RIP Ebert

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Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

We lost Siskel years ago, now the other half is gone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMFANjNjzOM

Edit to add.: http://www.suntimes.com/17320958-761/roger-ebert-dies-at-70-after-battle-with-cancer.html

Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2013 12:02 am

Dang!

I have many fond memories of watching 'Cecil and Egbert'. No disrespect but that's what I thought their names were since TV reception was a bit of an issue in my neck of the woods.

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jun 2011 Posts: 1066

I remember when I was a kid and my mom would watch the show every Saturday. It's how I learned that there were all these movies that grown-ups got to see but I couldn't.

Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2013 10:20 pm

This may be the saddest day in Chicago since Mike Royko's passing. Sad

NPR's Fresh Air put together a fine tribute today. See http://www.npr.org/2013/04/05/176339792/roger-ebert-in-review-a-fresh-air-survey

Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2013 10:38 pm

I was trolling around rogerebert.com and found a real gem of a review. The movie, which I have never seen and don't want to, is called North:

Quote:

I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

He will be missed!

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jun 2011 Posts: 1066

I've seen North. I should have listened to Ebert. Embarassed

Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2013 11:08 pm

oscarpiles wrote:

I was trolling around rogerebert.com and found a real gem of a review. The movie, which I have never seen and don't want to, is called North:

Quote:

I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

He will be missed!

Wanna see more like that? Check this out.

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

@lakeside77

Thanks, great listen.

Baiting Guru Joined: 07 Jul 2006 Posts: 5727

Eberts reviews of movies he hated were lots of times more fun than the reviews of the movies he liked. Here is his review of Duece Bigalow II:

Quote:

"Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" makes a living cleaning fish tanks and occasionally prostituting himself. How much he charges I'm not sure, but the price is worth it if it keeps him off the streets and out of another movie. "Deuce Bigalow" is aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience. The best thing about it is that it runs for only 75 minutes.

Rob Schneider is back, playing a male prostitute (or, as the movie reminds us dozens of times, a "man whore"). He is not a gay hustler, but specializes in pleasuring women, although the movie's closest thing to a sex scene is when he wears diapers on orders from a giantess. Oh, and he goes to dinner with a woman with a laryngectomy, who sprays wine on him through her neck vent.

The plot: Deuce visits his friend T.J. Hicks (Eddie Griffin) in Amsterdam, where T.J. is a pimp specializing in man-whores. Business is bad, because a serial killer is murdering male prostitutes, and so Deuce acts as a decoy to entrap the killer. In his investigation he encounters a woman with a penis for a nose. You don't want to know what happens when she sneezes.

Does this sound like a movie you want to see? It sounds to me like a movie that Columbia Pictures and the film's producers (Glenn S. Gainor, Jack Giarraputo, Tom McNulty, Nathan Talbert Reimann, Adam Sandler and John Schneider) should be discussing in long, sad conversations with their inner child.

The movie created a spot of controversy last February. According to a story by Larry Carroll of MTV News, Rob Schneider took offense when Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times listed this year's Best Picture Nominees and wrote that they were "ignored, unloved and turned down flat by most of the same studios that ... bankroll hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to 'Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,' a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic."

Schneider retaliated by attacking Goldstein in full-page ads in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. In an open letter to Goldstein, Schneider wrote: "Well, Mr. Goldstein, I decided to do some research to find out what awards you have won. I went online and found that you have won nothing. Absolutely nothing. No journalistic awards of any kind ... Maybe you didn't win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven't invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who's Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers."

Reading this, I was about to observe that Schneider can dish it out but he can't take it. Then I found he's not so good at dishing it out, either. I went online and found that Patrick Goldstein has won a National Headliner Award, a Los Angeles Press Club Award, a RockCritics.com award, and the Publicists' Guild award for lifetime achievement.

Schneider was nominated for a 2000 Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor, but lost to Jar-Jar Binks.

But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" while passing on the opportunity to participate in "Million Dollar Baby," "Ray," "The Aviator," "Sideways" and "Finding Neverland." As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.

Roger will be missed.

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 5:05 pm

If you want to be entertained, look up his review of the movie "The Brown Bunny" and the subsequent back-and-forth with the writer-director-star Vincent Gallo.

My favorite line from Ebert, "I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more entertaining than The Brown Bunny."

I too read his reviews often. I did not always like the movies he recommended, but almost always agreed when I saw a movie he had panned.

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 2:00 pm

I've read his reviews for hours... They are excellent and often far more worthwhile than the films.

Godspeed, Roger.