“I have real issues with how the Village Voice writes about film,” former New York Press critic Matt Zoller Seitz has told The Reeler‘s Stu VanAirsdale in a piece about the woes of that once great downtown weekly. “The language they use; the tone that they take; the political attitudes that are infused into almost every single piece that runs.
“But the breadth of their coverage? Nobody can touch it. It’s the gold standard. Nobody comes close, not even the New York Times, because the New York Times won’t bust out some little off-the-wall, American independent film. They won’t run an 800 or 1,000-word feature on a filmmaker from Asia or Europe just because they think they’re interesting.
“The Voice has been traditionally the only game in town; they’re the guys who have been holding down the fort for eclectic filmgoing. And either they’re going to continue to do that or they’re not. The tone that the writing takes is secondary to the breadth of the coverage, and that’s what I’m going to be looking for.”