Roger Ebert STILL Giving Reviews?

[DPRK]

To put it another way, anyone who was bothered by all the “exploitative” reviews showing up there had plenty of time to bitch about it- to Ebert himself. And if anyone actually did, obviously Ebert didn’t care.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@MortSahlFan

LOL

I made no mistakes. You don’t understand nuance, either. You think this is some contest or something.

Doubling your bet repeatedly only works until you hit the house limit.

[Charlie_Wayne]

For those people interested, CNN produced a very fine documentary on the life of Roger Ebert.

Life Itself (2014 film)

I was amazed by that documentary. There were many facets of his life that were truly remarkable.

I didn’t read every post in this thread and I apologize if I am duplicating another post.

[Charlie_Wayne]

Sorry. Mistaken post.

[MortSahlFan]

@I_Love_Me_Vol.I

[Bolding mine]

I’m afraid it’s true. It’s tempting to call people immoral and unethical but really, I think most are just too lazy and don’t care about anything beyond themselves and their immediate families.

Thus, they end up immoral and unethical without even noticing it’s happened or that that’s a bad, bad thing.

Yes, exactly. And I’m sure this happens in other areas.

@BigT

I also find it weird that so few see an issue with them using robertebert.com, a site that flat out says in its title that it is “Movie Reviews and Ratings by Film Critic Roger Ebert.” It was never presented as some sort of collaborative website or some group of people while he was alive, so why should it be when he’s not?

And that “in memoriam” banner is the type that most people will skip over when reading. They even use really light text and a light image so it will be very low contrast, making it more likely your eyes will skip over it. Add in how we’re trained to ignore banners by them being ads all the time, and I genuinely did not notice it was there and scrolled down the entire page.

It’s bizarre. I can’t say I can think of anyone else trying this, where a celebrity dies and other people take over his site and do the same things they did. If it was something like “ebertcoporation.com” I’d get it. Then you could argue it was like Disney, which billed itself as the Walt Disney company, and every already knew that Disney himself was not doing everything before he died. But it’s just using his personal site and his own personal brand.

I can’t help but feel that using his name is about borrowing some of his prestige and reputation. The brand applied to a particular person who is now dead–it did not apply to these other writers. They get a boost by being at rogerebert.com because of Roger Ebert’s reputation.

The website–as in its name–is part of the problem. It implies it is something it is not. I can’t help but think that the critics there show up so often because they borrow on his prestige, and wouldn’t if the writers were entirely under their own name.

Very perceptive - thanks for the read.

[burpo_the_wonder_mutt]

Robert Ludlum has published almost as many books since he’s died as when he was alive.

[Acsenray]

@BigT

I have trouble thinking of any examples of this on the web–where a person dies and the website that was just for their personal work is taken over by others who continue to do the same thing.

You’re narrowing the circumstances to the point of irrelevancy.

That doesn’t seem to apply here. rogerebert.com was always billed as the online archive for Ebert’s own work, not as some sort of company he had created.

This is simply untrue. As others have noted, Ebert began transitioning the site to include other reviewers while he was still alive.

@BigT

It was never presented as some sort of collaborative website or some group of people while he was alive

Again, this is simply untrue.

I can’t help but feel that using his name is about borrowing some of his prestige and reputation.

This is exactly the point—and indeed part of the essential definition—of a trademark.

[septimus]

@Ulf_the_Unwashed

I don’t get it. If you don’t know enough about Ebert to know that he’s dead, why would you be influenced by his movie reviews?

I found myself agreeing with Ebert’s reviews off-and-on for decades. He’s not my “go-to” on whether to see a movie or not, but might have been if I based decision on a single reviewer.

And I didn’t know he was dead until clicking a moment ago! (Or perhaps I’d heard … and soon forgot it.) Who’s being silly?

[Bijou_Drains]

Jimi Hendrix had 6 albums out when he was alive and over 80 after he died. There was a long court battle over who owned the rights to his recordings, his sister now controls them.

[Jackmannii]

@Bijou_Drains

I recently found out Betty Crocker is not a real person!!

Not true. She’s the lead singer on the current Ramones tour.

[Bijou_Drains]

There are people who died 40+ years ago and have an official website. For example, Vince Lombardi. I assume his family/estate gave permission and are paid for it.

http://www.vincelombardi.com/

[Larry_Borgia]

@I_Love_Me_Vol.I

The actual website is not the problem. The problem is other websites and aggregators who say that the review is from Roger Ebert, not rogerebert.com.

Oh my God, it’s spreading!

Look, the aggregator in question is a funky indie website called Google.com. Perhaps you have heard of it? When you type in a movie title it will return a bunch of stuff, including scores by review sites with links to those sites.

In this case

There was a score from IMDB which took you to IMDB.com,
A score from Rotten Tomatoes which took you to rottentomatoes.com
And a score from Roger Ebert which took you to rogerebert.com

That’s how these things work. It’s done by an algorithm. There is no malevolence or laziness going on. I don’t know how the algorithm works–when I googled Knives Out it had a slightly different trio of review sites–but that is all it does.

Rogerebert.com has all of Ebert’s reviews archived and is being managed by his widow. It contains reviews by friends and collaborators of Ebert, and did so while he was alive. The name is part of the brand, and there is no reason for Chaz to change it. In addition to being a trademark, it’s a way to keep her late husband’s memory alive. She chose Matt Seitz as editor and contributor because he was a friend of Roger’s and they frequently collaborated. There is nothing remotely fraudulent about any of this, no more than Ford motors keeping his name on the car company he founded.

I mean they could change the name to rogerebertbuthedoesntactuallywritethereviewsbecausehediedin2013.com
but that’s a pain to write and seems a little disrespectful.

[Bryan_Ekers]

Of course, Google itself is just trying to coast off the name of its late founder, George Oswald Ogle. The lack of outrage about this blatant deception is nothing less than shocking.