
Richard Jewell
Eastwood’s conceptions of heroism and villainy have always been, if not endlessly complex, at least never simplistic.
Eastwood’s conceptions of heroism and villainy have always been, if not endlessly complex, at least never simplistic.
It becomes repetitive, nonsensical, and just loud after everyone gets an origin story and we're left with nothing to do but go boom.
Roger Ebert on James Ivory's "Howards End".
"The Ballad of Narayama" is a Japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. What a space it opens…
An article about today's noon premiere of a new movie about architect Benjamin Marshall at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
An article about the screening of Horace Jenkins' "Cane River" on Friday, November 1st, at the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles.
Scout Tafoya's video essay series about maligned masterpieces celebrates Steven Soderbergh's Solaris.
An article about today's noon premiere of a new movie about architect Benjamin Marshall at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
An FFC on Gavin Hood's Official Secrets.
A celebration of Yasujiro Ozu, as written by a Far Flung Correspondent from Egypt.
The latest on Blu-ray and DVD, including Hustlers, Ready or Not, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and a Criterion edition of Until the End…
I have come to appreciate silence not as a sign of weakness or capitulation, but as a finely sharpened dagger that finds its way to…
Roger Ebert became film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967. He is the only film critic with a star on Hollywood Walk of Fame and was named honorary life member of the Directors' Guild of America. He won the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Screenwriters' Guild, and honorary degrees from the American Film Institute and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The first Chicago bar I drank in was the Old Town Ale House. That bar was destroyed by fire in the 1960s, the customers hosed off, and the Ale House moved directly across the street to its present location, where it has been named Chicago's Best Dive Bar by the Chicago Tribune.
I was taken to the Ale House by Tom Devries, my fellow college editor from the Roosevelt Torch. It was early on a snowy Sunday afternoon. I remember us walking down to Barbara's Bookstore to get our copies of the legendary New York Herald-Tribune Sunday edition. Pogo. Judith Crist. Tom Wolfe. Jimmy Breslin. I remember peanut shells on the floor and a projector grinding through 16mm prints of Charlie Chaplin shorts. I remember my first taste of dark Löwenbräu beer. The Ale House was cool even then.
Advertisement
I returned to the North Avenue drinking scene on New Year's Eve 1966, opening night of the legendary O'Rourke's, two blocks directly west. Its last call was 2 a.m. The Ale House had a 4 a.m. license, so many of us walked down the street to continue. O'Rourke's was the newspaper bar. The Ale House was the bohemian bar. Customers flowed freely between them.
Tobin writes: "This is the painting of Arthur as a young sailor and Sandy Valentino, the most beautiful women he ever had sex with. She was a former Playboy Bunny and she was implicated in the famous kidnapping of the chimpanzee from Lincoln Park Zoo."
The bar was owned in recent years by Beatrice Klug and her ex-husband Art Klug, who really did look like Paul Newman. Art was a movie fan so obsessed it was slightly alarming. The Ale House ambiance made an ideal outpost for Bruce Elliott, the left wing unemployed-by-choice gadfly and social spy. Art died. Then Beatrice grew ill, and was catered to and cooed over daily by Bruce, his wife Tobin Mitchell, and their daughter Grace Littlefeather Elliott.
At the reading of her will it was revealed that Bea had given the bar to Tobin. Bruce could still preserve his proud record of never having worked a day in his life until his retirement at 65. (He did once, as a favor to a friend, drive a cab one Saturday morning during his San Francisco years, and has made a few bucks hustling golf for money on the public course in Jackson Park--a few times against Barack Obama, then a neighborhood organizer.)
Bea's gift inspired Bruce's blog, The Geriatric Genius, in which Elliott shows himself in the direct line of descent from the Host in the 15th century The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer's character is the central figure and narrator of the Tales, the one who knows all the others and is their common bond, yet rarely takes an active role during their pilgrimage. It is he who names them, convenes their nightly meetings, observes what they do, hears their secrets, and tells of their weaknesses.
And briefly, when the sun had gone to rest, So had I spoken with them, every one, That I was of their fellowship anon, And made agreement that we'd early rise To take the road, as you I will apprise. But none the less, whilst I have time and space, Before yet farther in this tale I pace, It seems to me accordant with reason To inform you of the state of every one Of all of these, as it appeared to me, And who they were, and what was their degree, And even how arrayed there at the inn.
Advertisement
Next Article: What was my Aunt Martha trying to ask me? Previous Article: Outguess Ebert? I may have them all right
The best films of 2019, as chosen by the staff of RogerEbert.com.
A review of the newest film by Quentin Tarantino.
A review of three premieres from Telluride.
This message came to me from a reader named Peter Svensland. He and a fr...