Roger Ebert

The greatest movies ever made

Roger Ebert

All lists of the “greatest” movies are propaganda. They have no deeper significance. It is useless to debate them. Even more useless to quarrel with their ordering of titles: Why is this film #11 and that one only #31? The most interesting lists are those by one person: What are Scorsese’s favorites, or Herzog’s? The least interesting are those by large-scale voting, for example by IMDb or movie magazines. The most respected poll, the only one I participate in, is the vote taken every 10 years by Sight & Sound, the British film magazine, which asks a large number of filmmakers, writers, critics, scholars, archivists and film festival directors.

1. The Night of the Hunter, 1955

That one at least has taken on a canonical aspect. The list evolves slowly. Keaton rises, Chaplin falls. It is eventually decided that “Vertigo” is Hitchcock’s finest film. Ozu cracks the top ten. Every ten years the net is thrown out again. The Sight & Sound list at least reflects widespread thinking in what could be called the film establishment, and reflects awareness of the full span of more than a century of cinema.

The IMDb list of “250 Top Movies of All Time” is the best-known and most-quoted of all “best movie” lists. It looks to be weighted toward more recent films, although Keith Simonton, who is in charge over there, tells me they have a mathematical model that somewhat corrects for that. Specifically, it guards against this week’s overnight sensation shooting to the top of the list on a wave of fanboy enthusiasm. Still, the IMDb voters are probably much younger on average than the Sight & Sound crowd. To the degree the list merely reflects their own tastes back at them, it tells them what they already know.

New Agers and Creationists should not be President

Roger Ebert

New Age beliefs are the Creationism of the Progressives. I move in circles where most people would find it absurd to believe that humans didn’t evolve from prehistoric ancestors, yet many of these same people quite happily believe in astrology, psychics, reincarnation, the Tarot deck, the i Ching, and sooth-saying. Palmistry and phrenology have pretty much blown over.

If you were attending a dinner party of community leaders in Dallas, Atlanta, Omaha or Colorado Springs and the conversation turned to religion, a chill might fall on the room if you confessed yourself an atheist. Yet at a dinner party of the nicest and brightest in New York, Chicago, San

The balcony is closed

Roger Ebert

Gene and me in the 1980s. Looking at this photograph by Chicago’s Victor Skrebneski, Gene said, “Even our mothers don’t think we look that good.”

(Photo by Victor Skrebneski)

I was surprised how depressed I felt all day on July 21, when Richard and I announced we were leaving the “Ebert and Roeper” program. To be sure, our departures were voluntary. We hadn’t been fired. And because of my health troubles, I hadn’t appeared on the show for two years. But I advised on co-hosts, suggested movies, stayed in close communication with Don DuPree, our beloved producer-director. The show remained in my life. Now, after 33 years, it was gone–taken in a “new direction.” And I was fully realizing what a large empty space it left behind.

I’d like you to meet your best friend

Roger Ebert

It was the opening day of the Disney-MGM studios in Orlando. The stars were there with their children. There was an official luncheon at the Brown Derby, modeled after the legendary Hollywood eatery. I was beside myself. I was in a booth sitting next to Jack Brickhouse, the voice of the Chicago Cubs. A man walked over and introduced himself. “Bob Elliott.” Oh. My. God. Bob, of Bob and Ray.

For me he was the biggest star in the room. Who, after all, compared to even one half of Bob and Ray, was Tom Hanks? Whoopi Goldberg? Art Linkletter? “Gosh all whillikers, Mr. Science!” I said, “What’s that long brown object???” Bob didn’t miss a beat: “That’s known as a board, Roger.”

Another man was steaming toward us through the throng. A middle-aged man, well-dressed, tanned, with a pleasant smile. “Hi, Jack!” he said. “Say, I hear Ernie Banks is invited. Yeah, I was just talking to Michael and that’s what he said.” Jack turned to me and said, “Roger, this is a man I want you to meet. You’re going to be seeing him again many times over the years. Say hello Jerry Berliant.”

Much ado about the N-thing

Roger Ebert

I should have used the actual N-Word. Then I wouldn’t be in the middle of what Huffington Post calls “an N-Word” controversy. By N-Word, I mean, literally, “N-Word,” that sly usage that goes along with “F-Word” when we want to say a word without saying it.

By its coverage of this “controversy,” HuffPost demonstrates its roots in Old Media and an almost deliberate cluelessness in its struggle to lure meaningless page visits.

That’s not the IMAX I grew up with

Roger Ebert

It started for me with a letter from a Los Angeles filmmaker named Mike Williamson, who contacted me March 7 in outrage about a bait-and-switch involving IMAX. He paid an extra fee to see a movie in Burbank, and wrote the company in protest: “As soon as I walked in the theatre, I was disgusted. This was not an IMAX screen. Simply extending a traditional multiplex screen to touch the sides and floor does not constitute an IMAX experience. An IMAX screen is gargantuan. It is like looking at the side of a large building, and it runs vertically in a pronounced way. It is not a traditional movie screen shape….This screen was pathetic by IMAX standards.”

