Today’s episode of Sounds of Cinema took a look back at the live action Superman movies from 1951’s Superman and the Mole-Men to 2013’s Man of Steel. You can find the full reviews in the Sounds of Cinema review archive. Below is a quick summary of the films covered on today’s show:
Superman and the Mole-Men (1951)
This film was created as a demo for The Adventures of Superman television show and was only intended for theatrical release in case the show wasn’t picked up. The show went into production but the feature was put into theatrical exhibition anyway. Although it was created as a sample for the television show, Superman and the Mole-Men is quite different in its tone. The movie does not have the humor of the show and it plays more like a 1950s Cold War era drive-in movie than a Superman film.
Superman: The Movie (1978)
Superman: The Movie is a nearly perfect superhero film. Every aspect of this movie, including its cast, production design, and score, is impeccably pitched and it makes for the kind of crowd pleasing popcorn film that viewers will want watch over and over again. Christopher Reeve’s performance has become the standard against which all future portrayals of the character are set and it has numerous images that can rightfully be called iconic. This is perhaps the single most important superhero movie ever made, as its style and approach to comic book material has influenced all subsequent superhero films.
Superman II (1980)
Superman II has significant shortcomings but it is a lot of fun and it does the duty of a sequel to raise the stakes and broaden the story palate. This is a campier movie than its predecessor and the love story is handled clumsily but it is also more action packed and it has a memorable supporting performance by Terrence Stamp as General Zod.
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (1980/2006)
In far too many cases director’s cuts are cynical cash grabs but at their best these new editions allow for artistic visions to be preserved or restored. Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut is superior to the theatrical version in almost every respect. It more closely matches the tone of Superman: The Movie, it excludes many of the campier moments of Richard Lester’s version, and the action sequences are edited more tightly.
Superman III (1983)
Most movie franchises deteriorate over time but the decline between Superman II and Superman III is staggeringly steep. Everything that worked in the previous two movies is gone and what is left is an incoherent story with attempts at humor that aren’t funny. This is among the worst superhero films ever made and maybe the only nice thing to say about Superman III is its contribution to the plot of Office Space.
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)
After the critical and box office disappointment of Superman III, the rights to Superman were sold to Cannon Films, a small studio notorious for picking up discarded franchises and making quick-buck sequels and ambitious but frequently under-budgeted fantasy films like 1987’s Masters of the Universe. The results speak for themselves in Superman IV. It is a terribly cheap production that often looks like a made for TV movie. However, in the quarter century since its initial release, Superman IV has a gained kitsch value. It is frequently silly but it is also strangely entertaining in the way that cult movies often are and despite its faults (or maybe because of them) the movie is entertaining schlock.
Superman Returns (2006)
After Superman IV, the series lay dormant for nearly two decades. Superman Returns exists in continuity with Superman: The Movie and Superman II but ignores Superman III and IV. Like Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong, this is a tribute by contemporary filmmakers to a picture that was important to them. The movie was intended for the audience who came of age watching the Superman pictures of the 1980s and in that respect it is a middle aged superhero film. Director Bryan Singer, along with screenwriters Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, deserve credit for aiming higher than stunts and explosions but this probably isn’t the picture that moviegoers were looking for, especially those who were under the age of twenty-five as of 2006.
Man of Steel (2013)
The style of 1978’s Superman: The Movie has dominated all subsequent incarnations of the character whether on film or television and in both live action and animation. Man of Steel is an ambitious attempt to break from that tradition and whatever its faults the filmmakers of this picture have succeeded in pushing Superman into the 21st Century. The picture they have made is stylistically bold and thematically interesting but it lacks a soul. As in a lot of recent Hollywood tent pole movies, the filmmakers conjure grand images of mass destruction that invoke the imagery of the 9/11 attack while purging that imagery of all human emotion. This is violence without consequence and as a result the climax of the movie is frequently cold, plastic, and joyless.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Superman Retrospective on Sounds of Cinema
Tune in on Sunday, June 23, for a look back at the Superman movies. This episode will include reviews of all the character's live action feature films from 1951's Superman and the Mole-Men to 2013's Man of Steel as well as music from these pictures.
