I sense it's about time to share some of my thoughts about television and movie critics, myself, and the past, present and future of my corner of the critics-on-TV adventure. My friends A .O. Scott and Michael Phillips are well into their first season as the new co-hosts of "At the Movies." Richard Roeper just announced he will be streaming reviews on his web site, and they will re-run a week later on the Starz cable channel. I wish them all good fortune. And good health.
November 2009 Archives
The limerick's a form metronomical,
For the telling of jokes anatomical.
Yet the best ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
Auden, that very good man
Said a limerick need not merely scan.
But put up a struggle
And bend itself double
To be decent, and fail at the plan.
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."
Today, fifteen years after I first saw it, I believe "Hoop Dreams" is the great American documentary. No other documentary has ever touched me more deeply. It was relevant then, and today, as inner city neighborhoods sink deeper into the despair of children murdering children, it is more relevant. It tells the stories of two 14-year-olds, Arthur Agee and William Gates, how they dreamed of stardom in the NBA, and how basketball changed their lives. Basketball, and this film.
Photo copyright by Roka Walsh. Used with permission
"Hoop Dreams" observed its 15th anniversary Wednesday night at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Agee and Gates were both there. Gates, now a minister, observed that in one period of time he buried 20 victims of gang violence, 16 of them under 16. Agee said when he looks at his friends in the film today, "ten of them are no longer with us." Yet there they sat, men of around 40 now, articulate, thoughtful, and spoke about how their lives began to change on a Chicago playground 22 years ago when a movie camera showed up.
"We started out to make a little 30-minute documentary about a kid who had basketball dreams," Steve James, the director of the film, said Wednesday night. This was at a benefit for Kartemquin Films, the 40-year-old Chicago documentary group that produced the film.
The Webby Awards
Person of the Year
Best Blog: Natl. Soc. of Newspaper Columnists
One of the year's best blogs -- Time
Year's best blog: Am. Assn. of Sunday and Feature Editors
Roger Ebert
Search
About this Archive
This page is an archive of entries from November 2009 listed from newest to oldest.
October 2009 is the previous archive.
December 2009 is the next archive.
Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.
![lifeitself.jpg](https://web.archive.org/web/20120919190507im_/http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/assets_c/2011/07/lifeitself-thumb-175x265-36782.jpg)
Buy from Barnes & Noble
Buy from Borders
Buy from Indiebound
___________________
Read intro and buy
___________________
Buy from Amazon.com
Buy from Barnes & Noble
Buy from Borders
___________________
Tweet / Facebook
Pages
- "A Useful Life." A luminous film.
- "Baby Got Back" made from 295 movies
- "He wants us to do his dirty work:" Joe Klein eviscerates Netanyahu
- "Helicopter." A film about his mother's death
- "I've seen Romney and I've seen Bain"
- "Legitmate Rape," sung by the Raging Grannies
- "Life Itself." The paperback edition
- "Warning! Do not get on the bed!"
- "What is riskier than living poor in America?
- 163 Horror Movies in 2.5 Minutes
- A Monty Python Christmas
- An actual BMW ad from Germany for pre-driven used cars
- An underwater museum of ethereal beauty
- Anne Keegan was a newspaper reporter
- Awful couple plans horrid wedding
- Barack and Kumar go to North Carolina
- Beyond the Mainstream: IV
- Bill Maher defends the Eastwood speech
- Bill Nye the Science Guy explains why Creationism is bad for children
- Britain's Got Talent 2012 auditions: Not what you may be expecting
- David Lynch on watching movies on an iPhone
- Democratic National Convention: The movie junket
- Ebert Club All-Time Short Film Retrospective
- Everything Jeff saw in "Rear Window"
- Exclusive footage of the Last Supper
- He lives in Detroit, in the old Packard plant
- If you love The Daily Illini, it needs your help
- If you were a teenager in the 1950s...
- Infinity: ♬ That's about the size of it ♬
- Intro: "A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length"
- James Lipton takes Clint "Inside the Actors Studio"
- Joey Lauren Adams on Joey Lauren Adams
- Many of my losing entries in the New Yorker's daunting Cartoon Caption Contest
- My entry in 348th New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest
- My entry in the 349th New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest
- My video tour of Cambridge, York and London
- One trillion frames per second. Yes.
- Oscar-worthy B-rated trailers
- Public Edition #9
- R. L. Burnside: A something man
- recent Two Thumbs Up® reviews
- Rude service: A Chicago dining tradition
- She photographs elderly animals
- Silent weirdness with the Alloy Orchestra
- Six of Herzog's less-known documentaries, streaming
- Strategies of a Pub Dog
- Superheroes always make three-point landings.
- The 1994 Kennedy-Romney Debate on health care
- The Best B-Rated Movie Trailers Ever!
