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.

this "observation" just speaks to my midwestern snobbery, but there is something so fucking /berkeley/ about both of these dudes

I hung out at Clover's place once. He had a big ass tree sprouting up in the middle of the living room. I've always been envious of that for some reason.

being a regular film reviewer is one of those jobs that seemed like a dream job when i was younger but now seems kind of hellish. makes me think of that kael quip about retiring: "the prospect of sitting through another oliver stone movie was too much."

i guess that's part of marcus's problem, the other part is at some point he decided he was a Cultural Critic and began to write grandiloquent tomes connecting medieval heretics with the Sex Pistols etc. it's as though the subject matter that had preoccupied him as a critic was no longer ambitious or arty enough.

― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, July 11, 2014 10:01 PM (44 minutes ago)

i think this is unfair -- the stuff GM wrote about punk was interesting and unpredictable in a way that his "old weird america" stuff has never been (at least for me), and the pieces collected in "in the fascist bathroom" are some of the sharpest and most engaging criticism i know. i won't defend all of marcus's stuff and he definitely has his ridiculous side but i think "lipstick traces" is less pretentious and more fun in execution than it sounds if you're describing its premise to someone.

xgau never even got it together enough to write a book.

that's true of a lot of critics, including some very good ones.

"the prospect of sitting through another oliver stone movie was too much."

sister, i feel you.

and she's saying that after wall street, not wall street: money never sleeps.

http://b.vimeocdn.com/ts/230/031/230031495_640.jpg

what up yo

btw i love this review of clover's first book of poetry

So my buddy Pete finds a bag of books outside his apartment one morning and takes it inside. A bunch of poetry books were in it, including this one by this dude Joshua Clover, who looks like he's trying to be a rock star on the photo on that little flap at the back of the book (shirt unbuttoned, dark shades, standing on his deck he was probably up partying all night after winning that Whitman prize).. I wasn't expecting much, poetry's not my thing, hated it ever since Whitman and Dickinson in high school, but there were some poems I could relate to, like the ones about the Gulf War (which I was in, Airborne all the way) though it kind of made me want to take this Clover dude to the wall since I was there and saw a lot of really crazy stuff and he's back at his little graduate school drinking coffee, hitting on my girlfriend, writing his poems, I think they're against the war. There's also a poem that you have to turn the book sidewise to read it, which is pretty different and cool I guess. All in all, this isn't too bad for poetry but I wonder if the poems would be better if Clover didn't strut so much? Like, de-frost your hair and see how that goes.

Clover's book about 1989 isn't bad, albeit sullied in places by academic prose (inevitable) and by this point you must like the Marcus-influenced free-ranging correspondence of ideas to even pay attention.

btw i love this review of clover's first book of poetry

http://o.onionstatic.com/images/10/10446/3x4/120.jpg

Clover's book about 1989 isn't bad, albeit sullied in places by academic prose (inevitable) and by this point you must like the Marcus-influenced free-ranging correspondence of ideas to even pay attention.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, July 12, 2014 9:43 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yeah, i like parts of that book. i have such divided opinions on that dude, my reaction is often "this is coyly pretentious and completely unconvincing as any of kind of historical argument, but boy is this guy ever brilliant"

sometimes even i can appreciate brilliant sophistry, especially when the writer has a real way with words. but i wouldn't mistake his critical writing for anything lasting.

i had exactly the same feeling about michael rogin and a host of other academic cultural critics.

This film was good.

file under "curb yr enthusiasm'

http://www.thewrap.com/josh-gad-to-play-roger-ebert-opposite-will-ferrell-in-russ-roger-go-beyond/

I watched that Ebert documentary on CNN last night. Having gone through this long terminal illness thing with my dad - including multiply surgeries - it was hard to take. It's like, I've had too many hospitals in my life lately to watch this.

I mean, I've been watching Ebert on TV since I was a kid. Hard to watch that without feeling really sad, it showed more of his illness than his life.

Winterbottom may direct Meyer-Ebert movie

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/michael-winterbottom-eyed-to-direct-will-ferrells-russ-roger-go-beyond-exclusive-1201476957/

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/russ-and-roger-josh-gad-roger-ebert-1201582931/

http://www.avclub.com/article/new-chicago-musical-tells-love-story-roger-and-cha-226363

New song by Clem Snide, based on an anecdote told by Ebert's wife in an interview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ToUdq0v-tU

(An appreciation/explanation from Chaz Ebert is here: https://www.rogerebert.com/chazs-blog/thank-you-clem-snide-for-your-song-entitled-roger-ebert)

Ebert was a false moralist who would let a film get away with anything if it had an air of respectability. He said movies were empathy machines but called Tom Green retarded when he saw his. He'd love South Park if it was directed by Sidney Lumet https://t.co/GSapw8K0xU

— malcolm (@bitchfacepalace) June 23, 2020

Pretty sure he never called Tom Green "retarded."

