Роджер Эберт

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Роджер Эберт
Эберт в 2006 году
Рожденный	Роджер Джозеф Эберт ( 1942-06-18 ) 18 июня 1942 г. Урбана, Иллинойс , США
Умер	4 апреля 2013 г. (04-04-2013) (70 лет) Чикаго, Иллинойс, США
Occupation	Film critic journalist screenwriter film historian author
Alma mater	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (BA)
Subject	Film
Years active	1967–2013
Notable works	Sneak Previews At the Movies The Great Movies Beyond the Valley of the Dolls Life Itself: A Memoir
Notable awards	Pulitzer Prize for Criticism (1975)
Spouse	Chaz Hammel-Smith ​ (m. 1992)​
Signature
Website
rogerebert.com

Роджер Джозеф Эберт ( / ˈiː b ər t кинокритик / EE -burt ; 18 июня 1942 — 4 апреля 2013) — американский , историк кино, журналист, эссеист, сценарист и писатель. Он был кинокритиком в газете Chicago Sun-Times с 1967 года до своей смерти в 2013 году. Эберт был известен своим интимным стилем письма Среднего Запада и критическими взглядами, основанными на ценностях популизма и гуманизма . Написав в прозе, призванной быть развлекательной и прямой, он сделал сложные кинематографические и аналитические идеи более доступными для неспециализированной аудитории. Эберт часто поддерживал иностранные и независимые фильмы, которые, по его мнению, будут оценены широкой публикой, поддерживая таких режиссеров, как Вуди Аллен , Спайк Ли , Вернер Херцог и Эррол Моррис , а также Мартина Скорсезе , чей первый опубликованный обзор он написал. В 1975 году Эберт стал первым кинокритиком, получившим Пулитцеровскую премию за критику . Нил Стейнберг из Chicago Sun-Times сказал, что Эберт «без сомнения, был самым известным и влиятельным кинокритиком страны». а Кеннет Туран из Los Angeles Times назвал его «самым известным кинокритиком в Америке».

Early in his career, Ebert co-wrote the Russ Meyer movie Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970). Starting in 1975 and continuing for decades, Ebert and Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel helped popularize nationally televised film reviewing when they co-hosted the PBS show Sneak Previews, followed by several variously named At the Movies programs on commercial TV broadcast syndication. The two verbally sparred and traded humorous barbs while discussing films. They created and trademarked the phrase "two thumbs up," used when both gave the same film a positive review. They regularly appeared on numerous talk shows together including Late Show with David Letterman. After Siskel died from a brain tumor in 1999, Ebert continued hosting the show with various co-hosts and then, starting in 2000, with Richard Roeper.

In the early 2000s, Ebert was diagnosed with cancer of the thyroid and salivary glands. He required treatment that included removing a section of his lower jaw in 2006, leaving him severely disfigured and unable to speak or eat normally. However, his ability to write remained unimpaired and he continued to publish frequently online and in print until his death in 2013. His RogerEbert.com website, launched in 2002, remains online as an archive of his published writings. Richard Corliss wrote, "Roger leaves a legacy of indefatigable connoisseurship in movies, literature, politics and, to quote the title of his 2011 autobiography, Life Itself." In 2014, Life Itself was adapted as a documentary of the same title.

Early life and education

Roger Joseph Ebert was born on June 18, 1942, in Urbana, Illinois, the only child of Annabel (née Stumm), a bookkeeper, and Walter Harry Ebert, an electrician. He was raised Roman Catholic, attending St. Mary's elementary school and serving as an altar boy in Urbana.

His paternal grandparents were German immigrants and his maternal ancestry was Irish and Dutch. He began his writing career with letters of comment to the science-fiction fanzines of the era. At age 15, he was a sportswriter for The News-Gazette covering Urbana High School sports. He attended Urbana High School, where in his senior year he was class president and co-editor of his high school newspaper, The Echo. In 1958, he won the Illinois High School Association state speech championship in "radio speaking," an event that simulates radio newscasts.

"I learned to be a movie critic by reading Mad magazine ... Mad's parodies made me aware of the machine inside the skin – of the way a movie might look original on the outside, while inside it was just recycling the same old dumb formulas. I did not read the magazine, I plundered it for clues to the universe. Pauline Kael lost it at the movies; I lost it at Mad magazine"

— Roger Ebert, Mad About the Movies (1998 parody collection)

Ebert began taking classes at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign as an early-entrance student, completing his high school courses while also taking his first university class. After graduating from Urbana High School in 1960, he attended the University of Illinois and received his undergraduate degree in 1964. While there, Ebert worked as a reporter for The Daily Illini and served as its editor during his senior year while continuing to work for the News-Gazette.

