ejp626 Posted April 6, 2013 Report Posted April 6, 2013 It's always hard to tell how sincere anybody is, but I certainly liked Bringing Out the Dead, and I don't find it impossible that Ebert genuinely found something of interest in it. (Not that I had a straight line to his thoughts, for sure.) But Ebert certainly didn't feel that he had to follow the crowd, and definitely by the time that particular review came out he wouldn't have had any need to suck up to Coppola. Quote
JSngry Posted April 6, 2013 Report Posted April 6, 2013 Maybe Ebert felt the wsame way about Coppola as I do about Sonny Rollins. Or Wayne Shorter. Or even about the last few seasons of The Cosby Show, when it was obvious that they were just making stuff up to keep the show going because the original premise had more or less been rendered irrelevant as the kids got older. But there was nevertheless a story in motion there, and I watched and enjoyed anyhow, just because I had bought in so hard when the story began that damned if I wasn't going to stick around to see how it ended. Or maybe he had those feelings and at the same time had a good business sense about what might yet lie ahead. No harm in that, I think. No compromising basic sentiment, jsut positioning it in such a way as to maybe yield benefit further down the road. Nice work if you can get it, right? Or maybe he was a shameless manipulator who fooled everybody. It happens. But me, I really don't care that much. I always dug the Siskel-Ebert thing and used to like Siskel more until he left, and then I realized how cool Ebert really was. And now they are both dead, so, yeah, the list of Live People I Have Dug In My Lifetime Who Are Now Dead grows yet again. Quote
Larry Kart Posted April 6, 2013 Report Posted April 6, 2013 It's always hard to tell how sincere anybody is, but I certainly liked Bringing Out the Dead, and I don't find it impossible that Ebert genuinely found something of interest in it. (Not that I had a straight line to his thoughts, for sure.) But Ebert certainly didn't feel that he had to follow the crowd, and definitely by the time that particular review came out he wouldn't have had any need to suck up to Coppola. That was Scorsese's movie, not Coppola's. Quote
John Litweiler Posted April 6, 2013 Report Posted April 6, 2013 One of my few encounters with Roger Ebert was the day ca. 1990 or so we both reviewed the Thelonious Monk movie. His review, then, included several things that weren't true and weren't in the movie at all. I mentioned this to a regular Trib movie reviewer (not Siskel) who sd, "That's how he's so prolific." A valuable and very decent guy, though. For one thing he articulated his politics very well. He also quietly did a lot of good around here, good things that probably won't go into his biography. Incidentally he was famous in Chicago for being in theaters and screaming at the movies, for ex., "Don't open that door, lady, the ax murderer is there!" Quote
JSngry Posted April 6, 2013 Report Posted April 6, 2013 Incidentally he was famous in Chicago for being in theaters and screaming at the movies, for ex., "Don't open that door, lady, the ax murderer is there!" In white theaters? Quote
Tim McG Posted April 7, 2013 Report Posted April 7, 2013 Does anyone know if he used tobacco products of any kind? Quote
Larry Kart Posted April 7, 2013 Report Posted April 7, 2013 No, just fermented grains (but eventually he gave up on that). Quote
Larry Kart Posted April 7, 2013 Report Posted April 7, 2013 I was thinking whiskey, but I'm really not sure what he drank, other than it was alcoholic. Quote
Mark Stryker Posted April 7, 2013 Report Posted April 7, 2013 (edited) As a newspaper man I completely understand the world Larry is describing, the characters therein and the meetings so described. Discerning the motivation of critics is slippery of course, and what's conscious or sub-conscious is equally slippery. What Larry is describing in terms of strategic tempering of opinion certainly happens, but Jim's take can also be true. I would only add this: Though the level of celebrity was completely different, we had a similar situation here in Detroit between the movie critics at the Free Press and News: Highly competive market, writers who did both reviews and features and competed fiercely in the same manner for exclusive interviews. And there was always a feeling in both newsrooms that the other critic, when praising a consensus dog of movie by a big name director or actor, was just angling for an eventual interview. For me, if Ebert played with this line on rare occasions, it wouldn't change my basic opinion of him or of the trustworthiness of his work. (On a personal note, as someone who functions as both a critic and reporter, I would add that negotiating the issue of always being truthful with your own opinions and honest with readers but also knowing that, for example, the same music director you blast as a dork in Mahler on Saturday you're going to have to request an interview from on Monday, is one of the biggest challenges of the gig.) I have tremendous admiration for Ebert on many fronts, but one thing that's worth noting beyond the actual work are the many stories of his professional courtesy and generosity toward writers, editors and critics who were much lower on the food chain than himself. That's exceedingly rare in the world of big-time journalism, and a reminder that one key measure of a person's character is not how they treat people above them but how they treat those below them. Edited April 7, 2013 by Mark Stryker Quote
