Chocano, whom we've admired since her days at Salon, broke the news in a brief note to FishbowlLA; her departure leaves veteran Kenneth Turan as the lone full-timer among a growing pool of freelancers (including Kevin Thomas, whose own contract the paper bought out in 2006). Fittingly or not, Chocano's final feature for the Times addressed the portrayal of hard economic times in the movies: "The pendulum seems to be swinging again from the decadent mainstream art of fat times to the scrappy countercultural art of lean times. For a while, at least, anger and unadorned reality may stage a cathartic comeback." We'd like that, too, Carina — just not like this.

• Among the OUsted at the LAT: Carina Chocano [FishbowlLA via MCN]

By "starfucking" we mean more than just dating Whitney Port (which, let's be honest, is more like "radar-blipfucking"). We mean his Zelig-like proximity to celebrities and events where no mere blurb-whore has gone before. Take Christopher Mintz-Plasse's publicity-tour stop last week at the University of Michigan, where the Superbad co-star was accosted by a street preacher who said he was going to hell for his work in Hollywood. And look who was with McLovin, natch:

It's probably worth noting here that Lyons named Superbad among his top 10 films of 2007, a distinction made easier by the fact he was in the movie. But still, the Michigan incident was incidental; the consummate nepotist Lyons (who didn't graduate from any college, let alone Michigan) was taping an interview segment for his father Jeffrey's syndicated show Reel Talk when the mess went down. Things likely got more perverse later, when we imagine Lyons and Mintz-Plasse had a little more intimate encounter like those Lyons features in a blog gallery actually entitled "Ben Lyons Poses With Famous People."

Quite the professional, right? Seriously — who would you rather have sharing his cogent takes on new movies: Michael Wilmington or the douchebag below with the beer bong glomming onto Lauren Conrad?

Shia's face says it all: "I need a cigarette." Don't. We. All. How much longer can Ben Lyons get away with getting paid six figures annually to suffocate a beloved institution like At the Movies and document his stalking adventures for E!? And who will stop him? Act fast, America — your celebrities need you.

[C]omments by Salon.com's Stephanie Zacharek raise another concern: "The big news isn't that daily newspapers aren't hiring women as critics; it's that many of them have ceased caring whether they have a full-time movie critic at all," she writes. Lauzen's numbers, she continues, "don't trouble me as much as the pervasiveness of the idea that critics — the last line of defense between moviegoers and studio-generated hype — no longer matter."

That said, Zacharek gets anecdotal about gender bias: She turned down a job as a major daily's film critic because the salary "was so laughably low. The editor who interviewed me ... made no secret that the paper wanted to hire a female critic, but clearly, what the joint really wanted was a cheap date."

This news is certainly frustrating enough in strict cultural terms, but to absorb it in a time when even Ben Lyons has occasion to shovel more shit on TV every week... well, really. That's just fucked up, right there.

• Women Film Critics: An Endangered Species? [AlterNet]

And ESPECIALLY when the solution to America's Movie Critic Deathwatch is hidden within the trenchant stream-of-consciousness rant therein. We're just sorry that troubled Hot Blog commenter "LexG" won't be around to reap the rewards of his masterwork after the blog's proprietor, David Poland, cut him off at the knees:

I'M SMARTER THAN HALF THE SO CALLED EXPERTS. I SHOULD BE A FUCKING FILM CRITIC. WHY AM I A WORKADAY POSTHOUSE DOUCHE WHEN I'M SMARTER THAN ANYONE IN THE WORLD?

Our thoughts exactly! But that's hardly everything; taste all the bile after the jump. (Or, if you're Kenneth Turan, Elvis Mitchell or Luke Y. Thompson, maybe just consider skipping to the next item.)

I DON'T GET WHY SOME PEOPLE GET TO BE PROFESSIONAL MOVIE CRITICS WHEN I'M OBVIOUSLY SMARTER THAN THEM.

I HAVE DEGREES IN JOURNALISM, FILM HISTORY, AND ENLIGHT LIT, WITH MINORS IN RUSSIAN LIT, FILMMAKING, AND LIKE 15 OTHER THINGS.

HOW DOES A LUKE THOMPSON OR A FATBODY LIKE ELVIS DOUCHEBAG MITCHELL GET A PAID JOB AS A FILM CRITIC?

OR THAT FAT OLD BITCH KEN TURAN? THAT GUY IS THE WORST MOVIE CRITIC IN AMERICA, AN OLD, ELDERLY, BORING STUFFY BORE. KEN TURAN BLOWS.

