roger ebert
Today, as it must to all men, death came to Roger Joseph Ebert.
I have written about him several times on this blog. I’m not sure I’ve ever written about another critic (book, movie, whatever). Not only was he the most important American movie critic of the last few decades, he was almost certainly the last to be as important as he was. Newspapers aren’t as influential as they used to be, and the world of information is much more fragmented now.
But the main thing was how good he was – both in terms of how thoughtful and informed his reviews were, and in terms of how well he wrote them. He identified himself as a newspaperman, not as a film critic. I remember once that he made a very serious point that when he started at the Sun-Times as a teenager, he was a newspaperman, not an intern.
Not that I always agreed with him. Part of my review of Ghost Dog was devoted to disagreeing with his interpretation of the film (he liked it, but I don’t think he understood it). He was horrified by Kick-Ass, and I thought he missed the point there, too (I will write about that soon). And I think he was wrong about 3D, as I talked about here.
But I always read what he wrote, and when I heard about a new movie and wanted to decide whether I should see it, his review was the first I’d read. And he was right about Robert Altman, and Let the Right One In, and Stagecoach, and many, many more. And about Avatar and Hugo, which he loved even though they were in 3D.
Because that was he thing – he never sounded like he was proclaiming film judgments from on top of a mountain. His reviews always seemed like the start of a conversation (or, if necessary, an argument). This is why the TV show with Gene Siskel (in all of its various forms) was such a natural platform for him.
One thing I’d recommend in particular? No matter how many times you’ve seen Citizen Kane (which I quote up at the top there), get the DVD with Roger Ebert’s commentary track. You’ll learn some things.
To paraphrase what I wrote when Rober Altman died: It’s too bad there won’t be any more words, but there are a hell of a lot to look back on and re-read and learn from (and disagree with). Going out as he did, after a long life doing what he wanted, and doing it as well as anybody ever has, that’s the best deal any of us can hope for.
From the Chicago Sun-Times (of course):
“Roger Ebert dead at 70 after battle with cancer”
“If there were a Mount Rushmore of movie critics, we’d start with Roger Ebert”
Later:
From the Chicago Tribune:
“Farewell to a generous colleague and friend” (A wonderful story of Ebert teaching the novice critic from his rival paper how to navigate the complexities of the Cannes Film Festival.)
From the AV Club (I think of them as being an Internet-only phenomenon, but of course they are located in Chicago and many of them knew Ebert, at least casually):
“What did Roger Ebert mean to you?”
“Some thoughts on the death of Roger Ebert, a man who meant a lot to us“
Even later:
I wrote this as a comment to the excellent post “Goodbye Roger Ebert” over at The Best Picture Project:
It’s sort of too bad that he’s so associated wih the thumbs-up/thumbs-down thing, because that’s really the opposite of how he reviewed movies. Yesterday I happened to read the Wikipedia entry for Dr. T. and the Women (a minor Robert Altman movie) and at the end it linked to Ebert’s review. I clicked through to read it (I’d read it before, but didn’t remember what he’d said): http://tinyurl.com/ctgjbkc. It’s not a great movie (I’m an Altman fanatic, and it’s nowhere near my top ten list), but Ebert really thinks about it, bringing out specifics about the film and also more general points (including that Altman was “more interested in women than any other great director, with the exception of Ingmar Bergman” – which is a very provocative thought). He really gets into the acusations of sexism against the film. And this was just a routine review of a fairly non-exceptional film.