To start off the week we watched 2015 City of Gold, a documentary about Jonathan Gold, a food critic reviewing all kinds of different restaurants he attends. The film in itself very informative in teaching us using different personas in criticism. Having personas is pretty important in being a critic, it was interesting to learn how much of a difference critics are treated compared to a normal public customer. Throughout the film, it would just show every restaurant treating Gold like a VIP, because they know he is a well renown critic, so they obviously want to get the best review from him. It was interesting to find out, that some critics do multiple runs of a place before actually giving a review, some critics go in as a critic, then as a disguise normal customer and they were able to write how different they were treated between the two. Although as enjoyable and informative the film maybe in to Gold’s life and upbringing. It didn’t really showcase his reviewing style much, for a film about critics, there wasn’t much criticisms from the critics in general, it was more about the life of a critic. When we read one of his pieces during the class, we were able to get a sense of his writing style, and how his persona works.

Unfortunately I could attend the Wednesday class of this week, however I was able to do the reading on different critics on their take on Edward Scissorhands. Luckily for me I have seen the film before, so I was able to understand the reviews coming out of each critics opinions. But it was interesting reading 5 different reviews of the same film. One thing in common all the critics had was that they were able to summarize the plot and able to analyze the content of the film. However 2 of the critics delved way too much into the plot and ended completely just spoiling the plot and not reviewing the film at all. 3 out of the 5 reviews felt like actual reviews, the other two felt like detailed descriptions of the plot. Nonetheless each critic has their own writing style, and were able to point it out in their criteria for review, so they were able to admit what style of writing they are comfortable with. I personally wouldn’t read the first two as they did feel like big plot summaries, and less of a review than the other three.