Roger Ebert
TIFF #4: Darwin walks out on Genesis
During the first press screening here of “Creation,” during a scene when Charles Darwin walks out of church during a sermon on the first book of Genesis, an audience member stood up and walked out. Was he offended by the film? There’s no way to say. There were an unusually large number of walk-outs, but who knows if they were leaving for theological reasons, or to get in line for the screenings of “Bright Star” or “Fish Tank,” or because of boredom? I hope it wasn’t boredom. Although it’s a movie with a good deal of talk, at least no one shouted out, “You lie!”
Charles Darwin as Paul Bettany
This will adamantly not be a review of “Creation,” which will await its opening. It will be a discussion of some of the thoughts it inspires. I expected the film to be focused on Darwin’s theory of the origin of species and the controversy it provoked in mid-19th century, but it is primarily about his domestic life, centering on Down House, Bromley, where he and his wife Emma lived from 1842 until until his death in 1882.
Now I lay me down to sleep
Although most religions forbid it, human societies throughout history have accepted suicide as a reality. Sometimes, as in Japan, it was seen as a matter of personal honor. Usually it was seen as an act of despair, or a manifestation of insanity. It can also be seen as a rational act, and to assist someone in committing it can be seen as an act of mercy.
I have never, even in my darkest hours, considered suicide. But with my troubles I have been fortunate; I’ve never had unbearable physical pain. In Barry Levinson’s movie “You Don’t Know Jack,” Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s best friend says his mother told him: “Imagine the worst toothache you’ve ever had. Now
imagine that’s how it feels in every bone of your body.”
The spheres of the music
What do you think of while you listen to classical music? Do you have an education in music, and think of the composer’s strategies, or the conductor’s interpretation? Do you, in short, think in words at all? I never do, and I suppose that would make me incompetent as a music critic. I fall into a reverie state.
Hugh Hefner has been good for us
From the moment that Hal Holmes and I slipped quietly into his basement and he showed me his father’s hidden collection of Playboy magazines, the map of my emotional geography shifted toward Chicago. In that magical city lived a man named Hugh Hefner who had Playmates possessing wondrous bits and pieces I had never seen before. I wanted to be invited to his house.
I was trembling on the brim of puberty, and aroused not so much by the rather sedate color “centerfold” of an undressed woman, as by the black and white photos that accompanied them. These showed an ordinary woman (I believe it was Janet Pilgrim) entering an office building in Chicago, and being made up for her “pictorial.” Made up! Two makeup artists were shown applying powders and creams to her flesh. This electrified me. It made Pilgrim a real person. In an interview she spoke of her life and ambitions.
There is something and not nothing
The mind of a theoretical physicist must be a wonderful place. It can consider things that for me are only words, and will always be words. It can make play with multiple dimensions. It can contemplate black holes. It can not only theorize the existence of the Higgs boson, but can devise an experiment to find it–an experiment that succeeds.
Happy days are here again
For me the best news produced by the Florida primary was Newt Gingrich’s vow to take his fight all the way to the floor of this year’s Republican convention. It has been way too long since a national political convention was more than a coronation stage-managed by public relations experts.
A personal message from Chaz Ebert
To all those who have expressed concern about the future of “Ebert Presents at the Movies,” thank you!
We are moved by the response from friends, bloggers, viewers, newspaper writers and even heavyweights in the industry stepping up in an incredible effort to rally support for Roger and the “Ebert Presents” show.
It is clear that this show is valued and respected for the quality of content and programming, and the contribution it makes to the fabric of our culture. We are also pleased that so many of you agree with us about the talents of Christy Lemire, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky and our contributors.
Knocked up at the movies
Above all it was her personality. Pauline Kael had an overwhelming presence in a conversation. There will no doubt be many discussions of Kael’s work and influence and with the publication of Brian Kellow’s new biography Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, and the Library of America’s forthcoming collection of her work.