- The best cat video of all time
- The best Lone Ranger story ever told
- The birthday of the cinema
- The Lady from Shanghai
- The man inside the Nicolas Cage suit
- The Second Best Cat Video of all Time
- The story of a dog named Stanley
- the Your Movie Sucks™ files
- Tiny Tim sings "The Ice Caps are Melting:
- Tom Hanks tells a Michael Clarke Duncan story
- Usain Bolt narrates his world-record run
- Videos of every panel at Ebertfest 2012
- Who goes there? A map of science-fiction
- 3D
- Animation
- Archives
- Art in many forms
- "I don't know anything about architecture, but I know Brutalism when I see it"
- "In the Morning," a short fim inspired by Edward Hopper
- Gregg Toland, cinematographer
- Have you ever seen a Tintin story?
- Is The Phantom the only sexually-active superhero?
- Pogo's lament on Earth Day
- The world's largest indoor photo in 360 degrees
- Being here
- A photo of a little girl, and memories of two beloved aunts
- Hitchens is eloquent in the face of death
- How to be alone
- Jean Shepherd reads his original "A Christmas Story"
- Let's get together and feel all right
- My master thinks this is art
- To be young and mixed in America
- Werner Herzog meditates on The Bear
- West Virginia 8th grade test in 1931
- C'est moi
- "Memory." How my memoir "Life Itself" opens
- Best films 1967-2009: Siskel & Ebert & Scorsese
- Helicopter crashes in our house!
- I have no arms and I must play
- I read these in my bedazzed youth. Now it's the covers I love.
- I'll be honest and fight sqare
- If you were a kid in the 1950s, you remember...
- It's hard to believe it's been 12 years, Gene. I miss you.
- It's like so uncool to like sound like you know what you're like talking about
- Matinees and horse manure
- My drinking days, recalled in a noirish oil
- My other neighborhood on Red Arrow Highway
- My talk at TED 2011
- Portrait of the critic at home
- Siskel & Ebert and Howard Stern
- Cooking
- CyberWorld
- Directors
- A conversation with Atom Egoyan
- Claude Chabrol, RIP. The master at midpoint
- Herzog looks ahead to the Cave
- Jason Reitman in conversation
- Louis Malle: A do-it-yourself interview
- Manuel de Oliveira is 102: A tribute
- Scorsese on Elia Kazan: Watch the documentary
- The heart of the world and other organs: The singular cinema of Guy Maddin
- The secret of Jacques Tati
- Ebert Club
- Ebert Presents
- Ebert presents at the movies
- Ephemera
- Film Festivals
- Film classics
- Funny
- A personal letter from Steve Martin
- Aid rushed to movie overdose victims
- At this point, we all need a good laugh
- Attack of the Second-Rate Monsters
- Buddy Hackett: Up at drama, down at comedy.
- Dan and Dan: The Daily Mail Song
- David Mamet's "Lost Masterpieces of Porn," with your host, Ricky Jay
- Do the Creep!
- Down memory lane: Nic Cage goes batshit
- George W. Bush and Mike Tyson in "The President's Speech"
- Helen Mirren's breasts are the answer to everything
- Henny Youngman: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this!"
- How Michael Caine Speaks
- How to get a guy to notice you during sex (nsfw)
- I know every single word. So do you.
- I love it when I'm quoted correctly
- Push the dragon's head, and the marble runs down here, and...
- The 1982 Tron Holiday Special
- The helpful Robert Benchley
- Walken the Walk, by Walkin' Walken
- When Harry met Sally 2, with Billy Crystal and Helen Mirren
- Who cut the cheese?
- Yes! I won the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest!
- Literature
- "Fight Club," by Jane Austen
- "In Love with Raymond Chandler," by Margaret Atwood
- "The Premature Burial," by Edgar Allan Poe
- Gatsby in Scott Fitzgerald's handwriting
- In memory of the memories of W. G. Sebald
- Jack Kerouac: 3/12/22 - 10/21/69
- Let's hear it for the Oxford Comma!
- On 4/13/1906, Samuel Beckett started waiting
- Some bookstores just feel this way
- Stephen Colbert reads "The Lie," by T. C. Boyle
- Studs and Algren and Patterson, N.J.
- The Black Mask Boys
- The books everyone should read
- The enigmatic case of the oddly persistent mystery writer
- Walt Kelly, an immortal
- Werner Herzog reads "Go the F**k to Sleep"
- Why is film criticism important?
- London
- Meaning of it All
- Movies
- "As Penny Chenery's youngest son..."
- "Man in a Blizzard," by Jamie Stuart
- "Rosebud" was a rather tawdry device
- "Whose birthday, Lou?" "Yours, Bud!" "Mine?!? Waitaminit! You were born before me." "That's why your birthday is first." "Who's second?" "You. I was born first."
