"It’s a Moribund and Desiccated Leftover That’s Been Cut Off from Ordinary Life"

"As I see it, film culture made a couple of last stands with the indie-film waves of the ’80s and ’90s, which brought us first Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch and Steven Soderbergh, and then Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers, David Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson and Wes Anderson.
"It’s definitely not a coincidence that the biggest critic of those years and an important advocate for most of those filmmakers was Roger Ebert, who has turned the Internet to his advantage like almost no one else and has prospered both as a populist movie critic and all-purpose cultural commentator. It’s also no coincidence that the mid-to-late ’90s zone of movies like 'Pulp Fiction' and 'Fargo' and 'Fight Club' overlaps with the explosion of Internet culture and the venture into original drama by the cable network formerly known as Home Box Office. I almost don’t need to add that it preceded the birth of YouTube and the spread of mobile devices, developments that undercut the traditional hegemony of movies even more."

In Salon, Andrew O'Hehir asks, "Is Movie Culture Dead?"