I'm more encouraged by the saplings: new music groups, tiny new venues, entrepreneurial musician-composers who aren't waiting to be discovered but are instead building their own Establishment.

I'm more encouraged by the saplings: new music groups, tiny new venues, entrepreneurial musician-composers who aren't waiting to be discovered but are instead building their own Establishment.

Despite some standout events, 2012 was demoralizing. The Met felt adrift, and New York City Opera couldn't claw its way back to artistic health.

Well, the movie isn't bad. For a while, I even told myself I liked it, even as it missed one mark after another. But in the end, it's shapeless and blandly apolitical, apart from its watered-down feminism. You see, Fey's Kim Baker - changed from Barker - transforms herself from a neophyte reporter, condescended to by male war correspondents, soldiers and Afghan officials, into a hard-charging political animal who speaks the language fluently and parties as hard as men. That's about as edgy as a sitcom.

Some reviewed 'The Master' on their knees, and while I respected its distinctive discordancy - can a movie be at once feverish and glacial? - I was unmoved.

Along with my peers, I gripe about the increasing number of superhero films, and I'm sad that so many critics so uncritically use words like franchise, which should be reserved for your local Burger King.

There will be a competition among critics for the best Paris Hilton insult. Here's my first: Her attention span is so short that she can't even maintain her concentration while running away from a psycho... Maybe the ultimate insult is that she makes her co-star Elisha Cuthbert seem, by comparison, the sexiest and most interesting actress in modern cinema.