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In August 1979, I took my last drink. It was about four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, the hot sun streaming through the windows of my little carriage house on Dickens. I put a glass of scotch and soda down on the living room table, went to bed, and pulled the blankets over my head. I couldn't take it any more. On Monday I went to visit wise old Dr. Jakob Schlichter. I had been seeing him for a year, telling him I thought I might be drinking too much. He agreed, and advised me to go to "A.A.A," which...

Having read through some 600 comments about universal health care, I now realize I took the wrong approach in my previous blog entry. I discussed the Obama health plan in political, literal, logical terms. Most of my readers replied in the same vein. The comments, as always, have been helpful, informative and for the most part civil. My mistake was writing from the pragmatic side. I should have followed my heart and gone with a more emotional approach. I believe universal health care is, quite simply, right.

"Death panels" is such an excellent term. You know exactly what it means, and therefore you know you're against them. Debate over. This term more than anything else seems to have unified the opposition to the Obama health care proposals. It fuels the anger that has essentially shut down "town hall" meetings intended for the discussion of the issues. Of course the term is inspired by a lie. There are no conceivable plans to form "death panels" or anything like them. The Obama plan, which has some bipartisan support, doesn't seek or desire to get involved in any decisions about...

Apparently unconnected items appeared within two days of each other in the Los Angeles Times, and together confirmed my fear that American movie-going is entering into a Dark Age. The first was in a blog by Patrick Goldstein, who said: "Film critics are in the same boat as evening news anchors -- their core audience is people 50 and over, and getting older by the day. You could hire Jessica Alba to read the evening news -- or review 'G.I. Joe' for that matter -- and younger audiences still wouldn't care." The other was in a report by John Horn...

Nixon And Ebert At The Movies By Ed Driscoll · December 13, 2008 As Christian Toto writes, while Roger Ebert has always been a man of the left, his BDS seems to be getting the better of him these days. In his otherwise appropriately middling review of the Keanu Reeves remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, Ebert opines: The message of the 2008 version is that we should have voted for Al Gore. This didn't require Klaatu and Gort. That's what I'm here for. To which Christian replies: Really? I thought you were here to help the public...

As the mighty tide swept the land on Tuesday night, I was transfixed. As the pundits pondered red states and blue states, projections and exit polls, I was swept with emotion. Not because America was "electing its first Black president." That comes a little late in the day. It was because America was electing the right President. Our long national nightmare is ending. America will not soon again start a war based on lies and propaganda. We will not torture. We will restore the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of privacy, and habeas corpus. We will enter at last...

Why do corporations tend to be greedy? I suspect it's because their executives are paid millions and millions to maximize profits, minimize salaries and slash benefits that cut into the bottom line. Sometimes this can be taken to comic-opera extremes, as when the (now) convicted thief David Radler was stealing millions from the Sun-Times and actually turned off the escalators to save on electricity. I guess that helps explain why the Ford Motor Co., followed by Chrysler, stole the secret of the intermittent windshield wiper from a little guy named Robert Kearns. Why bother? Why not just pay the guy...

It's no secret that everyone is weighing in on politics these days, from David Letterman to Barbara Walters and the esteemed ladies of "The View," who, as the New York Times pointed out today, have had Barack Obama, John McCain and even Bill Clinton on their couch, with McCain clearly getting the toughest grilling. But should film critics be weighing in on the presidential race as well? It's no secret that America's leading film critic, the Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert, has been on quite a roll lately, writing a series of barbed commentaries about GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin....

-snip- I would also want someone who didn't make a teeny little sneer when referring to "people who go to the Ivy League." When I was a teen I dreamed of going to Harvard, but my dad, an electrician, told me, "Boy, we don't have the money. Thank your lucky stars you were born in Urbana and can go to the University of Illinois right here in town." So I did, very happily. Although Palin gets laughs when she mentions the "elite" Ivy League, she sure did attend the heck out of college. Five schools in six years. What was...