LEXG IS SMARTER THAN FUCKING KEN TURAN, WHO'S LIKE THE BORING BOOK CRITIC VERSION OF MICHAEL MEDVED.

YEAH, I SAID IT. FUCK KEN TURAN. WORST MOVIE CRITIC IN AMERICA. OLD FUCK. MAN UP, TURAN, YOU'RE A PUSSY.

KEN TURAN IS GARBAGE.

HIRE THE LEX.

I'M SMARTER THAN HALF THE SO CALLED EXPERTS. I SHOULD BE A FUCKING FILM CRITIC. WHY AM I A WORKADAY POSTHOUSE DOUCHE WHEN I'M SMARTER THAN ANYONE IN THE WORLD?

YES, I AM SMARTER THAN YOU.

YOU ARE A BITCH. I AM GOD. BOW TO ME.

THREE COLLEGE DEGREES, IQ OF 230. [...]

ALCOHOL OWNS. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

DRINK UP ALL BITCHES— LEXCOUNT = 11 BEERS, HALF A BOTTLE OF THE D.K.A. AND NOW SOME JACK BITCH.

YEP YEP.

KNOW. I AM PLAINVIEW. FUCK EVERYONE.

And there's more. Who's hiring?

• Dumping Posts [The Hot Blog]

"I've just been informed that my position at Premiere.com is being terminated. What this means for this blog is still up in the air; I've got meetings this afternoon in which such things are to be negotiated. In any case, I now join the ever-growing ranks of film critics without staff positions. I very much hope to keep this blog going...and get some good freelance work, quick." And the comments are getting feistier and feistier by the minute: "I can't wait to hear Hachette's justification," protests one Kenny acolyte. "Perhaps they needed to funnel more money towards ellegirl.com. Fuckers." In any case, our condolences to Kenny and best wishes for his swift, certain return in another forum.

RELATED: More on the Hachette fallout can be found over at Gawker.

• The End Of An Era[Premiere.com]

I believe that movie criticism is not an elitist ability that only scholars can claim. There should be no need for movie history in determining a movie's worth. That is like saying that relatively this movie is awful, but if these others had not come along, it would be great. - Michael Walsh, Alpharetta, Ga.

I stopped listening to critics because too frequently they are criticizing the actor, not the film. For instance, "The Hammer" is one of the best movies I've ever seen, but many critics said the movie was awful because they seemed to dislike Adam Carolla. The opposite can be said of a Will Farrell [sic] movie (no offense to Will, but they're not all Old School). - Tim, Seattle, Wa.

I lost my attraction to movie critics, when it seems there was a glut. Online, magazines, local papers, everywhere you looked. And most of these were no better than my own opinion...which I trust much more than theirs anyway. - Chet, Avondale, Ariz.

We sensed Adam Carolla might eventually symbolize the tipping point in the enduring battle between critics and the hoi polloi — but in only his first starring role? The culture is indeed accelerating faster than we can keep up. In any case, our ambulance is gassed up for our next foray to the front lines, which should be ... this afternoon? Next hour? We hope not, but when even Chet from Avondale has lost his attraction, we know the clock is ticking.

• Readers say, No need for movie critics [MSNBC]

In the Ebert age of criticism, the Aesthetic of the Hit dominates everything. Behind those panicky articles about critics losing their jobs (what about autoworkers and schoolteachers?), lurks the writers' own fear of falling victim to the same draconian industry rule: Most publishers and editors are only interested in supporting hits in order to reach Hollywood's deep-pocket advertisers. This is what makes traditional criticism seem indefinable and obsolete, leaving web criticism as a ready (but dubious) alternative. ... (Viral criticism isn't real; it's mostly half-baked, overlong term-paper essays by fans who like to think they think.) — Armond White, New York Press

Armond's deeply confused screed makes me glad I quit the Press so that I don't have to attempt to explain to people out of professional courtesy what point he thought he was trying to make. ... His simplistic denunciation of the meaning and impact of Roger Ebert — who has done more to widen the tastes of the moviegoing public and popularize basic cinema literacy than any critic in the history of print — is shameful, and would be so even without the "I wish him well as he recovers" parenthetical. — Matt Zoller Seitz, The House Next Door

I mean, it's really sad that all these film critics are losing their jobs, but I think most film criticism is terrible. And not useful. And frankly, really boring. I read very little of it, and find very little of it to be useful. So it's a shame that my colleagues are losing their jobs, but on the other hand I don't read many of them. ... [New Yorker critic] Anthony Lane is a very witty, very funny writer — and he doesn't know shit about movies. — Nathan Lee, Rotten Tomatoes

How to write film criticism? Stop reading it. — Karina Longworth, Spout Blog

Next week: The aftermath! Join Defamer as we break out the dental records and attempt to identify the latest round of critical casualties beaten, torched and cannibalized beyond recognition. No one under 18 will be admitted.

