Roger Ebert and his Film Criticism

[X.]

I don't know why it has taken me so long to make this thread.

I love Ebert (insert standard disclaimer about not always agreeing with him on his movie verdicts) for his great passion for movies and his terrific insight into how they work for an audience.

As we all know, he's been very sick lately - out of action for months for of cancer surgery and recovery.

This was such a moving and funny update from him, I just had to share:

Ebert writes from rehab

For 40 years, I didn't miss a single deadline, but since July, I have missed every one. I also, to my intense disappointment, missed the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. Having just written my first review since June ("The Queen"), I think an update is in order.

Faithful readers and viewers will recall that I expected a speedy recovery from surgery for salivary cancer last June. My expert (and now beloved) doctors had an encouraging game plan, and I expected to be back at work right away. Then I had several episodes of sudden and serious bleeding.

They stabilized me, operated on me to deal with the arteries, kept me sedated to avoid disturbing the affected areas -- and then I essentially spent July and August completely out of it. I remember only fragmentary episodes.

In September, my bleeding hazards stabilized, I came off sedation to find I had lost track of two months of my life, and starred in several prayer vigils for which I am eternally grateful to my wife and tower of strength, Chaz; my family and friends, and the many clergy who came to see me.

I was so touched when Chaz described those lost months. And now I am at the famous Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago -- learning to walk again! My muscles were atrophied by the weeks of inactivity, and I became a rehabilitation candidate. It's been quite an adventure, made easier by the tireless good cheer and expertise of Dr. Jim Sliwa and his RIC team.

During all of this, I didn't lose any marbles. My thinking is intact and my mental process doesn't require rehabilitation. Visits from colleagues at the Chicago Sun-Times, "Ebert & Roeper," ABC-7 and the film world kept me informed -- although, curiously, I found myself more interested in plunging into the depths of classic novels ("Persuasion," "Great Expectations," "The Ambassadors") than watching a lot of DVDs. I prefer to see the new Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood films on a big screen, for example. But our "Ebert & Roeper" producer Don DuPree brought around a DVD of "The Queen," and when I viewed it, I knew I wanted to review it.

A few more recent movies also will be reviewed, but I won't be back to full production until sometime early next year. The good news is that my rehabilitation is a profound education in the realities of the daily lives we lead, and my mind is still capable of being delighted by cinematic greatness.

I plan to have my Overlooked Film Festival again in April, and cover the Academy Awards and Cannes. I can't wait to be back in the Sun-Times on a full-time basis, and to rejoin Richard Roeper in the "Ebert & Roeper" balcony. Dr. Harold Pelzer and Dr. Neil Fine of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and my personal physician, Dr. Robert Havey, also of Northwestern, assure me I will eventually walk, talk, taste, eat, drink and live, more or less, normally. But it will be a struggle, involving another surgery to complete what began in June.

I have discovered a goodness and decency in people as exhibited in all the letters, e-mails, flowers, gifts and prayers that have been directed my way. I am overwhelmed and humbled. I offer you my most sincere thanks and my deep and abiding gratitude. If I ever write my memoirs, I have some spellbinding material. How does the Joni Mitchell song go? "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone"? One thing I've discovered is that I love my job more than I thought I did, and I love my wife even more!

[ozzylogic]

Hope he gets well soon...I love reading his reviews coz' I know how hilariously biased he is (yeah, I'm generalising, though he is a gifted critic).

[animatedude]

i hope he gets well 

[ozzylogic]

i hope he gets well

Good one animated dude!

[madali]

[X.]

I'll say this once again: I love this classic all-American fighting spirit; but he should quit now, now that he's a legend.

P.S. I look forward to his new book -- with THAT image as the cover!

[shariqq]

but he should quit now, now that he's a legend.

Agreed. His review of Shrek The Third is plain bad.

[X.]

Someone tried to beat up Ebert. At least that's what was reported by the media.

Ebert explains.

[X.]

Here's a toast to Ebert from critic-turned-filmmaker Rod Lurie:

In Praise of a Real Man
By Rod Lurie | May 4, 2009

If you are like me, the first thing you thought about when you read that the Chicago Sun-Times was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection was this: what would that mean for Roger Ebert? To be more specific, what would that mean for our ability to read Ebert from now on?

