Features
I know every single word. So do you.
At last, those years of French classes pay off for me.
Some 200 of my TwitterPages are linked at the right.
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My entry #371 in New Yorker cartoon caption contest
Click here to enter this week’s contest.
So much depends upon a red wheel barrow
 
Dr. William Carlos Williams: Sept. 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963.
The stanzas are shaped like wheelbarrows..
For all those years, he was like Elvis in South Africa, this Detroit demolition worker
• The Oscar-nominated doc “Searching for Sugar Man” tells, like “Hoop Dreams,”a story that is too good to be true, and plays like fiction. The closing revelation that Sixto Rodriguez is still still alive comes with an enormous charge. What must it feel like, to cut two albums that disappear, only to discover that all during those lost years you were a superstar in South Africa? And then to fly there at 70 for concert tours packed with adoring fans?
As the film suggests and subsequent interviews have shown, Sixto Rodriguez has handled this roller coaster life with grace, modesty and singular charm.
Here is my 4-star review of “Searching for Sugar Man. The film had its world premiere at Sundance 2013. Because of its Academy Award nomination, it may be playing at a theater near you. It’s available on DVD, and can be streamed via Amazon Instant Video for $3.99.
¶
The segment on “60 Minutes”
David Mamet’s “Lost Masterpieces of Porn,” with your host, Ricky Jay
David Mamet’s “Lost Masterpieces of Pornography” w/ Kristen Bell, Ed O’Neill & Ricky Jay from David Mamet
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Siskel & Ebert fight over a toy train
I’ve never forgotten this show, but feared it was lost forever. Now it’s turned up on YouTube. How well I remember the day we taped this special! I couldn’t get anything to work. Maybe this is historical evidence of why I’ve never gotten along with video games. Gene Siskel’s comic timing is flawless here, and I make a great Oliver Hardy. Stay tuned while we play “Wheel of Fortune” via low-tech VHS tape.
Between Two Ferns: The Oscar buzz edition, Part 2
What delights me is, those are the real actors. They must be complely sick of Dreaded Hotel Room Interviews.
Between Two Ferns: Oscar Buzz Edition Part 1 from Zach Galifianakis
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Silent weirdness with the Alloy Orchestra
The famed Alloy Orchestra of Cambridge, Mass., performed their original compositions to a group of “Wild and Weird” early silent shorts on April 27 at Ebertfest. This is a sample of the program, with titles by Ken Winokur. Check their web site to see when they’re coming to your area.
The Platters perform “The Twist”
These are The Platters Featuring Monroe Powell, live in concert on 8/27/2010 at the Acorn Theater in Three Oaks. Michigan. Monroe Powell is last of the survivors who sang lead with the earlier group. He’s on the left above; the others are Kenni Jaye, Inez Zak and Don Gloudé. (photo: Ebert)
You have to reflect that some of the dancers in this video have been doing The Twist for almost 50 years. That’s why they’re so good at it.
✔ Click to expand. Comments are open.
✔ Directory of recent entries in my blog, Roger Ebert’s Journal.
✔ The home page of my Web Site.
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Siskel & Ebert’s 1980s Holiday Gift Guides
For four years, Gene Siskel and I produced an annual Video Gift Guide. These taping sessions were endless, chaotic and exhausting. Our poor producer, Larry Dieckhaus, said he would have rather negotiated the Cuban Missile Crisis. Gene and I fought over everything. It was all the more hilarious because of our forced jollity.
I think you can see some cracks in the ho, ho, ho spirit here. We almost drew blood in a disagreement over a toy train. We each made our own film with a toy PixelVision camera. We slugged it out with an early video game.
These precious videos recently surfaced after years of being thought lost. I watched them. I laughed, I cried, and during the video boxing match I kissed my ass goodbye.
A note of thanks to TheAisleSeatCom, the user on You Tube who uploaded all these videos.
Dan and Dan: The Daily Mail Song
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Amazon.com Widgets
Four-year-old Jonathan conducts conducts the Chandler Symphony Orchestra
Jonathan a year ago:
A story about the Chandler Symphony concert.
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Bill Moyers on Creeping Creationism in our taxpayer-supported public schools
Moyers devotes a full program to the way “intelligent design” is being used as a a Horse to smuggle religious fundamentalism into pubic schools. Included here, viewable separately, are his sessions with intellectual Susan Jacoby and with Zack Kopplin, who when he was a Louisiana high school student enlisted the support of Nobel Prize winners in his campaign to draw attention to the practice.
Here’s a link to Kopplin’s segment, and a full transcript on the issue.
My related blog entry, Win Ben Stein’s Mind.
Siskel & Ebert on how to be a film critic
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Amazon.com Widgets
Amazon.com Widgets
At last, a trailer that doesn’t give away the whole story
“House” is new in the Criterion Collection, so I figured it might be good. I looked at the trailer. This is the trailer. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it: Having not seen the film and working only from the trailer, explain WTF this movie is about.
My TwitterPages are linked in the right column.
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I could listen to Ronnie play guitar all day long
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The birthday of the cinema
My reader Tim O’Neill reminds me: “Today, December 28, marks the 115th Anniversary of the birth of cinema. The Lumiere Brothers presented the first public screening of motion pictures at the Salon Indien du Grand Cafe in Paris. This was the beginning of one of the great art forms of the 20th Century. Unfortunately, the 21st Century will be remembered as the death of film.”
I don’t believe it will mark the death of film, but certainly it will mark the birth of new forms of cinema.
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Amazon.com Widgets
The ukulele orchestra of Great Britain
Official website of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.
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