- 100 Great Moments in the Movies
- 36 Hitchcock death scenes all at once
- A double feature every day!
- All of Hitchcock's cameos
- Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
- How Tom Cruise shot the skyscraper scene
- I could watch a Fellini film on the radio
- Jeff Bridges: The Starman within
- Marni Nixon: The secret voice of Hollywood
- Nick & Nora's hangover cure
- Revenge on "Revenge of the Sith"
- Richard Harris: Don't let it be forgot
- Robert Duvall: "Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that"
- Rock Hudson's secret
- Street scene: Movie theater, snow, rain, promise
- The 100 greatest movie threats of all time
- The Akira Kurosawa Song
- The Bechtel Test
- The Duke on Rooster: "My first good part in 20 years"
- The shower scene
- Why Pauline Kael never saw a movie twice
- Movies free online
- "Cyrano de Bergerac" (1950)
- "Inspired by Bret Easton Ellis," by Matthew Ross
- "Love Serenade"
- "Plan 9 from Outer Space," by the Worst Director of All Time
- "Sita Sings the Blues"
- "The Corporation"
- Dante's "Inferno," a 1911 Italian film with music by Tangerine Dream
- Freddie Mercury: The Untold Story
- Harold Lloyd: A rare early short and an interview
- John Huston's "Beat The Devil"
- Pauline Kael's favorite film: "Menilmontant"
- Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in Richard Lester's "The Bed-Sitting Room"
- Rene Clair's "And Then There Were None"
- The Kennel Murder Case
- Thomas Edison's "Frankenstein" (1910)
- Music
- "Chanda Mama" around the world
- "Gimme Shelter" by Playing for Change
- "Making Giant Hands," by Dog and Panther
- "Redemption Song" around the world
- "Swan Lake" by the Great Chinese Circus
- "What'll I do?" by Julie London
- A Labor Day concert
- A xylophone in a forest
- Bob Marley: One Love around the world
- Concert for an uncertain world
- Did Leonard Cohen save my life?
- Ella: It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing
- Esperanza Spalding. Yes.
- Four-year-old Jonathan conducts conducts the Chandler Symphony Orchestra
- Freddie Mercury vs. the Platters & Wayne's World
- George Shearing, 1919-2011
- Happiness is being on the road again
- I could listen to Ronnie play guitar all day long
- I went to school with Andy Cohen
- I'll never smoke weed with Willie again
- If Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" had been a tango
- Jammin' cellos: Stjepan Hauser and Luka Sulic
- Joan Baez: There is a clearing where one is almost happy
- John Prine: A concert in Ireland
- John Prine: American Legend
- Jonathan is three and loves great music
- Joni MItchell: "Big Yellow Taxi"
- Julie London: The torch is burning
- New Year's with Steve: In tribute to a great heart
- Que sera, sera
- Sing a song of newspapers
- Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee
- Still Bill: The life and songs of Bill Withers
- Sweet Dreams, Baby: For Patsy Cline
- The Platters perform "The Twist"
- The night Hank Williams came to town
- The triumph of the day-fly
- The ukulele orchestra of Great Britain
- Tom Waits serenades New York harbor
- We need Punk Vaudeville. Jarmean?
- Won't you ride in my little red wagon?
- Yankee Doodle Dandy: Born on the Fourth of July
- Your Christmas morning concert
- ♫ Deck us all with Boston Charlie, Walla Walla, Wash., and Kalamazoo! ♫
- ♫ Don't know much about history... ♫
- ♫ My funny valentine, sweet comic valentine, you make me smile with my ♥
- ♫ Nestor Torres and the spirit in the music
- New Yorker captions
- News
- Newspapers
- O'Rourke's magazine
- Oscars
- Pages for Twitter
- People
- "By the age of 50, every man has the face he deserves."
- "It's not like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Cher said.
- Bill Mauldin, American
- Bob Hope: Thanks for the memories
- Bronson: Coming of age in Scoop Town
- Dorothy Dandridge: In Memory
- Falling in Love Again: Marlene Dietrich
- Farewell, First Lady of the Air
- Keanu thought his two years were running out
- Kirk Douglas: I've killed so many Romans, so many Vikings, so many Indians...
- Lars von Trier, meet Klausi Kinski
- Leslie Nielsen, RIP. "And don't call me Shirley"
- Liza, when all was still ahead
- Mae West and Rock Hudson: "Baby, It's Cold Outside!"
- Maria Schneider comes to America
- Orson Welles sells peas
- Pete Postlethwaite: 1946-2011
- Robert Mitchum remembers Marilyn Monroe
- Susannah York, 1939-2011
- The last days of Tiny Tim
- Werner & Erroll & the mystery of Ed Gein's grave
- Who is Billy "Silver Dollar" Baxter?
