You gotta love Roger Ebert. As I was perusing my links looking for a juicy article to write about, I stumbled upon the lastest entry in Roger Ebert's online journal. I ususally don't use his entries for my blog, I read them primarily for pleasure, for personal edification. He is not only a great writer,a great critic, but he is also a great conveyor of emotions. His new article entitled "See You at the Movies" discusses his probable return to the position of television movie critic. This got my heart beating erratically. You see, growing up, I was a huge fan of "At the Movies" with Ebert and his cohost, the late great Gene Siskel. As I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, their repartee was witty, jocular, and sometimes cutthroat. But underlying all the rhetoric of both was a deep love for cinema, the unequivocal fecundity of it. It was infectious. When Siskel passed away from brain cancer, Ebert plodded on with a series of cohosts unil he himself succumbed to a debilitating illness- he lost his voice. He is still however, perspicaciously writing reviews every week on his Chicago Sun Times website. Even though verbal articulation is gone, the words are still soaked with emotion, intonation, and deep passion. On top of his review column, he has started a personal online journal. These are mainly for personal musings, usually of a political or nostalgic origin. It seems that his inner voice has been sharpened to compensate for the loss of the outer because all his entries have a deep poignancy, resonance, to them and finally reveal the man behind the estimable critic. And what a man, what a mind! He would be my ideal interlocutor. Not only would we talk about movies, say by Herzog or Scorsese, but we would also hold discourse on Dickens, Yeats, philosophy, etc. We are both self-confessed Anglophiles and I could just imagine hours of conversation on his past perambulations in London or the countryside of Hardy, Eliot...
Oops. I digressed again. Sorry, can't be helped. Back to his recent article. In it, he claims that since he has been relegated to writing purely on the internet, he has a new-found respect, appreciation, for what the medium has to offer. He feels the power of being able to disseminate his closest thoughts to millions of people with just a single press of a "submit" button-certainly easier than slogging through a weekly, erudite TV show (sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it?)ceaselessy trying to improve the ratings, competing with more inane, but audience-palatable shows. You would think that through all the vicissitudes his previous show went through,variegted hosts and different time slots and now cancellation,that he would be reticent to approach TV again. He probably would capitulate if it wasn't for his intractable hope in the average movie watcher. In the article, Ebert has analyzed the Red Box and Netflix phenomena and realized that many of the top rentals have been critically acclaimed films such as Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler, Milk, and Doubt. That's a good pedigree of films. This gives Ebert hope that there alot of people out there that will welcome his show.
His show,as he states, will not just review mainstream blockbusters, but will discuss foreign films, independent films, an obscure film by Herzog, or by Bahrani. It will run the gamut, and rightfully so. He will not be one of the hosts, due to his vocal constraints. He does have software that can replicate the sound of his voice, but not at the speed of extemporanous conversation. Therefore, there he will handpick the hosts as well as personally doing more self-contained pieces, perhaps a soapbox interlude, or highlights from festivals. Ebert and his wife Chaz will be coproducers. This, I know, will ensure the artistic dignity of the show. In the article, he is very reticent ot go into details, but it seems it will be going into production in the near future. I for one am very ecstatic by this news, as should every devoted cinema addict out there. In the meantime, check out Ebert's site as suntimes.com (click on Ebert's link) as well as his adjoining online journal. It is food for the mind as well as the soul.
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