Ebert and Roeper Version 4.0

Ebert at the movies was cancelled but Roger Ebert made the wise decision that with the right backing, there's no reason why the show couldn't work. I agree: The audience of people wanting to read and delve into film criticism is much greater now than it was decades ago when Ebert and Siskel started. I have a hunch that even if the blogosphere existed when Ebert and Siskel first came on the air, there would be a lot fewer film blogs. The idea of caring what film critics had to say was novel back then.

Seeking to resurrect his program, Roger Ebert hand-picked his successors: Christy Lemire from the Associated Press and the world's luckiest internet film critic in 24-year old Ignatiy Vishnevetsky who was plucked from obscurity.

A little background on Ignatiy: He immigrated to the USA from Russia at the age of 9. Went to film school and dropped out after two semesters to watch three movies a day, so he could learn everything there was to learn about film. Aside from doing some translation work, he blogs on two or three websites and co-manages a video store in Chicago which charges one dollar per film which isn't exactly a powerhouse.

It's a safe bet that he would have had a career indistinguishable from every other film blogger if Roger Ebert hadn't actively looked for a new and different voice. For that, both Ebert and Vishnevtsky are now cult heroes as far as I'm concerned.

Lest you think that Vishnevtsky has no social life because he watches movies all day, he's very well-connected to people in his field in Chicago, he's very charming and articulate, and he recently proposed marriage to his girlfriend and then impulsively got married two days before the first show aired.

So I tuned into this show very excited at what was being awaited. Everything worked very well. Both hosts are photogenic (read: easy on the eyes), knowledgable and able to compress their opinions into informative one-minute discussions.

There was just one little glitch to the first episode: The way they voted.
Vishnevtsky and Lemire both voted the exact same way every time. He liked absolutely everything. Lemire absolutely disliked everything. Thumbs up thumbs down to eveyrhting.

They shouldn't have been dishonest but they should have at least picked a film where someone had a change of opinion. It looks like one's a softy and one's a massive cynic so far, and they would have been better served by picking a film where they meet in the middle. Hope, it changes next week.

Downfall of comedy I: Where it stands today

In response to an interesting question: What's a good "stupid" comedy?

I'm going to assume by "stupid" the person mean films that don't have the respect of critics or film academics. The truth, however, is that comedy usually doesn't get the respect of critics as much.

Although comedy is an integral part of movies and a respectable genres, you have to think that comedy isn't as well-respected as it used to be by the critical community, or not a lot of it anyway. Successful comedies today include:
-Indie hits like Little Mrs. Sunshine and Lost in Translation,
-Dramedies with good scripts and good dialogue by the likes of Alexander Payne, James L Brooks or Charlie Kaufman. It's no small coincidence that these guys win screenwriting rewards at the Oscars
-The Coen Brothers seem to be an outliar among comedic directors and that they seem to be put into a class well above other comic filmmakers by film critics. They're film scholars who are well-versed in film history (as if someone like Mel Brooks or Vince Vaughn isn't?) and it usually impresses the film critics that their movies are usually innovative in their technical aspects or clever uses of refences to past films (i.e. Man Who Wasn't There is based on film-noir, Intolerable Cruelty is based on screwball comedies, and Big Lebowski is based on The Big Sleep). A lot of casual movie fans like the Coen brothers too and have given them a large cult following. The reputation of the Coen brothers is continually being inflated through a mutual enthusiasm between the critics and the casual movie fans that "well, we at least agree on something on the comedy front."
-I could also see the critical community being split between many other comic autuers who would have had more critical respect if the comic genre itself was more respected such as Kevin Smith, Adam McKay, and Judd Apatow (and there might be some other examples in here). Kevin Smith has gotten some good reviews by Ebert and Roeper but I doubt more serious outlets like Sight & Sound or Premiere Magazines would give him the time of day on their review columns.

Comedy used to be equally viable in film achievement on every level back in the day. Columbia Studios became a major power player through the success of the pure comedy, "It Happened One Night" from 1935 which won the oscar that year. Screwball comedies dominated cinema in the 1930's and 1940's and Billy Wilder forged a great career out of comedies. What I find interesting is Mel Brooks' career and how it figures into that transition (which I'll cover in the next post)