The American Idol candidate September 10, 2008 By Roger Ebert I think I might be able to explain some of Sara Palin's appeal. She's the "American Idol" candidate. Consider. What defines an "American Idol" finalist? They're good-looking, work well on television, have a sunny personality, are fierce competitors, and so talented, why, they're darned near the real thing. There's a reason "American Idol" gets such high ratings. People identify with the contestants. They think, Hey, that could almost be me up there on that show! My feeling is, I don't want to be up there. I want a vice president...

Five years ago, I wrote an essay trashing Roger Ebert for the shrill one-note predictability of his political commentary. I went for the jugular, comparing Ebert to his idol, Pauline Kael: It's worth comparing Ebert's reflexive right-bashing with the approach of Pauline Kael, the legendary New Yorker writer who was considered the nation's most influential film critic in her heyday. The contrast does not flatter her successor.

I watched Sarah Palin's interview with Charles Gibson, and felt uneasiness stirring in my stomach. The feeling did not involve politics. Somehow it was personal. Gradually, memories churned to the surface...

CHICAGO — Film critic Roger Ebert on Thursday confirmed that a fellow critic yelled at him and whacked him on the knee with a program during a movie screening at the Toronto Film Festival last weekend, but said incident was "blown out of proportion." "It has been blown out of proportion. It is of little interest," Ebert said in a column posted Thursday on the Web site of the Chicago Sun-Times, where he has been a critic since 1967. Ebert, who has battled cancer in recent years and was left unable to speak, did not name the other critic involved...

Critic goes Post-al on ill Roger Ebert Thursday, September 11th 2008, 4:00 AM The audience at the Toronto Film Festival press screening of "Slumdog Millionaire" didn't know they were also going to get live entertainment Saturday. There'd been lots of Oscar buzz about Danny ("Trainspotting") Boyle's flick, about a poor Mumbai guy who wins a girl and becomes a national hero by going on a game show. So the screening room was packed. Soon after the lights went down, a source tells us, "a man in the audience started yelling, 'Don't touch me!' People looked around and shrugged. Ten minutes...

Review: **** "The Golden Compass" is a darker, deeper fantasy epic than the "Rings" trilogy, "The Chronicles of Narnia" or the "Potter" films. It springs from the same British world of quasi-philosophical magic, but creates more complex villains and poses more intriguing questions. As a visual experience, it is superb. As an escapist fantasy, it is challenging. Teenagers may be absorbed and younger children may be captivated; some kids in between may be a little conflicted, because its implications are murky. They weren't murky in the original 1995 novel, part of the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, a...

Ebert's Oscar predictions Oscar's in the driver's seat BY ROGER EBERT / In a year when the Academy Award nominations are more diverse and international than ever before, it's anyone's guess who will win best picture. "Dreamgirls" garnered more nominations than any other movie, but was passed over for both picture and director. But there are four categories that can be predicted with certainty -- best actress: Helen Mirren; supporting actress: Jennifer Hudson; best actor: Forest Whitaker, and supporting actor: Eddie Murphy. They have won almost every award, including the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Golden Globes. If any...

For 40 years, I didn't miss a single deadline, but since July, I have missed every one. I also, to my intense disappointment, missed the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. Having just written my first review since June ("The Queen" -- for 10/12), I think an update is in order. Faithful readers and viewers will recall that I expected a speedy recovery from surgery for salivary cancer last June. My expert (and now beloved) doctors had an encouraging game plan, and I expected to be back at work right away. Then I had several episodes of sudden and serious bleeding....

July 17, 2006 The Honorable Condoleezza Rice Secretary of State of the United States of America U.S. Department of State 2201 C Street NW Washington, DC 20520 Dear Madam: We, the undersigned, are the citizens of Vietnam who, on April 8, 2006, have proclaimed the Manifesto 2006 which calls for democracy and freedom in Vietnam. We call ourselves Group 8406. According to the information that we received from Vietnam’s Ministry of External Affairs and the U.S. Department of States, we understand that you’ll be visiting Vietnam by the end of this month. We will be happy to welcome you here...