His college mentor was Daniel Curley, who "introduced me to many of the cornerstones of my life's reading: 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, The Ambassadors, Nostromo, The Professor's House, The Great Gatsby, The Sound and the Fury... He approached these works with undisguised admiration. We discussed patterns of symbolism, felicities of language, motivation, revelation of character. This was appreciation, not the savagery of deconstruction, which approaches literature as pliers do a rose." Years later, Ebert coauthored The Perfect London Walk with Curley. One of his classmates was Larry Woiwode, who went on to be the Poet Laureate of North Dakota. At The Daily Illini Ebert befriended William Nack, who as a sportswriter would cover Secretariat. As an undergraduate, he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity and president of the United States Student Press Association. One of the first reviews he wrote was of La Dolce Vita, published in The Daily Illini in October 1961.

As a graduate student, he "had the good fortune to enroll in a class on Shakespeare's tragedies taught by G. Blakemore Evans....It was then that Shakespeare took hold of me, and it became clear he was the nearest we have come to a voice for what it means to be human." Ebert spent a semester as a master's student in the department of English there before attending the University of Cape Town on a Rotary fellowship for a year. He returned from Cape Town to his graduate studies at Illinois for two more semesters and then, after being accepted as a PhD student at the University of Chicago, he prepared to move to Chicago. He needed a job to support himself while he worked on his doctorate and so applied to the Chicago Daily News, hoping that, as he had already sold freelance pieces to the Daily News, including an article on the death of writer Brendan Behan, he would be hired by editor Herman Kogan.

Instead, Kogan referred Ebert to the city editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, Jim Hoge, who hired Ebert as a reporter and feature writer in 1966. He attended doctoral classes at the University of Chicago while working as a general reporter for a year. After movie critic Eleanor Keane left the Sun-Times in April 1967, editor Robert Zonka gave the job to Ebert. The load of graduate school and being a film critic proved too much, so Ebert left the University of Chicago to focus his energies on film criticism.

Career

1967–1974: Early writings

Ebert (right) with Russ Meyer in 1970

Ebert began his career as a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967. That same year, he met film critic Pauline Kael for the first time at the New York Film Festival. After he sent her some of his columns, she told him they were "the best film criticism being done in American newspapers today." That same year, Ebert's first book, An Illini Century: One Hundred Years of Campus Life, a history of the University of Illinois, was published by the university's press. In 1969, his review of Night of the Living Dead was published in Reader's Digest. One of the first films he reviewed was Ingmar Bergman's Persona. He told his editor he wasn't sure how to review it when he didn't feel he could explain it. His editor told him he didn't have to explain it, just describe it.

He was one of the first critics to champion Bonnie and Clyde, calling it "a milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance. It is also pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking and astonishingly beautiful. If it does not seem that those words should be strung together, perhaps that is because movies do not very often reflect the full range of human life." He concluded: "The fact that the story is set 35 years ago doesn't mean a thing. It had to be set some time. But it was made now and it's about us." Thirty-one years later, he wrote "When I saw it, I had been a film critic for less than six months, and it was the first masterpiece I had seen on the job. I felt an exhilaration beyond describing. I did not suspect how long it would be between such experiences, but at least I learned that they were possible." He wrote Martin Scorsese's first review, for Who's That Knocking at My Door (then titled I Call First), and predicted the young director could become "an American Fellini."

In addition to film, Ebert occasionally wrote about other topics for the Sun-Times, such as music. In 1970, Ebert wrote the first published concert review of singer-songwriter John Prine, who at the time was working as a mailman and performing at Chicago folk clubs.

Ebert co-wrote the screenplay for Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) and sometimes joked about being responsible for it. It was poorly received on its release yet has become a cult film. Ebert and Meyer also made Up! (1976), Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979), and other films, and were involved in the ill-fated Sex Pistols movie Who Killed Bambi? In April 2010, Ebert posted his screenplay of Who Killed Bambi?, also known as Anarchy in the UK, on his blog.

