Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Preview of Star Wars II Rant Against Crappy Reviewers
<rant> I saw a link to this review on the Ain't It Cool News Web site from a /. link. Don't get me wrong -- I'd be the last person who would be camped out in front of the theatres in order to see this film (or any film for that matter), but I am at least curious about it.

My only real comment is that writer Harry Knowles is undoubtedly one of the worst popular writers on the Internet if his breathless review of Attack of the Clones is anything to go by. Ick. As a webmaster, I also can't stand his use of an oversized font for his body text - blech! It reminds me of how people WHO TYPE IN ALL-CAPS APPEAR TO BE SHOUTING.

The piece is 3,000 words of dross and hype on behalf of Lucasfilms, with very little real analysis -- or at least that is so for the first few paragraphs, as I couldn't stand reading the rest of it. It's countless grammar errors, general wordiness and hipper-than-thou adjectives spewed up just turned me off from reading the rest of it. The most insightful comment about all of this came from one of his readers, who picked up that this guy being allowed to see an early cut of the film can hardly be a coincidence -- the people at Lucasfilm aren't dummies, and considering that this guy seem to praise anything with the least bit of geek appeal, it would seem a pretty smart move on their part to let this guy see a "unauthorized preview". Yeah, right.

What I can't believe is that this guy has actually written and published a book. Maybe I'll ask for a review copy of it on behalf of The Computer Paper. I suspect it would need a good editor for it to be readable. (Don't get me wrong -- I don't pre-judge books. If I get it, I'd review it on its own merits, though I suspect I'd fall into line with those reviewers on the Amazon site who didn't give it a whole lot of stars). Interesting to see that the Slashdot comments on the story are all pretty much giving a thumb's down to this review. Best quips: "Aint it cool = don't it suck" and "This is not the review you are looking for. You can go about your business. Move along." ;-)

However, I also realize that I'm simply not the demographic this guy's advertisers are interested in. As long as he writes like a high-school junior covering the latest geek films, I suspect he will have a long career as a mouthpiece for the movie publicists. Just not my cup of tea is all.

Oh yeah, did I mention that I used a couple of his previous reviews in my Web Design class when I needed an example Web site marred by spelling errors?

I guess I just also hate anybody who feels a need to add multiple exclamation marks at the end of most of his sentences. </rant>

Update: I see the article (and indeed the entire Ain't It Cool Web site) has suffered from the Slashdot effect. I bet he will see this as some sort of success worthy of further hype, though I'm sure he'll conveniently not mention the scathing series of comments on Slashdot regarding him and his ersatz review.

I hadn't realized how much antipathy there is out there for ol' Harry, so I am far from alone in my ranting. The best and most comprehensive I've seen are these two articles from Film Threat.

Okay, enough said already...