Eep.

Green plays Gord Brody, a 28-year-old who lives at home with his father (Rip Torn), who despises him, and his mother (Julie Hagerty), who wrings her hands a lot. He lives in a basement room still stocked with his high school stuff, draws cartoons and dreams of becoming an animator. Gord would exhaust a psychiatrist's list of diagnoses. He is unsocialized, hostile, manic and apparently retarded. Retarded? How else to explain a sequence in which a Hollywood animator tells him to "get inside his animals," and he skins a stag and prances around dressed in the coat, covered with blood?

I mean, he's calling Green's character "retarded," which I know isn't the point...

Gonna go out on a limb and say Sidney Lumet would probably not have directed South Park.

somebody dig up Ebert and let him know he's canceled.

Not gonna defend Ebert's use of the word in the least, he should have known way better by that point. That said, is the pandemic just driving Twitter to dig up anyone they can find for the "gotcha, you're canceled" move now? I've seen so many things this week that are trotted out like surprise - cf Twitter suddenly discovering Howard Stern said racist and misogynistic bullshit in the 90s. You don't say. I mean, I'm all for celebs rightfully getting called out for their bullshit, but with a dearth of celebs out and about to put their feet in their mouths in the present, folks are digging in the archives for people to cancel.

Still wondering what a "false moralist" is.

Actually, I'm not, because I'm pretty much at the point where I don't care what anyone on Twitter thinks of anything, ever, even when I agree with them.

he should have known way better by that point

I was still a moronic teen when Freddy Got Fingered came out but I recall the word being vaguely acceptable, albeit somewhat edgy, in public discourse at the time.

Maybe I'm misremembering how late it hung around, but I felt like by 2001 is definitely well into the era when it was finally starting to get shamed out of use.

It was on its way out in the wokest, most avant-garde circles, but no one else batted an eye. I think the late 00s is when (almost) everyone followed suit. Ime, of course.

"Twitter suddenly discovering Howard Stern said racist and misogynistic bullshit in the 90s"

Stern built his rep saying such things in the '80s.

See, for instance, this WaPo article from 2011:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/why-you-shouldnt-use-the-r-word/2011/06/06/AGISc3nH_story.html

xp

Tropic Thunder was 2008, fwiw. And I don't think I've heard it as a punchline since.

Yeah, I guess it hung around a lot later than I thought.

Norm MacDonald still says it

Well people still say it, of course. I just meant from non-comedians who should be better informed, like Ebert.

Gonna step out on a limb and say I think we can give the long-deceased man a pass on this one.

Ebert was a false moralist who would let a film get away with anything if it had an air of respectability.

His crusade against Blue Velvet would seem to put the lie to this statement

“ He'd love South Park if it was directed by Sidney Lumet”

This is an incredibly stupid thing to think and an even stupider thing to write down

“He would have loved Freddy Got Fingered if it was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer”

Lynch wasn't 'respectable' to middlebrows in '86

wait what? When Blue Velvet played at AMC theaters to solid box office that fall?

Even Peter Travers liked it https://people.com/archive/picks-and-pans-review-blue-velvet-vol-26-no-12/

iirc Ebert loved trashy exploitation movies and may have even made a couple

I've thought this over carefully and I think it's fair to say that Ebert was no saint.

(xpost) Was going to say--friend of and collaborator with Russ Meyer. If Malcolm Twitter thinks it'll make the world a better place, I'm sure he can have a field day.

Ebert was a false moralist who would let a film get away with anything if it had an air of respectability.

His crusade against Blue Velvet would seem to put the lie to this statement

― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Wednesday, June 24, 2020 6:04 PM (three hours ago)

this was my thought too

I know eric just posted that tweet for the lols but if you're gonna try to cancel ebert you're gonna have to come a little more correct than that clown shit. easily one of the decentest major public figures I can remember

have been reading some of his later reviews, have come to respect him

That's what I think of before anything else: the way he continued to put himself out there those last few years. I would have crawled under a rock and died if that'd been me. And that's not even mentioning the writing he did towards the end (only a little of which I've read), where he thought about his life and his condition and managed to come to terms with all of it. So cut him some slack. And the Dylan line: "Cursing the dead who can't answer him back."

Yeah all the writing and blogging he did towards the end was really good imo. I assume a lot of it got used in his memoir? (I never read it.) The thing about him being a better writer than critic is true but that never bothered me.

ive been reading his ‘a kiss is still a kiss’ book.. never really knew he did writing like this, theyre magazine profile pieces from the 70s and 80s.. the celebs are all strikingly, refreshingly candid & ebert is skilled @ in particular capturing dialogue esp given he sez he doesnt use a tape recorder

(He made them up)