Last week, Matt Dillon and I presented our film Nothing But the Truth at his annual Ebertfest. The single loudest moment of applause came during the discussion session following the film when Roger promised that even if the Sun-Times went under, he would continue to write about film and whatever else he damn well pleased on his blog. If his throat cancer -- devastating and unforgiving -- has not been able to stop him, then nothing as petty as the collapse of one of the nation's stalwart journalistic enterprises was going to either.

Nothing But the Truth is a journalistic thriller that is set during the end of days for print media. In December of last year the film's distributor itself fell victim to the economic crisis and also had to declare Chapter 11. After a slew of the best reviews I have ever received as a writer/director and nominations from the Broadcast Critics for Best Actress (Kate Beckinsale) and Best Supporting Actress (Vera Farmiga), Nothing But the Truth never got an actual release. No poster was even printed. It was deader than Lenin.

All of that didn't sit well with Ebert, a man who loves movies and loves newspapers. He was very kind to the film, which he started to write about during the Toronto Film Festival. He decided to do what he could to get the movie seen. Next thing we knew, Nothing But the Truth was projected on the massive screen at the Virginia Theatre in Champaign/Urbana in advance of its DVD release. 1600 wildly enthusiastic movie lovers watched the film that night. If I have ever had greater professional satisfaction, I can't recall it.

Ebert introduced the film with the help of a computer generated voice that he calls Sir Laurence. It doesn't sound quite like Olivier to me, though. It was more like Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs or even HAL 9000. In any case, Ebert's speech was full of the same old wit and wisdom that he so affably spread when he was on television. The audience gave him a standing ovation. No surprise there.

During the film, he was responding as much as anybody, slapping his hand on the armrest when a laugh would normally register and clapping loudly during any exciting moment. (A La-Z-Boy recliner has been installed in the theater for his benefit.) He wasn't going to give up that thrill of cinema which is physically manifested by the audience.

This all registered with me with a special profoundness. I have followed his writing since I was a teenager. When I was 14, I sent him a letter asking for his ten best of all time list. He wrote me back. In longhand. That's a mensch for you (Citizen Kane was number one, I remember). He is the one critic who can convince me to see films that everybody else hates because he has a unique sense of finding hidden talent and hidden value. Whenever I have a film coming out, his is the one opinion I take personally. When he has given me a smack here and there I have deserved it. Before Ebertfest, I had met him only twice -- once, when he was a guest on my radio show (during my film critic days) and then when he briefly interviewed Joan Allen, Jeff Bridges, and me at the Toronto Film festival where we premiered a film called The Contender.

The hell that Ebert has gone through is unquestionable. And yet, he is more Ebert now than ever. He writes and he writes and he writes. Truthfully, his age alone (67) would have sent most people into retirement. But I think it is safe to say that Ebert is now writing more than ever before. There are his reviews. There are the Movie Answer Man columns. There is his occasional Great Movies column. There are his books -- he just put one out on the work of Scorcese. And then there are his blogs that run the gamut from God to politics (allow me now to point out how courageous Ebert's first partner in crime -- Gene Siskel -- was when he was battling cancer himself -- taping a show up until a week before he passed away).

Ebert now communicates by writing on a small pad. Matt Dillon and I were peppering him with questions. Matt wanted to know who his favorite directors were (I think I saw Hawks, Huston, and Keaton on the list), I asked him what movie has he never seen that everybody would have expected to have come under his gaze (The Sound of Music). I joked with him that his handwriting must have really improved over the past few years. His wife Chaz agreed with that one. She told me that in years past he had the penmanship of a doctor.

As I watched him write his answers -- and he did it with zeal and pleasure -- it struck me that his pen had become an IV to him. His lifeblood.

Much of Ebert's ability to fight on is due, no doubt, to his equally amazing wife. Chaz is a pretty brilliant woman in her own right. She has now become a loving extension of her husband -- her presence at Ebertfest was as distinct as Roger's.

Not long ago I was talking to my teenage kids about what it was that constituted a "real man." I'll tell you this -- you can look at all the masculine toughies you want -- the Ben Roethlisbergers, the Russell Crowes, the David Petraeuses -- but if you want to look at what a man should be -- persevering, honest, a person who manifests his intellect into action -- you need look no further than Roger Ebert.

[X.]

He's back! With a new crew...



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