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Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

suntimes.com

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Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#21

Post by danso »

Ebert made his name in movie criticism but he was one of my favorite writers, period. I've read him since I was in junior high...it sounds silly now, but the way he would give four stars to what seemed like just a shallow blockbuster action movie but then justify it for doing shallow action wonderfully...that taught me a lot about how to judge things on what they purport to do, rather than just against what you, the writer, prefers.

As good as his four-star reviews were, I still loved reading his 0 to 1 star reviews. He was at great at ripping movies as he was as exalting them.

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#22

Post by deltron »

tptacek wrote: post #14
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…

"It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and [Vincent Gallo] will still be the director of The Brown Bunny."

Ebert really was an eloquent wordsmith.

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#24

Post by sho_hn »

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/20121026130620/http://rogerebert....)

I think what set Ebert apart is that he consistently judged films in the context of their ambitions. An action film was good so long as it had effective action; films purporting to be more cerebral in nature had rather more to answer for. He resisted the ivory tower most other writers with his level of film knowledge would climb.

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#25

Post by jpxxx »

suyash wrote: post #15

Someone needs to find 100% cure against this deadly disease. So much money is spent on cancer research every year and what are the results..almost zero.

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.

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#26

Post by cafard »

smacktoward wrote: post #17
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…

My favorite line of his is the one he ended his review of 1996's Mad Dog Time ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Dog_Time ) with: " Mad Dog Time should be cut up to provide free ukelele picks for the poor."

Not half bad, but drawing on a line of S.J. Perelman's about a movie that "... provided a snug return for its investors, and was retired to be cut into ukulele picks."

And if you like entertaining reviews, the "Cloudland Revisited" pieces from The Most of S.J. Perelman are well worth the price.

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#27

Post by crapshoot101 »

From the THR review - part of the reason I liked Ebert - he wasn't fundementally getting his rocks off on being a cynical asshole:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/roger-ebert-dies-film-... “I am, beneath everything else, a fan. I was fixed in this mode as a young boy and am awed by people who take the risks of performance.”

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#28

Post by leejoramo »

I can think of no better way to learn about the art and history of movies than to read through Ebert's Great Film articles. He did such a great job of putting films in context. I loved how his "Great Films" articles always had a good mix of films from the first movies to recent years.

http://rogerebert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=REVIEWS...

Re: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

#29

Post by tptacek »

jusben1369 wrote: post #18
tptacek wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and [Vincent Gallo] will still be the director of The Brown Bunny."

Which is stealing/paraphrasing Winston Churchill "yes I may be drunk. But my Dear in the morning I'll be sober and you'll still be ugly" or something close to that.

At the risk of dissecting the frog, the wit is in the assumptive twist about The Brown Bunny.

He was right, by the way: he did indeed get thin (he stopped being able to eat after losing his jaw to a surgical mishap), and Vincent Gallo is indeed still the director of The Brown Bunny.

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