What are some notorious film critic rivalries?
Well, there are certainly a lot of times when film makers have been really pissed off by what film critics have said. There are some directors that have fallen in and out of favor over the years with critics because they're larger than life personalities, and they take risks and the risks don't always pay off. Certainly this has happened to Woody Allen, with some of his comedies in the 90s, but then he returned to form with Matchpoint. It happened with Brian DePalma on movies like his big bomb adaptation of Bonfire of the Vanities. It happened with Oliver Stone with the very controversial Natural Born Killers, and his homo-erotic Macedonian seven hour movie Alexander. There have also been some examples literally where critics really take it hard. M. Night Shyamalan whose first film The Sixth Sense was a hit with critics and audiences, ever since then has been labeled a one trick pony who makes movies that really don't please critics at all. It bothered him so much that in the movie Lady in the Water, he kills off a film critic on screen. And my favorite example of a director taking film reviews personally is the German director Uwe Boll, who a lot of people haven't heard of. He's basically done video game adaptation movies like Alone in the Dark and BloodRayne, and these movies are terrible and they tank at the box office. He took the reviews so personally that he has challenged film critics to boxing matches. Any detractors of his work who wants to fight it out in the ring, he thinks he should have a shot at them.