In case you haven't been paying attention (and the gist if these pieces is that you haven't, but you really, really should), it goes like this:

1. Longtime critics are being bought or forced out of their print institutions.

2. Studios don't need critics, but independent film distributors are upset because they need the word of mouth.

3. The dissemination of film news, reviews and rumors online has supplanted their print analogues.

4. The Internet both diffuses and democratizes criticism — and the market that sustains it.

5. Rinse and repeat in The New York Times, Variety, New York Post, Salt Lake Tribune, Movie City News and finally (we pray) the Los Angeles Times.

Are we oversimplifying? No more so than Goldstein, who ambitiously invokes everyone from Pauline Kael to Matt Drudge en route to the same sorta-thinky semi-conclusion at which the last 100 writers who tackled this issue arrived:

Whether critics are irritants or masters of elucidation, opinions still matter. But no one is respected simply because of the authority of the institution they write for. The Web isn't the enemy of critical thinking. The land of a million blogs is a medium brimming with opinion. What's different is the reader gets to decide whose opinion matters the most. It's a big adjustment, but maybe it's time critics, like many artists, realize they should pay more attention to their audience.

So should Goldstein, the ultimate latecomer to a dance that really got going back in 2006 when everybody and his mother (including David Carr and Anne Thompson, who've eagerly revisited the meme in the last seven days) was writing about the phenomenon of the "critic-proof" film. Readers didn't care then, and two years of distance and 27 critical casualties later, they still don't seem to be reacting — unless, that is, you count our eyes rolling back in our heads at the first glance of Goldstein's "analysis." We don't.

Not coincidentally, all this overkill dovetails with The New York Times's recent "Blogging Will Kill You" fret-piece; it's not just Web writers inflating demand in a voracious 24/7 news cycle. Goldstein et. al. prove that a slow news week is slow everywhere. It just feels that much slower when we can sense what's coming from a mile away.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• The end of the critic? [LAT]

"For those of us who are making work that requires a kind of intellectual conversation, we rely on that talk to do the work of getting people interested," said Mr. Rudin, who produced No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, two Oscar-nominated and critically championed films last year. "All of the talk about No Country, all of the argument about the ending, kept that film in the forefront of the conversation" and helped it win the best picture Oscar. ...

Mr. Lacey added that the [New Times] chain still has five full-time film critics and that worrying about whether each city had its own critic seemed silly at a time when major metropolitan dailies can't afford to cover the presidential race. (The loss of a critic in New York, where some films see their only light of day, would seem to be more problematic.)

We, too, went on the record with Carr today to espouse our only slightly obvious belief in the power of the Web, where much of Rudin's beloved "intellectual conversation" actually took place and where old-schooler Lacey would do well to invest resources as opposed to slashing them. When "new media" like the Internet finally take off one of these days, we'd hate to see such progressive cultural pillars caught ill-prepared.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Now on the Endangered Species List: Movie Critics in Print [NYT]

The departures of Stuart and Seymour, the latter a recent chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle, mark the third such high-profile exit at a New York tabloid in the last month, following Jack Mathews retirement from the Daily News. Look for Newsday music writer Rafer Guzman and reliable freelancers like John Anderson and company to pick up film assignments along the way. Meanwhile, it's anyone's guess who's next in line for the velvet ax in the Tribune Company's arts abbatoir, but word on the street points to the Los Angeles Times newsroom. Anyone out there heard anything? You know where to find us.

PREVIOUSLY: Exclusive: Detroit Free Press Becomes Largest Newspaper In The Country Without A Full-Time Film Critic

We called the Detroit Free Press this morning and learned from a (very confused) HR rep that "We are not planning on replacing [Terry Lawson] at this time." Very interesting. By our research, all of the other Top 20 newspapers in the United States have at least one major, well-known critic (yes, even the Arizona Republic). However, The Freep's move clearly signals that there's a changing tide in the amount of importance (and budget dollars) local newspapers allocate to coverage of the movie business. The Freep appears to be content to run wire reviews for new releases (they seem to favor the criticism levied by the Orlando Sentinel's Roger Moore) and, from what we've gathered, readers don't seem to mind much, either. After all, there's clearly no shortage of film criticism available on The Internets. And while movie reviews have probably never been enough to make someone throw down their two bits to pick up a copy of the Friday fishwrap, it still saddens us that there's not enough room in the budget of a Top 20 newspaper to send someone to the movies a few times a week.