jetpack_monkey_ljarchive

Kind of a mess right now. Roger Ebert was a huge, huge influence on my writing as a film critic and he was just a generally decent person to boot. And now he's gone. Two days ago he posted that he was doing something new in his life and only reviewing the films that he wanted to review. I cracked to my mother on the phone this morning, "I guess he only wanted to review Ingmar Bergman's new works."

Ebert intersected my life twice. The first time he, unknowingly, put me back on the right course after I detoured. The second time, he helped me clarify my convictions.

( 2002: A Film Critic's Odyssey )

.

( The Discreet Charm of the Dead Teenager Movie )

That got really long. I apparently have a lot of feelings pent up on various things. Ahem.

Anyway. I'll miss you, Roger. The way you communicated your feelings on movies was unparalleled. When you loved a movie, it was sublime. When you hated a movie, the flames of enmity burned through your words. But where you really were different was when a film bored you. There you were able to riff on movies in general and the expectations we hold for them and any number of other subjects, all loosely tied to the film under the glass -- and somehow all of that divergence from the movie communicated exactly your feelings on it.