FMA Posted by ro @ 8:59 pm in Uncategorized I am sure the troops in Iraq, the forgotten victims of Katrina, the people being gauged at the gas pumps are grateful that President Bush is focusing on the central issue facing our nation: how to bar gay Americans from someday maybe getting the right to obtain a civil marriage license. Bush first announced Federal Marriage Amendment in feb 2004 – since that day 1,943 American soldiers were killed in Iraq. Total dead - 2476 Total wounded - 15,271 Fool me once… ------------------- fonda Posted by ro @ 11:57 pm in...

One of the most recognizable women of our time, Jane Fonda—actress, activist, feminist, workout guru, entrepreneur, and philanthropist—examines her “life so far”. As Fonda relates her story, what emerges is a full portrait that transcends the many labels that have been used to define her as well as a cultural history of our nation’s last forty years as her life has woven through our times. “Coming to see my various individual struggles within a broader societal context enabled me to understand that much of my journey was a universal one for women. …. I’m proof that you teach what you...

The sponsor of an effort to honor Jane Fonda in the Georgia state Senate withdrew her resolution Thursday, after a rocky reception from some colleagues and a phone call from the actress' office. Sen. Steen Miles, D-Decatur, said a representative for Fonda, who is out of the country, asked that she avoid the controversy the effort had stirred. "This, ladies and gentlemen, should not be occupying our time," said Miles. The resolution cites the Atlanta resident's work as founder of the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention, donations to Atlanta-area universities and charities and role as goodwill ambassador with the...

Dear Readers, I've received so many messages about my review of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" that, frankly, I don't see how the Answer Man can process them. I could print a dozen or a hundred, but that would lead us into an endless loop. Many are supportive. More are opposed to the movie and just about everything in it, and are written by people who have not seen the movie and will not see it for a variety of reasons, including the theory that it is "liberal propaganda." What I fail to understand is why global warming should be...

Sir! No Sir! Just saying no Release Date: 2006 Ebert Rating: *** BY ROGER EBERT / Jun 9, 2006 Quick question: When Jane Fonda was on her "FTA" concert tour during the Vietnam era, who was in her audience? The quick answer from most people would probably be, "anti-war hippies, left-wingers and draft-dodgers." The correct answer would be: American troops on active duty, many of them in uniform. "Sir! No Sir!" is a documentary that about an almost-forgotten fact of the Vietnam era: Anti-war sentiment among U.S. troops grew into a problem for the Pentagon. The film claims bombing was...

When there is a new outrage, I have to download some of my existing outrages, to make room. -- Al Gore CANNES, France -- What he wants you to know is that he has not made a political film. Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" tries to move outside politics and focus on the facts of global warming. Gore says those facts are established, the returns are in, there is almost unanimous scientific agreement about them, and we may have about 10 years before the earth reaches a tipping point from which it cannot recover. He has been traveling the world...

It is not too soon for "United 93," because it is not a film that knows any time has passed since 9/11. The entire story, every detail, is told in the present tense. We know what they know when they know it, and nothing else. Nothing about Al Qaeda, nothing about Osama bin Laden, nothing about Afghanistan or Iraq, only events as they unfold. This is a masterful and heartbreaking film, and it does honor to the memory of the victims. The director, Paul Greengrass, makes a deliberate effort to stay away from recognizable actors, and there is no attempt...

American Gun BY ROGER EBERT / April 7, 2006 "American Gun" tells three stories that are small, even quiet. The stories are not strident but sad, and one of them is open-ended. They are about people who find that guns in the hands of others have made their own lives almost impossible to live. The first story involves a mother named Janet, played by Marcia Gay Harden, whose son shot and killed other students at his Oregon high school three years ago, and then was shot dead. She carries on with her remaining son, David (Chris Marquette), who attends a...

It's official. ROGER EBERT HAS DECLARED WAR ON ME (and Ann Coulter, too). Check this out. My movie reviews must be getting to movie critic, Roger Ebert. Ebert and I have had it out over his buddy, Islamic terrorist, Ibrahim Parlak (here and here). He even cited me in one of his movie reviews, in response. But now Roger Ebert has posted this on his website. It's written by RogerEbert.com movie reviewer, Jim Emerson. Even though I appreciate the exposure--not to mention the ire of all things Ebert, including people and fans--I think I should ask my lawyers if quoting...

