Ross the Boss.

Former movie critic for the Tampa Tribune Bob Ross was laid off in 2007, "before it was quite the rage."

If that quote doesn't say something about the man, I honestly don't know what does.

Though I was soon informed that Ross had been a reporter for the St. Pete Times' Bradenton Bureau before taking his position as the Trib's movie critic, I must admit that I didn't expect our class discussion that day to be too rich in substance.

I also have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised.

I felt like Ross kept dropping little pearls of wisdom at random intervals throughout his visit to our class, all of which I rediscovered when I sat down to write this blog.

Ross noted that our society lacks any real broad range of rational opinion at this point and lamented that most people get their "facts" from a single news source or show.

More vividly, in this world of short attention spans, "it's like eating cotton candy all the time--mentally, you've got to have some kind of fiber in your diet."

While this is a recurring theme within our class discussions, Ross also had some plot twists that kept me guessing.

I suppose I always envisioned movie critiques to be strict analyses of all the important aspects in film and how each individual work ranks in regard to those aspects.

Ross maintains that while a good critique should incorporate those things, the work should also carry literary weight.

When he writes his critiques, Ross says that he strives to write a review that people will read from top to bottom without necessarily ever planning to see the film in question.

"A reader needs to get something out of reading a critique independently from the work," Ross said.

A movie review is, therefore, akin to a good column, where you use facts and solid reporting to construct a valid argument; the topic of conversation is the only real difference.

While Thelen said he recalled a time when people either watched all the movies or none of the movies that Ross ruled in favor of in his reviews, Ross said that it didn't matter whether people followed his advice or not, he simply served as a common, consistent point for lively discussion to revolve around.

"It's really a position of false power," Ross said, describing his work as "inflicting his opinion on all those people."

Whatever he wanted to call it that day, anyone in our class can be certain that Ross enjoyed his work as a movie critic for the Trib, so much that he pursued it even after being laid off.

"I loved it so much that I don't really want to do anything else," Ross said.

While his passion for his craft was evident, as was his sorrow for the direction that the film industry is headed.

Ross said that now we are constantly bombarded with movies programmed for the mass culture, and with numbers of newspaper critics dropping dramatically within the last few years, he feels that there are fewer and fewer people to stand up and call these films out for what they are: mindless.

Now, Ross added, if there are people reviewing movies, they're more snarky than analytical.

And with the mindset of today's film industry on "succeeding financially rather than artistically," as Ross would put it, we're seeing fewer low budget and independent films, further dumbing down our current movie culture.

As a final note, Ross told our class that whatever we find ourselves writing in the future, we should be mindful of our readers rather than ourselves--perhaps a change in that direction can dig us out of the cultural abyss we find ourselves in all too often...

...aaand cut.