Roger Ebert (now an RIP thread)

Paperback: 400 pages

Did he hate, hate, hate this movie? That cover looks suspiciously like a homage!

!!!

until i called him the ur-ilxor last night at the standard tap!

I think less of Ilxors with every passing year too.

Wait, he DID? Fuck, then his review was a bizarro homage.

It would have been fun if Roeper had reviewed the Garfield movie from the point of view of Heathcliff.

I think all his reviews since 1969 or so are on here.

And yes, he said it right - abandon those dumb nerd asses.

Roeper's not actually a film critic. His column for the Sun-Times is just a personality column, full of celebrity gossip, bland pontificating, and didja-ever-wonder Andy Rooney-isms. The TV show is the only place where he actually "reviews" movies.

don't you mean...?

Shouldn't you pick someone older, more successful and famous who once made a badass album or something?

Lately my only big qualm with him has been his baby boomerisms, especially regarding politics. But I let that slide.

Not Garfield-level roffles, but half the movie (Devil Wears Prada) is recapped in the style of a children's book.

Nevertheless, Roger Ebert has great taste and he's one of the
best critics out there. He gave _Star Wars_ a positive review
right out of the gate, when most other critics were dissing it
as pulpy schlock. His "The Great Movies" feature is quite
educational, and if he gives a movie a positive review I'm
75% sure to like it. And that's more solid than any other
critic I've come across.

Still, he's not perfect. Like someone already noted,
Ebert gets carried away quite often. Too many tangents, opinions,
editorials, jokes. I'd rather read a boring review that actually
DESCRIBES THE FILM than a cute, funny review that skirts over
the issue.

Also, Ebert has a tendency to screw up when it comes to HUGE
commercial
films. He either jumps totally on board (4 stars for _The Phantom
Menace_ and he frankly admitted he liked it for it's
technical achievements) or, when it comes to mainstream comedies,
he can be too harsh. He has an aversion to scatological humor
and he's a bit too PC. He shows his age too much these days.

On the other hand, he occasionally goes overboard in praising
some indie flick that's very original, but still not that good,
really. (_Winter Passing_, _Gus Van Sant's Last Days_, _Elephant_).

Anyway, here's how I use Ebert: I watch every 4 star movie he
reviews (or even 3 and a half), and most of them are fantastic,
although I have to put up with the occasional mainstream shitlog.
If he gives a movie 2-3 stars, it's a crapshoot. Maybe good,
maybe not. If he gives a movie 2 stars or less, it's probably
bad unless it's a comedy, in which case it might be worth a
second opinion (He despises Sandler, for example, and has
a low tolerance for Carrey, two of my favorite comedians).

http://www.slashfilm.com/article.php/20060702155832645

Carrey & Sandler: two of my favorite comedians

Does not compute.

Dammit, the man named Dark City the best film of the year. Not too many mainstream critics jumped on that one from the day it was released like he did. I'll always love him for that.

he's great! of course. he's a legend.

everyone's seen the youtube clip of ebert and siskel getting catty with each other, right? ebert comes off as a bit of a prick in the first half but the second's pretty funny.

-- ¨ˆ¨ˆ¨ˆ¨ˆ¨ˆ¨ˆ (chaki.tim...) (webmail), July 5th, 2006 3:53 PM. (later)

or alternately: can't wait for ya to come back roger. get well soon!

They both suck but so does Roeper.

OTM. the same "he's not dying" spin control came out about johnny ramone the week before he bought it.

Roger writes from rehab

by Roger Ebert / October 11, 2006

For 40 years, I didn't miss a single deadline, but since July, I have missed every one. I also, to my intense disappointment, missed the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. Having just written my first review since June ("The Queen"), I think an update is in order.

Faithful readers and viewers will recall that I expected a speedy recovery from surgery for salivary cancer last June. My expert (and now beloved) doctors had an encouraging game plan, and I expected to be back at work right away. Then I had several episodes of sudden and serious bleeding.

They stabilized me, operated on me to deal with the arteries, kept me sedated to avoid disturbing the affected areas -- and then I essentially spent July and August completely out of it. I remember only fragmentary episodes.

In September, my bleeding hazards stabilized, I came off sedation to find I had lost track of two months of my life, and starred in several prayer vigils for which I am eternally grateful to my wife and tower of strength, Chaz; my family and friends, and the many clergy who came to see me.

I was so touched when Chaz described those lost months. And now I am at the famous Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago -- learning to walk again! My muscles were atrophied by the weeks of inactivity, and I became a rehabilitation candidate. It's been quite an adventure, made easier by the tireless good cheer and expertise of Dr. Jim Sliwa and his RIC team.

During all of this, I didn't lose any marbles. My thinking is intact and my mental process doesn't require rehabilitation. Visits from colleagues at the Chicago Sun-Times, "Ebert & Roeper," ABC-7 and the film world kept me informed -- although, curiously, I found myself more interested in plunging into the depths of classic novels ("Persuasion," "Great Expectations," "The Ambassadors") than watching a lot of DVDs. I prefer to see the new Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood films on a big screen, for example. But our "Ebert & Roeper" producer Don DuPree brought around a DVD of "The Queen," and when I viewed it, I knew I wanted to review it.

A few more recent movies also will be reviewed, but I won't be back to full production until sometime early next year. The good news is that my rehabilitation is a profound education in the realities of the daily lives we lead, and my mind is still capable of being delighted by cinematic greatness.

I plan to have my Overlooked Film Festival again in April, and cover the Academy Awards and Cannes. I can't wait to be back in the Sun-Times on a full-time basis, and to rejoin Richard Roeper in the "Ebert & Roeper" balcony. Dr. Harold Pelzer and Dr. Neil Fine of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and my personal physician, Dr. Robert Havey, also of Northwestern, assure me I will eventually walk, talk, taste, eat, drink and live, more or less, normally. But it will be a struggle, involving another surgery to complete what began in June.

I have discovered a goodness and decency in people as exhibited in all the letters, e-mails, flowers, gifts and prayers that have been directed my way. I am overwhelmed and humbled. I offer you my most sincere thanks and my deep and abiding gratitude. If I ever write my memoirs, I have some spellbinding material. How does the Joni Mitchell song go? "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone"? One thing I've discovered is that I love my job more than I thought I did, and I love my wife even more!

Fire Roeper and hire Joni Mitchell to share the balcony w/ you.

Apparently his long illness has turned him into Truman Capote. Take that, Gallo!

I am relieved he is well-alive and cogent, and much like for the next surgery(!).

goddammit, everything has to lead back to rock music with these bitches

http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/images/criticwatch/criticwatch_shalit.jpg

It was the Pitchfork of Old Media.

i owned that 1992 r.s. record guide. it's AWFUL, but i used it an awful lot. 1992 was an important year for me, so much so that i still have this weird reflex where i think it's 1992. i'm not making any sense but i'm a little ocd and somehow weird bits of info in that record guide really implanted themselves in my brain.

the interweb with its awesome comprehensiveness makes that record guide look incredibly quaint, especially since it's one of the last such we'll probably ever see. (well there were some MusicHound guides that came out later, and that Spin alternative-music guide.)

the dave marsh-edited 1970s r.s. record guides are interesting, or at least i found them interesting after i wore out the 1992 guide.

GTR
GTR(1986)
TTL SHT.

GTR
GTR(1986)
TTL SHT.

Only that wasn't in the RS Record Guide, it was J.D. Considine in Musician magazine.

Maybe they allowed the author to expand it, to flesh it out, as it was going into a book?

It was the best he could do, what with Babette's Feast not being rereleased this year.

TS: J.D. Considine vs. Ford Prefect

OTM. I feel kinda guilty just for hating Ebert now.

Spike
From Fotpedia

Spike has been sometimes referred to as Droopy Zippermouth. His Bea Arthur-like vocal timbre would occasionally prompt Tom to play the theme from Maude during their conversations.

The "Real" Spike?
Spike has never revealed his true identity, forcing Tom and the Best Show listeners to listen closely to his calls for clues. This, along with his somewhat dubious (or outright fictional) claims of being a successful, jet-setting Dungeon Master, have led many to ponder the question Who Is The Real Spike? A popular theory that has emerged is that "Spike" is none other than Sire Records founder and WFMU fan Seymour Stein, possibly speaking with a few marbles in his mouth or a wet towel over the phone. Proponents of this theory cite the following irrefutable string of logic:

Brooklyn Accent + Speech Impediment + Doo-Wop Afficianado + WFMU Listener + Appreciation for Black Leather - Shame = Seymour Stein = Spike.

[edit]Catchphrases and Witticisms
"Helloooo, Tom"
"I don't do ___ (the suburbs, the mall, coffee, etc.)"
"Where's Debbie?" or "Where's Sexy Sadie?" (for months, Spike's initial calls often consisted solely of one of these two questions)
"Oh, you mean Jenny from the Bedroom?" (widely regarded to be the most devastating put-down in Best Show history; a take-off on Jennifer Lopez' song "Jenny From the Block")
"I never cranked Grandpa." (a reference to the fact that Spike never delivered one of his trademark Debbie/Sadie crank calls to Al "Grandpa" Lewis's radio show on WBAI.)
"As long as someone's getting decapitated, I'm a happy camper." (Spike on his love of extreme cinema)

John Cougar Mellancamp is guest hosting this week...?

Message from Roger Ebert on the eve of the 9th Overlooked Film Festival (aka Ebertfest):

My Ninth Annual Film Festival opens Wednesday night at the University of Illinois at Urbana, and Chaz and I will be in attendance. This year I won’t be speaking, however, as I await another surgery.

I have received a lot of advice that I should not attend the Festival. I’m told that paparazzi will take unflattering pictures, people will be unkind, etc. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. As a journalist I can take it as well as dish it out.

