Roger Ebert (1942–2013)

A very moreish book - cause it's a collection of shortish reviews and they all make pretty easy reading, you just keep reading the next one. Only enjoyable if you like reading short reviews/summaries of bad films - it's exactly what it says on the tin - but great if you like that. The summaries are usually far more enjoyable than the film itself and although Ebert isn't a proper comedian, he's witty enough that I've laughed out loud quite a bit and smiled even more. Sometimes his moral and political judgements are very, very off (for example, his portrayal of a few films where women are constantly violent to men as men-hating... alas! he has no idea) and there are some reviews which aren't up to much - whether cause the film is so average or cause of Ebert's poor writing or hang-ups. It's definitely enjoyable if you like reading about bad movies but the quality is pretty variable. The great reviews are a lot of fun though.… (lisätietoja)

Starting out this read like it was going to be a dry recitation of biographical facts – where Ebert was born, what schools he went to, so on and so on – and then somewhere along the way it turned into an intimate portrayal of a truly remarkable life. Of course the main subject was Ebert himself but the way he wrote about his own life became a perceptive look at the world he lived in and those around him. I ended up with 14 pages of annotations in my ereader, too many to include here, but one that I especially liked was this quote, “No good movie is too long. No bad movie is short enough”. It reminded me of this line from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, “If a book is well written, I always find it too short”, and that brings up my one and only criticism of this memoir – it’s too short.… (lisätietoja)

New hobby for us - we watch one of the films Ebert writes on in the evening, then read his essay aloud over coffee the next morning and discuss. It's a bit like attending a film seminar. First we form our own opinion, then we let Ebert tell us what he thinks made the movie under discussion great. Most of the time we would feel it was a great film without his input, a few times he was able to convince us. Once in a while, he doesn't convince us, but we can understand why he thinks so. In one case, Body Heat, we still felt this was not a good movie. But that's part of the fun of reading a book like this. Another bit of fun: in nearly every essay, there was a factual error as Ebert recounted the plot. Was this some form of hidden trivia contest? One last thing: Ebert knows how to construct an essay. He saves some valuable insight, or twist, or detail for the very end. Recommended.… (lisätietoja)