The New York Times throw professionalism out of the window

Hey there readers, Colonel Curious here, and I'd like to draw your attention to this particular blog post I saw over at Hot Air earlier today. Apparently one reviewer accused The Stoning of Soraya M. of being torture porn, exaggerating the length and strength of the violence in one particular scene. That same reviewer then went on to review 9 Songs, an especially controversial movie because it contains unsimulated sex scenes; unsurprisingly, he never once refers to the film as porn.

The New York Times offered a weird review of The Stoning of Soraya M, oddly juxtaposed with one from the same writer for also-excellent The Hurt Locker. Newsbusters noticed it as well, as did Mitch Berg. Stephen Holden calls the painful and realistic depiction of a stoning “lurid torture-porn,” missing the entire point.

To say this is an exaggeration is to put it mildly. First, the stoning sequence lasts about eight minutes, not 20. It starts at the 1:31:30 mark, it’s over by 1:40, and it’s intercut with at least one flashback sequence.

You can read the entire article, accompanied by source and a few reference links over at Hot Air.