So let’s talk turkey. What will I look like? To paraphrase a line from “Raging Bull,” I ain’t a pretty boy no more. (Not that I ever was. The original appeal of Siskel & Ebert was that we didn’t look like we belonged on TV.)

What happened was, cancer of the salivary gland spread to my right lower jaw. A segment of the mandible was removed. Two operations to replace the missing segment were unsuccessful, both leading to unanticipated bleeding.

A tracheostomy was necessary so, for the time being, I cannot speak. I make do with written notes and a lot of hand waving and eye-rolling. The doctors now plan an approach that does not involve the risk of unplanned bleeding. If all goes well, my speech will be restored.

So when I turn up in Urbana, I will be wearing a gauze bandage around my neck, and my mouth will be seen to droop. So it goes.

I was told photos of me in this condition would attract the gossip papers. So what? I have been very sick, am getting better and this is how it looks. I still have my brain and my typing fingers.

Although months in bed after the bleeding episodes caused a lack of strength and co-ordination, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago restored my ability to walk on my own, climb stairs, etc. I no longer use a walker much and the wheelchair is more for occasional speed and comfort than need. Just today we went for a long stroll in Lincoln Park.

We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to
miss my Festival.

Why do I want to go? Above all, to see the movies. Then to meet old friends and great directors and personally thank all the loyal audience members who continue to support the Festival. At least, not being able to speak, I am spared the need to explain why every film is “overlooked,” or why I wrote “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.”

Being sick is no fun. But you can have fun while you’re sick. I wouldn’t miss the Festival for anything!

P.S. To Gossip Rags: I have some back pain, and to make it easier for me to sit through screenings, the Festival has installed my very own La-Z-Boy chair. Photos of me in the chair should be captioned, “La-Z-Critic.”

more for the roger file:

Roger Ebert recently sent Reed an e-mail telling her about a dinner conversation he had with Black and his wife, Barbara Amiel, after Black bought the paper in 1994. If you owned the Sun-Times, they asked him, what would you do? Ebert said he'd take the paper back to its roots: he couldn't understand why readers in a staunchly working-class town like Chicago had to choose between two Republican papers. The Sun-Times can't go further right than the Tribune, so why try? But Ebert saw Black and Amiel glance at each other and raise their eyebrows, as if to say, "We'll see about that."

...Ebert tells me that when he read Reed's piece about going back to roots he was "stunned with joy." There will be times when the question of what position to take comes down to the question "Who are we?" She should ask Roger. He knows.

I was afraid this thread bump was going to be a RIP. I'm a big fan of Ebert. I don't always agree with his opinions about movies, but he seems he would be a great guy to have conversations about movies with. I know his reviews have started conversations between my friends and I (especially his Fight Club review).

I think what a lot of people miss about Ebert is that he reviews movies from the perspective of a fan of whatever genre. He evaluates whether a movie accomplishes what it set out to do. This is why he loves certain kids movies, and certain violent yakuza movies or whatever. His Fight Club review, for me, was one of the times he just outright hated a movie for his own personal reasons and didn't review it fairly based on the craft of it. I kind of stopped reading his reviews after that and a few other movie reviews after it that I strongly disagreed with. He just started to get older, and more conservative (and I mean conservative not in a right/left sense of the word).

Was announced this week on the show:

"Every televised review by Siskel & Ebert since 1987 will be archived at their website, www.ebertandroeper.tv, starting Thursday, August 2nd. Roger Ebert will also be on hand for a live online chat on Thursday, at 7 PM CST"

Siskel & Ebert's review of Red Sonja just might have been the funniest 3 minutes of television ever. I can't wait.

Red Sonja came out in '85. :(

HE IS BACK AND McLoves Superbad.

He's been back for a couple of months now, hasn't he?

I love how his trashing of Blue Velvet is an extra on the BV dvd.

His outright dismissal of Lady Chatterley shows he's still basically the crap critic he always has been.

he is finally catching up with post-B&W Godard negative re-appraisal

Wow, I saw a "Ebert & Roeper" endorsement on a Superbad ad recently and didn't even let it sink in what that meant. Good to know he's back in action finally. It always kinda broke my heart to think about how sick someone would have to be not even be able to watch movies and type, especially if that's what they do for a living.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/misc/yourmoviesucks.jpg

lolz

I like to think that he used that cover as a Christmas card for Vincent Gallo.

He's been writing sporadic reviews for a while, but it seems like he's doing it on a more regular basis now. I specifically remember he came out of his hiatus to write a review of The Queen, which he watched on DVD from his hospital bed.

He's not back on the show yet, though, is he? I seem to remember a recent review or column where he said he still wasn't able to talk.

He's going back and reviewing the stuff he missed as well, like Casino Royale.

Roeper is the suck. i rented the lookout based on his rep'ing it. i should know better, really.

hes funny though

i rented the lookout based on his rep'ing it. i should know better, really.

He called it the best of the year (so far), right? I liked it, but, c'mon...

he is finally catching up with post-B&W Godard negative re-appraisal

which films are we talking about here?

the show is being canceled is the rumor. bummerz.

fine by me, really... the appraisal of movies is too short to get any good analysis in, and half of what IS there is roeper.

well, if Ebert can't talk, certainly Roeper doesn't deserve to.

say what you will about gene siskel, but he beat the hell outta roeper

Is there anyone out there who thinks Roeper is a good film critic?

Is there anyone out there who thinks Roeper is a good film critic?

Hah, I was about to post and correct that myself.

September Dawn

On Sept. 11, 1857, at the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a group of fanatic Mormons attacked and slaughtered a wagon train of about 120 settlers passing through Utah on their way to California. Can we all agree that the date has no significance? No, we cannot, because "September Dawn" is at pains to point out that on another Sept. 11, another massacre took place, again spawned by religion.

But hold on. Where did I get that word "fanatic"? In my opinion, when anybody believes their religion gives them the right to kill other people, they are fanatics. Aren't there enough secular reasons for war? But there is no shortage of such religions, or such people. The innocent, open-faced Christians on the wagon train were able to consider settling California, after all, because their some of their co-religionists participated in or benefitted from the enslavement of Africans and the genocide of Native Americans.

Were there fanatics among those who ran the Salem Witch Trials or the Inquisition or the Crusades? Or the Holocaust? No shortage of them. Organized religion has been used to justify most of the organized killing in our human history. It's an inescapable fact, especially if you consider the Nazis and communists as cults led by secular gods. When your god inspires you to murder someone who worships god in a different way or under another name, you're barking up the wrong god.

The vast majority of the members of all religions, I believe and would argue, don't want to kill anybody. They want to love and care for their families, find decent work that sustains life and comfort, live in peace and get along with their neighbors. It is a deviant streak in some humans, I suspect, that drives them toward self-righteous violence, and uses religion as a convenient alibi.

That is true, wouldn't you agree, about Mormons, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and so on? No, not all of you would agree, because every time I let slip the opinion that most Muslims are peaceful and nonviolent, for example, I receive the most extraordinary hate mail from those assuring me they are not. And in a Muslim land, let a newspaper express the opinion that most Christians and Jews are peaceful and nonviolent, and that newspaper office is likely to be burned down. The worst among us speak for the best.

Which brings us back to Sept. 11, 1857, when a crazy Mormon zealot named Bishop John Samuelson (Jon Voight) ordered the massacre of the visiting wagon train, after first sending his spokesman to lie that if they disarmed, they would be granted safe passage. Whether the leader of his church, Brigham Young (Terence Stamp), approved of this action is a matter of much controversy, denied by the church, claimed by "September Dawn."

What a strange, confused, unpleasant movie this is. Two theories have clustered around it: (1) It is anti-Mormon propaganda to muddy the waters around the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, or (2) it is not about Mormons at all, but an allegory about the 9/11/01 terrorists. Take your choice. The problem with allegories is that you can plug them in anywhere. No doubt the film would have great impact in Darfur.

There isn't anything to be gained in telling this story in this way. It generates bad feelings on all sides, and at a time when Mormons are at pains to explain they are Christians, underlines the way that these Mormons consider all Christians to be "gentiles." The Mormons are presented in no better light than Nazis and Japanese were in Hollywood's World War II films. Wasn't there a more thoughtful and insightful way to consider this historical event? Or how about a different event altogether? What about the Donner Party? They may have been cannibals, but at least they were nondenominational.

If there is a concealed blessing, it is that the film is so bad. Jon Voight, that gifted and versatile actor, is here given the most ludicrous and unplayable role of his career, and a goofy beard to boot. Stamp, as Brigham Young, comes across as the kind of man you'd find at the back of a cave in a Cormac McCarthy novel. The Christians are so scrubbed and sunny, they could have been teleported in time from the Lawrence Welk program.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmnYCSwt2Js

Stamp, as Brigham Young, comes across as the kind of man you'd find at the back of a cave in a Cormac McCarthy novel.

sounds kind of awesome actually!

Organized religion has been used to justify most of the organized killing in our human history.

"used to justify" /= cause of

Zero Stars, awesome.

That movie's been postponed & postponed for release, in the sort of way ala Watchmen that suggests "this has every sign of sucking."

it sounds terrible on the whole but I kinda wanna see Stamp camp it up prophet stylee

im down for anything that hurts romney, regardless of principle

Like my FIST?

like a sharp stick to the eye!

xpost ha ha

Dan Brown's writing some kee-razy conspiratorial book abt he early Mormon church...that will be something people will actually notice.

ugh Dan Brown

which films are we talking about here?

he reviewed what I assume to be a reissue of Pierrot Le Fou last week:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070816/REVIEWS/70817008/1001

That movie's been postponed & postponed for release, in the sort of way ala Watchmen that suggests "this has every sign of sucking."

movie being shelved for months/years after completion and original release date, and eventually given a very limited theatrical release /= movie being in development hell for years and years before finally being greenlit for production with a big fat budget and summer release date

Dear Unca Rog,

Do you realize how often lately you're the top rating on the Metacritic page? The only positive review? I am concerned that your brush with death has turned your brain to oatmeal. Stop being so damn happy to be alive and give these only-barely-enjoyable movies the ratings they deserve.

