Star Wars
After much thought and deliberation, I have decided that, from now on, I will no longer be assigning star ratings to any of the reviews I write. The main reason for this is because, for too long now, I have had the feeling that many of my readers simply look at the star rating at the end of the review and use it as a quick and easy overview of my thought processes about a particular score, when in actual fact I want the meat of the review itself to convey my feelings. Slapping an arbitrary *** rating onto this score or that score really does nothing other than try to distill 2,000 words of prose into a single idea, whereas in reality the differences between three star, three-and-a-half star and four star ratings are subtle and can be swayed by all manner of different criteria.
So, here we go. I hope that the change in thinking will not be too radical for everyone. I do spend a lot of time crafting my thoughts and trying to put over intelligent arguments and detailed descriptions of each score I review, and hopefully the lack of an all-encompassing thumbs-up or thumbs-down will encourage people to really read what I write, (hopefully) understand my point of view about things, and stir up some interesting debate and discussion, both in the comments here and on the MMUK Discussion Board.
Thanks everyone!
— Jon
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That’s a five star post Jon. I never liked having to assign ratings when I wrote for Film Music on the Web. It makes the entire review redundant if it can be summed up with a simple rating. As you imply, why write 2000 words if a few stars will suffice.
As we discussed, I lept first and seem untarnished. As in my reviews, the reader will be able to clearly know exactly where you stand on the score by your commentary. Hooray for the triumph of words over the stars! All the best!
Star reader apology….In the past I must admit unless the film or the composer was of interest to me I would jump to the end in case it was worthy of a listen…your change of review will make me sit up a more and take note…saying of a cue ” thats nice” is about as far as my description goes…so I do appreciate the work you put in and will in future show due curtesey and read them….good luck for the future!
I would suggest a “Should you buy? Yes or No” as a good compromise.
Not going to lie, I hate the change.