Category Archives: Movies

I Love Roger Ebert

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The list of reasons for loving Roger Ebert is long and enduring. The man has introduced millions of readers and viewers to the pleasure of good movies. He wrote the screenplay for Russ Meyer’s trash classic, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

He encouraged Oprah Winfrey to pursue syndication—while the two were out on a date!—contributing to her powerhouse status. He has been inspirational in continuing to pursue the career he loves, despite serious health problems, ones that have robbed him of his ability to speak.

And he wrote perhaps the best takedown in film review history, eviscerating Rob Schneider’s Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalo. (Although it should be noted that Rob Schneider cemented his mensch status by sending Ebert flowers when the film reviewer fell ill.)

So what’s the latest evidence of Roger Ebert being the coolest guy in Chicago? His kiss-off letter to Jay Mariotti, who recently ended his love-hate relationship with Chicago sportsfans by dumping on the Chicago Sun-Times as he walked out the door.

Ebert’s response, published in an open letter at Poynter Online:

Dear Jay,

What an ugly way to leave the Sun-Times. It does not speak well for you. Your timing was exquisite. You signed a new contract, waited until days after the newspaper had paid for your trip to Beijing at great cost, and then resigned with only an e-mail. You saved your
explanation for a local television station.

As someone who was working here for 24 years before you arrived, I think you owed us more than that. You owed us decency. The fact that you saved your attack for TV only completes our portrait of you as a rat.

Newspapers are not dead, Jay, although you predicted the death of the Sun-Times and the Tribune. Neither paper will die any time soon. Job-hunting tip: It is imprudent to go on TV and predict the collapse of a newspaper you might hope would hire you. Times are hard in the newspaper business, and for the economy as a whole. Did you only sign on for the luxury cruise? There’s an old saying that you might have come across once or twice on the sports beat: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

Newspapers are not dead, Jay, because there are still readers who want the whole story, not a sound bite. If you only work on television, viewers may get a little weary of you shouting at them. You were a great shouter in print, that’s for sure, stomping your feet when owners, coaches, players and fans didn’t agree with you. It was an entertaining show. Good luck getting one of your 1,000-word rants on the air.

The rest of us are still at work, still putting out the best paper we can. We believe in our profession, and in the future. And we believe in our internet site, which you also whacked as you slithered out the door. I don’t know how your column was doing, but we have the most popular sports section in Chicago. The reports and blog entries by our Washington editor Lynn Sweet have become a must-stop for millions of Americans in this election year. After a recent blog entry I wrote about the Beijing Olympics, I woke up at 5 a.m. one morning, when North America was asleep, and found that 40 percent of my 100 most
recent visitors had been from China. I don’t have any complaints about our web site. So far this month my web page has been visited from virtually every country on earth, including one visit from the Vatican City. The Pope, no doubt.

You have left us, Jay, at a time when the newspaper is once again in the hands of people who love newspapers and love producing them. You managed to stay here through the dark days of the thieves Conrad Black and David Radler. The paper lost millions. Incredibly, we are still paying Black’s legal fees.

I started here when Marshall Field and Jim Hoge were running the paper. I stayed through the Rupert Murdoch regime. I was asked, “How can you work for a Murdoch paper?” My reply was: “It’s not his paper. It’s my paper. He only owns it.” That’s the way I’ve always felt about the Sun-Times, and I still do. On your way out, don’t let the door bang you on the ass.

Your former colleague,
Roger Ebert

Illegal Use of Joe Zopp is Here!

FLYMF Alums, Movies, , ,

All in all, it’s a pretty good story. A group of friends grow up together in a small Wisconsin town, graduate from high school and then college, and start following their own career paths. One gets a job in insurance; another works for a software company. Some stay at home; some move away. My buddy Nick Holle, co-founder of FLYMF, makes it all the way to Los Angeles, where we attend the Professional Writing Program at USC together.

