Looking
at Art
& Reviewing
Art
BTW
If you’ve done this kind of paper
in English 110 or elsewhere,
keep in mind that our
assignment is a bit different and
will be more challenging.
Listen to the Following Pieces

Hank Williams, “Your Cheating Heart”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS4LCoh0VGQ

Dead Kennedys, “Kinky Sex Makes
the World Go ‘Round”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVGg_5grOTg

Suzanne Vega, “Undertow”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VdptStNu-k

Rainstorm
Relaxing Rainstorm With Thunder Mix # 2 - Sleep Sounds / Ambient / Meditation / Lluvia
austinstrunk .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pGEHLbzWdg
Now...
1.
Rank the songs, with 1 being best
and 4 being worst. Briefly explain
your ranking.
2.
Now explain your ranking again, but
go deeper. What criteria were you
applying? What do you base your
own judgments on? What, for you, is
good music? What is good art?
3.
“For me, a good piece of music is
one that ________________”
Look at extracts from student
responses.
The
improvement
Formalist
of reality
(art as
a hammer
An escape from
reality; a sedative or
distraction
The honoring of tradition
Formalist
Again,
clarify, explain, and possibly
modify your personal criteria,
drawing on our discussion.
What do you want from any kind
of art? What, for you,
constitutes good music, a good
movie, etc.?
For me, a good work of art, whether it’s film,
music, visual art, or literature, has these
qualities:








Is emotionally moving. Blows my hair back! Has duende! Mojo!
Is thought-provoking.
Reveals a new way of looking at the world or reality. Or, even
better, challenges my view of reality; unsettles me; takes me out of
comfort zone. Is surprising, unpredictable.
Is multi-layered; we can’t quite exhaust all of its meanings; want to
see or hear it over and over.
Is formally innovative; direction, production, set, script, acting—
some or all have something NEW going on.
Shows attention to craft, in most cases.
Heightens and magnifies reality—is not an escape from it. Is not
mind candy or a sedative. Makes me feel more alive, even if that
mean experiencing pain alongside beauty.
Challenges me; asks me to be something more than a passive blob.
Prompts me to broaden what I think of as “attention” or
“awareness.” I actually begin to perceive things in a new way.
Remember
Horton
Hears a
Who?
There’s something in the world, way down in,
yelling, “We’re here! We’re here! We’re here! I
like art that calls out to me that way—exposes
me to a way of seeing/hearing I didn’t even
know existed before.
http://smile.amazon.com/Horton-Hears-Who-DrSeuss/dp/0394800788/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424775
084&sr=81&keywords=Horton+hears+a+who#reader_0394800788
Now that you’ve gained a little insight into your
own tastes and preferences in art...
What is the purpose of an ART
REVIEW? What is this genre of writing
for?
To evaluate! I.e., to judge favorably or unfavorably or
something in between. A review is an argument about
value.
Secondarily: reviews often introduce, summarize, and
advertise. They may also develop insight into or provide an
interpretation of the art work in question.
Why do you read art reviews?
To decide whether or not to buy an item, and/or to
decide what you yourself think about the item, and/or to
gain more insight into the item.
•
•
•
The Spectrum
The Fargo Forum
High Plains Reader
Real-World Art Reviews
Where do you find them?
EVERYWHERE!
• Newspapers
• Websites such as
Amazon.com or
Rotten Tomatoes
• Blogs, YouTube
What are they about?
ALL kinds of art!
• TV talk shows
• Magazines
• Conversations! in
real-time or on
Facebook, Twitter...
For Project #2:

Read about the review genre:


In Writing Today, read: Chap. 6, pp. 84-90 and "Quick Start Guide," p. 99.
Read a bunch of additional reviews to get a feel for this genre.

Go here for full instructions:
www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/120/Reviews to Read for English 120 Sp 2015docx

Begin thinking about a work of art to review:
A play at a local theater or perhaps down in the Cities; a new film; a new CD; a
new novel; a gallery exhibit; etc. (For concerts, try Eventful, Jade Presents, or
the Fargo Theater website. For films, check the Marcus Theaters website. And so
on.)