ejp626 Posted April 8, 2013 Report Posted April 8, 2013 I replied too hastily/carelessly to Larry's post, but the larger point is that Ebert didn't need to keep sucking up to either Coppola or Scorsese at that point. I say he actually enjoyed the film. He gave it 4-stars, and I simply can't believe he would have done so as part of a career move. 3 stars perhaps. An even stranger case is Altman's A Prairie Home Companion, which really did seem pretty sucky, and Ebert has gone ahead and stuck it into his list of Great Movies (one of his best 365 movies of all time)! It's not like he didn't already have 4 Altman films in the list. But something really struck a chord with him apparently. Most likely he was influenced by the fact Altman passed away shortly after Prairie Home Companion was released, so in that sense Ebert was probably really responding to Altman's entire career and not this particular movie. But he did have some fondness for its elegiac and gentle tone, to be sure. Quote
kinuta Posted April 8, 2013 Report Posted April 8, 2013 Sad if not unexpected news. He was always my default reviewer even though i disagreed with some of his opinions. Quote
BruceH Posted April 8, 2013 Report Posted April 8, 2013 There's not a movie critic in history who I haven't disagreed with on plenty of occasions. Quote
Larry Kart Posted April 8, 2013 Report Posted April 8, 2013 I replied too hastily/carelessly to Larry's post, but the larger point is that Ebert didn't need to keep sucking up to either Coppola or Scorsese at that point. I say he actually enjoyed the film. He gave it 4-stars, and I simply can't believe he would have done so as part of a career move. 3 stars perhaps. An even stranger case is Altman's A Prairie Home Companion, which really did seem pretty sucky, and Ebert has gone ahead and stuck it into his list of Great Movies (one of his best 365 movies of all time)! It's not like he didn't already have 4 Altman films in the list. But something really struck a chord with him apparently. Most likely he was influenced by the fact Altman passed away shortly after Prairie Home Companion was released, so in that sense Ebert was probably really responding to Altman's entire career and not this particular movie. But he did have some fondness for its elegiac and gentle tone, to be sure. Not quite a career move, perhaps, but Ebert did later on conduct a series of "conversations" with Scorsese that were published as a book, "Scorsese By Ebert." Quote
alocispepraluger102 Posted April 8, 2013 Report Posted April 8, 2013 http://www.ibtimes.com/roger-ebert-day-film-criticism-died-movie-critics-death-symbolizes-end-profession-1175149 "Ebert was the last of a now-extinct breed: a professional movie reviewer whose opinion actually mattered -- not mattered in a Rex Reed sense, where calling Melissa McCarthy a hippo can nab some headlines and rile people up on social media, but mattered in the spirit of public intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre, who believed his chief duty was to observe the world and speak out in accordance with his own conscience. If that type of conviction still exists, it’s been drowned out by Rotten Tomatoes, online trolls and the comments section on Comingsoon.net. Crowd-sourced criticism is calling the shots now,........" Quote
Larry Kart Posted April 8, 2013 Report Posted April 8, 2013 http://www.ibtimes.com/roger-ebert-day-film-criticism-died-movie-critics-death-symbolizes-end-profession-1175149 "Ebert was the last of a now-extinct breed: a professional movie reviewer whose opinion actually mattered -- not mattered in a Rex Reed sense, where calling Melissa McCarthy a hippo can nab some headlines and rile people up on social media, but mattered in the spirit of public intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre, who believed his chief duty was to observe the world and speak out in accordance with his own conscience. If that type of conviction still exists, it’s been drowned out by Rotten Tomatoes, online trolls and the comments section on Comingsoon.net. Crowd-sourced criticism is calling the shots now,........" "... in the spirit of public intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre...?" Not that Sartre was an unflawed figure, but (to quote from my favorite candy bar commercial) "great googly moogly!" Compare Ebert to a fellow journalist from the same city and of the same general era, Mike Royko, and Ebert IMO had nowhere near as great an impact on the public discourse. Yes, Ebert had many virtues, but what next -- the greatest moral philosopher since Immanuel Kant? Quote