Your friend,
-k.

i actually think his writing is a lot better now than it was before his health issues. maybe because he's not doing the show anymore? but let's not pretend the dude has ever been super-harsh, he always tends to give movies the benefit of the doubt. except for that mormon-baitin' movie a couple weeks back.

mormonbatin

he always tends to give movies the benefit of the doubt

I realize he has a problem with overrating the mediocre, at least on the star scale -- the first post on this thread is about that! It just seems like he's getting worse.

i mean, it's not like he's Peter Travers, ffs.

he gave six movies four stars this week

this is what i am saying, yes.

Roger, you've changed, maaaan.

he should quit giving stars altogether and just write.

He says that himself all the time. Circumstances will not allow it.

He seems constrained by the 4 star system--since 3 stars usually means 'watchable' or 'slightly better than mediocre' then giving a pretty good movie 3 1/2 stars seems almost like a diss. Thus a lot of movies get 4 stars. Does he ever give 4 1/2 or 5, or are those reserved for 'classics'?

I just answered my own question by searching his website--4 stars is the top rating, shared by the Godfather and Casino Royale and 3:10 To Yuma (the latter two are the remakes.)

I wish he was my dad.

rip

He says that himself all the time. Circumstances will not allow it.

it takes a long time to dig your own grave with one thumb, but he got it done.

His rating system is basically the same rating system allmusic.com uses. He's not judging movies against the pantheon, he's judging them based on their genre / market.

It's rare to see a new record get higher than 4 1/2 stars on allmusic, whereas Ebert hands out his top rating all the time.

Movies should be rated on the Michelin scale. 99% of what comes out gets 0 stars, 6 movies a year get one star, and in a good year there's a 2 or 3 star movie released.

otm.

in my paper we dont do stars but the really good ones get a checkmark!

Now I envision Slocki as the Michelin Man.

(x-post) Seconded. I think zero stars should be the middle of the scale, and there should be negative integers. Of course, I only say that because I think bad movies are worth more to me than middle-ish movies.

Q. It seems that your reviews since your return from illness are "nicer." Are you viewing life and films differently now? I can't remember ever seeing so many three- to four-star reviews from you, week after week, as I have in the past few months. Or do you think that movies are just getting better? What has changed, you or the quality of the films?
Garry Hasara, Tampa, Fla.

A. Maybe I'm just so happy to be writing reviews. Or maybe several other factors are at work: (1) Oscar season began in September, and autumn movies are traditionally superior to those of other seasons, (2) I no longer automatically review virtually every movie released and so tend to choose the ones that seem more interesting, (3) distributors have stopped screening most horror films for critics, (4) I enjoy calling attention to less-known indie films and tend to choose those I like, and (5) when I double back to review a movie that I missed earlier, of course I don't go looking for lousy ones.

(3) distributors have stopped screening most horror films for critics

Love how he slips that in there.

I need to write this guy a letter before he dies. I've been having recurrent second-base sex dreams about him lately. !!!

jeez, the poor guy almost died - you can't even give him a handjob in dreamland?

This is sweet -- videos of old Siskel and Ebert shows now archived to watch on the internettertron.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071117/COMMENTARY/71117002

His taste slips further.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071220/COMMENTARY/176124809

he has the poor taste to have more than two films in his top ten. for shame, roger!

i liked juno, but... #1?

across the universe?
THE GREAT DEBATERS??

I hope he gets well enough to go back on the show with Roeper, cuz they're virtually indistinguishable now.

I'll give this list this: the #1 is not a well-intentioned examination of our country's tattered race relations.

if I ever get a tattoo, it will be an Ebert tattoo

Their show used to be a lot more demonstrative in its early days:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c3nXYo-51M

His essay on Studs Terkel is pretty great
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/05/how_studs_helps_me_lead_my_lif_1.html

No more ____ & Ebert.

:(

Roeper already split the show, didn't he?

he split it into 17 parts and hidden them all over the world.

hmmmm, sounds like a challenge. who's with me?

certainly deeznuts

honor system search naturally

strange powers await to be discovered. don't take this lightly my friends.

or are we on a quest to discover ... ourselves? roper you devil.

oh! you're searching for the next piece! It's in the next town! But take this! ^_^

XP + 50
Gained 2 Hearts!

( SAVE ) / (CONTINUE ON) / (BACK TO MAIN TITLE) / (QUIT)

quit, plz.

RIP "Siskel... and Ebert... and the Movies. And the asshole."

farewell letter :(

pretty awesome of him to link those fairly embarrassing videos of them bickering at the bottom!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AJUB_GOOTc

Ebert: Still Notices Breasts (from his review of Eight Miles High)-

"The real Uschi, I learn, was slender. Not Avelon. She possesses a matched set of expensive breasts."

He follows w/a memory of Russ Meyer.

"Silicone," Russ believed, "spoils the fun," although he was later forced to relax his vigilance. It's an evocative name, Uschi. Makes me think of mashing ice cream.

This thread gets revived for:

1. cancer
2. tit shout-outs

So I'm glad it's the latter!

Gotta have tits.

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/7/78/300px-MeyerandEbert.jpg

gonna tear chicago UP

his review of Death Race made me LOL yesterday when he said the female lead (forget her name) delivered her lines in a venomous tone that she was probably practicing to use on her agent.

some dude whacked Ebert http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080911/EDITOR/809119972

:( http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080921/COMMENTARY/809219997

What the hell? Say it aint so ebert say it aint so

it's satire. dude has been a longtime evolution buff.

ahhh I was wondering if he had gone insane or something. granted, I only read the first line of that and closed the page.

so glad to hear that

Yeah, it's satire, and ironically or not, that's also about 85% exactly what a creationist would say to those questions.

C'mon! Ebert's a good old fashioned lapsed Catholic. He doesn't believe in creation, fer crissakes!

I think the last lines are the key; he wrote a scathing editorial against Sarah Palin recently.

blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/09/critic_is_a_fourletter_word.html#more

Responses at the bottom. I don't think it's supposed to be satire -- he says he copied and pasted the material from creationist websites. I think it's supposed to be, "How dumb is this?"

he says he copied and pasted the material from creationist websites

So I was off by 15%.

:/

Yeah, I like that last line

it's satire. dude has been a longtime evolution buff.

Yeah, and he drops it into reviews in the strangest places. I remember him critiquing the creatures in Alien/Aliens on the basis of evolution, and he panned the Spielberg/Cruise War of the Worlds in part because nature would never evolve a creature with an uneven number of legs.

Roger Ebert owning Ben Stein, and creationists in general:

Roger Ebert owns Ben Stein.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind.html

ebert ownes

my hero

I'm now in love with the phrase "entertainingly unfair"

as much as i agree with him, that's a really sloppily written piece

I don't know that it's sloppiness so much as it's that old-school columnist rhythm, which ... it always looks a bit insane and scattered in today's context.

His new book on Scorsese looks interesting:

Scorsese by Ebert
http://www.amazon.com/Scorsese-Ebert-Roger/dp/0226182029/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228506670&sr=1-1

I love the pretentiousness of just using the one name.

nabisco otm, it's not sloppy

Scorcese, the new fragrance from Ebert

nabisco otm

You're learning fast, K3vin K3ll3r.

"The rest smells like bullshit, and you know it."

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/11/death_to_film_critics_long_liv.html

The celebrity culture is infantilizing us. We are being trained not to think. It is not about the disappearance of film critics. We are the canaries. It is about the death of an intelligent and curious, readership, interested in significant things and able to think critically. It is about the failure of our educational system. It is not about dumbing-down. It is about snuffing out.

The news is still big. It's the newspapers that got small.

please dont revive this thread with urls that contain the word "death" :-(

Seriously, I am having a terrible day and when I saw this thread I was convinced he was dead.

i always think that when this gets revived.

his rulebook for crix linked to there is hilar.

His review of The Soloist, despite his intentions, makes it sound like it might actually be a good movie about mental illness.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090422/REVIEWS/904229989

There's no clear idea of what it would mean should Ayers triumph in a public debut; would it be a life-changing moment or only an anomaly on his tragic road through life? Can he be salvaged? Does he want to be? Or will be always be a soloist, playing to his demons in the darkness under a bridge?

Well, I'll offer this much. You can either have a clear path through life, or you can be mentally ill. You can be in between, too, of course -- most people are. But you're asking for both extremes, and that's too much to ask.

Once I discovered Simon, Sarris, Kael, Lane etc it was really hard to go back to Ebert's mundane and superficial thoughts on movies. Even his allegedly famous put-downs are lame in contrast to the "OH NO HE DIDN'T"-fest that comes with reading something from John Simon.

the more I think about this review the less sense it makes.

would it be a life-changing moment or only an anomaly on his tragic road through life?

Fuck you, Roger. Will you be the movie critic who defines all of humanity's tastes and proclivities, or will you just be another dude who dies? How tragic would that be?

I mean, if you take anything away from the story of Mr. Ayers, it should be that we don't get to decide those kinds of things.

Paulene Kael didn't really "get" Airplane, possibly because she's a girl. I think Ebert probably did, not just because he is a fat nerd, but because he is willing to try and engage a movie on its own terms, which is slightly more admirable a quality than being able to throw down the sharpest zingers. But probably zingers are more fun to read.

come again?

for real! come again? esp this bit: Paulene Kael didn't really "get" Airplane, possibly because she's a girl.

