Topic: RIP Roger Ebert
Love him or hate him, there's no denying that he was a powerful, unparalleled presence in the film world. I for one loved him, and he was a huge inspiration to me. He'll be sorely missed.
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Love him or hate him, there's no denying that he was a powerful, unparalleled presence in the film world. I for one loved him, and he was a huge inspiration to me. He'll be sorely missed.
Damn, and he'd just announced his semi-retirement yesterday. I wonder if he was more ill than he let on, or if stepping down from being a full-time reviewer just triggered the "I'm done here" instinct.
He said he was looking forward to only reviewing movies he wanted to see.... instead, the guy's last reviews were for GI Joe and the goddam Host. Truly, he died for our sins.
Damnit, this is the worst. It's not like he slowly aged and was losing it, he was still on top of his game and juggling like 6 different projects, and a week later, dead. just fuck this
He's the very definition of "inspirational." He lost his voice and his freaking jaw to cancer, and didn't slow down his workflow for even a second. Hell, like Trey said, he announced his semi-retirement yesterday. He was a force to be reckoned with for sure.
oh, correction: Roeper reviewed GI Joe on Ebert's site. Ebert's last review really was The Host.
/goddammitsomuch
RIP ROGER EBERT 1942 - 2013
The Chicago Tribune's cartoon tribute to Roger Ebert
So sad, he has pretty much followed me from I first logged into the internet. I did not always agree with him but he was to me consistent and I always respected his opinion.
Will we be getting an intermission on the old maestro?
Last edited by AshDigital (2013-04-05 10:09:28)
Wow, its one of the weirdest things to read. It sounds cold, but I know it was inevitable, but I really didn't expect it.
RIP Roger
I have said it before and I'll say it again- fuck Cancer!
RIP, Mr Ebert.
My favorite memory, back from the PBS Sneak Previews days, was his review of Halloween 3. Siskel hated it, and Ebert taunted him with the song.
"Come on, you mean you didn't like the jingle? [singing] 'Five more days till Halloween...'"
I was so very disappointed on seeing that his written review trashed the film
http://www.theonion.com/articles/roger- … mph,31945/
Great, now I'm crying.
I had a these thoughts after hearing the news:
1) If you stopped the average person on the street, there's probably only a handful of movie critics that person would know by name. Ebert was one of them. That's significant.
2) Even when I disagreed with Ebert, I admired his approach. There's even an example or two of him changing his mind, or having his mind changed by a sound argument, which seems rare among big-name critics. Also, he was a lifelong newspaperman who managed to write intelligently about movies while keeping his prose accessible. When I stop and think about it, these are the things I actually liked most about him, not so much that I tended to agree with his assessments.
3) As has been mentioned, cancer is a motherfucker. It also whacked Siskel.
4) He seemed to see criticism as a conversation about movies, not a war of contesting aesthetic values. On TV, his tone of voice often carried the implication that "this is my opinion." Other prominent critics, from Kael to Armond White, reliably adopted a tone that suggested their opinion was gospel, the objective truth that you'd be silly to disagree with. It's a tone designed to end the conversation rather than start it. I didn't see him adopt that tone as much as others. (Although he did do it to Siskel a lot back in the day. It was their rapport.)
5) His memoir wasn't bad, but this e-book, about Siskel & Ebert's behind-the-scenes shenanigans, is goddamned fascinating.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/roger- … mph,31945/
Great, now I'm crying.
It always amazes me how classy those dumbasses can be sometimes.
I can honestly say these two were a big part of why I love movies. I watched them on Chicago public television in the '70s right thru to their move to network TV in the '80s. They made it clear that it was okay for reasonable people to disagree, and it's okay to love cheesy movies as long as you check out the classics.
But they were both still very wrong about Anaconda being good. What a piece of crap.
One of my favourite Ebert quotes was this gem 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.”
And this one on B.A.P.S.-
"My guess is that African Americans will be offended by the movie, and whites will be embarrassed. The movie will bring us all together, I imagine, in paralyzing boredom."
And then these-
"I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more entertaining than The Brown Bunny."
"The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented."
"Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way."
We must not forget, naturally, that he wrote the script for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
"This is my happening and it freaks me out!"
Its funny that you have the Battlefield Earth review and I just watched another one from SFDebris.
Ah, to be united with anger towards a movie
One of my favourite Ebert quotes was this gem 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.”
I recall reading that. I never forgot it. I actually forgot what movie he was reviewing, but I always remembered that bit about barrels.
And that review he wrote on The Brown Bunny was withering. It actually made me want to see the movie.
Attention all people responsible for my love of film in some way: Please stop dying.
Ebert's last review really was The Host.
Yeah I saw that it was the last one on his Twitter feed and just thought, what a shame.
Cool. He must be just returning to Chicago from Europe via British Airways with a Pan Am connection in NYC. Probably back from the Cannes Film Festival.
http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/1 … onder.html
GOOD NEWS! His last review wasn't The Host. He wrote a review of Terrence Malick's latest, To The Wonder, before he passed. The review itself can't be read without an account, but I'm content with the knowledge that this is the film he went out on.
Was about to post that: http://rogerebert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art … 09984/1023
Really fitting somehow to go out on a Malick film, I feel happier now
It is kind of a relief that that was his final review. He liked Malick. It's like the difference between someone's last meal being stale saltines and someone's last meal being... whatever the culinary version of Terrence Malick is. I don't know. Something gourmet and fluffy, vaguely European in appearance but decidedly American in flavor.
Movies Roger Ebert really, really hated
Armagedon? Really Ebert, really???
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