Beginning in 1968, Ebert worked for the University of Chicago as an adjunct lecturer, teaching a night class on film at the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies. In 1975, Ebert received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Around this time, he was offered jobs by multiple major newspapers, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, but he declined their offers, as he did not wish to leave Chicago. In October 1986, while continuing to work for the Sun-Times and still based in Chicago, Ebert replaced Rex Reed as the New York Post's chief film critic.

1975–1999: Stardom with Siskel & Ebert

Co-host Gene Siskel at the 1989 Academy Awards

In 1975, Ebert and Gene Siskel began co-hosting a weekly film-review television show, Sneak Previews, which was locally produced by the Chicago public broadcasting station WTTW. The series was later picked up for national syndication on PBS. The duo became well known for their "thumbs up/thumbs down" review summaries. Siskel and Ebert trademarked the phrase "Two Thumbs Up."

In 1982, they moved from PBS to launch a similar syndicated commercial television show, At the Movies With Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert. In 1986, they again moved the show to new ownership, creating Siskel & Ebert & the Movies through Buena Vista Television, part of the Walt Disney Company. Ebert and Siskel were known for their many appearances on late night talk shows, appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman sixteen times and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson fifteen times. On one of their appearances on Johnny Carson's show, comedian Chevy Chase, who was on the couch with them, mimicked Ebert behind his back while he was discussing Chase's new movie. They also appeared together on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Arsenio Hall Show, Howard Stern, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

In 1982, 1983, and 1985, Siskel and Ebert appeared as themselves on Saturday Night Live. For their first two appearances, they reviewed sketches from that night's telecast and reviewed sketches from the "SNL Film Festival" for their last appearance. In 1991, Siskel and Ebert appeared in the Sesame Street segment "Sneak Peek Previews" (a parody of Sneak Previews). In it, they instruct the hosts Oscar the Grouch and Telly Monster on how their thumbs up/thumbs down rating system works. Oscar asks if there could be a thumbs sideways ratings, and goads the two men into an argument about whether or not would be acceptable, as Ebert likes the idea, but Siskel does not. The two were also seen that same year in the show's celebrity version of "Monster in the Mirror". In 1995, Siskel and Ebert guest-starred on an episode of the animated sitcom The Critic. In the episode, a parody of Sleepless in Seattle, Siskel and Ebert split and each wants protagonist Jay Sherman, a fellow film critic, as his new partner. The following year, Ebert appeared in Pitch, a documentary by Canadian filmmakers Spencer Rice and Kenny Hotz. He made an appearance as himself in a 1997 episode of the Chicago-set television series Early Edition. In the episode, Ebert consoles a young boy who is depressed after he sees the character Bosco the Bunny die in a movie.

In 1997, Ebert "wrote to Nigel Wade, then the editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, and proposed a biweekly series of longer articles great movies of the past. He gave his blessing... Every other week I have revisited a great movie, and the response has been encouraging." The first film he wrote about for the series was Casablanca. A hundred of these essays were published as The Great Movies (2002); he released two more volumes, and a fourth was published posthumously. For many years, on the day of the Academy Awards ceremony, Ebert appeared with Roeper on the live pre-awards show, An Evening at the Academy Awards: The Arrivals. This aired for over a decade, usually prior to the awards ceremony show, which also featured red carpet interviews and fashion commentary. They also appeared on the post-awards show entitled An Evening at the Academy Awards: The Winners, produced and aired by the ABC-owned KABC-TV in Los Angeles. A "Mayor Ebert" appeared in the 1998 remake of Godzilla, played by Michael Lerner. In his pan of the film, Ebert wrote: "Now that I've inspired a character in a Godzilla movie, all I really still desire is for several Ingmar Bergman characters to sit in a circle and read my reviews to one another in hushed tones." Ebert provided DVD audio commentaries for several films, including Citizen Kane (1941), Casablanca (1942), Crumb (1995), Dark City (1998), Floating Weeds (1959), and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970). Ebert was also interviewed by Central Park Media for an extra feature on the DVD release of Grave of the Fireflies. In 1999, Ebert founded his own film festival, Ebertfest, in his hometown, Champaign, Illinois.