If you will click to enlarge the graphic below, you will see that Williamson has a point. The illustration comes from Jeff Leins of newsinfilm.com, based on one with a useful article by James Hyder, editor of the LFexaminer, devoted to this issue. But documentation isn’t really necessary. Most of us know what an IMAX screen looks like,

and we instinctively know one wouldn’t fit inside our local multiplex. What “IMAX” means in such situations is that the company has taken over the largest screen in the complex, removed a few of the front rows of seats, and moved a somewhat larger screen that much closer to the audience. The picture is not projected through large format 70mm film, but with dual “high end” digital projectors. Every digital projector ever introduced was “high end” at the time.

Okay, kids, play on my lawn

Roger Ebert

I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place. I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn’t seen. Yet I declared as an axiom that video games can never be Art. I still believe this, but I should never have said so. Some opinions are best kept to yourself.

At this moment, 4,547 comments have rained down upon me for that blog entry. I’m informed by Wayne Hepner, who turned them into a text file: “It’s more than Anna Karenina, David Copperfield and The Brothers Karamazov.” I would rather have reread all three than vet that thread. Still, they were a good set of comments for the most part. Perhaps 300 supported my position. The rest were united in opposition.

“Jesus was a Nazi. So’s your preacher”

Roger Ebert

Pretty near everything Glenn Beck says strikes me as absurd, but he scored a perfect 10 when he warned his viewers against the dangers of Christianity. You already know all about it. Well, maybe not, because the usual defenders of Christianity, like James Dobson and Pat Robertson, were very quiet on the topic. Not even a peep from Pat about this man who showed every sign of having hired the best lawyers to draft his pact with Satan.

Many other Christians were not so silent Dr. David P. Gushee, Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, wrote: “He managed to do something few have been able to do — speaking only of my own religious community, he has united Catholics and Protestants, evangelicals and mainliners, Christian progressives and moderates and conservatives.”

My vocation as a priest

Roger Ebert

It was my mother who decided I would be a priest. I heard this beginning early in my childhood. It was the greatest vocation one could hope for in life. There was no greater glory for a mother than to “give her son to the church.” I speculated that my mother had given me birth with the specific hope of passing me on to the church.

There was a mother in our congregation at St. Patrick’s, Mrs. Wuellner, who had achieved the enviable distinction of giving two sons to the church, Fathers Frank and George, and these two good men came once to visit us at our home, possibly to inspire me.

The blogs of my blog

Roger Ebert

One of my favorite pastimes, especially when I should be doing something else, is moseying around the blogs of my readers. You may have noticed that when the name of a poster is displayed in blue, that means it’s a link — usually to the author’s blog, although you might be surprised. Assembled here is a distinctive readership of interesting people, not least because I am vigilant about never posting idiotic or perfunctory comments. A certain civil tone is (usually) maintained, avoiding the plague of flame wars.

More than a year ago, when the blog was somewhat new to me, I wrote: “Your comments have provided me with the best idea of my readers that I have ever had, and you are the readers I have dreamed of. I was writing to you before I was sure you were there. You are thoughtful, engaged, fair, and often the authors of eloquent prose. You take the time to craft comments of hundreds of words. Frequently you are experts, and generous enough to share your knowledge.”

How Studs helps me lead my life

Roger Ebert

I got caught in the Indiana Jones whirlwind and allowed an important anniversary to pass unremarked: On May 16, Studs Terkel celebrated his 96th birthday. One of the great American lives continues to unfold. If I know Studs, the great day passed with calls and visits from friends, and the ceremonious imbibing of one (1) gin martini, very dry. I hope he has eliminated the daily cigar, but I’m not taking odds. If you don’t know Studs, there are few people you can meet more easily in print. He is the greatest conversationalist I’ve met, the author of a shelf-full of books in which he engages people from all walks of life in thoughtful conversations about their own lives.

TIFF #1: Darwin, Herzog, the Coens and the Antichrist

Roger Ebert

I’ve just finished combing through the list of films in this year’s Toronto Film Festival, and I have it narrowed down to 49. I look at the list and sigh. How can I see six films a day, write a blog, see people and sleep? Nor do I believe the list includes all the films I should see, and it’s certainly missing films I will see. How it happens is, you’re standing in line and hear buzz about something. Or a trusted friend provides a title you must see. Or you go to a movie you haven’t heard much about, just on a hunch, and it turns out to be “Juno.”

Nicolas Cage in “Bad Lieutenant”

I can’t wait to dive in. Knowing something of my enthusiasms, faithful reader, let me tell you that TIFF 2009’s opening night is a film about the life of Charles Darwin. The festival includes the film of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” And new films by the Coen brothers, Todd Solondz, Michael Moore, Atom Egoyan, Pedro Almodovar, Hirokazu Kore-Eda, Alain Resnais and Guy Maddin–and not one but two new films by Werner Herzog. Plus separate new films by the three key talents involved in Juno: The actress Ellen Page, the director Jason Reitman, and the writer Diablo Cody.

