Bookbyte Blog  Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category  How the Web
Has Turned Us All Into Mini-Eberts   Photo of Roger Ebert from
this 2010 Esquire profile.  Photo of Roger Ebert from this 2010
Esquire profile.  I’m probably a bit older that most of the
readership of this blog, so I’m sorry if I sound too much like
an old fart in this post. For people college age and younger, I
don’t know if there’s much of a sense of who he was or why so
many people are eulogizing him.  I watched his show At the
Movies only a few times as a kid. I probably knew him better
from parody than from reality. (Animaniacs and The Critic come
to mind. What can I say? I really like cartoons.) The parodies
always depicted Ebert (or Ebert-like characters) as an
impossible-to-please curmudgeon who enjoyed tearing things down
more than appreciating them.  If you’ve read any of his
writings, you know that’s pretty far from reality. More than any
other critic I’m aware of, he tended to evaluate movies as
emotional experiences. Sure, he could tea