Surely he can't be serious

I am serious, and don't call me SURELY

A joek that does not work in type u see.

just hang loose, blood...

Kael:"If you were a teenager in the late 50s and read the movie lampoons in Mad and watched a lot of TV series shows and a lot of cheapie old movies on television and remembered parts of all of them, jumbled together into one dumb movie-that's AIRPLANE! It's compiled like a jokebook."

Ebert:“Airplane!” is a comedy in the great tradition of high school skits, the Sid Caesar TV show, Mad magazine, and the dog-eared screenplays people's nephews write in lieu of earning their college diplomas. It is sophomoric, obvious, predictable, corny, and quite often very funny. And the reason it's funny is frequently because it's sophomoric, predictable, corny."

Pretty similar assessments, but Kael's 'tude is like "I'm all about trash movies, but I'm above this pre-pube-boy nonsense, so I'm gonna rip this one a new one through casual dismissal, cause that's how K-dog rolls"

I'm not sure why you're picking "Airplane!" of all movies to compare/contrast Ebert and Kael.

lol

It's a little random, yes, but Kael did once write, "Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them."

Really liked his mini-memoir here:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/04/the_best_job_in_the_world.html

Pauline Kael wrote the book on "engaging a movie on its own terms." Plus I've read all her collected reviews & I don't think she ever referred to herself as "K-dog."

Krump Krump Bang Bang?

definitely agree more with philip here

Kael on Sound of Music:
"Whom could this operetta offend? Only those of us who, despite the fact that we may respond, loathe being manipulated in this way and are aware of how cheap and ready-made are the responses we are made to feel. We may become even more aware of the way we have been turned into emotional and aesthetic imbeciles when we hear ourselves humming the sickly, goody-goody songs."

Ebert on Freddy Got Fingered:
"This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels."

Kael would win in an 'oh snap' contest but Ebert has a more charitable heart. The harshest thing he can say is "barrels."

As Ebert himself might point out, it's not that it's about barrels, it's the way that it's about barrels. :)

Philip you are bringing the lolz. "The harshest thing he can say is 'barrels'" is a great statement.

Paulene Kael didn't really "get" Airplane, possibly because she's a girl.

Pretty sure he stole this from Renata Adler.

Josefa, he was alluding to Kael's rap album, Criticisms by K-Dog, which Atlantic unfortunately shelved back in 1985.

ha^

Pauline Kael wrote the book on "engaging a movie on its own terms."

I think the ability to engage a movie - and art and entertainment in general- on its own terms is tricky, it usually means intellectual slumming ("See, I can enjoy crap, too. Not an elitist!") rather than the critic reaching the almost-out-of-reach top shelf to understand something really nuanced and highbrow.

Ebert, and most populist critics, can enjoy dumb movies essentially made with fourteen-year old boys in mind and write about them with ease. But do those same critics help bring greater understanding to the more inaccessible artistic films that come down the pike? Ebert's versatility is one way: he can articulate why some of the more vulgar jokes in an Apatow movie might amuse him, but he almost never shows the same versatility in articulating the greatness of high-culure movies for the general public - and I think that the latter quality is in greater need.

nah brah: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=reviews08

Kael's take on Aiplane! isn't really a pan! It IS compiled like a jokebook, and it IS dumb. That doesn't mean it isn't funny. She's just pointing out that it isn't cinematic comedy. (She even says elsewhere in the review that "it's over blessedly fast.")

(PK's rave review of The Wrath of Khan called it "great dumb fun")

http://nuncscio.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/khan.jpg

KAAAAEEEEEEEELLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!

that Khan review is Kael at her best too! After confessing that she thought the original show was shit, she warms up to how professionally the actors in the movie abet themselves – so generously that, by the time she's reached the conclusion, she retracts her original remarks about the show.

is that online anywhere?

There's a short version here:

http://www.geocities.com/paulinekaelreviews/s8.html

I read one of Ebert's "Great Books" books not too long ago and it wasn't bad (kudos on his new essay on Withnail And I, via the link you put up) but, again, not as insightful compared with reading John Simon, Dwight McDonald, Agee etc. Too often Ebert's review has a sort of "What does it all mean? No idea, but it made me think, kinda...also, it reminds me of a an anecdote from my youth" tone.

It's too ponderous, nonjudgmental and amoral for my taste. I admire Simon for writing off the Godfather, despite its style, simply because the film is dishonest in its glorification of the mafia, never showing the kind of petty crimes that would cause them to lose audience sympathy and engaging in moral relativism in order to build audience sympathy. That kind of criticism is of a moral bent, but that's perfectly fine, and better, than simply judging things from a formalistic criteria.

well, sez you.

never showing the kind of petty crimes that would cause them to lose audience sympathy and engaging in moral relativism in order to build audience sympathy

waht

Is there a bizarre edit of "The Godfather" out there that removes all of the Mafia parts?

I am more perplexed by the suggestion that the referenced petty crimes (presumably blackmail, extortion, gambling, petty theft, etc.) are somehow MORE offensive to an audience than, say, a series of brutal and cold-blooded murders.

like "gee, I can totally understand how they'd wanna shoot that guy full of a hundred bullets, but STEALING THOSE CIGARETTES WAS WRONG"

You guys it's a movie about olive oil.

Yo, Ebert can bust out the judgmental morality card, too:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19860919/REVIEWS/609190301/1023

'"Rossellini is asked to do things in this film that require real nerve. In one scene, she's publicly embarrassed by being dumped naked on the lawn of the police detective. In others, she is asked to portray emotions that I imagine most actresses would rather not touch. She is degraded, slapped around, humiliated and undressed in front of the camera. And when you ask an actress to endure those experiences, you should keep your side of the bargain by putting her in an important film.

That's what Bernardo Bertolucci delivered when he put Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider through the ordeal of "Last Tango in Paris." In "Blue Velvet," Rossellini goes the whole distance, but Lynch distances himself from her ordeal with his clever asides and witty little in-jokes. In a way, his behavior is more sadistic than the Hopper character.'

not the same thing.

I thought the entire point of "The Godfather" was that an essentially moral, upstanding guy was pulled into the moral sewer that was the Mafia because he loved his family too much; the movie is supposed to be a tragedy about wasted potential, not a "wow isn't the Mafia neat???" recruitment drive.

^^^OTM

Also re: Ebert v 'better' critics.

Will agree that there are critics who write longer and more intelligently about films and putting them into a larger cultural context, but I still think Ebert is important BECAUSE he is somewhat simplistic and formalist. He's like an entry point for getting into films, and that's pretty invaluable.

People misinterpreting The Godfather as a celebration of family and gangsterism need to become friends with those people who took R.E.M.'s "The One I Love" as a sweet love song.

"I am more perplexed by the suggestion that the referenced petty crimes (presumably blackmail, extortion, gambling, petty theft, etc.) are somehow MORE offensive to an audience than, say, a series of brutal and cold-blooded murders."

How much of a gangsta hero would Scarface be if he ran around scrimping on construction materials for building old folks homes?

they're too busy dancing to "Every Breath You Take" at their wedding.

xpost

I think they already are; they all met at the wedding of the couple who used U2's "One" for their first dance.

xpost DAMMIT

It's true I own Simon's books and none of Ebert's, but my reaction to Simon is still usually more "Oh brother" than "Oh no you didn't," though I love his writing. I think every critic makes moral judgements, they just make different ones.

'more "Oh brother" than "Oh no you didn't,"'

What's the distinction? I kind of always thought of "Oh brother" as the polite, midwest version of "Oh no you didn't"

"Oh no you didn't" implies some "zing" flattery.

As for The Godfather, everyone the Corleones kill is more evil than they are, which is certainly a way of cheating the moral questions at the heart of the real-life mafia--which the Sopranos got into much more honestly. But it's still a great movie, which is why I prefer David Thomson's take.

Which Simon book should I read? (Moral breakdowns of movies sounds like fun!)

while i think the moral argument against the godfather is a little ridiculous, it would be disingenuous to claim that the movie doesn't romanticize the mob lifestyle at all

There's a difference between "romanticize" and "glamorize", isn't there? I mean, it was crystal-clear to me that they had to do some reprehensible shit to get to where they were; the fact that it was spun into a good story didn't change the morality behind it, IMO.

ya especially by the end of the second one, which is still one of the darkest endings ever

As for The Godfather, everyone the Corleones kill is more evil than they are

Uh . . . I do not think this is true (or even "true" within the constraints of the movie), and I think if you picture the same story being told from the point of view of, say, the Tattaglia family, you won't either.

I mean, sure, we may get some LOLZ from Luca Brazzi, but how is he any less "evil" (ugh) than Carlo Rizzi or Capt. McCluskey?

or the woman in bed with the guy who gets shot in the final score-settling... forget which dude it was

Is there a bizarre edit of "The Godfather" out there that removes all of the Mafia parts?

― the freakish wonder of nature that is "Beat Me" (HI DERE), Monday, 4 May 2009 16:41 (45 minutes ago) Permalink

I am more perplexed by the suggestion that the referenced petty crimes (presumably blackmail, extortion, gambling, petty theft, etc.) are somehow MORE offensive to an audience than, say, a series of brutal and cold-blooded murders.

The kind of crimes you see them commit were almost always grandiose or elegant in execution, if I remember. Showing a man waking up to a dead boar's head in his bed (or whatever it was) is different than showing some inarticulate stooge tell a small business owner that he'll have his legs broken if they don't get paid on time. Though the mafia may kill, they still have strong values (Family!) and abide by a moral code that, if I remember, is implied to at least be more honest than the hypocritical one that straight society abides by.

