While I haven't really been saying anything, here's some people who have:
* Matt Cheney on Cory Doctorow's new novel, Little Brother.
* From an interview with James Morrow at SF Signal: "... Europeans think one hundred miles is a long distance, and Americans think one hundred years is a long time. In other words, the weight of history hangs probably more heavily on the European psyche than on the American. This fact influences both mainstream and genre literature. When a European SF writer tries to dramatize a totalitarian society, an empire modeled on ancient Rome, a Renaissance mercantile system, or a mechanized invasion of one's homeland, he is operating in a milieu where such phenomena have actually occurred. On the American shore, we know about these subjects only secondhand. So the political sensibility of European SF is perhaps darker and edgier than in the U.S. equivalent."
* David Bordwell on film criticism: "At a higher level, your tastes may make you weigh certain criteria more heavily than others. If you most enjoy movies that wrestle with philosophical problems, you may favor the thematic-significance criterion. So you’ll love Bergman and think he’s a great director. In other words, you can have tastes in films that you also consider excellent. Presumably this is what we teachers are trying to cultivate as well: to teach people, as Plato urged, to love the good."
... Also: "Above all, the critical essay can develop new depth on the Web. Given more space, the Web can ask critics to lay out their assumptions and evidence more fully. After years of 'writing short,' of firing off invectives, put-downs, and passing paeans to great filmmakers unknown to most readers, critics now have an opportunity—not to rant at greater length but to go deeper. If you think a movie is interesting or important, please show us. Don’t simply assert your opinion with lots of hand-waving, but back it up with some analysis or interpretation. The Web allows analysis and interpretation, which take a lot of effort, to come into their own." (emphasis mine)
(In a throwaway comment, Bordwell also mentions last year's Cloverfield as a "symbolic replay of 9/11", a reading of the film that I have often defended.)