Friday, May 24, 2013
'Apocalypse Now' on Sounds of Cinema
On Memorial Day weekend Sounds of Cinema will feature a condensed version of Elektra Records’ two-disc, 96 minute soundtrack to Apocalypse Now. The soundtrack album is unique in that it includes the music as well as the dialogue, sound effects, and narration featured in the motion picture, making the album play very much like a radio drama.
Based on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now tells the story of Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), an American soldier in Vietnam who is given a secret mission to assassinate an American colonel who has gone insane deep within the Southeast Asian jungle. On Willard’s journey he confronts his own doubts about the war, his allegiance to his country, and even his own sanity.
Apocalypse Now is an unconventional war film. There are none of the typical war film clichés; no taking the hill, no waving flags, no Rambo-style heroics, no buddies in combat. Instead, Apocalypse Now is a journey from the order and relative civility of the military command through a progressively chaotic and uncouth battlefield, stripping away the social and technological signs of human advancement and returning the characters to a primal state of nature. By doing this, Apocalypse Now examines the roots of violence and the nature of warfare, making the film an exploration of the Thanatos drive.
Sounds of Cinema airs every Sunday morning at 9am on 89.5 KQAL FM in Winona, Minnesota and at 11am on 89.7 KMSU FM in Mankato, Minnesota.
Based on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now tells the story of Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), an American soldier in Vietnam who is given a secret mission to assassinate an American colonel who has gone insane deep within the Southeast Asian jungle. On Willard’s journey he confronts his own doubts about the war, his allegiance to his country, and even his own sanity.
Apocalypse Now is an unconventional war film. There are none of the typical war film clichés; no taking the hill, no waving flags, no Rambo-style heroics, no buddies in combat. Instead, Apocalypse Now is a journey from the order and relative civility of the military command through a progressively chaotic and uncouth battlefield, stripping away the social and technological signs of human advancement and returning the characters to a primal state of nature. By doing this, Apocalypse Now examines the roots of violence and the nature of warfare, making the film an exploration of the Thanatos drive.
Sounds of Cinema airs every Sunday morning at 9am on 89.5 KQAL FM in Winona, Minnesota and at 11am on 89.7 KMSU FM in Mankato, Minnesota.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
What James Franco and 'The Great Gatsby' Can Teach Us About Adaptation
In an article posted at Vice.com, James Franco has reviewed Baz Luhrmann’s new film adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Although the review is being regarded with eye-rolls from some quarters of the internet (as is most everything by Franco, unfairly in my view), the piece has some interesting things to say about the film and the craft of adaptation. Among his observations, Franco writes:
Franco also gets at the purpose of adapting a previously published text. This is important to understanding and evaluating a film like The Great Gatsby. Filmmakers who adapt books or other narratives to film may have various intents. Many filmmakers working today attempt to recreate the original text on celluloid; such is the case with recent adaptations of popular fiction like Twilight and the Harry Potter series, which adhere slavishly to the source material (often to the movie’s detriment). Filmmakers of an earlier era were more prone to translate the source material, which often means modifying the text for running time and capitalizing on the strengths of cinema; Jaws and Psycho follow the basic structure of their novels but make drastic changes to characters and slim down the plots. Other filmmakers seek to comment upon the original text, as in Paul Verhoven’s Starship Troopers, while still others may use the original text to make broader connections, as in Frances Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Heart of Darkness into Apocalypse Now.
None of these approaches are necessarily better than the others. Fans of a particular title will often talk about filmmakers “ruining” a book by making changes but that’s often hyperbole that misses the point. Critics and viewers have to evaluate an adaptation first in the same terms they would for any other film: how well it works as a piece of cinema. The fact that the Twilight series was apparently very faithful to the books does not make them good exercises in motion picture making. But adaptations also have to be understood in terms of what they have tried to do in relation to the original text. If the goal was to recreate the book and they failed to do this then that is fair criticism. But if the filmmakers attempt something else—and Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby is an attempt to translate the text and make it palatable for contemporary cinemagoers —then the film has to be understood in those terms.
I’ll have a full review of The Great Gatsby on Sunday’s show.