And, Shakey, you don't think that gruesome killings are more cinematic in their ability to inspire awe than the petty crimes that usually go on in the mafia? The truth of the matter is that almost every person on the planet is interested in the concept of murder to a point. Take out murder from all the books and movies and how much are we taking out? The murders may be more offensive, morally, but the point is that the filmmakers only show the Mafia at their Movie Villain best - you don't see them engaging in acts that make them too unsympathetic. Though only showing villains at their most glamorously bad is a problem with countless movies - it makes for good entertainment but it's obviously dishonest to the point of annoyance, at least for some.

As for The Godfather, everyone the Corleones kill is more evil than they are, which is certainly a way of cheating the moral questions at the heart of the real-life mafia--

This as well.

And the best Simon books is probably "Reverse Angle," his book on American films in the 1970s.

Is there a bizarre edit of "The Godfather" out there that removes all of the Mafia parts?

― the freakish wonder of nature that is "Beat Me" (HI DERE)

Colbert did a joke version for one of his "better know a district" segments, I'll try to post it.

The murders may be more offensive, morally, but the point is that the filmmakers only show the Mafia at their Movie Villain best - you don't see them engaging in acts that make them too unsympathetic. Though only showing villains at their most glamorously bad is a problem with countless movies - it makes for good entertainment but it's obviously dishonest to the point of annoyance, at least for some.

I don't think this is really representative of the preferred "taking a movie on its own terms" approach - the Godfather is a film about family and corruption, it is not designed to be an "honest" (whatever that means) portrayal of the day-to-day workings of organized crime. If you want that, watch "Mean Streets". The killings in the Godfather are cinematic and grandiose, no doubt about it. But they're entirely appropriate to the story - which is a MELODRAMA (hence all the reliance on "Movie Villain best" as you put it) - and I don't think they reveal the main protagonists as sympathetic. Michael is a sympathetic character only insofar as the film focuses on his reluctance to participate in the "family business", which is consistently shown as basically being murdering anyone who gets in your way, no matter who they are.

I don't think this is really representative of the preferred "taking a movie on its own terms" approach - the Godfather is a film about family and corruption, it is not designed to be an "honest" (whatever that means) portrayal of the day-to-day workings of organized crime. If you want that, watch "Mean Streets".

Fine, but by dishonest I mean that the movie shies from verisimilitude and basic principles regarding the mafia in favor of an elegant fantasy.

The killings in the Godfather are cinematic and grandiose, no doubt about it. But they're entirely appropriate to the story - which is a MELODRAMA (hence all the reliance on "Movie Villain best" as you put it) - and I don't think they reveal the main protagonists as sympathetic. Michael is a sympathetic character only insofar as the film focuses on his reluctance to participate in the "family business", which is consistently shown as basically being murdering anyone who gets in your way, no matter who they are.

The first problem I have is that the family is very sympathetic*, from what I remember, with the sole exception of the fact they kill and are criminals. The second is the "no matter who they are," as the people who get murdered by the family were always less than sympathetic. I never recall watching the Corleone's kill somebody and being appalled as I would've been had the victim been portrayed as really innocent and undeserving of it - and even when they do murder someone it's always done out of some code of honor, even Fredo's death is has a sort of Abraham-Isaac "your death is a commandment, not a personal wish" element.

*My definition of sympathy is that I can imaginatively see myself in their position and, gauging their actions, morally judge it to be understandable, if not something I condone.

But I don't mean to sidetrack this too much. The point is that reviewers like Simon and McDonald could at least start thoughtful debates like this through their reviews by keeping things like verisimilitude, meaning, and moral integrity at the forefront.

yeah, Sonny just begs the viewer to sympathize with him

not to mention the masculine ideal that is fredo

Fine, but by dishonest I mean that the movie shies from verisimilitude and basic principles regarding the mafia in favor of an elegant fantasy.

if you think it's dishonest for movies to shy away from verisimilitude i have a feeling a lot of movies that aren't documentaries are going to disappoint you

vershitmilitude

oh brother!

I recently saw the movie Shadows and then said wow

There are also movies that are documentaries that are going to disappoint Cunga! This seems like a perfectly valid criticism to level against a movie like "Fahrenheit 9/11" (or, as I like to call it, "BLAME THE SAUDIS!") but not so much for a movie like "The Godfather".

if you think it's dishonest for movies to shy away from verisimilitude i have a feeling a lot of movies that aren't documentaries are going to disappoint you

yeah I was gonna say...

I think its more important for films to be internally coherent than it is for them to achieve versimilitude with the real world.

^^^ OTM. The film's job is to build a world in which it can present a story; if it does its job well, it shouldn't need to be a direct analogue to real life.

if you think it's dishonest for movies to shy away from verisimilitude i have a feeling a lot of movies that aren't documentaries are going to disappoint you

It's not a requirement all the time and I'm not asking for the world when I think movies shouldn't always fall back on the "escapist fantasy" argument when somebody says that a film isn't very real, truthful or honest. There are more than two choices btw between documentary and fantastic Hollywood gangster movies. Criticizing the latter(arguably for just following its own genre) doesn't mean you want the former.

The first problem I have is that the family is very sympathetic*, from what I remember, with the sole exception of the fact they kill and are criminals.

lolz not exactly a minor exception there (unless you're the kind of guy who's easily swayed re: the necessity of icing your siblings)

The second is the "no matter who they are," as the people who get murdered by the family were always less than sympathetic. I never recall watching the Corleone's kill somebody and being appalled as I would've been had the victim been portrayed as really innocent and undeserving of it - and even when they do murder someone it's always done out of some code of honor, even Fredo's death is has a sort of Abraham-Isaac "your death is a commandment, not a personal wish" element.

I think the larger issue here though is applying a moral template a priori to this kind of story. The moral code in this case being something along the lines of "murder is inherently evil, therefore a depiction of murder should assert its essential evil". This is how, culturally, we arrived at ridiculous stuff like the Comics Code Authority that mandated presenting certain subjects with preordained outcomes. Its kind of not a good way to allow a given media to reach its full potential. A story about corruption works best when the protagonist is sympathetic, because it serves to point up the overwhelming power of corruption and how insidious it is. That the viewer see how the same thing could happen to them if they were in that situation plays against the viewer's natural reaction to the sociopathic behavior on display. Creating that cognitive dissonance is a very strong tool of storytelling.

Now, I have all kinds of moral and political objections to various films and I have no problem with integrating those issues into a larger critical discussion - but they need to take into account what the film is trying to accomplish. Because I don't think the overall goal of the Godfather was to "glamorize" the mafia (and if it WAS, there are a lot more fairly crass, unrealistic, and amoral tricks Coppola could've pulled to do so than just making his main characters sympathetic)

x-post

like, would Faust work as a story if Faust was just an unsympathetic evil jerk from the outset?

otm. corruption stories NEED to be seductive.

The killings in the Godfather are cinematic and grandiose, no doubt about it. But they're entirely appropriate to the story - which is a MELODRAMA

Well but I'm pretty sure the traditional genre of "melodrama" tends to be one-dimensional and use obvious cues (like music, per the name) to separate its characters into straightforward heroes and villains, to the point of maybe verging on morality plays. I think maybe part of what Cunga's getting at is that The Godfather has a lot of elements of melodrama and romanticism, only without quite so much of that clear/one-dimensional/black-and-white moral organization. Which does strike me as a perfectly reasonable thing to criticize, because it does demonstrably romanticize the mob -- just by presenting it (along with other things!) in these heavily dramatized terms -- without adopting some of the boring and hackneyed moral elements that traditionally came along with that "heavily dramatized" style. (I don't know that that's a criticism that really constitutes a huge part of how the film works or whether it's likable or not -- it just strikes me as a minor but legitimate qualm.)

the movie is NOT a melodrama for those reasons.

Melodrama has evolved from one-dimensional and use obvious cues (like music, per the name) to separate its characters into straightforward heroes and villains, to the point of maybe verging on morality plays. Another key aspect of modern melodrama is that it focuses on relationships and emotions, and is often coded as "feminine."

haha although comically enough, s1ocki, its theme music is constantly used for traditional melodramatic purposes elsewhere!

Do you mean like in actual mafia weddings?

I always listen to it before I riddle a family member with bullets

"like, would Faust work as a story if Faust was just an unsympathetic evil jerk from the outset?"

This is the main reason why Pacino is a LOT less interesting in the second Godfather than he is in the first.

how bout in part 3 where he's a sympathetic old diabetic trying like mad to get out of the game.

"or the woman in bed with the guy who gets shot in the final score-settling"

I thought of her the moment I posted. But it's not as if her death is dwelt upon, and we're more or less led to believe she's a prostitute, which in the fucked up morality of the Corleones makes her disposable. Put it this way: Kay is the moral center of the film, which is why the movie isn't about her. She's a reminder in the increasingly distant background of how far-gone Michael is (and we are) in getting swallowed up by his father's reality and his world and his moral terms, but she's also presented as being out of touch with what Michael is dealing with. I realize I'm derailing though, so I'll let someone else have the last word on this.

its theme music is constantly used for traditional melodramatic purposes elsewhere!

I have heard it played in Italian restaurants which seems somewhat inappropriate.

Let's put it this way: I'd rather see “Jennifer's Body” again than “Twilight.”

Oh Rog, you punning old dog.

Armond White is going to love Jennifer's Boy, I'll bet.

Haha no he didn't. Confounding!

Whenever I see this thread again I worry that something has happened to Ebert.

^^ OTM. We need to retitle this thread, "Roger Ebert is still alive, and said a thing."

how's that instead

not sure ilxors' general level of reading comprehension extends to more than 3 words in every sentence

ILX has a general?

