Oscilloscope MUSINGS Launch

Watch your favorite film critics battle it out in #FilmTwitter SMACKDOWN Live, the inaugural {fun!} film debate to celebrate Oscilloscope Laboratories’ new books MUSINGS – Volumes 1 & 2.

Join moderators Charles Bramesco and Alissa Wilkinson for a duel royale, with panel participants Bilge Ebiri, Sheila O’Malley, Chris Evangelista, Soheil Rezayazdi, David Roth, Vadim Rizov, Joshua Rothkopf and Steven Goldman.

Debate topics may cover such varied cultural touchstones as:

– Actually Crying Right Now: Is there room in criticism to stan?
– Scorsese VS Everybody: But is it cinema?
– Classic Malick or Late Malick: you must pick one!
– Is ERASERHEAD actually good?
– Movie Musicals: Is there life after CATS?
– Award for most tiresome discourse of the year

8 acclaimed film critics. 2 mischievous moderators. Plenty of hot takes to go around.

RSVP on eventbrite here.

Alissa Wilkinson is Vox.com’s film critic and an associate professor at The King’s College, where she teaches criticism, cultural theory, and cinema studies. She’s written for Rolling Stone, Vulture, RogerEbert.com, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Books & Culture, and many more.

Charles Bramesco is a freelance film and TV critic living in Brooklyn. A former staff writer for Rolling Stone, he has also been featured in the New York Times, New York Magazine, the Guardian, and many other fine publications. His first book, a volume on vampire movies for the “Close-Ups” series from Little White Lies, is now on US and UK shelves.

Bilge Ebiri is an American journalist and filmmaker. He currently works as critic for New York Magazine / Vulture. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, the Criterion Collection, and elsewhere.

Chris Evangelista is a staff writer and film critic for Slashfilm.com. His work has appeared at Mashable, Nerdist, RogerEbert.com, Empire Magazine, Birth.Movies.Death., and more.

David Roth is an editor at Deadspin, where he mostly writes about sports. He’s written for The New Republic, New York, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, GQ, and wrote baseball and basketball cards for Topps; his story on the NFL from The Baffler was chosen for Best American Sportswriting of 2017. He’s from New Jersey and lives in New York.

Joshua Rothkopf, the Global Deputy Film Editor and Senior Film Critic of Time Out New York, joined the staff in 2004. His reviews and interviews appear in Time Out editions worldwide. A voting member of the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Circle (which he chaired in 2012–14), Rothkopf has served on several international festival juries, and teaches at New York University’s School of Professional Studies.

Sheila O’Malley is a regular contributor to Rogerebert.com and Film Comment. She has a bi-weekly column on Film Comment called “Present Tense”. Her blog is The Sheila Variations. She is a member of the NYFCC.

Steven Goldman is the author or editor of numerous books, including Forging Genius: The Making of Casey Stengel. The former editor-in-chief and current senior consulting editor for Baseball Prospectus, he hosts the Infinite Inning podcast, which features tales and discussion from baseball, history, culture, and politics.

Vadim Rizov is the managing editor of Filmmaker Magazine. His work has appeared in publications including Sight & Sound, the AV Club and Vanity Fair online.

Soheil Rezayazdi is the manager of events and screenings at Columbia University’s MFA Film Program. He is also a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Filmmaker Magazine, Paper, Paste, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere.