Personal insults are not allowed outside the Pit. You’re welcome to discuss issues in Cafe Society, but leave the insults and personal comments out of the discussion.
Ebert is well aware of the fact that he’s the people’s movie reviewer while at the same time being one of the very best film critics. It’s this dual role that draws most people to Ebert in the first place. But it doesn’t change the fact that his reviews have been going downhill in his recent years (and don’t say I’m blaming the cancer, because this happened well before that).
The man spends many reviews focusing on some weird, inconsequential point before drifting off into a discussion of plotlines he missed, misquoted characters and talking about scenes that never happened.
What’s so frustrating is that he used to be amazing and I devoured every word he wrote. He’s still good for an occasional out-of-the-parker, but those are few and far between today.
PRR was referring to Ebert and his likely disdain for anyone making fun of him on the Internet.
After reading this essay from his blog: Things Fall Apart; The Centre Cannot Hold, I really don’t think Ebert cares if some of us don’t like the way he writes reviews.
Don’t criticize a Critic.
That seems to be the message from Ebert’s defenders.
What could be more sensible? :rolleyes:
I love Roger Ebert and have always appreciated his reviews because, even when I don’t agree with him, he expresses himself eloquently and well. That being said, I do think that he’s become a lot more rambling and “off-topic” (depending on your perspective) in recent years. The review in the OP is a great example of this kind of thing. I do think it is more rambling and off-topic than most of his reviews are, but a lot of his recent ones are like this.
I presume the little cartoon is intended to denote sarcasm. I recommend using your words instead.
“Don’t criticize a Critic” would indeed be a stupid message. I don’t see anybody here saying that. A closer summation might be “It’s pointless to criticize a film critic for doing what film critics do. It’s like criticizing jazz for having saxophones and double bass rhythm.”
I’ve always found Ebert’s stuff interesting, even though, fairly often, he seems to get basic facts about a movie wrong. And now, late in life, he does seem to be drifting a lot.
Uh uh uh uh.
Personal attack!!
Well I have delved a little deeper into Mr Ebert’s “criticism” and by golly he likes most movies a lot more than the reviewers I do read, Stephanie Zacharek, Anthony Lane, David Edelstein, Peter Travis and James Berardinelli.
I was particularly taken with this in his review of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which seems to consist of nothing other than his complaints that he doesn’t understand the storytelling conceits adopted by the creators; *It has been proposed that one reason people marry is because they desire a witness to their lives. *
Socrates? Descarte? Neitzsche? Susan Sarandon’s character in Shall We Dance. Fair enough.
This is ridiculous. If there’s a single “message” here, it’s “Don’t impose your own standards on someone whose only agenda is to express his own personal opinion.”
And if you decide his opinions aren’t for crap, these days, just let it go, because he was pretty damned good awhile back?
So if anyone who disagrees with his rambling shit, one should just shut up because, well, he’s sick and he’s doing the best he can?
Because he doesn’t work for you?
Who is so friggin’ vaunted that he is beyond criticism?
Dude. You’re not reading the thread. Read again for comprehension and then we can try again if you like.
I wasn’t trying to be personally insulting of any poster here. “Dweeb” (is “dweeb” a bad thing?) referred to any of us, including me, who might express an opinion towards Ebert, and how he’d think of that person’s authority over his printed opinions: i.e., not at all.
Barn Owl: Please do, as **lissener **suggested, read again for what he (and I) are saying here.
Says the guy who’s imposing a standard on someone who merely expressed a personal opinion on a message board… and a standard not many would share, I reckon. Ebert is paid to do write movie reviews and like any author is subject to criticism. I see no ethical or moral reason to suspend judgment.
Just to be clear, the statement most of us were objecting to is this:
That’s only one of the possible primary functions of a movie review, and it has never been Ebert’s chosen function, so it’s ridiculous to judge him by that standard.
Ebert’s article says that the movie is good, but because of a personal problem he has (the movie doesn’t mention other disability activists), he is giving it a low score.
My problem with this is that he is scoring the movie based on its historical accuracy, which should have little to do with whether the movie is enjoyable or not.
Ebert most likely gave it a low score because he wants to prevent other movies from inaccurately portraying important historical events. That’s a worthy agenda, and I don’t care if Ebert chooses to use his influence to pursue it.
Though Ebert can use any standard he wants in criticizing movies, I’m not going to take him seriously if he tells me Frost/Nixon is bad because a phone conversation in the movie never happened in real life. It will just annoy me because I want a movie critic to focus on what makes the film enjoyable or not. Historical critiques should be reserved for history books or documentaries.
I think we can use any standard we want to judge movie critics. If we want them to talk about the goddamned movie, that’s our prerogative.
You guys, I hardly think the OP cares what a bunch of people on the Internet think of his criticism of Ebert. He only has to please himself with his posts and if you don’t like them, you can read someone else’s.
In his written reviews for thed Sun-Times he uses a four star scale (which can be broken down into half stars, so basically he has a scale of 1-9, assuming something can get zero stars.
Not so: his star system is dictated by his thumbs up system. Count how many 3-star reviews he gives. If the movie gets a thumbsdown, he gives it 2.5 or less. If it’s thumbsup, he gives it 3 or up. The majority of his reviews are right along that dividing line; he only strays outside that window for egregious exceptions.
You’ve got it backwards, lissener. I have no cite at the moment, but I’ve read in the introductions to Ebert’s review compilations, and I think also on his website somewhere, that he assigns stars to movies first; then if a movie is 2.5 stars or higher, it gets a “thumbs up” on the TV show; if less than 2.5 stars, it gets a “thumbs down.” I would imagine that most of his reviews are in the 2-3 star range mostly because he prefers to reserve 4 stars for truly outstanding movies, and 1 star for total dreck.