She was the most powerful, loved and hated film critic of her time, but her work cannot be discussed objectively by simply reading it. She challenges you on every page, she’s always in your face, and she functioned as the arbiter of any social group she joined. She was quite a dame.
The best train set a boy could want: 2011 edition
The 2011 edition of a movie critic’s dream unreels again this week. In my own home town, I’ll be able to show the films of my choice in a classic movie palace, flawlessly projected on a giant screen before a movie-loving audience. To paraphrase Orson Welles when he was given the run of RKO Radio Pictures to make his own movie, it’s the biggest train set a boy could ever want.
Ebertfest 2011 runs April 27-May 1. The passes have been sold but we’ve always been able to find room for everyone in line inside the 1,600-seat Virginia Theater. Its long-term renovation continued this year with work on the lobby, the concession stand and the upstairs lobby. The marquee is a work in progress.
Nil by mouth
I mentioned that I can no longer eat or drink. A reader wrote: “That sounds so sad. Do you miss it?” Not so much really. Not anymore. Understand that I was never told that after surgery I might lose the ability to eat, drink and speak. Eating and drinking were not mentioned, and it was said that after surgery I might actually be able to go back to work on television.
Success in such surgery is not unheard of. It didn’t happen that way. The second surgery was also intended to restore my speaking ability. It seemed to hold together for awhile, but then, in surgeon-speak, also “fell apart.”
The best films of the decade
“Synecdoche, New York” is the best film of the decade. It intends no less than to evoke the strategies we use to live our lives. After beginning my first viewing in confusion, I began to glimpse its purpose and by the end was eager to see it again, then once again, and I am not finished. Charlie Kaufman understands how I live my life, and I suppose his own, and I suspect most of us. Faced with the bewildering demands of time, space, emotion, morality, lust, greed, hope, dreams, dreads and faiths, we build compartments in our minds. It is a way of seeming sane.
The mind is a concern in all his screenplays, but in “Synecdoche” (2008), his first film as a director, he makes it his subject, and what huge ambition that demonstrates. He’s like a
A shot in the dark
Catie and Caleb Medley went to the doomed midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.” It was a movie they’d been looking forward to for a year, her father said. Gunfire rang out. The bullets missed Catie, who was pregnant. Caleb was shot in the eye. On Tuesday, their son Hugo was born. Caleb is listed in critical condition, and the cost of emergency treatment for his head wound has already reached $2 million. The Medleys were uninsured.
Why I’m so conservative
For some time past I’ve realized I am profoundly conservative. No, not in my politics. In my thinking about the movies, and particularly about how best to experience them. This may be a character flaw, but I cherish it, and believe it helps my criticism. I adhere to the notion that the best way to see a movie is by light projected through celluloid onto a large screen in front of a sizable audience that gives it their full attention. The key words here are projected, celluloid, large screen and attention.
Video games can never be art
Having once made the statement above, I have declined all opportunities to enlarge upon it or defend it. That seemed to be a fool’s errand, especially given the volume of messages I receive urging me to play this game or that and recant the error of my ways. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say “never,” because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.
We’re all puppets, Laurie. I’m just a puppet who can see the strings
Inside many superhero stories is a Greek tragedy in hiding. There is the godlike hero, and he is flawed. In early days his weaknesses were simplistic, like Superman’s vulnerability to Kryptonite. Then Spider-Man was created as an insecure teenager, and comic books began to peer deeper. Now comes the “Watchmen,” with their origins as 1940s goofballs, their development into modern costumed vigilantes, and the laws against them as public nuisances. They are human. Although they have extraordinary physical powers, they aren’t superheroes in the usual sense. Then everything changes for Jon Osterman, remade after a nuclear accident as Dr. Manhattan. He isn’t as human as Batman, but that can be excused because he isn’t human at all.
He is the most metaphysically intriguing character in modern superhero movies. He not only lives in a quantum universe, but is aware that he does, and reflects about it. He says, “This world’s smartest man means no more to me than does its smartest termite.” He lives outside time and space. He explains that he doesn’t see the past and the future, but he does see his
