Roger Ebert is gone from "At the Movies," but he's an increasingly influential figure in the new dominant realm of film criticism: the Web.
Ebert last week announced he was leaving the long-televised show he began with Gene Siskel — by its earliest incarnation — in 1975. The 66-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning critic hadn't been on the show since 2006, sidelined, if only to a certain extent, by a battle with cancer that has left him unable to speak.
But he's continued to write reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times and this year began blogging on the newspaper's Web site: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert. His online musings, labeled a "journal," should be bookmarked by all film buffs.
In an entry last week titled "The Balcony is Closed," Ebert reminisced about "At the Movies." Most remarkable are his heartfelt memories of working with Siskel, who died of a brain tumor in 1999.
Evidenced by YouTube clips, Ebert explains their both contentious and loving relationship: "Did Gene and I hate each other? Yes. Did we love each other? Yes."
Another entry by Ebert was about the filmmaker Werner Herzog, who dedicated his recent film "Encounters at the End of the World" to Ebert. He writes, "(Herzog) and a few other directors keep the movies vibrating for me. Not every movie needs to vibrate, but unless a few do, the thrill is gone."
Film criticism has found online home
That Ebert should find a home on the Web is fitting. Though many factors made "At the Movies" the influential hit it was, perhaps none was as important as their "thumbs up, thumbs down" verdicts. (Ebert shares a trademark on the thumbs with the widow of his late co-host.)
Some critics have disdain for this kind of simplistic yay-or-nay criticism — the New Yorker's Anthony Lane once lamented that "the value of a motion picture is indicated by the rotation of a chubby thumb through 180 degrees."
Regardless, in today's moviegoing environment, critical influence of any kind is a rare commodity. "At the Movies" was not a bastion of illuminating, though-provoking criticism (particularly once Siskel's replacement, Richard Roeper, became the most consistent host), but it was an influential dialogue about what made a film good or bad.
The replacement hosts of "At the Movies," Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz, are unlikely to win the cachet that their progenitors did. Instead, a more recommended weekly destination is Ebert's blog.