General Disarray

http://myspace-792.vo.llnwd.net/00680/29/73/680653792_m.jpg

ha! beat me to it

thread title ought to read

"roger ebert (still alive, don't worry, we'll start another thread if the dude dies)"

Haha I don't follow Armond White that much, so I'll take people's word for it that he's truly confounding. But I remember feeling really NON-confounded when someone made that allegedly insane list of "bad movies according to Armond" and "good movies according to Armond" and a HUGE chunk of the things they couldn't believe he liked were, e.g., Norbit, Mr. 3000, Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?, First Sunday, How She Move, Next Day Air. I think I fell forever on White's side in that moment, seeing as he appeared to be getting yelled at by folks who couldn't figure out why a middle-aged black film critic might have good things to say about movies aimed at black audiences.

except that he's rather, uh, capricious on even that point. he's reacted violently to other films you'd think, based on the list above, he would embrace. he's a tough guy to predict, which can be a virtue, though not in this case.

a middle-aged black film critic might have good things to say about movies aimed at black audiences.

this is perhaps the funniest misreading of Armond's modus operandi ever

i didn't find the list that useful in getting at why he's a troll or 'bad at film criticism'. but this whole thing, of wondering what armond white likes, plays into his hands in the end.

that list says more about the person who compiled it than it does about Armond

(assuming the list was NOT a comprehensive list of all movies Armond has ever repped for, which would be impossibly long. not to mention deeply befuddling)

rip ebert

haha like I said, I take everyone's word on this point, I just found the list so odd that it made me side with the guy

(agreed that it says way more about the listmaker that his "I can't believe you like this" category is quite so full of mainstreamy black movies)

Shakey OTM about that particular list.

it's interesting to me in general that the sphere of film criticism, for obvious mechanical reasons, is a lot more concerned with common standards among critics than plenty of other spheres; maybe it's because I spend more time with music crit, where it matters so little and there's more contrarian posturing, but lots of stuff that's allegedly weird about White seems understandable or normal to me

does conflating Tyler Perry with Bresson seem "understandable" or "normal" to you

it's a qn of value. movie critics cover the waterfront. there's only idk a maximum of ten films released each week. music crit is much more specialized.

i wouldn't say movie critics are more about common standards than literary folk. it's a complicated question. but on the whole that emphasis was consciously adopted *from* literary criticism.

armond white can always say "well, once upon a time douglas sirk was scoffed at." whereas i don't know if 'peyton place' (which is about sirk's level) has attained parnassus yet.

of value and volume.

Yeah the difference is primarily one of function. White is an amusing read, but basically most if not all readers are going to find him pretty useless in determining whether or not to see a particular film (in fact they are more likely to have a movie they want to see spoiled).

at this point he just seems like he's trying to get a rise out of people, which is tiring. honestly his prose is so purply pretentious that i find it unreadable.

he sows the seeds of off-the-wall but possibly interesting academic dissertations, but I don't buy it for the most part. Still, would love to read a discussion of G.I. Joe and how it reflects Godard.

it is pretty bad writing. its this weird mixture of passive-aggressive indignation, enthusiastic contrarianism, and head-spinning name-dropping

Still, would love to read a discussion of G.I. Joe and how it reflects Godard

lolz you know we had this thread already rite

also, Glenn Kenny's Exercises of the Week includes a pretty amusing Armond White-ism of the week section every Friday at the Auteurs. I enjoy that.

i'm searching now shakey

it is pretty bad writing. its this weird mixture of passive-aggressive indignation, enthusiastic contrarianism, and head-spinning name-dropping

often he strings them together in one sentence which becomes LITERALLY unreadable, or at least unparse-able. you go back and try to see what it's saying and you realize it's just this weird hammering of different outlandish statements into something that only appears to be a complex thought.

so yeah, the IDEA of armond white and his taste that seems to owe no canon is a bit alluring, but once you read the man you realize he is just taking the piss.

its on this thread

a lot of those are pretty much what I meant by "obvious mechanical reasons," yeah. as for this:

does conflating Tyler Perry with Bresson seem "understandable" or "normal" to you

I think my answer is almost sorta yeah! Like I said, I don't know a ton about White, but his writing style -- and little contrarianisms like the one you're talking about -- actually do sorta make sense to me, in some general sense. Like basically they seem like a coherent kind of behavior for someone his age, from where he's from, who went to school where he did, etc.

(like I mean just based on his background and education I'm not sure how anyone would expect him not to have some kind of relationship with contrariness)

I have no idea what his background or education so I just think he's a tit.

some day youll need saving and many captains will stand ready to repay the favor xp

Apparently he was the recipient of a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University's School of the Arts! Know who else went there? Me neither.

Like basically they seem like a coherent kind of behavior for someone his age, from where he's from, who went to school where he did, etc.

this just boils down to "crazy person says crazy things". It isn't surprising, but the things he says are still crazy. Frankly I don't know anyone else, much less another critic, of any demographic that thinks like Armond does. He is one of a kind.

I'm talking more about the fact that he's a black man who grew up around Detroit in the 50s/60s and then, yeah, studied fine arts at a high level. This is a kind of position where I think a person is bound to have a pretty big relationship with having contrary views/expectations from others around him, and may either embrace it or not, depending; he also frequently uses language in a way that feels (to me) not uncommon of people his age/background who studied arts or literature; also basically to get down to it that is just not a life story that leads me to expect the possessor of it to agree with young folks about Iron Man.

^^ none of this is saying he's right on non-weird or awesome, just that he makes a lot of sense to me as a persona or type

also, Glenn Kenny's Exercises of the Week includes a pretty amusing Armond White-ism of the week section every Friday at the Auteurs.

Admittedly, GK is usually on-target with this. A friend was commenting this morning that White's writing, verdicts aside, has gotten much worse in the last few years.

AW is still a more interesting and perceptive critic than Ebert (but then, so am I).

wrong on both counts

armond white has scarcely written a thing that isn't either banal, puckishly inverted conventional wisdom, or nonsense. ebert, for all his faults, has made a ton of great observations in his long career.

name three.

and how much Armond White from the late '80s and '90s have you read?

Has Armond White written anything half as good as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls?

^ unassailable argument

I wish he was my dad.

Armond's book The Revolution has puh-LENTY of non-insane, non-piss-stained examples of critical insight and useful contrarianism. Ebert stumbles upon insight purely by accident.

i don't know if 'peyton place' (which is about sirk's level) has attained parnassus yet.

Peyton Place looks like a Sirk (c. Ross Hunter), but there is absolutely no comparison between the two otherwise.

Armond's book The Revolution has puh-LENTY of non-insane, non-piss-stained examples of critical insight and useful contrarianism. Ebert stumbles upon insight purely by accident.

― boring movies are the most boring (Eric H.), Saturday, September 19, 2009 4:21 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

can you clarify your meaning in the second sentence there?

Ebert is rarely insightful or usefully contrarian.

I don't think I have to clarify what I mean by it.

like give me an example of an accidental insight?

also what is your definition of usefully contrarian alfred? ebert gave "knowing" four stars, isn't that challopsian enough for you?

No.

Useful contrarianism is not calling a stupid movie great. Useful contrarianism is pointing out a movie everyone is accepting as truth is false.

hating on Ebert is like hating on Superman.

I suppose his dismissals of Blue Velvet and Erin Brockovich are stupidly contrarian enough.

hating on ebert is not useful contrarianism.

rip insight

ebert: “Twilight” for boys, with Megan Fox in the Robert Pattinson role, except that I recall Pattinson was shirtless

^^^ You know, I'm now willing to admit Ebert's gotten better in the last few years.

what a disaster for contrarianism

what a useful disaster

also basically to get down to it that is just not a life story that leads me to expect the possessor of it to agree with young folks about Iron Man.

Except he then goes on to agree with young people about Transformers Fucking 2 and goes in further in comparing Michael Bay to Godard.

Just keep this book away from me ...

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0767910389.jpg

... it tends to turn me into Alex in SF.

ebert owns, anyone who disagrees is literal shit

http://nuncscio.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/khan.jpg

KAAAAEEEEEEEELLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!

― s1ocki, Monday, May 4, 2009 12:04 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark

^^^classic post btw

Useful contrarianism is not calling a stupid movie great. Useful contrarianism is pointing out a movie everyone is accepting as truth is false.

― boring movies are the most boring (Eric H.), Saturday, September 19, 2009 4:27 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol @ this, contrarianism is only useful when you're hating!!

lol david thompson pwns all yr ebert and white

Just keep this book away from me ...

... it tends to turn me into Alex in SF.

― boring movies are the most boring (Eric H.), Saturday, September 19, 2009 5:44 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's a harmless book by a guy who loves movies talking about why he loves a bunch of movies, and sharing his enthusiasm for them. yeah, i can see why it makes you so angry.

I'm hearing that to the tune of "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac, deej.

Harmless.

roger ebert is basically an angel 2 me

eric h. is dogshit, i hate u

That is also not useful contrarianism.

er david thomson sans p

w/e he is the best, altho ebert is pretty good

david thomson bought me a smoked meat sandwich once - true story

Ebert and I gave Star Trek the same rating, I think that's accidental insight.

(on whose part is up to you)

s1ocki, the day you stop name-dropping is the day I start loving Ebert, deal?

sluzy

it would only have been a real name-drop if i had said "david once bought me a smoked meat sandwich"

tbh i have only recently discovered thomson and his sheer righteous OTM is really rather stunning, especially on the topic of bunuel and why 'that obscure object of desire' is the best film ever, a judgement i came to independent of him

good to know.

otoh he likes Nicole Kidman way too much.

yeah i heard about that :-/

Peyton Place looks like a Sirk (c. Ross Hunter), but there is absolutely no comparison between the two otherwise.

