Roger Ebert

Goodbye to all that

Roger Ebert

I sent an e-mail the other day that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to write. It was to Jim Palmer and Maura Clare at the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder. I told them I wouldn’t be coming back this spring. I sent it, and stared into space, and was flooded with sadness.

I don’t intend to write here about the Conference, which has allowed me to live more than nine months of my life in Boulder, one week at a time. I wrote about CWA in a 2009 blog entry titled the Leisure of the Theory Class. I need not tell you again about Howard Higman or Daddy Bruce Jr.

Mary we crown thee with blossoms today!

Roger Ebert

My grade school couldn’t get state approval today. The teachers were unpaid and lived communally. Two grades were taught in one classroom. There were no resources for science, music, physical education, or foreign languages except the Latin of the Mass and hymns. No playground facilities. The younger students were picked up by the single school bus; as soon as we were old enough, we rode our bikes to school, even in winter.

A typical meal in the lunchroom might consist of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread, a dish of corn, a dish of fruit cocktail, and a carton of milk. On Fridays we had fish sticks or macaroni and cheese. On bad days we got chipped beef on toast, and that’s how I discovered that word. If you had a penny, you might buy a jawbreaker afterward.

I received a first-rate education. At St. Mary’s Grade School in Champaign, one block across Wright street from Urbana, were we taught by Dominican nuns who knew their subjects cold, gave us their full-time attention, were gifted teachers and commanded order and respect in the classroom. For eight years we were drilled on reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. Periods were devoted to history, geography and science, taught from textbooks without visual aids or any other facilities. We learned how to write well, spell, and god knows we learned how to diagram a sentence. And we looped away at the Palmer Handwriting Method, neatly writing JMJ at the top of every page, for Jesus, Mary and Joseph, who would bless our lessons, but not always.

Putting a better face on things

Roger Ebert

Would I want to start over with a new face? Would I like to eat, drink, talk, and look like a normal person? Even if that person were a stranger? In theory, this is now possible. I’ve been thinking of it, on and off, for the last two weeks. I regularly visit several science websites, and from New Scientist, the invaluable British magazine, I happened upon this story:

“Yesterday it emerged that a farmer in his thirties in Spain who accidentally shot away the lower part of his face has become the first person to receive an entire face transplant. According to yesterday’s press conference, he is

The 10 best foreign films of 2010

Roger Ebert

“35 Shots of Rum”. Two couples live across the hall in the same Paris apartment building. Neither couple is “together.” Gabrielle and Noe have the vibes of roommates, but the way Lionel and Josephine love one another, it’s a small shock when she calls him “papa.” Lionel (Alex Descas) is a train engineer. Jo (Mati Diop) works in a music store. Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue) drives her own taxi. Noe (Gregoire Colin) claims only his much-loved cat is preventing him from moving to Brazil.

Why are we cruel?

Roger Ebert

I was watching a movie this week, a very good one, that will open Friday here in Chicago. As sometimes happens, it led me into a realm of thinking that was not directly connected to it–or perhaps it was.

The movie is “The Mill and the Cross,” by the Polish director Lech Majewski. It literally enters into a famous painting, Bruegel’s “The Road to Calvary,” and walks around inside of it.

Think of me as the butler, Carson

Roger Ebert

For an hour before bedtime every night for a week, I’ve watched an episode of “Downton Abbey.” Last night the Earl of Grantham interrupted a garden party to announce the beginning of World War I, and I pulled up short. I was watching the first season via Netflix Instant, and inattentively failed to notice there were only seven episodes. I naturally expected ten.

Your new age, and mine

Roger Ebert

Most events called “psychic” do not take place at all, but only seem to. All the events we can perceive take place in a rational universe governed by physical laws. They can be explained by human thinking and do not require a supernatural loophole.

I’m drawn to this thinking by Clint Eastwood’s new film, “Hereafter.” You may have absorbed the idea that it’s about the afterlife. It would be fairer to say it’s about the common human need for there to be an afterlife.

When I write that I expect to experience no more after death than I experienced before birth, I receive comments from people who pity me. They wonder how I can possibly live with such a bleak prospect.

A fall from grace

Roger Ebert

I should have left the bloody book on the floor. It was past midnight, and I had finished a little light bedtime reading: A thriller by Barbara Vine, a chapter a night. I replaced the bookmark and reached over to put the book on the bedside table. It fell to the floor. That was no big deal.

But no. I was compelled to lean over to pick it up. I am not very nimble these days. I stretched down. I was maybe two inches away. I shifted, and made a real reach. I crashed onto the

TIFF #6: Oy vey, such a film you should see

Roger Ebert

There is something about the Jewish way of humor and storytelling I’ve always found enormously appealing. I memorized material by Henny Youngman and Myron Cohen at an age when, to the best of my knowledge, I had never met a Jew. I liked the rhythm, the contradiction, the use of paradox, the anticlimax, the way word order would be adjusted to back up into a punch line. There seemed to be deep convictions about human nature hidden in gags and one-liners; a sort of rueful shrug. And the stories weren’t so much about where they ended as how they got there.