When adapting Gatsby to the big screen, the main questions Baz Luhrmann faced were: What will work? And, like Romeo and Juliet before, How do I make this older material live in a new medium for a modern audience? And somehow Luhrmann managed to be loyal to both the original text and to his contemporary audience. The jazz music of the 20s was raw and dangerous, but if Luhrmann had used that music today, it would have been a museum piece—irrelevant to mainstream and high culture alike, because they would’ve already known what’s coming. . . . Luhrmann’s film is his reading and adaptation of a text—his critique, if you will. . . . Luhrmann needed to breathe life into the ephemera and aura of the 20s and that’s just what he succeeded at.Franco refers to the use of contemporary hip-hop music in the film’s soundtrack. His assessment is right on, as hip-hop is the contemporary descendent of jazz and its appearance on the soundtrack gives the audience a point of reference in the party scenes.
Franco also gets at the purpose of adapting a previously published text. This is important to understanding and evaluating a film like The Great Gatsby. Filmmakers who adapt books or other narratives to film may have various intents. Many filmmakers working today attempt to recreate the original text on celluloid; such is the case with recent adaptations of popular fiction like Twilight and the Harry Potter series, which adhere slavishly to the source material (often to the movie’s detriment). Filmmakers of an earlier era were more prone to translate the source material, which often means modifying the text for running time and capitalizing on the strengths of cinema; Jaws and Psycho follow the basic structure of their novels but make drastic changes to characters and slim down the plots. Other filmmakers seek to comment upon the original text, as in Paul Verhoven’s Starship Troopers, while still others may use the original text to make broader connections, as in Frances Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Heart of Darkness into Apocalypse Now.
None of these approaches are necessarily better than the others. Fans of a particular title will often talk about filmmakers “ruining” a book by making changes but that’s often hyperbole that misses the point. Critics and viewers have to evaluate an adaptation first in the same terms they would for any other film: how well it works as a piece of cinema. The fact that the Twilight series was apparently very faithful to the books does not make them good exercises in motion picture making. But adaptations also have to be understood in terms of what they have tried to do in relation to the original text. If the goal was to recreate the book and they failed to do this then that is fair criticism. But if the filmmakers attempt something else—and Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby is an attempt to translate the text and make it palatable for contemporary cinemagoers —then the film has to be understood in those terms.
I’ll have a full review of The Great Gatsby on Sunday’s show.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
KMSU Spring Pledge Drive
89.7 KMSU FM "The Maverick" is currently holding its spring pledge drive. If you
listen to Sounds of Cinema from this station, please consider making a financial
contribution. You can make a pledge by calling 507-389-5678 or 1-800-456-7810.
You can also make a pledge online at the the station's website.
If you listen to KMSU and enjoy its content, please help to ensure that the station stays on the air. In stressful and uncertain economic times we all have to take extra care in how we spend our money. But it is also important to remember that we demonstrate what we value by where and how we spend our money. Consider the impact that KMSU's program has on the community. Many of the programs, especially those that are locally produced, provide a very important service to the listenership and to the Mankato area as a whole.
It's also important to remember that pledges are not just about money. Space and funding are at a premium across higher education and in these times of strained budgets college radio stations have been sold to generate short term cash. When you make a pledge to KMSU you demonstrate that the station is valued by the community and that helps justify its continued existence.
On Sunday, April 28th, those listening to Sounds of Cinema from KMSU will hear a special pledge drive episode. Those listening from 89.5 KQAL FM in Winona will hear the regularly schedule program.
If you listen to KMSU and enjoy its content, please help to ensure that the station stays on the air. In stressful and uncertain economic times we all have to take extra care in how we spend our money. But it is also important to remember that we demonstrate what we value by where and how we spend our money. Consider the impact that KMSU's program has on the community. Many of the programs, especially those that are locally produced, provide a very important service to the listenership and to the Mankato area as a whole.
It's also important to remember that pledges are not just about money. Space and funding are at a premium across higher education and in these times of strained budgets college radio stations have been sold to generate short term cash. When you make a pledge to KMSU you demonstrate that the station is valued by the community and that helps justify its continued existence.