JSngry Posted April 8, 2013 Report Posted April 8, 2013 (to quote from my favorite candy bar commercial) "great googly moogly!" Meanwhile, back in the States... Quote
J.A.W. Posted April 8, 2013 Author Report Posted April 8, 2013 http://www.ibtimes.com/roger-ebert-day-film-criticism-died-movie-critics-death-symbolizes-end-profession-1175149 "Ebert was the last of a now-extinct breed: a professional movie reviewer whose opinion actually mattered -- not mattered in a Rex Reed sense, where calling Melissa McCarthy a hippo can nab some headlines and rile people up on social media, but mattered in the spirit of public intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre, who believed his chief duty was to observe the world and speak out in accordance with his own conscience. If that type of conviction still exists, it’s been drowned out by Rotten Tomatoes, online trolls and the comments section on Comingsoon.net. Crowd-sourced criticism is calling the shots now,........" "... in the spirit of public intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre...?" Not that Sartre was an unflawed figure, but (to quote from my favorite candy bar commercial) "great googly moogly!" Compare Ebert to a fellow journalist from the same city and of the same general era, Mike Royko, and Ebert IMO had nowhere near as great an impact on the public discourse. Yes, Ebert had many virtues, but what next -- the greatest moral philosopher since Immanuel Kant?Funny how obits can turn into ridiculous overstatements. Quote
ejp626 Posted April 8, 2013 Report Posted April 8, 2013 (edited) You seem awfully ready to pull Ebert off a pedestal, Larry. I really don't know what your beef is. I guess you really want to focus on the feet of clay of St. Ebert. I would certainly agree that at his prime, Royko had far greater influence within Chicago, but by the time I made it to Chicago he was a crabby shadow of his former self, and it is this crabbed, narrow mantle that Kass has (unfortunately) taken upon his righteous shoulders. Ebert's influence continued to grow substantially through his blogs (and perhaps Zara is referring to the many blog posts he wrote on non-movie topics such as the worrying rise of creationism and anti-intellectualism -- that would put him roughly in the same sphere as a public moral philosopher). Still, I doubt Ebert would have put himself in the same class as Sartre or Kant... And despite his poor health, he reviewed over 300 movies in the past 12 months! And if anything his vision got even more humane and good-natured at the end. Compare that to the dwindling output of Royko after he moved to the Trib, and I know who mattered more to me and who was ultimately more inspirational. If you narrow things down to people who care about cinema as an art form (100,000s of people worldwide), then of course they revere him and are broken up over his passing. Edited April 8, 2013 by ejp626 Quote
Larry Kart Posted April 8, 2013 Report Posted April 8, 2013 You seem awfully ready to pull Ebert off a pedestal, Larry. I really don't know what your beef is. I guess you really want to focus on the feet of clay of St. Ebert. I would certainly agree that at his prime, Royko had far greater influence within Chicago, but by the time I made it to Chicago he was a crabby shadow of his former self, and it is this crabbed, narrow mantle that Kass has (unfortunately) taken upon his righteous shoulders. Ebert's influence continued to grow substantially through his blogs (and perhaps Zara is referring to the many blog posts he wrote on non-movie topics such as the worrying rise of creationism and anti-intellectualism -- that would put him roughly in the same sphere as a public moral philosopher). Still, I doubt Ebert would have put himself in the same class as Sartre or Kant... And despite his poor health, he reviewed over 300 movies in the past 12 months! And if anything his vision got even more humane and good-natured at the end. Compare that to the dwindling output of Royko after he moved to the Trib, and I know who mattered more to me and who was ultimately more inspirational. If you narrow things down to people who care about cinema as an art form (100,000s of people worldwide), then of course they revere him and are broken up over his passing. The posts I've made on this thread provide sufficient background I think for my less than adulatory view of Ebert's career as a critic. That you, and many others in the wake of his death, seem to think that a "pedestal" is where he belongs is among the reasons I decided to speak my piece. Also, just to be clear, my view of Ebert dates back some 35 years, and I worked in the same journalistic community at the same time FWTW. People I know and trust say that he was by and large a great guy personally; I didn't know him well enough on that level to have an opinion there. As for Royko -- yes, he more less became "a crabby shadow of his former self," but he was the (also not-uncrabby) Royko of the legend for decades before that, and during that time his influence was often immense. Also, on many matters during those decades he was just about the only columnist saying the things he said. Finally, I don't begrudge anyone for being broken up over Ebert's passing. Quote
