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“Thor” is not a Meet Cute for the gods.

Roger Ebert

I didn’t attend the April 30 critics’ screening for “Thor” because it was at the same time Ebertfest was showing “A Small Act,” about an 88-year-old woman named Hilde Back. She’d flown from Sweden, and I wanted be onstage to present her with the Golden Thumb. Missing “Thor 3D” was not an inconsolable loss, because Richard Roeper covered it for the paper and I was able to see it in Chicago in nice, bright 2D. The house was surprisingly well-populated for a 8:50 p.m. screening on a Monday, suggesting that some people, at least, will make an effort to avoid 3D.

“Thor” is failure as a movie, but a success as marketing, an illustration of the ancient carnival tactic of telling the rubes anything to get them into the tent.

I think I’m musing my mind

Roger Ebert

Blind people develop a more acute sense of hearing. Deaf people can better notice events on the periphery, and comprehend the quick movements of lips and sign language. What about people who lose the ability to speak? We expand other ways of communicating.

There are three ways I can “speak.” I can print notes. I can type on my laptop, and a built-in voice says them aloud. I can use my own pidgin sign language, combining waving, pointing, shrugging, slapping my forehead, tracing letters on my palm, mime, charades, and more uses of “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” than I ever dreamed of.

Click on image to expand

Another path is open to me in the age of the internet. I can talk with new friends all over the world. Writing has always been second nature to me, as satisfying in a different way as speaking. Maybe because I was an only child with lots of solitary time, I always felt the need to write, and read. I was editor of my grade school, high

“Iron Man” and Robert Downey Jr.’s quirky performance

Roger Ebert

When I caught up with “Iron Man,” a broken hip had delayed me and the movie had already been playing for three weeks. What I heard during that time was that a lot of people loved it, that they were surprised to love it so much, and that Robert Downey Jr.’s performance was special. Apart from that, all I knew was that the movie was about a big iron man. I didn’t even know that a human occupied it, and halfway thought that the Downey character’s brain had been transplanted into a robot, or a fate equally weird.

Where I stand on the Occupy movement

Roger Ebert

I commissioned this chart to make my position clear. I’ve avoided the subject until now because, while I instinctively felt I must be in favor of the Occupiers, I wasn’t sure what the movement stood for. I support most populist uprisings on matter of principle, and would perhaps even support the Tea Party were it not demonstrating in favor of the very things that are wrong.

Here’s another fine mess

Roger Ebert

What we can’t seem to accept is that the oil is leaking and we can’t stop it. This doesn’t fit the modern narrative in which we can fix anything if we get organized and throw enough money at it. An earthquake devastates Haiti? The world rushes to its aid. A tsunami wreaks havoc? Emergency teams descend. Swine flu? We get inoculated. The economy collapses? Bail it out.

This pattern has become embedded in cable news. First, the story is “Breaking News.” Then it’s assigned a catch-phrase, a graphic, maybe even its own theme song. Then comes an airplane crash, a hurricane or forest fire to change the subject. We mourn, we repair, we prevent, we blame, we pass laws, we raise standards, we know the drill.

The error of political prayer

Roger Ebert

There are vertical prayers and horizontal prayers. Vertical prayers are directed heavenward. Horizontal prayers are directed sideways at others.

It fills me with misgivings when a possible Presidential candidate warms up by running a “prayer rally” in a Texas sports stadium.

A prayer “rally?” I can think of words like gathering and meeting that might more perfectly evoke the spirit. Prayer rallies make me think of pep rallies. Their purpose is to jack up the spirits of the home team and alarm the other side.

Dude, where’s my breakfast?

Roger Ebert

Breathless reports have swooped around the web about John Anderson, film critic for Variety, pounding the legendary publicist Jeff Dowd (aka The Dude) at Sundance. There was a jab to the chest! One to the shoulder! Dowd kept his guard down! A punch to the head! Anderson turned and walked away, then came back and threw his best right to the jaw!

