For Roger Ebert,
it's a prayer that made him "more alert to the awe of existence." For Rober Koehler,
it's a kitschy New Age con. For Richard Brody, it perfectly captures the essence of a generation by depicting a character thinking
"back to the musings and fantasies of childhood, which are the product of a wondrous and fantastic view of science formed by popular-science books for children and by the commercial artists whose illustrations adorned them." For Stephanie Zacharek, it's
"a gargantuan work of pretension." For Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, it's
"a creation myth in the guise of a crypto-autobiography" that invents a universe of its own only to destroy it. For J. Hoberman, it's lifeless and dull,
"essentially a religious work and, as such, may please the director's devotees, cultists, and apologists." It spent thirty years in development,
three in editing and, yes,
it contains dinosaurs.
The Tree of Life, written and directed by
famously reclusive Zoolander fan and
"JD Salinger of American movies" Terrence Malick , won the
Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Tomorrow,
it comes out in the United States.
[more inside]
posted by alexoscar
on May 26, 2011 -
64 comments
Roger Ebert: "In the last year or two, the world's cinema has become even more available. This instant, sitting right here, I can choose to watch virtually any film you can think of via
Netflix,
Amazon,
Hulu,
MUBI, the
Asia/Pacific Film Archive,
Google Video or
Vimeo. At
Europa Film Treasures, I can watch films none of us has heard of." Ebert on how the accessibility of film online is making for more and better film criticism from around the world "..by their early 20s, Wael Khairy of Cairo and Seongyong Cho of Seoul had seen every significant film ever made." "The best single film criticism site is arguably
davidbordwell.net".
[more inside]
posted by stbalbach
on Jan 23, 2011 -
24 comments
Hearing him discuss films one day in the Lake Street Screening Room used by Chicago critics, Ebert said, "I was struck by the depth and detail of his film knowledge, and by how articulate he was." After reading his work online, Ebert was sold.
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, 24,
will co-host the revival of
At the Movies with Christy Lemire.
[previously] [more inside]
posted by Iridic
on Jan 4, 2011 -
35 comments
Pauline Kael called it "a huge, jerry-built, crumbling ruin of a movie". Roger Ebert called it "such a silly and stupid movie... our immediate reaction is pity". Few directors of
Michelangelo Antonioni's stature have followed a film as acclaimed as
Blowup (1966) with one as reviled as
Zabriskie Point (1970).
[more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on Jun 25, 2009 -
30 comments
On
At The Movies this past weekend Richard Roeper announced: 1) The past
20 years of At The Movies (formerly Siskel & Ebert & the Movies) is going to be archived for free download online. That's several thousand reviews -- from
Adventures in Babysitting to
Zodiac. Unfortunately, the first ten years of of the show was poorly preserved. Ebert writes, "Starting Thursday, Aug. 2, visitors will be able to search for and watch all of those past debates, including the film clips that went along with them, plus the “ten best” and other special shows we did. The new archive will be at
www.atthemoviestv.com, and will be the web’s largest collection of streaming reviews." 2) Roger Ebert will be a guest for an online chat Thursday at 8:00 Eastern (7:00 Central). You can submit questions in advance
here. The chat will be at
this link. (Until the actual archive shows up online,
you can enjoy these links.)
posted by McLir
on Aug 1, 2007 -
75 comments
Roger Ebert salutes Buster Keaton in an article in which he says the Great Stone Face is "the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies." High praise indeed! Any other Keaton fans out there? (This is from the Chicago Sun-times--I don't believe registration is required.) And if you want to see Buster smiling--sort of--here's a picture of him with one-time movie partner
Fatty Arbuckle.
posted by Man-Thing
on Nov 13, 2002 -
19 comments