Blue Train Posted April 8, 2013 Report Posted April 8, 2013 Any fans of Jonathan Rosenbaum and J. Hoberman? Quote
ejp626 Posted April 8, 2013 Report Posted April 8, 2013 What I thought was somewhat interesting in the Zara piece (aside from the hyperbole) is 1) how generational it all is and 2) how sad it is that there probably won't be another figure (in reviewing or more general column-writing) as influential as Siskel or Ebert or Kael or even Sarris. 1) I simply never related that much to Royko or even Studs Terkel. They were before my time. Most teens will think the same about Ebert. I hope I don't get too offended by that and keep telling them that they are missing out on the critics that really mattered. My track record with regards to pop music isn't too encouraging. 2) I think the more influential columnists (in the U.S. at least) have had to go the television route to stay relevant. Movie reviewing is in this weird limbo where the television review shows have degenerated to mere hackery/flackery. Ebert was trying to re-launch At the Movies via Kickstarter when he passed on, and it is hard to say whether they will succeed now. But there is something about the nature of movie reviewing in the age of Rotten Tomatoes where it just seems to have become so diffuse and at the same time more democratic that it does seem unlikely that another figure like Ebert will arise. And that I feel was the main lament in that piece. For whatever reason, I think political columnists like E.J. Dionne, George Will, Clarence Page, David Brooks and Thomas Friedman and maybe Paul Krugman have a broader visibility. Perhaps that isn't true outside the NY-DC nexus (and I just happen to read these papers and think they remain influential). I do think it is true that Chicago and L.A. are not producing columnists that are part of this conversation, and that didn't use to be the case. Quote
Larry Kart Posted April 8, 2013 Report Posted April 8, 2013 What I thought was somewhat interesting in the Zara piece (aside from the hyperbole) is 1) how generational it all is and 2) how sad it is that there probably won't be another figure (in reviewing or more general column-writing) as influential as Siskel or Ebert or Kael or even Sarris. 1) I simply never related that much to Royko or even Studs Terkel. They were before my time. Most teens will think the same about Ebert. I hope I don't get too offended by that and keep telling them that they are missing out on the critics that really mattered. My track record with regards to pop music isn't too encouraging. 2) I think the more influential columnists (in the U.S. at least) have had to go the television route to stay relevant. Movie reviewing is in this weird limbo where the television review shows have degenerated to mere hackery/flackery. Ebert was trying to re-launch At the Movies via Kickstarter when he passed on, and it is hard to say whether they will succeed now. But there is something about the nature of movie reviewing in the age of Rotten Tomatoes where it just seems to have become so diffuse and at the same time more democratic that it does seem unlikely that another figure like Ebert will arise. And that I feel was the main lament in that piece. For whatever reason, I think political columnists like E.J. Dionne, George Will, Clarence Page, David Brooks and Thomas Friedman and maybe Paul Krugman have a broader visibility. Perhaps that isn't true outside the NY-DC nexus (and I just happen to read these papers and think they remain influential). I do think it is true that Chicago and L.A. are not producing columnists that are part of this conversation, and that didn't use to be the case. You'll be happy to know that I couldn't stand Studs Terkel. Clearly, I'm the party with the problem here. Quote
ejp626 Posted April 8, 2013 Report Posted April 8, 2013 Any fans of Jonathan Rosenbaum and J. Hoberman? Not aware of Hoberman. Absolutely not a fan of Rosenbaum. At one point, I was reading and disliking his work on a regular basis (so an anti-fan of sorts), since I felt compelled to read all the reviews in the Chicago Reader. The Reader has fallen on hard times (and Rosenbaum may have moved on) and I am not in the city anymore, so he has completely fallen off my radar screen. Quote
Larry Kart Posted April 8, 2013 Report Posted April 8, 2013 Hoberman was at the Village Voice for many years; they let him go a while back. Rosenbaum I don't care for either in general. The best film critic I know is Dave Kehr (he's also a friend of many years), but others may not agree on Dave's virtues. Quote
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