Be thinking about where to publish your review: The Spectrum,
The High Plains Reader, Slate, The Atlantic, The New York
Times, or The Fargo Forum. Begin reading reviews in that periodical
to get a feel for the audience. (If you prefer a different periodical,
discuss with me.)
Weekly Work Assignment
Carefully read the reviews
assigned on our schedule:
“Reviews to Read and Watch for
English 120, Project #2”
Complete the Weekly Work
assignment titled, “Reading Art
Reviews.” Go into Bb “Weekly
Work” and you’ll see it. This is
due by class time on Tues. the
3rd.
Project #2
For full project instructions, go to:
http://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/120/Project2ArtReviewSp2015.htm
(If that link doesn’t work when you click on it, just copy-paste it into your browser.)
Research for Your Review
This isn’t an all-out research paper proper, but there is a
research component. It will prepare you to approach and
then write about the subject of your review knowledgeably.
You will inform
yourself about
the kind of art
you are
reviewing, and
about the
specific work in
question. You
will also look up
reviews already
written about
your topic.
Selecting an Art Form and Specific Work to Review
www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/120/Project2ArtRe
viewSelectingArtForm.docx
Research Strategy
www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/120/Project2ArtRe
viewResearchStrategy.docx
Research Questions for Various Art Forms
www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/120/Project2ArtRe
viewResearchQuestionsforArtForms.docx
Some Elements of Sample Art Forms
Films: direction, production, script, set, acting, plot, point of
view, genre, theme, intended audience.
Concerts: artists, stage managers, stage design, audio quality,
sequence of songs, theme, mood, execution, intended audience.
Albums: artists, instruments, production, sequence of songs, theme,
mood, execution, genre, intended audience.
Novel: author, characters and character development, setting, point of
view, motifs, scenes and scene development, plot (sequence of events,
pacing, devices, turning points, crisis), intended audience.
KEEP TRACK OF SOURCE INFO!
As you search for information, keep in mind that you need
to keep track of source information. You’ll use that info for
in-text citations and a Work Cited page in your review.
When you find a source that you want to read and may
possibly use in your review, you need to copy-paste or
write down pertinent info. about that source.
So don’t forget to take a look at "Using MLA
Style," Chap. 27 in Writing Today: read and
skim this whole chapter.
In-Text Citation [sample]
It is clear that Taxi Driver is Scorsese’s best
film, as Lou Noodlebrain asserts in a review
of a recent digital re-mastering (15-20).
Works Cited [sample]
Nucklehead, Chuck. Exploring the Films of Martin Scorsese. New
Haven, NJ: Yale UP, 1989. Print. Book source
Noodlebrain, Lou. “Is Martin Scorsese the Best Film Director in the
Web source
(online
World?” Film Studies, 27 Jan. 2009. Web. 8 Sept. 2014.
journal)
Taxi. Dir. Martin Scorsese. Prod. Norman Jewison. Stingray Production
Co, 1979. Film.
Film source
Again, What Makes a Review
Helpful and Interesting—or Not?
Watch segment from
Hollywood Shuffle.
According to what criteria
do the two men evaluate
movies? What are their
judgments and what
principles are those
judgments based on?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfWc47SEPA0
For the two guys in Hollywood
Shuffle segment:




A good movie is realistic.
A good movie reminds a viewer of
his/her own life.
A good movie provokes a strong
sensory response such as fear or
suspense.
A good movie doesn’t make the
viewer feel dumb. Doesn’t challenge
the viewer intellectually. Has an
easy-to-pronounce title!
How does their review fall
Obviously, the scene is meant to be funny. but let’s
short? look at it as though it were serious.

To
know
what
makes
a
review
really
great,
we
could
just
invert
each
of
these
items!



