roger ebert

  • Within two days, both Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper have announced that they are cutting all ties with At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper, because Disney-ABC wants to take the show in a new direction (which probably has something to do with the fact that Ebert is still incapable of speech). The TV show has been running in various forms since 1975, most of the time with Ebert and Gene Siskel. (7) #
    7/21/2008
  • Roger Ebert reviews Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will in his "Great Movies" series, coming to the conclusion that it's not so great, at least in his usual sense:
    It is a terrible film, paralyzingly dull, simpleminded, overlong and not even "manipulative," because it is too clumsy to manipulate anyone but a true believer. It is not a "great movie" in the sense that the other films in this group are great, but it is "great" in the reputation it has and the shadow it casts... I doubt that anyone not already a Nazi could be swayed by it.
    (0) #
    6/27/2008
  • Inspired by Redbelt, Roger Ebert has coined a new genre: the "Twister" -- a movie that's less identifiable about what it's about than how it's about it -- specifically, one that constantly plays with the audiences expectations:
    Twisters don't twist only at the end. They pull one rug from another out from under our feet, until we're astonished by how many rugs we were standing on. Sometimes it's almost impossible to keep all the versions of reality straight. Sometimes it's a futile exercise, because we realize the film could continue indefinitely. But when a Twister is in the hands of a master like Mamet, it can be devilish and ingenious.
    (2) #
    5/14/2008
  • A year later than usual due to his hospitalization, Roger Ebert releases his best movies of 2006. (4) #
    11/23/2007
  • The transcript of a live chat with Roger Ebert from earlier today. Those interested in what he thought of movies released during his absence will find some answers.
    Ben:
    what was your opinion of Children Of Men? It was my favorite movie of 2006, and I'm wondering if you got a chance to see it.

    Roger Ebert:
    yes, I've seen it. I'm gradually going back and picking up some of the movies I missed, and I have a feeling it might be a Great Movie on my website
    Too bad he didn't answer my question about Snakes on a Plane. (1) #
    8/2/2007
  • Roger Ebert in his four star review of Marie Antionette:
    This is Sofia Coppola's third film centering on the loneliness of being female and surrounded by a world that knows how to use you but not how to value and understand you.
    Do one thing and do it well? (18) #
    10/20/2006
  • According to his latest online letter written from rehab, Roger Ebert is recovering successfully and has written his first review ("The Queen") since his medical problems began in June. He plans to review a few more recent films, but "won't be back to full production until sometime early next year." I guess that means no Ebert Top Ten this year... (1) #
    10/11/2006

La Dolce Vita

La Dolce Vita

I recently saw La Dolce Vita for the second time, my first viewing being 10 years ago as a high school student. It's a masterful movie, but just as Fellini was both exasperated and bored with the decadent culture it portrays, I as the viewer couldn't help growing numb when being led into yet another soulless party, even while I was appreciating Fellini's ability to perfectly capture the prolonged intoxication of the empty "sweet life."

Incidentally, La Dolce Vita was the subject of one of Roger Ebert's first movie reviews, published in The Daily Illini when he was a sophomore at UIUC. While it's a positive review, he clearly isn't under the impression that it's a "great" movie. Almost forty years later, and after many viewings including a frame-by-frame analysis, Ebert reviewed it again as part of his Great Movies series. In this second review it's clear that he believes it to be one of the greatest movies of all time, especially after his own disillusionment with "the sweet life" of Chicago in the 1970's. (A profile I linked to last year touches on this phase of his life.) Also worth a read is this analysis from the blog of the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, MA (my former place of residence) by someone who believes it to be the greatest film of all time.

I've never been much of a partier, but I happen to live in Las Vegas, one of the biggest party towns in the country. It seems to me that a modern reimagining of this film, set in Vegas or in hipster L.A, could be interesting in the hands of the right director. It wouldn't be a remake exactly, nor would it attempt to emulate Fellini, but it would capture whatever's behind the endless party pictures you find on Flickr or lastnightsparty.com. And no, Swingers isn't what I have in mind. There are some scenes in Boogie Nights that I think come very close to the mood I'm thinking of, but not in any way that I can identify with. Can anyone think of a contemporary movie out there that comes close to capturing the mood of La Dolce Vita, all while maintining its sense of morality?

Sun, 08/27/2006 - 7:13pm
  • Roger Ebert four-star review of United 93. "There has been much discussion of the movie's trailer, and no wonder. It pieces together moments from 'United 93' to make it seem more conventional, more like a thriller. Dialogue that seems absolutely realistic in context sounds, in the trailer, like sound bites and punch lines. To watch the trailer is to sense the movie that Greengrass did not make." (29) #
    4/28/2006
  • When Gene Siskel died, Roger Ebert wrote that they became great friends only after a long period of intense hatred. Watch the sparks fly in this 1987 video of the duo trying to tape a promo:
    (12) #
    2/24/2006
  • Ebert's thoughts on This Film is Not Rated, a documentary shown at Sundance where a private detective infiltrates the MPAA Rating board (the 8 people who sometimes arbitrarily decide on a film's rating) and discovers that they're not the average parents the MPAA claims they are. (12) #
    2/5/2006
  • I've been having a hard time articulating why I think Paul Haggis's plot-intertwined Crash is not as great a movie as many have made it out to be. No matter, the first in this series of letters compiled by Roger Ebert does much of the talking for me. (7) #
    1/21/2006
  • Long profile on Roger Ebert. Didn't know he struggled with alcoholism throughout the 70's. (via rw) Another quote: "Laura Emerick, Ebert’s editor at the Sun-Times, thinks that since his bouts with cancer, “he’s more positive in terms of giving films a break.” My brother always pushed this theory -- now he's getting some validation. (11) #
    11/30/2005
  • Ebert gives high marks to the new Wallace & Gromit film. "Remarkably, given the current realities of animation, 'Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit' is the second stop-motion animated film in two weeks, after 'Tim Burton's Corpse Bride.' Both of these films are wonderful, but Wallace and Gromit have the additional quality of being lovable beyond all measure..." I remember being obsessed with the evil penguin in The Wrong Trousers as a teenager. (0) #
    10/7/2005
Home