The serious man is consoled by the friend who has stolen his wife

It moves! It speaks! It smells!

Roger Ebert

This week we’ll be treated to a big advertising campaign for “Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D.” I have not seen the film, but I have experienced the process.

Yes, the Scratch-n-Sniff card is back, this time advertised as Aromascope. We have come a long way since Odorama and Smell-O-Vision. Well, maybe not that long a way.

CIFF 2009: The winners! And our reviews

Roger Ebert

Post your own CIFF feedback

Tina Mabry’s “Mississippi Damned,” an independent American production, won the Gold Hugo as the best film in the 2009 Chicago International Film Festival, and added Gold Plaques for best supporting actress (Jossie Thacker) and best screenplay (Mabry). It tells the harrowing story of three black children growing up in rural Mississippi in circumstances of violence and addiction. The film’s trailer and an interview with Mabry are linked at the bottom.

Kylee Russell in “Mississippi Damned”

The winner of the Audience Award, announced Friday, was “Precious” (see below). The wins came over a crowed field of competitors from all over the world, many of them with much larger budgets. The other big winner at the Pump Room of the Ambassador East awards ceremony Saturday evening was by veteran master Marco Bellocchio of Italy, who won the Silver Hugo as best director for “Vincere,” the story of Mussolini’s younger brother. Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Filippo Timi won Silver Hugos as best actress and actor, and Daniele Cipri won a Gold Plaque for best cinematography.

Ending up in a kind of soundlesslyspinning ethereal void as we all must

Roger Ebert

The day will come when the words of Shakespeare are no longer known. The day will come, perhaps sooner, when all the words on the internet, in every language, have disappeared. These very words, and all the words we have read and written, will no longer exist. Oh, for a long time they may be on a hard drive somewhere, one able to store the entirety of the web. But not forever. Not even close. A word not read is like the proverbial tree falling in the forest. The word existed, the tree fell, but without witness, what does it mean?

These thoughts were inspired, oddly enough, by an advice column by Cary Tennis on Salon.com. He is asked a question, and answers it. I suspect the question was asked by Tennis of himself, in a spell of existential funk. His question comes down to: “Will anybody ever read what we write here, after today? I am sure our writing will persist in the World Wide Web, but will anybody ever read it again?

Will our best, well-meant advice ever help anybody else in the future? Will our detailed knowledge ever be of any use? Or do we just get filed, permanently?”

Are women better than men?

Roger Ebert

Sometimes I think so. Sometimes, not so much. If the blog I wrote a few weeks ago had started that way, I would have been spared a lot of grief. It better expresses what I was unsuccessfully trying to say.

The actual headline was “Women are better than men.” And that called down upon my head 408 comments, at least 80 percent hostile, and many surprisingly angry and insulting. This blog has traditionally been known for the civil tone of its comments, and now I was informed, for example, that I was a “feminist bitch.”

You can draw, and probably better than I can

Roger Ebert

In the early 1980s I met a laughter therapist named Annette Goodheart who told me I could draw. She was at the conference in Boulder to speak on laughter therapy, a subject she took very seriously indeed, and lectured about how we could be healthier in mind and spirit if we laughed more. This was of no help, because I already laughed a great deal, for example at my own jokes.

Win Ben Stein’s mind

Roger Ebert

I’ve been accused of refusing to review Ben Stein’s documentary “Expelled,” a defense of Creationism, because of my belief in the theory of evolution. Here is my response.

Ben Stein, you hosted a TV show on which you gave away money. Imagine that I have created a special edition of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” just for you. Ben, you’ve answered all the earlier questions correctly, and now you’re up for the $1 million prize. It involves an explanation for the evolution of life on this planet. You have already exercised your option to throw away two of the wrong answers. Now you are faced with two choices: (A) Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, or (B) Intelligent Design.

Because this is a special edition of the program, you can use a Hotline to telephone every scientist on Earth who has an opinion on this question. You discover that 99.975 of them agree on the answer (A). A million bucks hangs in the balance. The clock is ticking. You could use the money. Which do you choose? You, a firm believer in the Constitution, are not intimidated and exercise your freedom of speech. You choose (B).

Ebertfest 2008: My heart is in Urbana

Roger Ebert

The 10th Anniversary Ebertfest begins tonight in Urbana-Champaign. It is with some melancholy that I write these words on a legal pad in a hospital bed in Chicago. After consulting with my doctors, I have decided it may not be prudent to try to make the journey today with a fractured hip.