There's a great moment early on in Frank Zappa's engaging autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book, where a teenaged Zappa becomes obsessed with some long-forgotten doo-wop single. Having recently started taking band classes, he marched to his music teacher, put on the record, and demanded to know: "Why do I like this song so much?" The teacher gave it a listen and responded, simply, "Diminished fifths". This one moment began Zappa's lifelong affair with music theory, and the idea that there was more to why we responded positively to one song over another than simply matters of taste.
The internet has been a real double-edged sword in terms of film criticsism; on the one hand, it's opened up the field to non-professionals in a really positive way, allowing those outside the traditional academic and journalistic worlds to take a shot at the discipline, often with a fresh perspective, a new approach, or an eye towards non-mainstream films and genres. On the other hand, it's also subject to the same flattening effect on criticism that darkens the entire world wide web: it seems enough to merely have an opinion, and no one has he right to tell you it's wrong. Merely thinking something is enough, and the idea of defending your opinion intelligently -- let alone actually knowing what you're talking about -- is too often considered qualnt Web 1.0 thinking. That's why we're grateful to sites like the Broadview Blog.
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