On Sunday, April 28th, those listening to Sounds of Cinema from KMSU will hear a special pledge drive episode. Those listening from 89.5 KQAL FM in Winona will hear the regularly schedule program.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
'Die Hard' Replay
Today's episode of Sounds of Cinema was a replay of the Die Hard retrospective originally broadcast in February. You can find additional commentary on the Die Hard series here.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Why Roger Ebert Matters
Film critic Roger Ebert died on April 4, 2013 at age 70. He was the most visible, prolific, and influential film critic of the last thirty years and his work shaped the way the public thought about movies and the way aspiring critics wrote about film. A writer for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 up until his passing, Ebert was also the author of numerous books, contributed commentary tracks to DVDs of classic films like Citizen Kane and Casablanca, and maintained a very popular blog.
Ebert rose to national prominence through the television show Sneak Previews which began airing on public television in 1975. In 1982 the show moved to commercial syndication and was retitled At the Movies. The weekly program was co-hosted by fellow Chicago film critic Gene Siskel and the two men brought serious but fun discussion of the movies into the living rooms of millions and in the process coined the now iconic phrase "two thumbs up." After Siskel’s death in 1999 Ebert continued to host the show with Richard Roeper until the program ended in 2010.
Ebert’s combined impact across a variety of mediums was tremendous but the ultimate value of his life’s work was the way it encouraged listeners and readers to think about the movies. The Hollywood marketing machine would prefer if audiences don’t think and just obediently consume whatever product they thrust upon us. What film critics do, and Ebert was a leader in this regard, is to incite consciousness on the part of the viewer.
The attempt by critics to make viewers think about cinema is mostly carried out through the weekly grind of evaluating new releases. But Ebert went further. He and Gene Siskel used their television program to highlight trends in motion pictures that they found abominable, namely the slasher films of the 1980s and Hollywood’s attempts to market violence and warfare to children. They also highlighted filmmakers that they deemed important and dedicated entire episodes to discussing the work of directors like Stanley Kubrick and Quentin Tarantino. Ebert also took on the film industry itself, criticizing the MPAA’s rating system and critiquing the distribution strategies of Hollywood studios and national theater chains that virtually quarantined independent and art house cinema from most mainstream movie houses. And Ebert offered advice and criticism for his colleagues, writing rules of ethics for movie critics and questioning the usefulness of top ten lists.
One of Roger Ebert’s lesser known accomplishments was his efforts on behalf of independent and minority filmmakers. When Spike Lee’s feature Do the Right Thing was accused of potentially inciting racial violence, Ebert was one of the film’s most vocal defenders. He also was a staunch advocate of the documentary Hoop Dreams and took the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science to task for failing to recognize it with an Oscar nomination. In the opinion of film critic Wesley Morris, “No major critic did more for black movies than he did.”
Ebert also provided a platform for independent filmmakers. Some of this occurred through his reviews in which he encouraged viewers and readers to go beyond the offerings at the local multiplex. But Ebert took the initiative and began a yearly film festival now known as Ebertfest, which provided a venue for audiences to screen cinematic gems of past and present that they might not otherwise have the opportunity to view.
Ebert was among the most successful film critics for a variety of reasons. First, he was a very good writer with a biting wit and a snappy prose style. Readers often delighted in his negative reviews, which could be very droll, but he was also very elegant about movies worthy of praise. Later in his life, Ebert proved to be equally graceful while writing about other topics from politics to his own health challenges, and in 2011 he published a memoir, Life Itself.
Ebert was also successful because he never condescended to the audience. Sometimes critics get too cerebral or their judgments take on a false pretension. Ebert would have none of this and he liked to quote film critic Robert Warshow: “A man goes to the movies. The critic must be honest enough to admit he is that man.” In other words, Ebert wrote about how he thought and felt about the cinema he watched and he did not contrive excuses for so-called low-brow movies that he enjoyed nor did he apologize for beloved movies that he did not like.
In addition to making him accessible, this approach also made him authentic. Readers never felt as though they were being strung along and Ebert was honest about his own reactions while also making allowances for other people’s tastes and accounting for the purpose of the movie. If he felt that a film was suitable for its intended audience, such as the fan base of a genre, he acknowledged that and reviewed the film relative to equivalent movies.
But maybe the most important reason why Roger Ebert was so respected and so influential was that he loved the movies and it showed in his work. Because he loved cinema and cared about it he demanded greatness. That enthusiasm was recognized by those who read his work and received his criticism.
