Roger Ebert Home

Scanners

Scanners

Three faces of Margaret

Let me indulge my passion for operatic drama for a moment and say that I've seen Kenneth Lonergan's "Margaret" four times now (the theatrical version and the new "extended cut" on DVD, twice each) and, while I'm watching it, I…

Scanners

Louie: Funny is gravy

It's not enough to say that Louis C.K.'s "Louie" is the finest, funniest, most adventurous half-hour comedy on television. It's not even necessarily accurate, since the series is more like a short story anthology than any kind of sitcom you've…

Scanners

Preparing for The Dark Knight to Rise

So, we're having this wonderful discussion at Scanners about the moral dimensions of superhero movies -- mostly about "The Amazing Spider-Man," "Marvel's The Avengers" and "The Dark Knight." I was bringing up some things from 2008 and 2009 about how…

Scanners

What is a "rape joke," anyway?

What's worse than finding a hair in your soup? Being raped.* -- @AntiJokeApple, June 2, 2012 "I was raped by a doctor... which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl..." -- Sarah Silverman, "Jesus Is Magic" (2005) Seriously, what is…

Scanners

Margaret: The masterpiece that (almost) got away

Kenneth Lonergan's "Margaret" was written in 2003, filmed in 2005 and stuck in post-production for six more years. The 150-minute version briefly released theatrically last year was an inchoate masterpiece, perhaps, but a masterpiece nevertheless. The DVD/Blu-ray release, July 10,…

Scanners

Sorkin's Newsroom: Who, What, When, Where, Why

To best appreciate Aaron Sorkin's writing, you should probably know as little as possible about whatever it is he's writing about. Imagine that pithy, rather snarky statement delivered at a rapid clip from the mouth of one of Sorkin's characters.…

Scanners

It's not nice to call a superhero a "unitard"

Or: Do comic-book movie blog posts display traffic superpowers? New York Times film critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis held a discussion of comic-book movies and that subset known as "superhero movies" in advance of the Marvel re-boot, "The Amazing…