A couple years down the road, though, they start to get the itch. They want to do something. So they chat on a message board they’ve set up, kicking around one idea after another, and finally they come up with a movie. The concept: “a child prodigy turned social outcast returns to his hometown to investigate the circumstances of his own death.”

Continue reading Illegal Use of Joe Zopp is Here! →

The Dark Knight Is Strongman Claptrap—A Spoiler-Laden Review

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In The Dark Knight, the latest film featuring Christian Bale’s best attempts at a WWE-Smackdown! voice, the Joker’s greatest asset seems to be his ability to escape from any plot hole, no matter how large.

Want to threaten a meeting of the city’s top crime bosses? Just walk right in the back door. Feel like shooting rockets at police wagons and taking officers hostage? It’s ok—none of them will shoot back! Want to assassinate the mayor by posing as a member of his honor guard? No problem—policeman apparently have no idea what their peers look like, nor are they suspicious of people whose scars match those of the madman terrorizing the city.

For that matter, looking to kill the commissioner of police? Just sneak into his office off-camera. This same tactic can be used to load hospitals, ferries and abandoned warehouses with hundreds of barrels of explosives. It also comes in handy for leaving Bruce Wayne’s penthouse after Batman throws himself out the window. (“What’s that? Batman jumped out the window, leaving us alone in a room full of people we were terrorizing? Well, we might as well just take off then…”)

Continue reading The Dark Knight Is Strongman Claptrap—A Spoiler-Laden Review →

Guess Who Has an IMDB Listing?

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This guy!

The listing comes from my brief-brief-brief cameo in Illegal Use of Joe Zopp, the film that FLYMF co-creator Nick Holle and a group of his friends created in their home town of Chippewa Falls. The movie’s great (you can my response to it here), and it’s been really rewarding to see a group of good friends take a big artistic project through to fruition.

The movie will have its theatrical debut  on August 22 in Chippewa Falls Micon Cinemas; I will definitely be there. The movie will also be featured in Iowa City’s Landlocked Film Festival on August 23, after which there will be a DVD release. If you can make it to any of the screenings, you should show up to support an innovative grassroots film project. Congratulations to everyone involved!

Not Quite Invincible, But Good Enough

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The success of Iron Man is due less to the titular man in the metal suit than to his plainclothes alter ego, Tony Stark. Sure, there are plenty of action scenes to set the superhero mood: high g-force jet fights, raucous explosions and a multiple-villain takedown straight out of Terminator 2. The computer-generated effects even have an admirable heft to them, giving weight and presence to the laser blasts and aerial displays that can feel cartoonish in bad hands.

But where the movie really succeeds is in the acting of Robert Downey Jr., who exudes the insouciance and charmful arrogance that should be demanded of any millionaire playboy. His Tony Stark “works hard and plays hard,” to use a cliché. The head of a weapons-manufacturing firm, he’s consistently late and chronically soused. All-day immersions into genius engineering give way to all-night sessions of lovemaking. His private jet has a stripper pole; it’s probably also the fastest thing on the planet.

Downey’s performance reflects a man of gifts and privilege with a non-stop need for stimulation. Tony Stark seems to be living up to a thirteen-year-old’s image of a billionaire’s lifestyle, but a tinge of self awareness and a consistent sense of humor keep the whole thing grounded. Excellent supporting performances from Terrence Howard (college buddy/military man James Rhodes), Gwyneth Paltrow (right-hand assistant Pepper Potts) and Jeff Bridges (menacing mentor Obidiah Stane) lend the film a human feel that balances its high-flying action.

The movie even takes steps toward engaging the genre’s inherent contradiction—people pummeling others in the name of stopping violence—as Stark becomes disenchanted with his business after seeing arms he’s manufactured used by the wrong people. True, it doesn’t go very far in exploring the inherent limitations of Iron Man’s forceful approach (nor does it engage the difficulty of determining “the wrong people”), but hey, that’s what a sequel is for.