Perhaps one of the most impressive testaments to Roger Ebert’s legacy occurred in the hours following the public announcement of his death. Tributes and eulogies popped up all over the web and news programs of all sorts set aside time to discuss his impact on the culture. Among those paying public tribute to Ebert were many great and varied directors including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, Darren Aronofsky, Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Michael Moore, Spike Lee, Kevin Smith, and Wes Craven. It is difficult to imagine any filmmaker, much less a film critic, receiving accolades from such a wide spectrum of directors.
In reflecting on Roger Ebert’s career I realize that I owe him quite a bit. Some of this is professional. As a writer I have a great deal of respect for his body of work and I looked to Ebert as a role model for what critics can and should do for their audiences.
But what I owe to Roger Ebert is also personal. Movies were always important to me. I think that for a certain segment of the population movies are one of the primary ways in which we learn about the world, both literally through documentaries and historical dramas, but also figuratively through stories and the unique aspects of cinematic art. I learned much of what I understand of politics and power through Planet of the Apes, about heroism from Star Wars, of the destructive power of greed from Scarface, about the dark side of the human heart in Apocalypse Now, of social and community responsibility in Jaws, and of the heartbreak of mortality and the redemptive power of art in The Fountain. Of course movies aren’t everything but they are something and for me they were as much a part of my understanding of reality as any other major influence in my life.
What Roger Ebert did was introduce me to the possibilities of thinking about the movies in a meaningful way. Because when I started to think about films in terms of their form and their meaning I suddenly had the basic tools to start thinking about how I thought about reality itself. For those of us who go through life largely understanding the world through the cinema—and with the proliferation of television and online videos that is nearly everyone in the developed world—this is a critical skill. As Ebert once said, “Film criticism is important because films are important.”
Many of the tributes to Roger Ebert have declared his passing the end of an era. In one sense that may be true, as film criticism has moved from newspapers like Ebert’s own Chicago Sun-Times and onto the web. But the era of film criticism to follow will owe a great deal to the legacy of Roger Ebert. The many online video review programs, whether they are hosted by professional critics or enthusiastic fans, are a direct descendent of Siskel and Ebert’s syndicated banter and the way in which films are reviewed in text and in spoken word will certainly aspire to the wit and insight that Ebert so exemplified.
The balcony may be closed but Ebert’s thumbprint will remain for years to come.
Ebert rose to national prominence through the television show Sneak Previews which began airing on public television in 1975. In 1982 the show moved to commercial syndication and was retitled At the Movies. The weekly program was co-hosted by fellow Chicago film critic Gene Siskel and the two men brought serious but fun discussion of the movies into the living rooms of millions and in the process coined the now iconic phrase "two thumbs up." After Siskel’s death in 1999 Ebert continued to host the show with Richard Roeper until the program ended in 2010.
Ebert’s combined impact across a variety of mediums was tremendous but the ultimate value of his life’s work was the way it encouraged listeners and readers to think about the movies. The Hollywood marketing machine would prefer if audiences don’t think and just obediently consume whatever product they thrust upon us. What film critics do, and Ebert was a leader in this regard, is to incite consciousness on the part of the viewer.
The attempt by critics to make viewers think about cinema is mostly carried out through the weekly grind of evaluating new releases. But Ebert went further. He and Gene Siskel used their television program to highlight trends in motion pictures that they found abominable, namely the slasher films of the 1980s and Hollywood’s attempts to market violence and warfare to children. They also highlighted filmmakers that they deemed important and dedicated entire episodes to discussing the work of directors like Stanley Kubrick and Quentin Tarantino. Ebert also took on the film industry itself, criticizing the MPAA’s rating system and critiquing the distribution strategies of Hollywood studios and national theater chains that virtually quarantined independent and art house cinema from most mainstream movie houses. And Ebert offered advice and criticism for his colleagues, writing rules of ethics for movie critics and questioning the usefulness of top ten lists.
One of Roger Ebert’s lesser known accomplishments was his efforts on behalf of independent and minority filmmakers. When Spike Lee’s feature Do the Right Thing was accused of potentially inciting racial violence, Ebert was one of the film’s most vocal defenders. He also was a staunch advocate of the documentary Hoop Dreams and took the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science to task for failing to recognize it with an Oscar nomination. In the opinion of film critic Wesley Morris, “No major critic did more for black movies than he did.”
