The Great Film Critic Euthanizing of 2008 continued over the weekend with its highest-profile casualty yet: David Ansen, the highly respected 30-year veteran at Newsweek, joined 110 colleagues in accepting a buyout that Variety's Anne Thompson reports included "a sweetened pension, health coverage until age 65, and two years' salary." Plus he keeps a contributing editor title at the magazine, chipping in occasionally with reviews, features and whatever else Newsweek's fast-shrinking newshole can accommodate starting in 2009.

Did you know that people who write about food for a living tend to be fatties? It's true! Except for the Times' dreamy James Bond of gastronomy, Frank Bruni. The point is that some food critics have realized that scarfing down daily heapings of pork bellies and passing it off as a professional expense is no guarantee they won't keel over from a heart attack, and is a guarantee they will have a hard time seeing their own genitals. Even pork-loving wild man Mario Batali is threatening to start exercising! By chasing a greased sow in his Crocs, perhaps. But even while some of the wiser gluttons are easing back, says the Times, their stupider brethren—embodied by one man—just can't stop with the sausage:

Lil Wayne is the tattooed, drugged-out New Orleans rapper who, for some reason, causes spasms of hero worship among white internet rap critics. The extent of the enthusiasm for him has always been a total mystery to me, but it's almost comical watching rap nerds try to outdo each other with their verbose online praise for Wayne, who would certainly rather be drinking vast quantities of Robitussin and liquor than reading their bullshit. Anyways, he got booed off the stage at his recent concert in London, and then showered with bottles on his way out, for good measure. Guess the crowd didn't read all the right blogs before they went to the show. After the jump, two recent examples of internerd Wayne worship, and the video of his ill-fated exit in London. I must admit I find this highly enjoyable.

Critic Luc Sante has started a blog about pictures of things. "I won't pretend to specialize or present myself as an expert in anything," he promises. So far, so good! [Pinakothek]

Richard Schickel, who's been the Time film critic since before most of us here were born, is also kind of a muttonhead! He went postal in Sunday's LA Times on the op-ed pages and denounced the (largely imagined) rise of amateur critics, and worse, the bloggers. Eek!

· The Weinstein Co. (with help from their besties at Lionsgate) will release Michael Moore's documentary Sicko on July 29th, which should do for America's health care system what Bowling for Columbine did for a senile-seeming, rifle-loving Charlton Heston. [Variety]
· Hollywood Out Of Ideas, Even In The Prehistoric Past And Distant Future Edition: Robert Rodriguez is in talks to direct a live-action feature adaptation of The Jetsons, and has also met with Universal about Will Ferrell's adaptation of Land of the Lost. [THR]
· Universal lands its second Serious Actor for its The Incredible Hulk project, as Tim Roth is in negotiations to play Hulk antagonist Abomination and spend long hours discussing how best to portray the emotional torment of gamma-wave-poisoning sufferers in the context of a superhero film. [Variety]
· FX may pay up to $40 million for the TV rights to Spider-Man 3 for five years, but only once it completes it pay-cable run on Starz. [THR]
· Var TV critic and Entourage nemesis Brian Lowry is amused that his HBO stand-in, who'll be harassed by an aggrieved Johnny Drama in an upcomnig episode shot in the paper's offices, has an assistant. [Variety]

Yes, it's Max Brenner, the wacky Israeli chocolate place-entity that invaded New York a while back. Only a Jewish mother or a Catholic gay could venture into a sweet chocolate wonderland and return so concerned. But sure—there is no surprise in the fact that Max Brenner is a gimmicky shitty crapshow, whose chocolate isn't even that great. Still it's a handy spot, because it gives the Times restaurant critic an excuse to bitch and make Willy Wonka references, two of his favorite things. But what's next—reviewing a McDonaldland playground in the Bronx? The search for the best Dunkin' Donuts? Defining the boundaries of high and low culture in critic-land is gonna get increasingly more difficult.

So, surprise of surprises, this week's Time Out has a fairly interesting feature in which New York's professional critics are judged by a panel of experts. There aren't many shocks (The New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones and Alex Ross are great music critics, Frank Bruni is inferior to his $25-and-Under colleague Peter Meehan, something about dance, etc.) but the gloves really come off when Times book critic Michiko Kakutani gets reviewed.

Worker #3116 here.

As is the case with more and more movies these days, Snakes on a Plane declined to hold advance screenings for critics. Not one to be dissuaded, Manohla Dargis took in the flick with the commoners and issued her review a shockingly short time after. Which is probably how she slipped this one past Sifton's standards police: "Naughty by nature or perhaps more by design, these snakes don't just dart out of toilets; they also slide up bare legs and under dresses, moving in and out of more bodily orifices than the adult-film star Ron Jeremy did in his prime."

At the end of a long essay about the value of critical judgment in an era where poorly-reviewed films can still perform well at the box office, Times critic Tony Scott offers an explanation for the persistence of those in his profession despite the daily adversity they face:

"'Marie Antoinette': Best or Worst of Times? Under the Spell of Royal Rituals," by Manohla Dargis, New York Times, today:

And, once again, all pop-culture critics everywhere are reminded of their utter irrelevance. Sigh.

This just arrived:

First thing's first: Word we're hearing is that Chuck Eddy's replacement as the Voice music editor will be Rob Harvilla, currently of the VVM-owned East Bay Express.

As we predicted earlier this afternoon, we've now received multiple tips that Chucky Eddy is gone from the Village Voice. And we've learned that Robert Christgau apparently ended a recent podcast — yes, we know someone who listens to them, ashamed though we are about it — certain that he, too, was about to fired. That's it, folks. Two more Voice legends down. At the rate they're going, that leaves, what, only Musto and Hentoff to go? Hope Mike Lacey has enough napkins.

With the caveat that we have absolutely no idea that this is really true, a source claiming to be familiar with the goings-on at Village Voice Media HQ in Phoenix passes along this prognostication:

Former mayor (and, arguably, former Democrat) Ed Koch has long had a little sideline as a movie critic. These days he's emailing his reviews to anyone who has made it onto his distribution list — including, apparently, the random journo type who forwarded last week's installment to us. The big news? Koch hated Basic Instinct 2. "It is the absolute worst," he declares.

A Times correction, referring, natch, to a Alessandra Stanley TV review:

Among the many charms of Reference Tone proprietor John Cook — and they are legion — are his smug certitude and his obsessive devotion to a good bit. This, together with his previous job as a Chicago Tribune TV reporter, makes him the perfect investigator to examine, as he did today, just how wrong Times television critic Alessandra Stanley can be. While we prefer to ridicule Stanley's critical colleague Virginia Heffernan, we must give due credit to Reference Tone's exhaustive study, which unearths more than one correction a month since 2001 - and 11 percent inaccuracy rate in that period, Cook says, and a 14 percent inaccuracy rate this year — and lists them all.