― boring movies are the most boring (Eric H.), Saturday, September 19, 2009 9:22 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

could you explain how? i think his films are pretty dece weepies but really "absolutely no comparison"? what's so special about sirk?

o shit praising thomson when nrq is in the area = bad news (lol just read the DT-specific thread)

Bad things happen to people in Peyton Place. People make bad things happen in Sirk movies.

ebert's "stupidly contrarian" review of blue velvet was, in retrospect, totally OTM.

ebert has also never said anything half as dumb as the worst stuff in thomson's biographical dictionary.

how about "Fight Club is fascist"

haha fight club IS fascist though. but so is a lot of great art. (n.b. not calling fight club "great," though i do like it.)

:p

FREEDOM THRU FORCED DESTRUCTIVE WHIMSY

ebert has also never said anything half as dumb as the worst stuff in thomson's biographical dictionary.

Well, that's easy for him -- he's never stretched himself and risked foolishness. I'll take Thomson's batshit crush on Nicole Kidman over Ebert's genial blankness.

By the way, like a lot of people, I got my start reading Ebert's reviews, and watched "S&E" for the better part of a decade. I don't hate him.

ebert's zero-star reviews are usually an easy guide to a good time

OK, maybe Ebert's own batshit crush is on Scorsese.

ebert is a sucker for a lot of dumb things. no one's denying that. but he's also a really excellent writer. few people can express themselves so clearly.

but if what you look for in writing is witty challops and stunning gotchas, he's not really your man. but that's ok.

yes

armond white is a lousy challopy sub-n.p. thompson blogger-type who got lucky in his career

If only Joan Didion had written film criticism, we wouldn't even be arguing at all.

his "opinions" may be "interesting" (also probably not genuine or heartfelt) but who cares if he can't write? and his amazing misanthropy means his occasional valid opinion will just fall on deaf ears because he's incapable of sharing his viewpoint in a manner that doesn't make him appear to be a total sociopath.

that's an odd way to describe joan didion.

He meant James Didion.

anthony "tony" "tone" didion.

THUMBS UP on this entire thread, the question is up what

Ebert's essay on the rice-cooker (soon to be a cookbook!) is possibly the best thing I've ever read on the Internet. That includes Dave Mathews Band: Why Are THey So Terrible and Hated?

but he's also a really excellent writer. few people can express themselves so clearly.

closing line of his extract review: "A comedy need not be believable. But it needs to seem as if it's believable at least to itself."

his "opinions" may be "interesting" (also probably not genuine or heartfelt) but who cares if he can't write? and his amazing misanthropy means his occasional valid opinion will just fall on deaf ears because he's incapable of sharing his viewpoint in a manner that doesn't make him appear to be a total sociopath.

is he an ilxor yet

ebert's "stupidly contrarian" review of blue velvet was, in retrospect, totally OTM.

otmmm

he's a surprisingly moralistic pussy for an ex-russ meyer scribe, and while I liked him back when I needed fat nerd role models, I'm not sure why adults would read him.

also his reviews are rambly and disjointed as fuck

lol i basically said all that three years ago, sorry!

except for the ones that arent

"back when I needed fat nerd role models, I'm not sure why adults would read him."

so many adults today could be much improved by fat nerd role models of Ebert's caliber.

rip

fuck you

The women are also dressed in period threads, and many have big Afros. I am happy to say it brings back an element sadly missing in recent movies, gratuitous nudity. Sexy women would "happen" to be topless in the 1970s movies for no better reason than that everyone agreed, including themselves, that their breasts were a genuine pleasure to regard -- the most beautiful naturally occurring shapes in nature, I believe. Now we see breasts only in serious films, for expressing reasons. There's been such a comeback for the strategically positioned bed sheet, you'd think we were back in the 1950s.

^^^totally agree with that btw

yeah, sounds nice but actually a lot more complicated than that, but i'm not russ meyer's buddy

WHERE THE TITTAYS AT????

his epitaph

yeah, sounds nice but actually a lot more complicated than that,

You’ll take Ann-Margret in Feiffer’s Carnal Knowledge from my cold dead hands

I'll gladly let you have her in Newsies tho. ;_;

What review is that from Omar Littel? Sounds like it could be the Ang Lee Woodstock movie.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091014/REVIEWS/910149998

not about films:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/10/sign_the_social_contract.html

my kind of classic liberal catholic

666 Comments

Review of The Fourth Kind is several kinds of awesome. It actually reads like an ILX post...

Boy, is the Nome, Alaska, Chamber if Commerce going to be pissed off when it sees "The Fourth Kind." You don't wanna go there. You can't drive there, that's for sure. The only ways in are by sea, air, dogsled or birth canal. Why the aliens chose this community of 9,261 to abduct so many people is a mystery. Also why owls stare into bedroom windows.

Nome has been the center of an alarming series of strange disappearances, we learn. So many, the FBI has sent agents there 10 times more than to the much bigger Anchorage. "The Fourth Kind" is based on the testimony of a psychologist who found, circa 2000, that many of her patients reported waking at 3 a.m. with the sense that something was wrong and seeing an owl with its eyes on them.

The film goes to great lengths to be realistic. "I am the actress Milla Jovovich," Jovovich tells us at the outset, explaining that in the film she plays the psychologist Abigail Tyler, whose testimony was videotaped. Other fact-based characters are her colleague (Elias Koteas), the local sheriff (Will Patton) and a professor who interviews her (Olatunde Osunsanmi). "Every scene in this movie is supported by archived footage," she says, and to prove it, Osunsanmi, who's also the director, uses split screen to show Jovovich and the real Abigail talking almost simultaneously. The real psychologist's name has been changed, but since she's right there on the screen, how much of a mystery can she be in Nome?

It was with crushing disappointment that my research discovered this is all made up out of whole cloth, including the real Abigail. The film wasn't even shot in Nome, but mostly in Bulgaria. And Dallas Massie, a retired state trooper who's the acting police chief in Nome, says he's heard nothing about aliens.

I learn all this from the blog of an Anchorage Daily News reporter, Kyle Hopkins, who says about 20 people have indeed disappeared in the area since the 1960s, and writes: "The FBI stepped in, reviewing two dozen cases, eventually determining that excessive alcohol consumption and the winter climate were a common link in many of the cases. Some of the dead were killed by exposure or from falling off a jetty into the frigid Snake River."

All right, then, "The Fourth Kind" is a pseudo-documentary like "Paranormal Activity" and "The Blair Witch Project." But unlike those two, which just forge ahead with their home video cameras, this one encumbers its flow with ceaseless reminders that it is a dramatization of real events. When we see Will Patton, for example, a subtitle informs us: "Will Patton, actor." Oh! I already know well that Will Patton and Elias Koteas are actors, and Jovovich identifies herself at the start. I wish they'd had gotten a really big-name star. It might have been funny to read, "Bruce Willis: Actor."

Now here's a good question. In the film we see the "real" footage of "actual" client interviews with "Abigail." Why would an real psychologist release confidential videotapes to a horror film, especially tapes showing her clients having seizures? Who are those "actual clients," really? The end credits don't thank them, although Jovovich's intro claims to explain them. Remember, even in a movie "based on a true story" (like "Fargo"), nothing before the actual end credits needs to be true. You want to watch those credits like a hawk. My theory is, the "actual" clients are played by the actors also playing their fictional versions. I can't be sure of that. Think about it.

Jovovich is good, actually. It's a broad melodramatic role with lots of screaming, and after two "Resident Evil" movies, she's good at being an endangered heroine, and makes a competent psychologist. And a successful one, too. Her log-cabin Arts & Crafts office looks like it was surely subleased from a (Bulgarian) millionaire. We see there's a lot of business in Nome for a specialist in owl-staring.

Inside her lives a great hurt, and also her child, conceived in a rape.

4 stars for that jim carrey/zemeckis 3D abortion

robert zemeckis' four-star movies according to ebert:

a christmas carol
the polar express
forrest gump
who framed roger rabbit

Used Cars gets two stars, for being too complex.

imagine if someone made a 3D movie with boobs in it

lollll

What was that Ebert quotation about how you can't rationalize boners and laughing?

That 'Roger Ebert: On Boobs' excerpt that Omar posted reminds me of Simon going on for a paragraph about Barbara Bach not being naked in the Spy Who Loved Me. And I was too harsh about Ebert upthread, he's not all bad.

What was that Ebert quotation about how you can't rationalize boners and laughing?

Probably not unlike this quote from Tynan: "Western man, especially the Western critic, still finds it very hard to go into print and say: 'I recommend you to go and see this because it gave me an erection.'"

"Who Framed Roger Rabbit" fully deserves 4 stars, btw.

i agree. that movie is all times.

Cunga, the quotation I'm thinking of is def. along those lines, but Ebert parallels it with not being able to consciously help what we find funny.

You guys, he just gave "2012" 3.5 stars.

Ebert is not able to consciously help which movies he rates highly.

ebert : movies :: ILM : music

not that this is a bad thing

bet this would have gotten like a 1.5 if there'd been a tsunami a few weeks ago

Bet it would've gotten 4 stars if it featured a CGI cartoon cat.

People who pay any attention to Ebert's star ratings are morons. They're a joke and a provocation. Just read the damn reviews

but they're a joke too

I'm hoping 2012 is worth 3 1/2 stars. That's what I would have given the Day After Tomorrow if I were a reviewer.

The bottom line is: The movie gives you your money's worth. Is it a masterpiece? No. Is it one of the year's best? No. Does Emmerich hammer it together with his elbows from parts obtained from the Used Disaster Movie Store? Yes. But is it about as good as a movie in this genre can be? Yes. No doubt it will inflame fears about our demise on Dec. 21, 2012. I'm worried, too. I expect that to be even worse than Y2K.