Okay, I’ve already seen two of those. They were screened here in Chicago (Page as a teenage Roller Derby in “Whip It,” Cody’s script for “Jennifer’s Body,” starring Megan Fox as a high school man-eater, and that’s not a metaphor). I already saw more than ten of this year’s entries at Cannes, including Lars on Trier’s controversial “Antichrist,” Jane Campion’s “Bright Star,” Gasper Noe’s “Enter the Void,” Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces,” Bong Joon-Ho’s “Mother,” Lee Daniels’ “Precious,” Mia Hansen-Løve’s “The Father of My Children,” and Resnais’s “Wild Grass.” A lot of good films there. Not all of them, but a lot.

The third most important story of the year

Roger Ebert

HYDERABAD, India, Nov. 8 (UPI) — About 6,000 Muslim clerics from around India approved a fatwa against terrorism Saturday at a conference in Hyderabad.

The Muslim world has not been eager to hate America. For many Muslims, America with its religious freedom represented for decades a refuge against what all were pleased to call “godless Communism” and the USSR persecution of its Islamic republics. After the 9/11 attacks, there was a candlelight march in the streets of Tehran in mourning for the victims.

American flags were waved. No flags are waving now. I visited Tehran once, in 1972, for the film festival. My Iranian guide took me home for tea with her parents. There was a point that her family members wanted to make. “We are not Arabs,” her mother said. “We are Persians. We speak a different language. We are Muslims, but we are modern Muslims. You do not see our women covered up in the streets or locked up in their houses. America is our ideal, where all are left to worship in peace.” Then the Shah was overthrown, and the fundamentalists took over. Moderate candidates have been elected to national office in recent years, but the ayatollahs have veto power over moderation.

That was an Iran I hope still exists beneath the hostile stance they are taking against us. When we sent an army to Kuwait to throw back Saddam, Iran rejoiced, because Iraq was their ancient enemy. It was after we invaded Iraq after 9/11 that feelings began to sour. The sight of our occupation of a Muslim country disturbed the entire region. If we would invade its neighbor of our own volition, was Iran next? Until very recent months it seemed as if Iran was next. The White House reportedly ordered a military plan to be drawn up.

Stream a little stream with me

Roger Ebert

With the entry of Facebook into the field, an 800-pound gorilla has entered the room where we stream movies via the internet. If nothing else, this will introduce untold millions who have heard about live streaming but never tried it, in many cases because they assume it’s somehow difficult.

Just about everyone seems to be on Facebook, but for some people getting a FB account seems to represent the limit of their online expertise. Now streaming will come to them, on their very own page, and all they’ll have to do is give Mark Zuckerberg their credit card and buy some Facebook Credits.

No animals were Uncanny Valleyed in the making of this movie

Roger Ebert

A reader named Zig writes me from Cliffside Park, New Jersey: “What is your opinion of Amy Kaufman’s LA Times piece about animal use in films, the subject in general, and whether digital technology, like in ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes,’ can currently capture the natural personalities of individual animals, or will we have to wait for technology to advance just a little further?”

Raising free-range kids

Roger Ebert

I wrote recently about my childhood growing up in Downstate Illinois. I mentioned me and my friends roaming all over town on our bikes, walking to the movies and the swimming pool on our own, and riding our bikes through rain water backed up after thunderstorms. Also, for that matter, through piles of burning leaves. One of my classmates wrote to mention that the Boneyard, the creek running through town, was a drainage canal. “What?” I asked. “Where we caught crawdaddies?”

One of the comments on the entry was from a reader in Florida who said, rather sadly, that his 15-year-old son had just taken his first unsupervised bike ride through the city park. When he was growing up, he said, things were different. But not “today.” We use that word today as code for the dangers lurking everywhere in modern society. Another reader sent me a link to a web site advocating the raising of Free Range Children. I learned this has become something of a movement, cheered by a book by Lenore Skenazy. The movement believes we are punishing our kids by over-protecting them.

Certainly today we take for granted things that we never imagined in our own childhoods, like child car seats, bike helmets, bottled water, security guards, sunblock, hand sanitizer and childproof bottles. I mentioned my childhood memory that we boys would pee behind trees, shrubbery, or garages (“If you run home, your mom might grab you and make you do something”). I forgot to mention that one of the reasons we needed to pee is that when we got thirsty we drank out of garden hoses–our own, and anybody else’s.

Smash his camera, but not immediately

Roger Ebert

He is a viper, a parasite, a stalker, a vermin. He is also, I have decided, a national treasure. Ron Galella, the best known of all paparazzi, lost a lawsuit to Jackie Kennedy Onassis and five teeth to Marlon Brando, but he also captured many of the iconic photographs of his era. At 77, he is still active, making the drive from his New Jersey home and his pet bunny rabbits through the Lincoln Tunnel to Manhattan, the prime grazing land of his prey.

I had an idea, as many of us do, about Gallela and the species of paparazzi. It was a hypocritical idea. I disapproved of him and enjoyed his work. Yes, he comes close to violating the rights of public people, and sometimes crosses the line. He certainly crossed the line with Jackie’s children.