I have this blow-by-blow account from The Dude himself. Park City Police Officer Bob deBotelho responded after a call from the Yarrow restaurant, collected eyewitness testimony, and offered

TIFF #7: It was a very good day

Roger Ebert

I saw three new movies on Monday. Each one could have been the best film of the day. I can’t choose among them, so alphabetically: Werner Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” Atom Egoyan’s “Chloe” and Rodrigo Garcia’s “Mother and Child.” A story involving a cop uncontrollably strung out on drugs. A story involving a wife who meets a hooker. A story about three woman whose lives are shaped by the realities of adoption. Three considerable filmmakers. Three different tones. Three stories that improvise on genres instead of following them. Three titles that made me wonder, why can’t every day be like this?

Nicolas Cage and Werner Herzog were surely destined to work together. Radical talents are drawn to one another. Cage tends to exceed the limitations of a role, Herzog tends to exceed the limitations of film itself. Knowing nothing about conditions during the shoot, my guess is they found artistic harmony. If not, they ended up hardly on speaking terms. Either way would have worked.

Roger Ebert’s Last Words, con’t.

Roger Ebert

Christy Lemire wrote me: “So, everyone seems pretty moved by the Esquire piece on you, but I’m wondering what you thought about it. It’s so intimate, personal.”

Yeah, it was, wasn’t it? It was also well written, I thought. When I turned to it in the magazine, I got a jolt from the full-page photograph of my jaw drooping. Not a lovely sight. But then I am not a lovely sight, and in a moment I thought, well, what the hell. It’s just as well it’s out there. That’s how I look, after all.

It was an inexplicable instinct that led me to agree when Chris Jones contacted me requesting an interview. The idea of Esquire appealed to me. I did a bunch of interviews for them in the 1970s, when it was the crucible of the New Journalism.

Vincent P. Falk and His Amazing Technicolor Dream Coats

Roger Ebert

You might never have heard of Vincent P. Falk, but if you’ve been a visitor to Chicago you may well have seen him. He has performed for the patrons on every single tour boat cruising the Chicago River. And he is known to every viewer of the NBC/5 morning news, and the ABC/7 afternoon news. He’s the smiling middle-aged man with a limitless variety of spectacular suits. He stands on the Michigan or State street bridges, showing off his latest stupefying suit. He flashes the flamboyant lining, takes it off, spins it in great circles above his head, and then does his “spin move,” pivoting first left, then right, while whirling the coat in the air. Then he puts it on again and waves to the tourists on the boat, by now passing under the bridge, always wearing a suit for the occasion: Shimmering black for Kwanzaa, red for Christmas, neon green for St. Patrick’s Day so blinding Mayor Daley wouldn’t have the nerve to wear it.

For ABC/7, he stands outside the big windows of the news studio, which open onto State Street. You can’t miss him. For NBC/5, he’s worked his way up to regular Friday morning appearances. The station’s news studio overlooks Pioneer Court Plaza, and when the anchors go outside to chat with people, there’s Vincent. He’s agreed to appear exclusively on the Channel 5 early news, where I have never seen him, because his usual spin on Fridays is just before the 6 a.m. sign-on of the Today show.

I’m reading newspapers again

Roger Ebert

Of course I’ve never stopped reading the Sun-Times. That’s the start of my daily ritual. But while I used to read four newspapers every day, I found that, gradually, I wasn’t. You know how it is. You get mired in the matrix of the web and think you’re reading all the news you can handle. You have the papers, but they’re unopened at the end of the day.

However, during the election season and the Inauguration euphoria, I renewed our subscription to the New York Times and remembered, at first almost unconsciously, how much I enjoy reading a newspaper. The pages follow in orderly progression. The headlines and artwork point me to stories I find interesting. I am settled. I am serene. I read, I think. I am freed from clicking and the hectic need to scroll, to bounce between links. I don’t have search for the print stories. They find me.

Reading the paper, September 7, 2007 (By Elizabeth Perry; click)

The anger of the festering fringe

Roger Ebert

I’ve had these thoughts for some time, but have been reluctant to express them. Now so many others have voiced them that it’s pointless to remain silent. I am frightened by the climate of insane anti-Obama hatred in this country. I’m not referring to traditional conservatives or Republicans. They’re part of the process. I’m speaking of the lunatic fringe, the frothers, the extremist rabble who are sweeping up the ignorant and credulous into a bewildering and fearsome tide of reckless rhetoric.