- Woody Allen interviews Billy Graham
- Zuppke of Illinois: A football coach
- Photos in need of a caption
- Photos in need of comment
- Poetry
- "Hell is a Lonely Place," by Charles Bukowski
- "Nirvana," by Charles Bukowski
- "Poetry Readings," by Charles Bukowski
- "Portrait of a Lady," by T. S. Eliot
- "The Perfect High," by Shel Silverstein
- "This Be the Verse," by Philip Larkin (nsfw)
- "You being in love," by e. e. cummings
- 'Twas the Night Before Pogo
- All the world's a stage
- Dylan Thomas goes not gently
- Emily Dickinson's life closed twice before its close
- Evening Prayer
- Good-bye to All That
- Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
- I love this sweet grandmother
- In Just-Spring, when the world is mud-luscious...
- Marilyn Monroe and Carl Sandburg
- Remembering Bukowski
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
- So anyway, Charles Bukowski, Errol Morris and Roger Ebert walk into this bar...
- So much depends upon a red wheel barrow
- W. B. Yeats: "Horseman, pass by!"
- Walt Whitman: I sing the body electric
- When icicles hang by the wall
- William Blake: Of innocence and experience
- e. e. cummings lives in a pretty how heaven
- e. e. cummings talks dirty (nsfw)
- Politics
- Christopher Hitchens at length on BBC's Newsnight
- Pogo says it for the very first time
- Saul Alinsky pours for the Tea Party
- The Battle Hymn of the Tea Party
- The financial crisis explained (nsfw)
- The rich are waging war on America
- The smoker and the Cheshire Cat
- Update on the TSA breast milk incident
- Will Rogers on unemployment
- Willam F. Buckley was not an Ayn Rand fan
- Satire
- Science and not
- Ants have built-in pedometers
- Do Creationists make good science students?
- If Disney had animated mushrooms
- Our beautiful, awesome, terrifying universe
- Snakes on mathematical planes
- Starting with one cell, we arrive at Prof. Hawking
- The God Gene. A breakthrough
- The python's dinner
- We are part of all worlds
- Werner Herzog explains radioactive albino crocodiles to Stephen Colbert
- Sex and stuff
- Siskel and Ebert
- Letterman, Siskel & Ebert go door-to-door in New Jersey
- Letterman: "The lovely & talented Siskel & Ebert"
- Siskel & Ebert & Stern
- Siskel & Ebert fight over a toy train
- Siskel & Ebert on home video in 1988
- Siskel & Ebert on how to be a film critic
- Siskel & Ebert recommend great summer movies
- Siskel & Ebert's 1980s Holiday Gift Guides
- Siskel & Ebert's animated appearance on "The Critic"
- When Siskel & Ebert were on "Sneak Previews"
- Strange
- Television
- Trailers
- Videos
- What could go wrong?
Categories
- 3D (5)
- Best film lists--and worst (16)
- Books and reading (5)
- Books and such (3)
- Cannes 2009 (10)
- Cannes 2010 (10)
- Darwin, My Hero (9)
- Deeper into movies (36)
- Film festivals (3)
- Just for Twitter (1)
- My Life and Times (47)
- My Old Gang (13)
- People (23)
- Political (32)
- Popular entries (17)
- Specific films (27)
- Supposedly funny (13)
- The Immensity (32)
- The Seasons (3)
- The Webopolis (8)
- The show (9)
- Toronto 2009 (11)
- Toronto 2011 (6)
Monthly Archives
- September 2012 (7)
- August 2012 (5)
- July 2012 (7)
- June 2012 (5)
- May 2012 (6)
- April 2012 (4)
- March 2012 (4)
- February 2012 (5)
- January 2012 (4)
- December 2011 (8)
- November 2011 (7)
- October 2011 (4)
- September 2011 (11)
- August 2011 (6)
- July 2011 (6)
- June 2011 (4)
- May 2011 (6)
- April 2011 (3)
- March 2011 (4)
- February 2011 (4)
- January 2011 (7)
- December 2010 (6)
- November 2010 (4)
- October 2010 (7)
- September 2010 (12)
- August 2010 (5)
- July 2010 (5)
- June 2010 (5)
- May 2010 (13)
- April 2010 (6)
- March 2010 (5)
- February 2010 (4)
- January 2010 (7)
- December 2009 (9)
- November 2009 (4)
- October 2009 (7)
- September 2009 (15)
- August 2009 (9)
- July 2009 (7)
- June 2009 (6)
- May 2009 (13)
- April 2009 (7)
- March 2009 (7)
- February 2009 (10)
- January 2009 (6)
- December 2008 (5)
- November 2008 (8)
- October 2008 (6)
- September 2008 (6)
- August 2008 (6)
- July 2008 (4)
- June 2008 (5)
- May 2008 (11)
- April 2008 (4)