops

[jobotic]

I don't know if its him or others too but The Guardian often seems to have film reviews that are incredibly short and seem to stop long before they should, sometimes almost mid-sentence. Which really does suggest that someone has written them in a coffee shop, run out of time as they are meeting their friend for lunch/swimming so just send off what they've written. Money for old rope.

[dissolute ocelot]

I don't know if its him or others too but The Guardian often seems to have film reviews that are incredibly short and seem to stop long before they should, sometimes almost mid-sentence. Which really does suggest that someone has written them in a coffee shop, run out of time as they are meeting their friend for lunch/swimming so just send off what they've written. Money for old rope.

They're still living in the days of print when you'd have half a page of film reviews, one long one, and 3 or 4 single-paragraphs around the edges. This is the internet, boomer!

[kngen]

It wouldn't have taken me half as long to realise that the opening line in his review was a play on the song 'Do You Want to Build a Snowman?' if he'd actually got the title right.

[chveik]

Bradshaw's reviews are a joke.  95% regurgitating the plot (he usually - though not always - stops short at giving away the last 10 mins of a film), followed by 'I like/I don't like/I think it ok'.  Absolute dreck.  A profoundly lazy writer.

Roger Ebert-tier critique.

[joaquin closet]

It wouldn't have taken me half as long to realise that the opening line in his review was a play on the song 'Do You Want to Build a Snowman?' if he'd actually got the title right.

Tbf tbf that's how it's sung in the song. "wanna" not "want to".

[kngen]

Tbf tbf that's how it's sung in the song. "wanna" not "want to".

You are correct. It probably didn't help that I read it in the voice of Max Bygraves.

Re: Bradshaw. One of the few critics (and indeed only a handful of journalists) I've ever worked with who gets edit approval (so his stuff would get subbed, PDFs emailed to him, then he'd phone up and argue the toss over every little comma that had been added or removed as deadline fast approached.) Sometimes there's be some really dodgy stuff that he'd dig in and refuse to budge about - like quotes of dialogue in foreign accents that he'd write out phonetically that just wouldn't fly anywhere else in the paper (or the civilised world, for that matter). These arguments could go back and forth for hours. Nowadays, the Culture desk is so over-worked and understaffed they probably have no option but to wave his stuff through because to do anything else would take too much time, hence stuff like that Frozen review.

He's actually a quite pleasant and genial bloke away from work, but dealing with him professionally ... yeesh.

[dissolute ocelot]

I assume he gets paid a good amount of money for his weekly waffle too. If you're one of the world's millions of Bradfans hanging on his every word and opinion, for a mere £1.04 you can buy his "bloke-lit" novel Dr Sweet and his Daughter in paperback from Amazon:

Dr Sweet's life is largely unremarkable. A recent divorce and ongoing custody battle; a tame affair that's gradually grinding to a halt; a job which seems to have stopped halfway up the professional escalator; friends who are too preoccupied with their own lives to spare much of a thought for anyone else . . . In fact, the only bright spark in Dr Sweet's life is his terrifically talented and terribly precocious daughter, Cordie. With Christmas family hell just around the corner, however, in the shape of his parents and ex-wife, Dr Sweet's life is about to take a turn for the worse. Sent to the local shop for some last-minute supplies, this is the day he manages first to lose his mistress, then his job and, finally, his freedom, as the police arrest him for murder.This is a deeply amusing comedy about an unremarkable man trapped in remarkable circumstances.

Autobiographical I assume. 4.6 out of 5! And the reviews don't all sound like Bradshaw under a pseudonym, although "I'm not a big novel reader but I give it a big thumbs-up!" is a bit suspicious.

[TheBrownBottle]

The book itself was probably intended as a review of the book.  He just forgot to say 'this is a very good book' on the last page. 

[popcorn]

fuck

[BlodwynPig]

I was thinking this before i even read the review

Welcome to the post-capitalist Tory hell

[Twit 2]

It's testament to the 'quality' of Bradshaw's writing that I didn't realise he was doing a poem until at least a stanza or two in; up till then it scanned as yet another of his bizarre reviews in prose.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

fuck

Jesus fucking Christ.

[mjwilson]

So I guess we can say that Cats is getting some terrible reviews.

[Cardenio I]

Do we not have a thread for Cats? I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to go and see it now after some of these reviews.

[Mister Six]

fuck

Ha, I came here to post this after a (lovely, really) pal of mine put it on Facebook with a favourable comment.

This bit especially:

There are lots of big names here, names we see daily, Names that supposedly give us a lift. Nothing like Jonathan Pie or Bill Bailey

Have we done a thread on mediocre things loved by middle-class London Lib Dem supporters? Bradshaw and Pie would both be on there.

[Cardenio I]

Jonathan Pie licks his arsehole, eats some grass, throws up on the couch.

[Mister Six]

Hm, maybe writing doggerel about Cats is some kind of elaborate meta-pun.

(No, it is not.)