Atencioblog

Last night spikey-haired creampuff and human movie poster pull-quote factory Ben Lyons vaguely threatened me with bad movie reviews in the future because I mentioned how Roger Ebert clearly blames Lyons for the downfall of his old show “At The Movies.” This is funny for a number of reasons.

• He chose the most vague, passive-aggressive way of threatening someone I’ve ever seen, which is a feat for a platform like Twitter, which was basically designed for making vague, passive-aggressive threats.
• The most common criticism lodged against Lyons (well, maybe second-most common after the whole “he knows dick about film” complaint) is that he has no integrity whatsoever, and frequently gives inexplicable praise to terrible movies, with the implication being that he simply enjoys seeing his name on movie posters and advertisements. Threatening to give a bad review because the filmmaker thinks you’re a dick instead of judging the film on its own merit does nothing to dispel that complaint.
• Unfortunately for Lyons, by the next time I have a film that he can review, his life will revolve around celebrity pro-am golf tournaments and ribbon-cutting ceremonies at new Best Buys, and he’ll be so busy cashing in on his tiny sliver of celebrity that he’ll probably have left the increasingly less lucrative film criticism game behind altogether. In fact, if he’s still a paid film critic when I finish another movie, I will hand deliver it to the condominium he purchased with his father’s money myself.