Talk:Leslie Halliwell

Date of death

 * The DNB has a different date for his death.
 * He died of cancer on 21 January 1989 in the Princess Alice Hospice, Esher, Surrey.
 * --jmb 14:31, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

?
"Shaped domestic tastes"? The very idea of having someone as a buyer of movies for television stations whose own appreciation of cinema is so supremely stuck in the 1940s and who regards anything vaguely modern as instantly second rate is plain stupid. The guy was a waste of space and the sort of snob that stifles any inventiveness. Tosser.

--I love that comment above, I only wish it was possible to cut and paste it into the main article. I viewed this article after becoming perplexed by 'Halliwell's Film Guide' reviews used at a video rental web site that I often view. It seems to throw up reviews which hilariously miss the point and are often utterly at odds with other amateur and professional reviews, allbeit not actually written by the man himself. 82.70.155.252 (talk) 11:52, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, if you took the time to read the reviews closely you will find many movies past the 40s that he reviewed very positively. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.181.128.187 (talk) 23:39, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Bollocks he did. I had the Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion and also the Halliwell's Film Guide as a christmas present in 1979 when I was a teenager and also a real movie nerd. Whilst I read them from cover to cover, it was immediately noticeable that pretty much every movie that he gave good reviews to was made before the 1970s, most of them in the 1930s or 40s. If that's his opinion, then fair enough. But it is bloody stupid to have someone in charge of purchasing movies who believes that anything of value stopped in the 1940s. It would be a bit like having someone in charge of BBC Radio 1 or BBC 6 Music who seriously believes that any band formed after 1972 is not worth listening to. It's one person's limited and anachronistic viewpoint trying to deprive everyone of the chance to widen theirs. I don't know whether he was a snob or not (and it doesn't much matter if he was or not) but he was certainly blinkered. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.33.117.205 (talk) 15:33, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Allegation of bias
I disagree that "the spread of four-star films across the decades clearly demonstrated a bias towards older films". It actually reflects a decline in the standard of films since the 1960's. Moreover the accusation of bias is itself a form of bias. The one-sided reporting of criticism is POVRoyalcourtier (talk) 02:10, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

A decline in whose opinion? You can’t simply dismiss anything modern just because you don’t personally enjoy it. That is not being a critic, that’s just being someone who has a sentimental obsession with the past, your youth, the “old days” or whatever you call it. I have a great fondness for TV shows made in the 1970s because I was a kid then, and seeing those shows takes me back to that period. But that doesn’t mean that I slag off any show made in the last decade. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.101.147.139 (talk) 21:32, 16 January 2022 (UTC)