In May 1998 Siskel took a leave of absence from the show to undergo brain surgery. He returned to the show although viewers noticed a change in his physical appearance. Despite appearing sluggish and tired, Siskel continued reviewing films with Ebert and would appear on Late Show with David Letterman. In February 1999, Siskel died of a brain tumor. The producers renamed the show Roger Ebert & the Movies and used rotating co-hosts including Martin Scorsese, A.O. Scott, and Janet Maslin. Ebert wrote of his late colleague: "For the first five years that we knew one another, Gene Siskel and I hardly spoke. Then it seemed like we never stopped." He wrote of Siskel's work ethic, of how quickly he returned to work after surgery: "Someone else might have taken a leave of absence then and there, but Gene worked as long as he could. Being a film critic was important to him. He liked to refer to his job as 'the national dream beat,' and say that in reviewing movies he was covering what people hoped for, dreamed about, and feared." Ten years after Siskel's death, Ebert blogged about his colleague: "We once spoke with Disney and CBS about a sitcom to be titled Best Enemies. It would be about two movie critics joined in a love/hate relationship. It never went anywhere, but we both believed it was a good idea. Maybe the problem was that no one else could possibly understand how meaningless was the hate, how deep was the love."

2000–2006: Ebert & Roeper

In September 2000, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper became the permanent co-host and the show was renamed At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper and later At the Movies. In 2000, Ebert interviewed President Bill Clinton at The White House. Clinton spoke about his love for the movies, his favorite films of 1999, and his favorite films of all time, such as Casablanca (1942), High Noon (1952) and The Ten Commandments (1956). Clinton named Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, and Tom Hanks as his favorite actors.

In 2003, Ebert made a cameo appearance in the film Abby Singer. In 2005, Ebert became the first film critic to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2004, Ebert appeared in the Sesame Street franchise's direct-to-video special A Celebration of Me, Grover, delivering a review of the Monsterpiece Theater segment of "The King and I".

2007–2013: RogerEbert.com

Ebert ended his association with the Disney-owned At The Movies in July 2008, after the studio indicated it wished to take the program in a new direction. As of 2007, his reviews were syndicated to more than 200 newspapers in the United States and abroad. Ebert also published more than 20 books and dozens of collected reviews. His RogerEbert.com website, launched in 2002 and originally underwritten by the Chicago Sun-Times, remains online as an archive of his published writings and reviews while also hosting new material written by a group of critics who were selected by Ebert before his death. Even as he used TV (and later the Internet) to share his reviews, Ebert continued to write for the Chicago Sun-Times until he died in 2013. On February 18, 2009, Ebert reported that he and Roeper would soon announce a new movie-review program, and reiterated this plan after Disney announced that the program's last episode would air in August 2010.

Ebert was one of the principal critics featured in Gerald Peary's 2009 documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. He discusses the dynamics of appearing with Gene Siskel on the 1970s show Coming to a Theatre Near You, which was the predecessor of Sneak Previews on Chicago PBS station WTTW and expresses approval of the proliferation of young people writing film reviews today on the internet. On May 4, 2010, Ebert was announced by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences as the Webby Person of the Year, having found a voice on the Internet following his battle with cancer. On October 22, 2010, Ebert appeared with Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies during their "The Essentials" series. Ebert selected the films Sweet Smell of Success and The Lady Eve.

On January 31, 2009, Ebert was made an honorary life member of the Directors Guild of America. His final television series, Ebert Presents: At the Movies, premiered on January 21, 2011, with Ebert contributing a review voiced by Bill Kurtis in a brief segment called "Roger's Office," as well as a more traditional film reviews in the "At the Movies" format presented by Christy Lemire and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky. The program lasted one season, before being cancelled due to funding constraints. The last review by Ebert published during his lifetime was for The Host, which was published on March 27, 2013. The last review Ebert wrote was for To the Wonder, which he gave 3.5 out of 4 stars in a review for the Chicago Sun-Times. It was posthumously published on April 6, 2013. In July 2013, a previously unpublished review of Computer Chess appeared on Ebert's website. The review had been written in March but had remained unpublished until the film's wide-release date. Matt Zoller Seitz, the editor of Ebert's website, confirmed that there were other unpublished reviews that would eventually be posted. A second review, for The Spectacular Now, was published in August 2013.

A biographical documentary about Ebert, Life Itself (2014), directed by Steve James, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was executive produced by Martin Scorsese and includes interviews with Scorsese, Ava DuVernay, Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, and numerous critics. The film received critical acclaim and received numerous accolades including a Emmy Award, Producers Guild of America Award, and Critics' Choice Movie Award.