OS ANGELES (Reuters) - It has wowed film festivals, won rave reviews and sparked Oscar buzz, but when "Brokeback Mountain," a.k.a. the gay cowboy movie, begins playing to general audiences on Friday, it faces its toughest challenge yet -- wooing mainstream America. [snip] ...Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, risk alienating fans and sending their stars plummeting if, after watching the pair have sex on screen, audiences cannot see them any other way than gay. Winning over middle America is important for the roughly $12.5 million movie because its backer, art house specialist Focus Features, wants a big box office and...

"Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" makes a living cleaning fish tanks and occasionally prostituting himself. How much he charges I'm not sure, but the price is worth it if it keeps him off the streets and out of another movie. "Deuce Bigalow" is aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience. The best thing about it is that it runs for only 75 minutes. Rob Schneider is back, playing a male prostitute (or, as the movie reminds us dozens of times, a "man whore"). He is not a gay hustler, but specializes in pleasuring women, although the...

Article published: Jun 28, 2005http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050628/REVIEWS/50606007/1023 http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050628/REVIEWS/50606007/1023&template=printart War of the WorldsCreaking Havoc Release Date: 2005 Ebert Rating: **    By Roger Ebert / Jun 29, 2005 "War of the Worlds" is a big, clunky movie containing some sensational sights but lacking the zest and joyous energy we expect from Steven Spielberg. It proceeds with the lead-footed deliberation of its 1950s predecessors to give us an alien invasion that is malevolent, destructive and, from the alien point of view, pointless. They've "been planning this for a million years" and have gone to a lot of trouble to invade Earth for no...

War of the Worlds screenwriter David Koepp admits political propaganda in movie KABC talk show host Larry Elder said today that David Koepp, one of the two War of the Worlds screenwriters, stated in a recent interview for a Canadian publication that the Martians slaughtering the humans are a metaphor for the adventurism of the American military forces, i.e., for the Bush Administration's war on terrorism, and the human civilians are a metaphor for the Iraqi people. He stated that this is going back to the original H. G. Wells book upon which the movie is loosely based. However, the...

"War of the Worlds" Spielberg-esque Message: Don't Fight Terror By Debbie Schlussel I'm violating Steven Spielberg's review policy for "War of the Worlds" and telling you what I think ahead of tomorrow's scheduled release date. I saw the movie at a press screening, last night, and was disturbed by the message: Don't fight terror, and everything will work out. (Security was literally tighter than that for going to the White House to meet the President. No purses allowed. Three wandings by security.) It's bad enough that Steven Spielberg is adding "balance" and factual inaccuracy to the story of the Israeli...

This is actually a running debate. first the strip that offended Ebert and others. http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=9440 Title: "B.C." vs. "Doonesbury" Posted By: Jim Romenesko   From ROGER EBERT: I am not suggesting that Johny Hart's "B.C." comic strip today should be censored in any way, but I will be fascinated to see if any editors do spike it, as they sometimes spike "Doonesbury," etc., for political reasons. 5/3/2005 11:48:52 AM http://poynter.org/forum/?id=letters From MATT MENDELSOHN: Thanks to Roger Ebert for the heads up on Johnny Hart's slam on Darwin and evolution. When I Googled "Hart" I expected to find one -- just...

In response to Debbie Schlussel's column "Roger Ebert Gives Thumbs-Up to Terrorism" in yesterday's issue of FrontPage Magazine, film critic Roger Ebert sent her an e-mail and asked that we post it on our site.* We have complied with his wishes and posted her rejoinder beneath it. -- The Editors. Dear Ms. Schlussel, Update your database. I have lost 100 pounds. As you know, because I made it clear in the letter you refer to, Ibrahim's offer to come to my house to cook for me came during a period when I was recovering from radiation treatment. By suppressing the...