Ebert also provided a platform for independent filmmakers. Some of this occurred through his reviews in which he encouraged viewers and readers to go beyond the offerings at the local multiplex. But Ebert took the initiative and began a yearly film festival now known as Ebertfest, which provided a venue for audiences to screen cinematic gems of past and present that they might not otherwise have the opportunity to view.
Ebert was among the most successful film critics for a variety of reasons. First, he was a very good writer with a biting wit and a snappy prose style. Readers often delighted in his negative reviews, which could be very droll, but he was also very elegant about movies worthy of praise. Later in his life, Ebert proved to be equally graceful while writing about other topics from politics to his own health challenges, and in 2011 he published a memoir, Life Itself.
Ebert was also successful because he never condescended to the audience. Sometimes critics get too cerebral or their judgments take on a false pretension. Ebert would have none of this and he liked to quote film critic Robert Warshow: “A man goes to the movies. The critic must be honest enough to admit he is that man.” In other words, Ebert wrote about how he thought and felt about the cinema he watched and he did not contrive excuses for so-called low-brow movies that he enjoyed nor did he apologize for beloved movies that he did not like.
In addition to making him accessible, this approach also made him authentic. Readers never felt as though they were being strung along and Ebert was honest about his own reactions while also making allowances for other people’s tastes and accounting for the purpose of the movie. If he felt that a film was suitable for its intended audience, such as the fan base of a genre, he acknowledged that and reviewed the film relative to equivalent movies.
But maybe the most important reason why Roger Ebert was so respected and so influential was that he loved the movies and it showed in his work. Because he loved cinema and cared about it he demanded greatness. That enthusiasm was recognized by those who read his work and received his criticism.
Perhaps one of the most impressive testaments to Roger Ebert’s legacy occurred in the hours following the public announcement of his death. Tributes and eulogies popped up all over the web and news programs of all sorts set aside time to discuss his impact on the culture. Among those paying public tribute to Ebert were many great and varied directors including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, Darren Aronofsky, Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Michael Moore, Spike Lee, Kevin Smith, and Wes Craven. It is difficult to imagine any filmmaker, much less a film critic, receiving accolades from such a wide spectrum of directors.
In reflecting on Roger Ebert’s career I realize that I owe him quite a bit. Some of this is professional. As a writer I have a great deal of respect for his body of work and I looked to Ebert as a role model for what critics can and should do for their audiences.
But what I owe to Roger Ebert is also personal. Movies were always important to me. I think that for a certain segment of the population movies are one of the primary ways in which we learn about the world, both literally through documentaries and historical dramas, but also figuratively through stories and the unique aspects of cinematic art. I learned much of what I understand of politics and power through Planet of the Apes, about heroism from Star Wars, of the destructive power of greed from Scarface, about the dark side of the human heart in Apocalypse Now, of social and community responsibility in Jaws, and of the heartbreak of mortality and the redemptive power of art in The Fountain. Of course movies aren’t everything but they are something and for me they were as much a part of my understanding of reality as any other major influence in my life.
What Roger Ebert did was introduce me to the possibilities of thinking about the movies in a meaningful way. Because when I started to think about films in terms of their form and their meaning I suddenly had the basic tools to start thinking about how I thought about reality itself. For those of us who go through life largely understanding the world through the cinema—and with the proliferation of television and online videos that is nearly everyone in the developed world—this is a critical skill. As Ebert once said, “Film criticism is important because films are important.”
Many of the tributes to Roger Ebert have declared his passing the end of an era. In one sense that may be true, as film criticism has moved from newspapers like Ebert’s own Chicago Sun-Times and onto the web. But the era of film criticism to follow will owe a great deal to the legacy of Roger Ebert. The many online video review programs, whether they are hosted by professional critics or enthusiastic fans, are a direct descendent of Siskel and Ebert’s syndicated banter and the way in which films are reviewed in text and in spoken word will certainly aspire to the wit and insight that Ebert so exemplified.
The balcony may be closed but Ebert’s thumbprint will remain for years to come.
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