Critical style

Ebert cited Pauline Kael as an influence

Ebert cited Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael as influences, and often quoted Robert Warshow, who said: "A man goes to the movies. A critic must be honest enough to admit he is that man." He tried to judge a movie on its style rather than its content, and often said "It's not what a movie is about, it's how it's about what it's about." He awarded four stars to films of the highest quality, and generally a half star to those of the lowest, unless he considered the film to be "artistically inept and morally repugnant", in which case it received no stars, as with Death Wish II. He explained that his star ratings had little meaning outside the context of the review:

When you ask a friend if Hellboy is any good, you're not asking if it's any good compared to Mystic River, you're asking if it's any good compared to The Punisher. And my answer would be, on a scale of one to four, if Superman is four, then Hellboy is three and The Punisher is two. In the same way, if American Beauty gets four stars, then The United States of Leland clocks in at about two.

Metacritic later noted that Ebert tended to give more lenient ratings than most critics. His average film rating was 71%, if translated into a percentage, compared to 59% for the site as a whole. Of his reviews, 75% were positive and 75% of his ratings were better than his colleagues. Ebert had acknowledged in 2008 that he gave higher ratings on average than other critics, though he said this was in part because he considered a rating of 3 out of 4 stars to be the general threshold for a film to get a "thumbs up."

Although Ebert rarely wrote outright-scathing reviews, he had a reputation for writing memorable ones for the films he really hated, such as North. Of that film, he wrote "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it." A collection of his pans was published as I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie.

He wrote that Mad Dog Time "is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. Oh, I've seen bad movies before. But they usually made me care about how bad they were. Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line" and concluded that the film "should be cut up to provide free ukulele picks for the poor." Of Caligula, he wrote "It is not good art, it is not good cinema, and it is not good porn" and approvingly quoted the woman in front of him at the drinking fountain, who called it "the worst piece of shit I have ever seen."

Ebert's reviews were also characterized by what has been called "dry wit." He often wrote in a deadpan style when discussing a movie's flaws; in his review of Jaws: The Revenge, he wrote that Mrs. Brody's "friends pooh-pooh the notion that a shark could identify, follow or even care about one individual human being, but I am willing to grant the point, for the benefit of the plot. I believe that the shark wants revenge against Mrs. Brody. I do. I really do believe it. After all, her husband was one of the men who hunted this shark and killed it, blowing it to bits. And what shark wouldn't want revenge against the survivors of the men who killed it? Here are some things, however, that I do not believe" and went on to list the other ways the film strained credulity.

"[Ebert's prose] had a plain-spoken Midwestern clarity...a genial, conversational presence on the page...his criticism shows a nearly unequaled grasp of film history and technique, and formidable intellectual range, but he rarely seems to be showing off. He's just trying to tell you what he thinks, and to provoke some thought on your part about how movies work and what they can do".

— A.O. Scott, film critic for The New York Times

Ebert often included personal anecdotes in his reviews; in his review of The Last Picture Show, he recalls his early days as a moviegoer: "For five or six years of my life (the years between when I was old enough to go alone, and when TV came to town) Saturday afternoon at the Princess was a descent into a dark magical cave that smelled of Jujubes, melted Dreamsicles and Crisco in the popcorn machine. It was probably on one of those Saturday afternoons that I formed my first critical opinion, deciding vaguely that there was something about John Wayne that that set him apart from ordinary cowboys." He occasionally wrote reviews in the forms of stories, poems, songs, scripts, open letters, or imagined conversations.

Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, wrote of how Ebert had influenced his writing: "I noticed how much Ebert could put across in a limited space. He didn't waste time clearing his throat. 'They meet for the first time when she is in her front yard practicing baton-twirling,' begins his review of Badlands. Often, he managed to smuggle the basics of the plot into a larger thesis about the movie, so that you don't notice the exposition taking place: 'Broadcast News is as knowledgeable about the TV news-gathering process as any movie ever made, but it also has insights into the more personal matter of how people use high-pressure jobs as a way of avoiding time alone with themselves.' The reviews start off in all different ways, sometimes with personal confessions, sometimes with sweeping statements. One way or another, he pulls you in. When he feels strongly, he can bang his fist in an impressive way. His review of Apocalypse Now ends thus: 'The whole huge grand mystery of the world, so terrible, so beautiful, seems to hang in the balance.'"