Normally, it would be unfair to attack Roger Ebert for his addiction to food. Normally, it would be in poor taste to hold the calorically-gifted film-critic’s insatiable taste-buds against him. Normally. But now, Roger Ebert’s irresistible yen for a sandwich is literally his excuse to defend an Islamic terrorist, Ibrahim Parlak. Parlak, who is under deportation orders, owns a restaurant in Harbert, Michigan—a restaurant Ebert frequents, with apparently great appetite. In a letter to the U.S. government opposing Parlak’s deportation, Ebert wrote, “[H]e offered to come to my home and prepare special foods for me.” But haute cuisine for liberal...

Thumbs Down: Roger Ebert Helps A Terrorist March 26, 2005 By Debbie Schlussel Normally, it would be unfair to attack Roger Ebert for his addiction to food. Normally, it would be in poor taste to hold the calorically-gifted film-critic’s insatiable taste-buds against him. Normally. But now, Roger Ebert’s irresistible yen for a sandwich is literally his excuse to defend an Islamic terrorist, Ibrahim Parlak. Parlak, who is under deportation orders, owns a restaurant in Harbert, Michigan—a restaurant Ebert frequents, with apparently great appetite. In a letter to the U.S. government opposing Parlak’s deportation, Ebert wrote, “[H]e offered to come to...

Warning: The following letters discuss plot details of "Million Dollar Baby." Q: You think that guarding the secrets of "Million Dollar Baby" to preserve a "key plot point" (as you put it) is of the highest importance. In my opinion, it is the teaching of "Million Dollar Baby" that should have been the focus of your review. Why? Eastwood and all motion picture directors and writers are teachers. They teach us how to dress. How to express ourselves. Whether to smoke or not. Movies teach the public about acceptable and not acceptable behavior. Movies are usually not propaganda. They do,...

If you have not yet seen "Million Dollar Baby" and know nothing about the plot, read no further. The characters in movies do not always do what we would do. Sometimes they make choices that offend us. That is their right. It is our right to disagree with them. It is not our right, however, to destroy for others the experience of being as surprised by those choices as we were. A few years ago, I began to notice "spoiler warnings" on Web-based movie reviews -- a shorthand way of informing the reader that a key plot point was about...

Q. The Motion Picture Academy has named the 12 finalists for the best documentary category. Two of the titles jumped off the list for me: "The Story of the Weeping Camel" and "Touching the Void." Since both of these films were fictionalized versions of their stories and employed actors to play many of the roles, how do they qualify as documentaries? Greg Nelson, Chicago A. Bruce Davis, executive director of the Motion Picture Association, replies: "The questions about the eligibility of 'The Story of the Weeping Camel' and 'Touching the Void' in this year's feature documentary field are fair ones...

What the Republicans did, cleverly, was to establish effective "memes" in the minds of the public and the pundits... Bush became the "winner" of a dead heat, in the midst of an incomplete recount, when a premature victory was declared on her own unnecessary deadline by his Florida campaign co-chairwoman, who also held the crucial post of secretary of state... [I]t was clearly a shameless ploy to slam the door before the election escaped. A meme was born. The other effective GOP meme was the mantra, "we counted, and counted again, and then a third time." These words were chanted...

http://www.illinoisleader.com IL MEDIA UNSPUN: Kinsey & Ebert, At the Movies Friday, November 19, 2004 By Arlen Williams, media critic (arlen.williams@unspun.info) Alfred Kinsey's life is featured in a new film, "Kinsey," released this weekend.   The Chicago Sun Times' film critic Roger Ebert is a native of Downstate Urbana. Warning: This column is not suitable for children, nor some adults. OPINION -- A movie is now being shown that promotes one of the most evil and destructive figures in the 20th Century. The setting: not Berlin, nor Moscow, nor Peking . . . but Bloomington, Indiana. People of informed conscience...

Alfred Kinsey has been dead for 48 years, and he still makes people mad. "Kinsey," a movie inspired by the life of the sex researcher, hasn't even opened, and here is an AP story about "indignant conservative groups" who think it is propaganda for the sexual revolution. ----------------------------------------------------- BY ROGER EBERT Sun-Times Film Critic / Nov 14, 2004 Alfred Kinsey has been dead for 48 years, and he still makes people mad. "Kinsey," a movie inspired by the life of the sex researcher, hasn't even opened, and here is an AP story about "indignant conservative groups" who think it is...

