Skip to main content

Thank you, Roger Ebert.



As a kid growing up, there were a few things I spend my time doing on Saturdays: getting up early to watch Saturday morning cartoons, going to the movies with my parents, playing outside with my roller-skates, and watching the latest edition of Siskel & Ebert on television. In fact, that was probably one of the moments of the day I was looking forward to. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert didn't just debate about the latest movies that had just been released; they didn't just argue back and forth about why this movie worked or why it was awful. These men didn't just love movies, they lived, breathed the power of cinema as an art form. And I don't think no one person exemplified this kind of mad-hot passion for, well....anything better than Ebert himself. Even after Gene's death in February of 1999, the man still carried on and talked about his love of the movies, with other critics and cinemaphiles, from Lisa Scwartzburn of Entertainment Weekly, to Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News, to legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese. Richard Roper of the Chicago Sun-Times would eventually become his partner from 2000 up until 2006, when post-surgical complications with thyroid cancer left him unable to speak, but his love of the big screen wouldn't diminish. If anything, Ebert found a new voice in which to communicate his excitement for a movie, or his utter disgust for what had transpired on the screen through Twitter, and he still had his columns on his own personal website, and he still wrote reviews for the Chicago-Sun Times, and held film festivals. In short: his burning spirit wouldn't keep him from what he loved: the cinema. Ebert's place was in the balcony of a movie theater, and for one afternoon on a Saturday, I - along with everyone else who loved film as much as he did, or simply wanted to hear his thoughts - were allowed in to listen, argue, and debate the movies. The fact that tonight, we no longer have that voice with us, is a tragedy in of itself. Ebert is a big reason why I loved going to the movies: I wanted to capture the same passion for watching films as he clearly had, and is a continued inspiration for me as a amateur critic with a blog, and it's a continued hope of mine that it comes through with each review I write. For the days I spent sitting in the living room, watching him give the trademark "Thumbs Up," or "Thumbs Down" to eagerly seeking out his reviews on the latest movie to hit theaters, I say thank you Roger Ebert, for making me a lover of the cinema, and forevermore, the balcony will be closed.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

On Dynasties, Ignorance, and Moving Foreward To the Future.

In the beginning, I wanted Mr. Brown Verses to be a blog about movies, and that's it. Given how there's much more going on, like film analysis and how it relates to issues both here in America and beyond our borders; the annual predictions on the Academy Awards race; the state of the film industry; issues of ethnicity and gender roles in the business; the continued rise of fandom with both sexes; etc - it would be foolish to not  talk about it and just sticking with reviewing movies. Most of this has been hesitance on my end because I personally feel that I'm not as well-versed in the film medium to really speak on trends and whatnot. There are other, more eloquent critics and readers of the Award-season tea leaves that express these concepts so damn well, it's almost amazing they haven't been picked up by publishers like Entertainment Weekly or Rolling Stone or The New York Times, but I guess the idea that they stand apart makes their work more fearless, more rich

Cowardice

I was looking forward to watching the James Franco/Seth Rogen comedy The Interview  on Christmas Day, even more so than Angelina Jolie's WWII drama Unbroken , or Rob Marshall's Into the Woods . I like what the writing and directing duo of Rogen and his pal Evan Goldberg have done with comedies like Superbad , Pineapple Express and their debut feature, This Is the End . In light of Sony being hacked (which now appears to be North Korea's doing) and threats of attacking theaters that carry the comedy, three things happened today: 1.) Every major theater chain - AMC, Regal, Cinemark, Arclight, etc, had decided to pull out from showing The Interview  on its scheduled release date. 2.)  This prompted Sony Pictures to basically cancel the release date of the film amid threats of blowing up theaters. 3.)  Both Sony and the theater chains basically caved into the demands of cyber terrorism from North Korea. Are you fucking kidding me? We just caved into terrorist d

Mr. Brown Verses Battleship (Or: Michael Bay's Poisonous Influence On Modern Day Action/Blockbuster Movies)

Eventually, I am going to get to reviewing a movie that I actually liked, because I don't just want to be be bitching about terrible movies from the past and from the present In fact, there are two really great movies i'll be reviewing within the next week ( The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Master ) that I think rank among the year's best; add to that the release of Ben Affleck's international thriller Argo , and you'll be seeing a weekend's worth of praise of movies from me, including my picks for the best movies i've seen thusfar. Now, before I tear into the latest review on the sci-fi action picture, Battleship , I need to give this movie some background; not as much on the board game that inspired this bloated and boring piece of crap, mind you, but rather, the director who's trademarks are all over this mess of a film: Michael Bay. See, back in 1998, Bay released a little movie that joined together an unholy union of the Dirty Dozen, the