They don’t seem to have reflected much on their
own criteria. The principles they base their
judgments on could use a little thought and
discussion. They aren’t warranted.
Their judgments are extremely hasty as well as
absolutist, based on only seeing a fraction of a
movie.
They don’t do a lot to acknowledge alternative
points of view.
They don’t offer any real insights into the movies
they review.
Come to class with answers to at least some
of your research questions, typed--say at
least 5 questions.
Please bring your contemplative journal as
well.
and now...
Go experience your subject!
Take notes, if possible,
drawing on info from
Writing Today, p. 90,
where Johnson-Sheehan
and Paine encourage you
to reflect on the responses
you are having throughout
the experience.
Keep in mind what you’ve
been learning about
mindfulness.
If you haven’t already, take a look at the
sample student journal entries I sent out
recently:
www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/120/Conte
mplative Journal Student Samples.docx
Introduction
What does the intro do?
•Helps orient reader; prepares them for what is to follow.
– Road-map style overview?
– Background info: dates, places, history, definition of key terms?
•Catches reader’s interest; engaging.
–
–
–
–
Pose a question?
Sneak-peak at interesting details to come?
Snazzy quotations?
First excellent example of something?
•Makes clear the work’s central idea or THESIS?
– Some strategies call for main point later.
Body
What does the intro do?
Conclusion
What does the intro do?
Looking at Your Drafts
You will almost certainly need to include a
comprehensive yet concise and consistent
statement of criteria. Common probs:
Stating one or two criteria early on, then
introducing a bunch more in the body...
Making some nice comprehensive statement
early on, but then, late in the paper and out
of nowhere, start talking about some new
criterion.
Making a good statement of one criterion
early on, but never applying it or never
applying it with any detail or examples.
Be aware...
that you may need to “warrant” your criteria.
That is, you need to anticipate possible
reader questions about your choice of
criteria. You don’t want them to come off as
arbitrary, thoughtless, uninformed, or
narrow-minded.
.
Here’s a sample excerpt from a review of
the newer War of the Worlds. Notice that I
discuss and clarify my criteria, then apply it
to specific scenes with details.
This is an excerpt from half-way through....
Another important requirement for a good movie is well-developed characters. That is, the main
character especially has to change as a person in some interesting way in the course of the
story. Static characters are maybe ok for movies that are 100% plot-driven, but most of us want
interesting people involved in that plot action!
In War of the Worlds, we do indeed get some character development. If this movie were
absolutely nothing but gigantic monster machines spewing blood and guts everywhere, we’d
likely loose interest after a short while, or just expect ever bigger explosions and ever more
disgusting gore. But the film develops a sub-plot involving Cruz’s relationships with his
children—he actively learns to be a real father in the course of the story.
For instance, early on we see his son showing him disdain when they are playing catch in the
backyard. The Cruz character says blah blah blah, and then the son says yadda yadda yadda;
the Cruz character then furiously throws the ball through a window. They clearly do not share a
very good father-son relationship; not only is there continual miscommunication in language
between the two, but they can’t even toss a ball back and forth!
About mid-way through, however, in the scene where the boy is about to run off to join the
military battle, we see the father pleading with him to remain. They even have an intense eye-toeye moment of silence as Cruz grabs his son’s arm. We realize that this father is learning,
however gradually, to actively show his love, and that, likewise, his son is beginning to believe in
that love. This is the kind of character development which makes us want to see a film not just
once for its flashy computer effects, but for the real-life people in the story. And it’s another one
of the reasons why you will love this movie.
And look out for...
awkward, wordy sentence
constructions!
You want graceful, powerful, concise
sentences that have an impact and
communicate their meaning easily
and fluently.
We’ll do
more work
with
sentence
style in our
final project,
but you
should pay a
decent
amount of
attention to
it NOW.
Documenting
Sources
for Project #1
• Use MLA-style in-text citations and/or
integrate brief source info smoothly into your
text. You don’t need lengthy URLS—those
can optionally be found on the Work Cited
page. (Short web page info is fine, such as
“Paramount.com.”)
• The trick is to provide just enough detail intext that your reader can easily look up
additional info on the Work Cited page.
• Provide a Work Cited page.
For excellent, easy-to-use
documentation info, see OWL
