worthy of scorn

A few months back, Harry Knowles announced in one of his reviews (Editor’s note: of The Ruins, no less — which he loved, no less!) that he had been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a totally hateful person (okay, okay, I am) but there was something immensely satisfying about this revelation. It was as though one of the immutable laws of the universe had just been re-confirmed. You eat like a disgusting slob and watch movies all day: you will become obese and get diabetes. For the world to have continued on without Harry being a diabetic was an insult to all the other diabetics. To get just a taste of Harry, this is how he describes his newfound diabesity:

“…The nurse came in with this Kit – to poke my finger and feed this vampire device that tells me whether or not I’m too sweet. First off… My fingers love penetrating, but abhor being penetrated. This just isn’t natural…”

If you’re like me, you just threw up. Worse, when discussing lapband surgery, he seems to be saying he did it not for his health, but because losing his eyesight would put a crimp on his film-watching.

But that’s not why he’s one of those worthy or scorn. No, Harry’s sins are legion.

Fault the First: Bad Writing

This is, after all, the guy who started the whole movie-review-where-I-tell-you-about-my-whole-day-leading-up-to-the-review. And then he upped the ante by becoming the guy who writes movie-reviews-as-graphic-sexual-metaphors-even-though-he’s-500 lbs-on-the-wrong-side-of-a-vagina. Not to mention… the endless… ellipses… In short, people who write sentences like this: “Louis Leterrier has made a HULK movie that first and foremost is badass, kickass and asskicking, but is most certainly not ASS.” deserve our hatred.

(random side note: a girl once told me that the punctuation mark that most fit me as a person was the ellipses. I’m still trying to decide if I like that or not.)

Fault the Second: Bad Taste

no

From pimping shitty movies that his “friends” like Del Toro or QT did, to gushing over totally lame genre crap like Battle Royale because it’s foreign, to shitting his pants over mediocre Michael Bay crap, Harry’s taste is beyond reproach: it’s awful. If Harry actually does like a good movie, it’s probably by accident and for the wrong reasons. Like when he pooh-poohed The Matrix Reloaded for not having more Werewolves and Vampires.

Fault the Third: He’s Texan

Reason enough. Worse, he seems to have infected promising directors like Robert Rodriguez and Tarantino with his retarded love for the Lone Star State and its crappy tex-mex food. The world does not need any more glorification of shit-kicking rednecks.

Fault the Fourth: Misguided Politics

Harry hails from some sort of weird “me vs. the Man” political dichotomy that causes him to think that something like The Faculty is subversive. Actual quote, for reals:

“I responded with the use of drugs in this film. Personally I’m counting on actual OUTRAGE, public screaming at the highest levels. Mentions on the floor of Congress when some pompous ass begins farting out a pontification about what’s wrong with society today. Absolutely wonderful. It is, quite simply… Real Damn Cool.”

Yeah, still waiting for that huge brouhaha over The Faculty to die down. Nancy Grace won’t shut up about it. Bill O’RLY has a segment on it every night. Basically, if a movie is made by one of Harry’s friends or favorite filmmakers (like Eli Roth) and it features tits and or drugs, Harry views it as some sort of scathing protest film exposing the hypocrisies of our time, or something. That he is supporting democrats now makes me worried.

Fault the Fifth: Spoilers

Not that he’s solely to blame for this, and the movement probably would have continued without his help, but there’s no denying that Harry played a major role in popularizing the reveal of spoilers to a movie or tv show. Remember when we used to go see a movie knowing only what we saw in the trailer and what the local reviewer had to say about it? That’s a far better way to see a movie. Worse, Harry was such a poor reporter of spoilers that half the time they were wrong and set up artificial expectations for a film that were never met. And now that Harry has been successfully co-opted by the studios’ marketing departments, he openly lords his privileged knowledge over his readers and then holds back the juicy stuff. Asshole.

Have I missed anything? feel free to add your own.