KYW Newsradio's Movie Critic Visits Local Library

Hatboro, PA - While Philadelphia movie critic Bill Wine acknowledges the growing role that technology has played in the entertainment field, he still maintains that nothing compares to seeing movies the way that they were originally intended to be watched. "Movies are made for a dark room, filled with people, where everything is bigger than you," he explained to an audience of 25 in the basement of The Union Library Company on Friday, May 2. Wine conceded that this particular forum does not redeem a bad movie, but at least gives viewers the total experience. But one component is inconsistent with Wine's typical viewing venue: his fellow viewers consist of only seven other viewers, critics who screen on average four films per week at a center city theater. Wine admitted that he is often appalled by the disruptive behavior of other patrons when he and his family go to a public cinema together.

Wine, who has been employed by KYW Newsradio since 2001, discussed some notable differences between working in newspaper and working in broadcast journalism. "In newspapers it's how much you can write," he said. "In radio it's how fast you can talk." Wine finds note-taking while watching a movie that he is supposed to be reviewing distracting, and explained that he prefers to let a film "wash over" him first. Stressing how much he enjoys his career, Wine likened it to "an addiction somewhere between heroin and Hagen Daaz."

In response to questions about the subjective nature of movie reviews, Wine admitted that his opinion is simply that, but added that his experience and background qualify him to do his job well. The most important criterion for being a movie critic, he maintained, is the ability to watch a lot of movies. In addition, critics should be open to all genres.

Wine shared some personal anecdotes, such as the time he was recognized in a restaurant, and a 13 year-old girl who was dining with her family came up to his table and said "My parents love it when you trash all those movies." Once when he was vacationing in Europe with his wife and children, another family approached Wine and confided "We know that you're Steven Spielberg, but we won't tell anyone." Some of his more mundane encounters include lying on a New Jersey beach while nearby sun-bathers made snide remarks about his "negative reviews."

Wine denied that he is mostly negative, or mostly positive, regarding his movie critiques. "Most movies are two and a half stars (out of four)," Wine explained. "Every once in a while, you have a really good movie, or a really bad movie, but most fall somewhere in the middle. It's kind of like the bell curve." He then described his job as having four functions - that of a critic, a consumer reporter, an entertainer and a figurative "food taster."

Wine concluded his presentation by reading some of the more interesting hate mail that he has received, to the delight of the audience. He said that he does not even mind receiving angry letters, implying that negative attention is better than being ignored. He did relate one very unpleasant experience that occurred when he was working at Fox News in Philadelphia and gave a zero out of four stars for the 1990 comedy The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, starring controversial comedian Andrew Dice Clay. Wine's wife was barraged with harassing phone calls from irate fans of "the Diceman." Immediately afterwards, Wine got an unlisted number.

In addition to being a film critic, Wine is an associate professor of communications at LaSalle University. His movie reviews can be heard on Philadelphia's KYW Newsradio, 1060 AM. His presentation, titled "Everybody's a Critic," was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council.