^^^written by Donald Rumsfeld

Yeah, Ebert is all about rating movies on the basis of how well they achieve what they intend within their particular genre.

jaymc otm---i think it's why i trust him as a reviewer, while may not agreeing with him. if that makes sense.

like if i am deciding between two movies i will read ebert to get an accurate picture of what to expect, since he's been consistent in my experience.

i kind of agree with that assessment tbh

(of 2012)

bet this would have gotten like a 1.5 if there'd been a tsunami a few weeks ago

― da croupier, Friday, November 13, 2009 2:54 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

lol totally

would have gotten half a star if the earth fell out from underneath entire continents, killing billions in one fell swoop

Malaysia is a mostly Muslim country with a flag that looks a lot like ours: It has the red and white stripes of the American flag, and a blue field in the upper left corner, which instead of stars displays Islamic symbols, the star and crescent. Malaysia is home to the Petronas Towers of Kuala Lumpur, the world's tallest buildings. But you get the point. If the Malaysians made a comedy about the assassination of the president of the United States because of his opposition to slavery, it would seem approximately as funny to us as "Zoolander" would seem to them. I realize I am getting all serious on you.

hahahaha that last sentence is fantastic

he was so off the money on that review. wasn't he one of the dudes championing the "death of irony" after 9/11, too?

of course he was

the whole review is pretty "rly?"

I also admire the ruthlessness with which "Zoolander" points out that the fashion industry does indeed depend on child labor. The back-to-school clothes of American kids are largely made by Third World kids who don't go to school. In fact, the more you put yourself into the shoes (if he had any) of a Muslim 12-year-old in a sport-shirt factory, the more you might understand why he resents rich Americans, and might be offended by a movie about the assasination of his prime minister (if he had the money to go to a movie). Kids like that don't grow up to think of America as fondly as the people who designed his flag.

basically the movie was funny, except for this one detail that could inspire anti-american sentiment and let me explain how.

Obviously, in times like these, we need a little escapism. "Hagrid," the usually sane critic at Ain't It Cool News, went to see "Zoolander" feeling "a comedy is just what I needed, and, what I feel, everybody needs at this time." His verdict? "It's a perfect film to help people forget everything for a few hours, and it's gonna be huge." Well, you know, I wanted to forget, but the movie kept making me remember.

dude really shouldn't be throwing slights like "usually sane" around

guys Zoolander sucks

"Hagrid"

but only because it jokes about assassinating the prime minister of malaysia

xpost

I remember that review being v. wtf.

And the Turkey Time thread reminded me of another great wtf review from Ebert:

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are in love and plan to get married, as you already know unless you are sealed off from all media, in which case you are not reading this review, so put it down. Because they are a famous couple, starring in a movie romance, we expect something conventional and predictable and that is not what we get from "Gigli." The movie tries to do something different, thoughtful, and a little daring with their relationship, and although it doesn't quite work, maybe the movie is worth seeing for some scenes that are really very good.

Consider the matching monologues. They've gotten into an argument over the necessity of the penis, which she, as a lesbian, feels is an inferior device for delivering sexual pleasure. He delivers an extended lecture on the use, necessity and perfect design of the appendage. It is a rather amazing speech, the sort of thing some moviegoers are probably going to want to memorize. Then she responds. She is backlit, dressed in skintight workout clothes, doing yoga, and she continues to stretch and extend and bend and pose as she responds with her speech in praise of the vagina. When she is finished, Reader, the vagina has won, hands down. It is so rare to find dialogue of such originality and wit, so well written, that even though we know the exchange basically involves actors showing off, they do it so well, we let them.

wtf

Reader, please!

the vagina has won, hands down

que otm

the vagina has won, hands down.

http://i33.tinypic.com/343p43o.gif

I'm not the first person to say or notice this but Ebert's reviews of movies like Gigli seem to be really dependent on what kind of mood he's in.

x-post

I wish he was my dad.

yeah i'm claiming that

Hahaha I was wondering "How long until somebody uses 'the vagina has won, hands down' for a display name?"

"I am the actress Milla Jovovich," Jovovich tells us at the outset,"

would have been better had she been played by meryl streep

'I recommend you to go and see this because it gave me an erection.'

I seem to recall Siskel, in broadcast language, recommending a film along these lines; it might've been Henry & June.

"i recommend this film because it gave me [top hat on ebert's lap suddenly pops up]"

xp Odd, because apparently Siskel is the one who said, "Two things are not debatable: eroticism, and comedy. If you don't think it's sexy, or funny, there's no way I can change your mind."

that is...otm? it is def the crux of like 50% of nonracism/tipping ilx threads

maybe not "debatable" but i still like to read about how and why and whether people find things funny.

ebertchicago Say what you will, Kool-Aid is an excellent beverage.
about 1 hour ago from web

eventually twitter turns everyone into norm macdonald's impression of larry king

haha

eventually twitter turns everyone into norm macdonald's impression of larry king

― Kenny G. Saxgarden (some dude), Saturday, November 14, 2009 5:54 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i was thinking the exact same thing

*Sigh* The Bodhi Tree was where I met Angie Dickinson. We were adding to our Tarot Card collections. http://j.mp/8pi4EC
17 minutes ago from web

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100113/REVIEWS/100119992

"The Lovely Bones" is a deplorable film with this message: If you're a 14-year-old girl who has been brutally raped and murdered by a serial killer, you have a lot to look forward to. You can get together in heaven with the other teenage victims of the same killer, and gaze down in benevolence upon your family members as they mourn you and realize what a wonderful person you were. Sure, you miss your friends, but your fellow fatalities come dancing to greet you in a meadow of wildflowers, and how cool is that?

Whoa. I read that entire paragraph in Ebert's voice but it seems "how cool is that?" is forever tainted by that Weezer song.

as my mind skips right to Rivers singing the last four words.

haha.

On the pleasures of making out.

aww

It's true! i've even made out with girls and would do so again if they werent expecting more.

The nerve of these girls expecting more.

It's the teevee!

Ebert totally OTM there. Making out is criminally underrated.

Between this and his letter to Rush, he's on fire this week.

Roffle

hahahahahahaha

awesome

is that Ned wallpaper?

It's amazing how I get about.

http://www.esquire.com/features/roger-ebert-0310

Wow. Is that really him?

It is.

The part where he and his wife realize that the tribute show clips for Gene Siskel have been taken down is a hell of a suckerpunch.

Beautiful piece.

I should take notes when I watch movies - I know I'd get a lot more out of them

wait is that al yankovic thing in good humor or is he being an asshole?

Ebert is waiting for a Scottish company called CereProc to give him some of his former voice back. He found it on the Internet, where he spends a lot of his time. CereProc tailors text-to-speech software for voiceless customers so that they don't all have to sound like Stephen Hawking. They have catalog voices — Heather, Katherine, Sarah, and Sue — with regional Scottish accents, but they will also custom-build software for clients who had the foresight to record their voices at length before they lost them. Ebert spent all those years on TV, and he also recorded four or five DVD commentaries in crystal-clear digital audio. The average English-speaking person will use about two thousand different words over the course of a given day. CereProc is mining Ebert's TV tapes and DVD commentaries for those words, and the words it cannot find, it will piece together syllable by syllable. When CereProc finishes its work, Roger Ebert won't sound exactly like Roger Ebert again, but he will sound more like him than Alex does.

genuinely marveling at the wonders of technology here. so crazy

this feature was BEAUTIFUL.

ehh I feel it was overwritten in a typical english major style. but the content was good.

"typical english major style"

I should take notes when I watch movies - I know I'd get a lot more out of them

Not sure of this is a pisstake or not, but it's an annoying parctice. As the Mekons said, WATCH THE FILM.

more than one way to skin a cat morbs

DYAO prefers his/her features written by Biology graduates with a minor in German Philosophy

Morbs wld it bother you if I knit during a movie bcz I kind of can't watch movies now w/out knitting during.

stevie: no. I can understand *occasionally* pausing and scribbling while watching a DVD -- I do that sometimes -- but if you're notetaking during a 'live' screening, you are NOT immersed in the experience and you are missing things while you are writing. It's like skipping every tenth or twentieth page in a novel.

I'm talking about critics, obv, knit away

<3

I had a friend who was not a critic but wld rage out at you if you wanted to use the bathroom during a movie (even at home), or anything other than look reverently and solemnly at the screen 100% of the time. I figured you were saner than this dude.

i have to take notes coz i have to do a p detailed synopsis, and it kind of sucks; otoh, s.times it's useful. i think pauline kael did it.

i bring a digital record and just speak into it every time i think of an important observation

stevie: no. I can understand *occasionally* pausing and scribbling while watching a DVD -- I do that sometimes -- but if you're notetaking during a 'live' screening, you are NOT immersed in the experience and you are missing things while you are writing.

Tell that to Kael, who filled legal pads with hastily written notes and had amazing recall powers (remember she only saw movies ONCE).

guys, you have to remember morbs takes all his notes BEFORE seeing the movie

zing

stevie: no. I can understand *occasionally* pausing and scribbling while watching a DVD -- I do that sometimes -- but if you're notetaking during a 'live' screening, you are NOT immersed in the experience and you are missing things while you are writing. It's like skipping every tenth or twentieth page in a novel.

yeah tbh i took notes all the time when i was reviewing screenings, though i'm pretty good at writing without taking my eye off the screen

Also in press screenings the prod co tries to give notes - these must be subverted. Luckily the kind of people who need to take notes at a film do so in situations where everyone will be.

Adding to the 'this is a beautiful feature' stans.

i remember missing the ending of josie & the pussycats at a screening because i was desperate to pee, and kept thinking "the movie's sure to end any second now" and then after a number of false endings i just got up and went, thinking, "no way it could end between now and end of pee-break" and well you know what happened next

You pissed on the seat.