There have always been nuts. Remember when the John Birch society thought Kennedy was a communist? In those innocent days most of the American people were reasonable. They’d shake their heads in wonder at such a weird notion. Kennedy might be one of those liberals, but he wasn’t a commie. And when people said Johnson murdered Kennedy? Also ridiculous. But slowly, ominously, things began to change. After his death, it was said that Edward Kennedy was a Soviet agent. These theories have rabid subscribers.

Obama is a Muslim. Obama was born in Kenya. Obama was a terrorist. Obama will destroy Medicare. Obama will kill your grandmother. Obama is a racist. Obama wants atheism taught in the schools. Obama wants us to pay for the health care of illegal immigrants.

Open the hurt locker and learn how rough men come hunting for souls

Roger Ebert

“The Hurt Locker” represents a return to strong, exciting narrative. Here is a film about a bomb disposal expert that depends on character, dialogue and situation to develop almost unbearable suspense. It contains explosions, but only a few, and it is not about explosions, but about hoping that none will happen. That sense of hope is crucial. When we merely want to see stuff blowed up real good in a movie, that means the movie contains no one we give a damn about.

Don’t read me first!

Roger Ebert

If you ever intend to read my review of “Tru Loved,” please read it now. This is so essential that I’m taking a risk by posting this blog entry on the same day the review goes up. The review brings into focus a belief that is at the core of my critical approach. I have cited it many times. Please forgive me for repeating it. As the critic Robert Warshow wrote, “A man goes to the movies. The critic must be honest enough to admit that he is that man.” In other words, whatever you saw, whatever you felt, whatever you did, you must say so. For example, two things that cannot be convincingly faked are laughter and orgasms. If a movie made you laugh, as a critic you have to be honest and report that. Maybe not so much with orgasms.

[Click clock to read dial.]

If you reached the end of my “Tru Loved” review, you found that I stopped watching at about eight minutes. How did this discovery make you feel? My editor, a wise and expert woman who has saved my ass many times over more than 20 years, was horrified.

I’m a proud Brainiac

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert is a moron! Transformers 2 is the best action movie ever. Don’t listem to that moron! He is only into slow boring romantic movies. That is his type of movies. Michael Bay did a great good. Roger… your an old fart! John C

Having now absorbed all or parts of 750 responses to my complaints about “Transformers,” I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that most of those writing agree with me that it is a horrible movie. After all, look where they’ve chosen to comment. There have, however been some disagreements that I thought were reasonable. These writers mostly said they had a thing about the Transformers toys of their childhoods, or liked the animation on TV, or like to see stuff blowed up real good. In that case. Michael Bay is your man. If you enjoyed the movie, there is no way I can say you’re wrong. About yourself, anyway.

Another common line of attack was disturbing. It came from people who said I was out of touch with the tastes of the audience. That the movie’s detractors (lumped together as “the critics”) like only obscure movies that nobody else does–art films, documentaries, foreign films, indies, movies made 50 years ago–even, God forbid, “classics.” One poster argued that “Transformers” was better than that boring old movie “Casablanca.”

I was informed I didn’t “get” Michael Bay. I was too old, “of the wrong generation,” or an elitist or a liberal–although not, I was relieved to find, a “liberal elitist.” It seems to me “Transformers” also qualifies for conservative scorn. It is obliviously nonpartisan. Yet one commented said I hated the movie because it was an attack on President Obama. I was afraid to say I hadn’t noticed that, because then I would be told I hadn’t even seen the movie. It is possible to miss many of the plot points, strange in a movie with so few of them. Veiled in-jokes about politicians and famous people, popular in animation and mass market movies, come with the territory. I enjoy them. The apparent reference to Obama was no big deal, although a reader from Germany told me the actual name “Obama” was used in the German dub. That possibly didn’t happen without Bay hearing about it.

Cannes #8: Of lies and ghosts and fathers

Roger Ebert

The days dwindle down to a precious few. At 6 p.m.on Friday, Cannes is oddly silent. The tumult on the streets a week ago today is forgotten. There are empty seats at some screenings. The locals of Cannes know this is the time to stand in the ticket lines. The daily editions of Varsity and Hollywood Reporter ceased Thursday. Friends are in Paris, or London, or home. Some few diehards stay for the award ceremony Sunday night.