Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer • Hacker News Board

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#91

Post by Hannan » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 10:59 PM UTC

gnosis wrote: post #74

JPKab wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. The Fitzgerald quote is amazing. Thanks for sharing. As a kid growing up in a poor, rural community, I wasn't exposed to much intellectual writing. The exception was the reprint in the local paper of Ebert's movie reviews, and of course seeing him on one of the two channels that came in on the antenna. When so many around me thought that being dissatisfied with the intellectual equivalent of McDonald's was eliti…

It's a sad comment on society that Ebert is considered an intellectual.

The man won a Pulitzer... how high is the bar you're setting, exactly?

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#92

Post by Vivtek » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 11:07 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #69

jpxxx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, stop, I can personally name forty people working on it right now. Cancer is not a single thing, and progress is made on every front, every day.

I won't challenge you for their names, but if so many people are working on the issue, why don't we see any progress? Sure we have 30 ways to cure cancer in rats, but the best we can do for humans is either to poison them with chemicals (some of them radioactive, no less) or laser beams that are only slightly less likely to kill normal cells than cancer cells. Meanwhile we throw a fortune at the problem and throw a f…

No. Just, no. The progress is freaking immense. Childhood leukemia used to be a death sentence - now? 95% survival. That's just one. My stepdad just got cured of prostate cancer, and no, not with weird-ass stuff either. Incremental progress. I've got a cousin who's surviving breast cancer.

Cancer is way, way weirder than anybody thought. It's not a single-bullet thing. Cancer actually evolves right inside you, for one thing. They can actually chart the genome of different parts of the tumor and trace the cell lineages. So any one drug has different effectiveness against different parts of the cancer.

So there's been slow, steady progress over the last couple of decades, and survival rates are way better than they used to be - and just getting better. But "treating cancer" is kind of like "treating viruses" - you need a whole array of techniques. And we're building that array. Nothing's stopping anybody.

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#93

Post by jfb » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 11:08 PM UTC

jfb wrote: post #49

stcredzero wrote: post #48

A lot of young people look at his scathing wit and try with varying degrees to emulate that. His hallmark, and one of the fundamental sources of his scathing wit was his integrity. If you're careful about writing/saying what's true , and if you're doing it because writing/saying what's the truth is your motivation, then you can be great like he was. If you're just after attention and want to be known as a scathing wi…

The great thing about him, to me, was his unabashed love of movies; and all he wanted to do was share this with his readers. He introduced me to the work of Werner Herzog, and through that, a whole huge world of movies that I might not otherwise have seen. Thanks, Robert, and RIP.

"Robert"? Sheesh.

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#94

Post by apas » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 11:10 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #13

Fitzgerald said "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Ebert seemed to have a knack for thinking all the thoughts simultaneously, and then getting their product onto a page: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind.... http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2013/03/how_i_am_a_roman_cat... One of t…

Well, Aristotle said something very similar:

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#95

Post by tsotha » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 11:11 PM UTC

xxpor wrote: post #11

Wait what? I thought I had just read this morning the cancer had returned. I guess he really pushed on til the very end.

I was wondering about that too. He takes a leave of absence and dies two days later? Makes me wonder if there was some event (like a stroke) related to his cancer but not the cancer itself.

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#96

Post by jellicle » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 11:16 PM UTC

Ebert was a great film critic, but oddly, no one here seems to be talking about his one gigantic blind spot, which is his enduring and impenetrable belief that video games are not art, could never be art, and have no artistic merit whatsoever. His half-hearted apology - "I still believe this, but I should never have said so." - is in no way a retraction or backdown from that belief.

This is totally wrong. Movies are a subset of video games. Eventually, Ebert's remarks on video games will stand as a laughable monument to a by-gone era.

So. Ebert had the potential to be the first great video game critic, ever. His massive background in movies would have served him well. But he didn't have the fortitude to make the jump.

Who's going to be the first great video game critic ever?

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#97

Post by tptacek » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 11:20 PM UTC

chjj wrote: post #53

wcfields wrote: post #12

. I'll just leave one of my favorite quotes from Ebert about a movie that is actually one of my all time favorite comedy. "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." [1] - Roger Ebert review of "Freddy Got Fingered"; April 20, 2001 [1] http…

I'm just going to link to one of my favorite reviews of his. You can __taste__ the contempt he has for this movie and all its characters in his words: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19... I'll also never forget when Ebert lambasted that ridiculous "Benjamin Button" movie. At the time, I felt like he was the only one on earth that agreed with me. The film recieved nothing but praise, and I w…

What do you ask a snowman inhabited by your father? After all, Dad's been dead a year. What's it like on the other side? Is there a heaven? Big Bang or steady state? When will the NBA lockout end? Elvis--dead? What's it like standing out on the lawn in the cold all night? Ever meet any angels? Has anybody else ever come back as a snowman? Do you have to eat? If you do, then what? Any good reporter could talk to that snowman for five minutes and come back with some great quotes.

But Charlie, self-centered little movie child, is more concerned with how Jack Frost (his father's real name) can help him. His dad has been dead for a year and comes back as a snowman and all he can think of is using the snowman to defeat the school bully in a snowball fight. Also, the kid tries to keep Dad from melting. (What kind of a half-track miracle is it if a snowman can talk, but it can't keep from melting?) Does the snowman have any advice for his son? Here is a typical conversation: Jack Frost: "You da man!" Charlie: "No, YOU da man!" Jack: "No, I da SNOWMAN!"

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#98

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 11:29 PM UTC

jfb wrote: post #93

jfb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great thing about him, to me, was his unabashed love of movies; and all he wanted to do was share this with his readers. He introduced me to the work of Werner Herzog, and through that, a whole huge world of movies that I might not otherwise have seen. Thanks, Robert, and RIP.

"Robert"? Sheesh.

I do that too. Take the 1st part of the 1st name and glom it onto the last part of the last name.

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#99

Post by hristov » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 11:30 PM UTC

jellicle wrote: post #96

Ebert was a great film critic, but oddly, no one here seems to be talking about his one gigantic blind spot, which is his enduring and impenetrable belief that video games are not art, could never be art, and have no artistic merit whatsoever. His half-hearted apology - "I still believe this, but I should never have said so." - is in no way a retraction or backdown from that belief. This is totally wrong. Movies are…

Nobody really cares about that. He never really got video games but he was old and nobody expected him to. Also, only pretentious fools spend anytime arguing about what is or isn't art.

I think we will have to look for great video game critics from our generation.

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#100

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 11:33 PM UTC

rodgerd wrote: post #76

sho_hn wrote: post #24

While it might be cheap to remember a critic by something as sensationalist as a scorcher - and Ebert was of a higher caliber than to build a career on the entertainment value of them - his review of "Highlander 2" has been a favorite of mine for its good-natured bickering about the gaping holes in the film's logic: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19... (Cache: http://web.archive.org/web/201…

Your final paragraph was Ebert's great value for me: there are no shortage of critics who can tell me interesting things about the canon of great films; there are almost none amongst them who can also meet less elevated fare on its own ground.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, Ebert wasn't trying to impress anyone. He told the truth as he saw it. Keep doing that while being a good writer, and people will recognize you for it.