By Jim Emerson Editor, RogerEbert.com October 14, 2004Who's the, uh, biggest villain in "Team America"? Kim Jong Il or Hollywood celebrities?"You should learn to keep your opinions OUT of your reviews!" Every critic I know has received at least one letter like that from an indignant reader. Of course, it's an absurd proposition; critics are paid to express their opinions, and the good ones (who exercise what is known across all disciplines as "critical thinking") are also able to cite examples and employ sound reasoning to build an argument, showing you how and why they reached their verdict. Well, since...

Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & Selling the American Empire Roger Ebert / October 15, 2004 Cast & CreditsNarrated by Julian Bond. With Daniel Ellsberg, Karen Kwaitkowski, Noam Chomsky and Norman Mailer. Immediate Pictures presents a documentary directed by Sut Jhally and Jeremy Earp. Running time: 76 minutes. No MPAA rating. I have here a commentary by John Eisenhower, son of the late president, who states in the Manchester Union-Leader that for the first time in 50 years he plans to vote for the Democratic candidate for president. "The fact is that today's 'Republican' Party is one with which I am...

"If you accept Moore's values, you cannot ethically criticize what happened on September 11, 2001.... Moore is un-American, he's un-British. He must be French."-- David Hardy, co-author of the book Michael Moore Is A Big, Fat Stupid White Man in "Fahrenhype 9/11" * * * * Around the time Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" was released in the summer of 2004, New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier wrote: "It is very hard to forgive George W. Bush for the good fortune of Michael Moore." I feel the same way. I find it difficult to forgive George W. Bush a lot of things...

ANAHEIM -- Who knew that movie press junkets were such a threat to one's mental health? The pained, disingenuous reaction of many of the nation's leading film critics to last week's release of the lunatic puppet satire, Team America: World Police, is further confirmation that the junkets appear to have helped spread in viral fashion the mentality of left-wing Hollywood blowhards from la-la land to critic land. One result: Sean Penn and Roger Ebert now appear to be swapping material. For one of the many examples he's given us in recent years, Ebert might as well have been channeling Penn...

The Battle of Algiers (1967) BY ROGER EBERT / October 10, 2004 The most common form of warfare since 1945 has involved irregular resistance fighters attacking conventional forces and then disappearing back into the population. Bombs planted by civilians, often women and children, have served as deadly weapons in this war. The United States, France, Russia, Israel, Northern Ireland, South Africa and several South American states have all had their experiences with urban guerrillas. George W. Bush complained in his first televised debate with Sen. John Kerry that he thought Saddam's army would stand and fight, but it melted away...

1 Star "What are you rebelling against, Johnny?" "Whaddya got?" ) --Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" If this dialogue is not inscribed over the doors of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, it should be. Their "Team America: World Police" is an equal opportunity offender, and waves of unease will flow over first one segment of their audience, and then another. Like a cocky teenager who's had a couple of drinks before the party, they don't have a plan for who they want to offend, only an intention to be as offensive as possible. Their strategy extends even to their...

Of all the dirty tricks in this unhappy presidential campaign, the most outrageous has been the ad campaign by the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," attempting to discredit John Kerry's service in Vietnam. Supporters of the malingering Bush have shamelessly challenged the war record of a wounded and decorated veteran. Their campaign illustrates the tactic of the Big Lie, as defined by Hitler and perfected by Goebbels: Although a little lie is laughed at, a Big Lie somehow takes on a reality of its own, through its sheer effrontery. "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry" is a matter-of-fact...

John Sayles' "Silver City" can be read as social satire aimed at George W. Bush -- certainly the film's hero mirrors the Bush quasi-speaking style -- but it takes wider aim on the entire political landscape we inhabit. Liberals and conservatives, the alternative press and establishment dailies, environmentalists and despoilers, are all mixed up in a plot where it seems appropriate that the hero is a private detective. Even the good guys are compromised. Sayles, like Robert Altman, is a master at the tricky art of assembling large casts and keeping all the characters alive. Here, as in his "City...