The Fine Art of the Slam
Aug. 18th, 2009 02:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lumineauxWhen I was younger, I did not appreciate the national treasure that is Roger Ebert. I do now. Very much so. He has a lovely way with words, particularly when those words are animated by malice towards bad movies and the profound stupidity of our fellow human beings.
"This movie has to be seen to be believed. On the other hand, maybe that's too high a price to pay." -- Ebert on "Highlander 2: The Quickening"
"I have often asked myself, "What would it look like if the characters in a movie were animatronic puppets created by aliens with an imperfect mastery of human behavior?" Now I know." -- Ebert on "Friends and Lovers"
"That makes "Hellbound: Hellraiser II" an ideal movie for audiences with little taste and atrophied attention spans who want to glance at the screen occasionally and ascertain that something is still happening up there. If you fit that description, you have probably not read this far, but what the heck, we believe in full-service reviews around here." -- Ebert on "Hellbound: Hellraiser II"
"Eventually the secret of Those, etc., is revealed. To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore. And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backwards out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets. "- Ebert on "The Village"
"I know full well I'm expected to Suspend My Disbelief. Unfortunately, my disbelief is very heavy, and during "Ocean's Thirteen," the suspension cable snapped." -- Ebert on "Ocean's Thirteen"
"Keanu Reeves is often low-key in his roles, but in this movie, his piano has no keys at all. He is so solemn, detached and uninvolved he makes Mr. Spock look like Hunter S. Thompson at closing time." -- Ebert on "The Day the Earth Stood Still"
"Hitchcock said a movie should play the audience like a piano. “Death Race” played me like a drum. It is an assault on all the senses, including common. Walking out, I had the impression I had just seen the video game and was still waiting for the movie." -- Ebert on "Death Race" (2008)
"Going to see "Godzilla" at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica."
"Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly."
"This movie has to be seen to be believed. On the other hand, maybe that's too high a price to pay." -- Ebert on "Highlander 2: The Quickening"
"I have often asked myself, "What would it look like if the characters in a movie were animatronic puppets created by aliens with an imperfect mastery of human behavior?" Now I know." -- Ebert on "Friends and Lovers"
"That makes "Hellbound: Hellraiser II" an ideal movie for audiences with little taste and atrophied attention spans who want to glance at the screen occasionally and ascertain that something is still happening up there. If you fit that description, you have probably not read this far, but what the heck, we believe in full-service reviews around here." -- Ebert on "Hellbound: Hellraiser II"
"Eventually the secret of Those, etc., is revealed. To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore. And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backwards out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets. "- Ebert on "The Village"
"I know full well I'm expected to Suspend My Disbelief. Unfortunately, my disbelief is very heavy, and during "Ocean's Thirteen," the suspension cable snapped." -- Ebert on "Ocean's Thirteen"
"Keanu Reeves is often low-key in his roles, but in this movie, his piano has no keys at all. He is so solemn, detached and uninvolved he makes Mr. Spock look like Hunter S. Thompson at closing time." -- Ebert on "The Day the Earth Stood Still"
"Hitchcock said a movie should play the audience like a piano. “Death Race” played me like a drum. It is an assault on all the senses, including common. Walking out, I had the impression I had just seen the video game and was still waiting for the movie." -- Ebert on "Death Race" (2008)
"Going to see "Godzilla" at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica."
"Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly."
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Date: 2009-08-18 11:48 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-08-18 11:17 pm (UTC)Loved this.
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Date: 2009-08-18 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-08-18 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-23 01:09 pm (UTC)Without the ability to speak, he really lets his writing speak for him, and has said so much himself.
Definitely alot of good stuff in there.