Sight and Sound

[holyzombiejesus]

I've been buying this for years and have felt it's gone downhill pretty quickly since the new editor took over. I got the new relaunched version today and it's really bad, a horrible mess. Poor layout and design, a monthly Jonathan Ross column(!), reviews are for some reason printed on horrible cheap paper and it's clearly desperately trying to appeal to a younger demographic who I don't think are going to be interested anyway. It reminds me a bit of Melody Maker in the late 90s, in that obviously doomed kind of way.

[sevendaughters]

a monthly Jonathan Ross column(!)

trying to appeal to a younger demographic

dialectic or paradox?

[AnOrdinaryBoy]

I've been buying this for years and have felt it's gone downhill pretty quickly since the new editor took over. I got the new relaunched version today and it's really bad, a horrible mess. Poor layout and design, a monthly Jonathan Ross column(!), reviews are for some reason printed on horrible cheap paper and it's clearly desperately trying to appeal to a younger demographic who I don't think are going to be interested anyway. It reminds me a bit of Melody Maker in the late 90s, in that obviously doomed kind of way.

I got a subscription to it this year as a vague attempt at trying to attach myself to the modern world and have been disappointed by it. The free access to the digital archives that came with the subscription have, however, been absolutely wonderful.

[thundarrshirt]

Had a mate do a work placement there in the build up to Nick James handing editorial duties over to this new bloke, who used to work for the NME. Apparently (unsurprisingly) the mag makes fuck all money, has quite a small number of subscribers and low sales despite being place in every train station Smiths across the land. New bloke obviously tasked with making the mag more "populist" (in conjunction with making the BFI website less unwieldly); my pal transcribed some old interviews from their archives for these one-off auteur-focussed spin-off mags they have, like those MOJO or Q Magazine heritage editions.

Most of the staff have been the same for decades, film academics or the like who've been happy to file their copy without much interference or, apparently, readership. Can't help but worry it'll go the way of Film Comment, which was similarly propped up by its associated cinema body, but was probably never going to be a profit-maker in and of itself (and shouldn't be, arguably, cos then you end up with...current Sight & Sound).

[holyzombiejesus]

It's hard to see where it can go to increase its readership but I really don't believe that whatever they're trying to do right now is going to work. There seems to be an increasing tendency to use genre or themed covers but I don't feel that anyone will pick it up because there's an issue discussing the future of cinema, or even video nasties. It's not going to pick up any Empire readers even if it does cater for more mainstream tastes and it's hard to see a net gain in readers due to Jonathan Ross' column. The magazines I like (and that I presume aren't massively struggling) stick to what they know and don't try to attract other readers by dolling themselves up.

[greenman]

Chris Nolan films make up all the top 10 next time they do their list.

[mjwilson]

It's hard to see where it can go to increase its readership but I really don't believe that whatever they're trying to do right now is going to work. There seems to be an increasing tendency to use genre or themed covers but I don't feel that anyone will pick it up because there's an issue discussing the future of cinema, or even video nasties.

I picked up the recent issue which had a cover of video nasties for precisely that reason.

[dissolute ocelot]

Yeah, the redesign is awful, and as well as printing the reviews on Yellow Pages-style paper stock the rest of it seems less glossy. One of the advantages it had over film websites (most of which are awful) was the glossy paper and high-quality photos. But now it's mostly black and white even the cover photo. And the text layout is awful and feels way too cramped.

The new issue also has exceptionally little content. Lately there has been some good archive stuff, and coverage of niche things like silent films, obscure film history, reviews of books and classic DVDs, and obituaries are quite good, but all the "We ask 100 people something" things are incredibly dull. Even recent features like 100 Best Anime, while informative (for me), was a bit on the lazy side. I guess fewer films are being made/released now, and it's probably harder to do on-set reports/interviews. But they were seldom very enlightening either.

And despite the alleged populism (is this supposed to be popular? A b&w cover of Luca Guagdagnino?), the reviews still fail to tell you if a film is actually worth watching. The first piece in the mag is about film v digital - ugh.

They took a while to figure how to react to Netflix and streaming, before deciding to cover it (quite) heavily. But a lot of their coverage is half-hearted or dull. For anything populist like Loki we get Kim Newman reciting plots and that's about it.

I don't know if they get money from the BFI and it would be a shame if it ended (not least because, as I said, other sites like Indiewire - now owned by The Hollywood Reporter - are increasingly terrible). I guess I'll keep buying it - and it's good having access to the archive, which until recently required a separate subscription. But I don't always read a great deal of it.