PURDUE (or our textbook!):
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/
11/
Passage from a sample student film
review with a PRINT source:
Surprisingly, most recent reviews of August,
Osage County are completely opposite of mine. In
the January issue of The New Yorker
magazine, Fred Fuzzywuzzle actually says that
“[T]he movie blows most family dramas out of the
water and opens up a whole realm of possibilities
for the creation of realistic, family-based stories in
popular film” (26). Sure, it’s possible that the
movie suggests some new ways to represent the
American family, but “realistic” is hardly a word I’d
choose to describe the characters in this film.
Alternative way to cite source
on previous slide:
Surprisingly, most recent reviews of August,
Osage County are completely opposite of mine.
Fred Fuzzywuzzle of The New Yorker actually
says that “T]he movie blows most family dramas
out of the water and opens up a whole realm of
possibilities for the creation of realistic, familybased stories in popular film” (26). Sure, it’s
possible that the movie suggests some new ways
to represent the American family, but “realistic” is
hardly a word I’d choose to describe the
characters in this film.
And another:
Surprisingly, most recent reviews of August,
Osage County are completely opposite of mine.
One film critic actually says that “[T]he movie
blows most family dramas out of the water and
opens up a whole realm of possibilities for the
creation of realistic, family-based stories in popular
film” (Fuzzywuzzle 26). Sure, it’s possible that the
movie suggests some new ways to represent the
American family, but “realistic” is hardly a word I’d
choose to describe the characters in this film.
And another!:
Surprisingly, most recent reviews of August,
Osage County are completely opposite of mine.
One review claims that “[T]he movie blows most
family dramas out of the water and opens up a
whole realm of possibilities for the creation of
realistic, family-based stories in popular film” (New
Yorker 26). Sure, it’s possible that the movie
suggests some new ways to represent the
American family, but “realistic” is hardly a word I’d
choose to describe the characters in this film.
Work Cited
[entry for the previous slides’ in-text citation of a PRINT source]
Fuzzywuzzle, Fred. “August, Osage County
Rocks." The New Yorker Mar. 2014:
143-48. Print.
Citing electronic sources:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resour
ce/747/08/
This page tells you everything you need
to know about using WEB sources in
your art review.
Sample passage from a student film
review with an ONLINE source:
Surprisingly, most recent reviews of August,
Osage County are completely opposite of mine.
One online review claims that “[T]he movie
blows most family dramas out of the water and
opens up a whole realm of possibilities for the
creation of realistic, family-based stories in popular
film” (“Osage County Rocks”). Sure, it’s possible
that the movie suggests some new ways to
represent the American family, but “realistic” is
hardly a word I’d choose to describe the
characters in this film.
Work Cited
[entry for the previous slides’ in-text citation of an
ELECTRONIC SOURCE]
Fuzzywuzzle, Fred. “August, Osage Country
Rocks.” The New Yorker Online. Condé
Nast, 16 Aug. 2013. Web. 4 May 2009.
Films or Movies
List films (in theaters) by their title. Include the name of the director, the
film studio or distributor, and the release year. If relevant, list performer
names after the director’s name. Use the abbreviation perf. to head the
list. List film as the medium of publication.
To emphasize specific performers (perf.) or directors (dir.), begin the
citation with the name of the desired performer or director, followed by
the appropriate abbreviation.
Lucas, George, dir. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
Twentieth Century Fox, 1977. Film.
from Owl Purdue
The Usual Suspects. Dir. Bryan Singer. Perf. Kevin Spacey,
Gabriel Byrne, Chazz Palminteri, Stephen Baldwin,
and
Benecio delToro. Polygram, 1995. Film.
Recorded Films or Movies
List films by their title. Include the name of the director, the
distributor, and the release year. If relevant, list performer
names after the director’s name. Use the abbreviation perf.
to head the list. End the entry with the appropriate medium
of publication (e.g. DVD, VHS, Laser disc).
Ed Wood. Dir. Tim Burton. Perf. Johnny Depp,
Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker,
Patricia Arquette. Touchstone, 1994. DVD.
Sample passage with film source:
In this age of high-quality, creative, dazzling
special effects, there is no excuse for awful scenes
full of what are obviously cheap vector graphics.
And yet “cheap” and “awful” are words that come
to mind with director Ross Collins’ newest effort,
Zombies of the Upper Plains, just out on DVD
through Touchstone.
Sample Work Cited entry:
Zombies of the Upper Plains. Dir. Ross Collins.
Perf. Leonardo Decapitated and Kristin
Stewpot. Touchstone, 2014. DVD.
With all sources,
and all citations:
make the source info
meaningful but unobtrusive.
Got it?