Entries in the Category "roger ebert"
Two Bittersweet Stories About Roger Ebert
Certainly my favorite film critic writing right now is Roger Ebert, who in less than 1000 words can cut a bad movie down to size, or build a pedestal on which a great movie will sit. His health problems of the last few years have had severe effects on his body (robbing him of his voice, notably), but that has only caused him to multiply his writing output. In addition to his reviews, he's blogging and philosophizing and even tweeting continually.
A few weeks ago, he authorized a cover story to be written about him for Esquire magazine, revealing very intimate details of his life as a partial invalid. It's a sad and lovely article, making you feel like you're hanging around in the viewing room with Ebert and his kickass wife, Chaz.
Roger Ebert: The Essential Man (Chris Jones, from Esquire)
Today, I read another tribute to Ebert, this one of a very different kind. A writer called Will Leitch describes how he idolized Ebert, hugely insulted him in print, and grew to regret it. It's a really compelling tale, with Leitch in full apology mode. Remember that time Ryan on The Office excused his past behavior by saying: "I was in my mid-twenties"? That basically sums up Leitch's explanation of his behavior, but he is wise enough as a writer now that the story he wrote here is really about what an unmissable writer Ebert has continued to be despite his ordeals.
My Roger Ebert Story (Will Leitch, from Deadspin)
Movie Reviews: Epic Wednesday Ghetto Life
I’m more Gilmore Girls than ghetto, of course, and so I can’t say that the realism of the movie really struck me or that I felt a spiritual connection with the characters or anything like that. Yeah, good stories are universal, but there’s a certain wall between me and this kind of life that sort of absents me from having anything real to say about it.
I know narratives, though, and this was a good one. The threads of the story were woven quite skillfully together, what seemed to be isolated incidences reverberating later, until they all came together in one explosive tangle. (Does that work?) There was also a nice parallelism with Caine’s childhood and Anthony’s, including the nearly-identical scenes on the stoops. The guy who will eventually be Anthony’s father teaches Caine how to be a thug; years later he finds himself in the same situation in the opposite role, with a kid at his feet. I don’t know what to make of the fact that he didn’t speak at all, and waited for Ronnie, Anthony’s mom, to come out and rescue him.
It is a bit puzzling—though moments in the film were clearly telegraphed from the get-go (I’m at home saying, “Someone’s gonna die right about now, I don’t know who, but…”), other moments were more careful and ambiguous. The character of Ronnie (Jada Pinkett later Smith) was the biggest puzzle, for me. In fact, she seemed to exist in a different movie altogether. She complained that Caine had become hardened, but how was she living in this environment without being hardened herself? How was she not filled with the rage that was fueling everybody else? “Do cops hate us?” her kid asks her and she says, “no, of course not, it was a misunderstanding.” That’s an extremely generous view to take of things—where is she drawing that strength from? Caine’s grandparents are explicitly drawing their optimism from their religious faith; Ronnie didn’t seem to have devoted herself to anything in that way.
Maybe we were supposed to understand that she had devoted her energy to Caine himself, who was a pretty questionable idol, seeing as he became more and more of an ass throughout the film. Was it for his benefit that she invited all those thug guys to her house for her going-away party? She couldn’t be friends with them if all she does is hassle them about their lifestyles and what they’re smoking and the kind of role models they are for her son. Just don’t invite them, Ronnie.
Spike Lee, and Michael Jordan wannabes, after the jump.
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