In his introduction to The Great Movies III, he wrote:

People often ask me, "Do you ever change your mind about a movie?" Hardly ever, although I may refine my opinion. Among the films here, I've changed on The Godfather Part II and Blade Runner. My original review of Part II puts me in mind of the "brain cloud" that besets Tom Hanks in Joe Versus the Volcano. I was simply wrong. In the case of Blade Runner, I think the director's cut by Ridley Scott simply plays much better. I also turned around on Groundhog Day, which made it into this book when I belatedly caught on that it wasn't about the weatherman's predicament but about the nature of time and will. Perhaps when I first saw it I allowed myself to be distracted by Bill Murray's mainstream comedy reputation. But someone in film school somewhere is probably even now writing a thesis about how Murray's famous cameos represent an injection of philosophy into those pictures.

In the first Great Movies, he wrote:

Movies do not change, but their viewers do. When I first saw La Dolce Vita in 1961, I was an adolescent for whom 'the sweet life' represented everything I dreamed of: sin, exotic European glamour, the weary romance of the cynical newspaperman. When I saw it again, around 1970, I was living in a version of Marcello's world; Chicago's North Avenue was not the Via Veneto, but at 3 A. M. the denizens were just as colorful, and I was about Marcello's age.

When I saw the movie around 1980, Marcello was the same age, but I was ten years older, had stopped drinking, and saw him not as role model, but as a victim, condemned to an endless search for happiness that could never be found, not that way. By 1991, when I analyzed the film a frame at a time at the University of Colorado, Marcello seemed younger still, and while I had once admired and then criticized him, now I pitied and loved him. And when I saw the movie right after Mastroianni died, I thought that Fellini and Marcello had taken a moment of discovery and made it immortal. There may be no such thing as the sweet life. But it is necessary to find that out for yourself.

Preferences

Favorites

In an essay looking back at his first 25 years as a film critic, Ebert wrote:

If I had to make a generalization, I would say that many of my favorite movies are about good people... Casablanca is about people who do the right thing. The Third Man is about people who do the right thing and can never speak to one another as a result... Not all good movies are about good people. I also like movies about bad people who have a sense of humor. Orson Welles, who does not play either of the good people in The Third Man, has such a winning way, such witty dialogue, that for a scene or two we almost forgive him his crimes. Henry Hill, the hero of Goodfellas, is not a good fella, but he has the ability to be honest with us about why he enjoyed being bad. He is not a hypocrite. Of the other movies I love, some are simply about the joy of physical movement. When Gene Kelly splashes through Singin' in the Rain, when Judy Garland follows the yellow brick road, when Fred Astaire dances on the ceiling, when John Wayne puts the reins in his teeth and gallops across the mountain meadow, there is a purity and joy that cannot be resisted. In Equinox Flower, a Japanese film by the old master Yasujiro Ozu, there is this sequence of shots: A room with a red teapot in the foreground. Another view of the room. The mother folding clothes. A shot down a corridor with a mother crossing it at an angle, and then a daughter crossing at the back. A reverse shot in the hallway as the arriving father is greeted by the mother and daughter. A shot as the father leaves the frame, then the mother, then the daughter. A shot as the mother and father enter the room, as in the background the daughter picks up the red pot and leaves the frame. This sequence of timed movement and cutting is as perfect as any music ever written, any dance, any poem.

Ebert argued for the aesthetic values of black-and-white photography and against colorization, writing:

Black-and-white movies present the deliberate absence of color. This makes them less realistic than color films (for the real world is in color). They are more dreamlike, more pure, composed of shapes and forms and movements and light and shadow. Color films can simply be illuminated. Black-and-white films have to be lighted... Black and white is a legitimate and beautiful artistic choice in motion pictures, creating feelings and effects that cannot be obtained any other way.

Ebert championed animation, particularly the films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. In his review of Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke, he wrote: "I go to the movies for many reasons. Here is one of them. I want to see wondrous sights not available in the real world, in stories where myth and dreams are set free to play. Animation opens that possibility, because it is freed from gravity and the chains of the possible. Realistic films show the physical world; animation shows its essence. Animated films are not copies of 'real movies,' are not shadows of reality, but create a new existence in their own right." He concluded his review of Ratatouille by writing: "Every time an animated film is successful, you have to read all over again about how animation isn't 'just for children' but 'for the whole family,' and 'even for adults going on their own.' No kidding!"

Ebert championed documentaries, notably Errol Morris's Gates of Heaven: "They say you can make a great documentary about anything, as long as you see it well enough and truly, and this film proves it. Gates of Heaven, which has no connection to the unfortunate Heaven's Gate, is about a couple of pet cemeteries and their owners. It was filmed in Southern California, so of course we expect a sardonic look at the peculiarities of the Moonbeam State. But then Gates of Heaven grows ever so much more complex and frightening, until at the end it is about such large issues as love, immortality, failure, and the dogged elusiveness of the American Dream." Morris credited Ebert's review with putting him on the map. He championed Michael Apted's Up films, calling them "an inspired, even noble use of the medium." Ebert concluded his review of Hoop Dreams by writing: "Many filmgoers are reluctant to see documentaries, for reasons I've never understood; the good ones are frequently more absorbing and entertaining than fiction. Hoop Dreams, however, is not only documentary. It is also poetry and prose, muckraking and expose, journalism and polemic. It is one of the great moviegoing experiences of my lifetime."

If a movie can illuminate the lives of other people who share this planet with us and show us not only how different they are but, how even so, they share the same dreams and hurts, then it deserves to be called great.

— Ebert, 1986

Ebert said that his favorite film was Citizen Kane, joking, "That's the official answer," although he preferred to emphasize it as "the most important" film. He said seeing The Third Man cemented his love of cinema: "This movie is on the altar of my love for the cinema. I saw it for the first time in a little fleabox of a theater on the Left Bank in Paris, in 1962, during my first $5 a day trip to Europe. It was so sad, so beautiful, so romantic, that it became at once a part of my own memories — as if it had happened to me." He implied that his real favorite film was La Dolce Vita.

His favorite actor was Robert Mitchum, and his favorite actress was Ingrid Bergman. He named Buster Keaton, Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Altman, Werner Herzog, and Martin Scorsese as his favorite directors. He expressed his distaste for "top-10" lists, and all movie lists in general, but did make an annual list of the years best films, joking that film critics are "required by unwritten law" to do so. He also contributed an all-time top-10 list for the decennial Sight & Sound Critics' poll in 1982, 1992, 2002 and 2012. In 1982, he chose, alphabetically, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Bonnie and Clyde, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, La Dolce Vita, Notorious, Persona, Taxi Driver, and The Third Man. In 2012, he chose 2001: A Space Odyssey, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Apocalypse Now, Citizen Kane, La Dolce Vita, The General, Raging Bull, Tokyo Story, The Tree of Life and Vertigo.

His favorite Bond film was Goldfinger (1964), and he later added it to his "Great Movies" list. Several of the contributors to Ebert's website participated in a video tribute to him, featuring films that made his Sight & Sound list in 1982 and 2012.

Best films of the year

Ebert made annual "ten best lists" from 1967 to 2012. His choices for best film of the year were:

• 1967: Bonnie and Clyde
• 1968: The Battle of Algiers
• 1969: Z
• 1970: Five Easy Pieces
• 1971: The Last Picture Show
• 1972: The Godfather
• 1973: Cries and Whispers
• 1974: Scenes from a Marriage
• 1975: Nashville
• 1976: Small Change
• 1977: 3 Women
• 1978: An Unmarried Woman
• 1979: Apocalypse Now
• 1980: The Black Stallion
• 1981: My Dinner with Andre
• 1982: Sophie's Choice
• 1983: The Right Stuff
• 1984: Amadeus
• 1985: The Color Purple
• 1986: Platoon
• 1987: House of Games
• 1988: Mississippi Burning
• 1989: Do the Right Thing
• 1990: Goodfellas
• 1991: JFK
• 1992: Malcolm X
• 1993: Schindler's List
• 1994: Hoop Dreams
• 1995: Leaving Las Vegas
• 1996: Fargo
• 1997: Eve's Bayou
• 1998: Dark City
• 1999: Being John Malkovich
• 2000: Almost Famous
• 2001: Monster's Ball
• 2002: Minority Report
• 2003: Monster
• 2004: Million Dollar Baby
• 2005: Crash
• 2006: Pan's Labyrinth
• 2007: Juno
• 2008: Synecdoche, New York
• 2009: The Hurt Locker
• 2010: The Social Network
• 2011: A Separation
• 2012: Argo

Ebert revisited and sometimes revised his opinions. After ranking E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial third on his 1982 list, it was the only movie from that year to appear on his later "Best Films of the 1980s" list (where it also ranked third). He made similar reevaluations of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Ran (1985). The Three Colours trilogy (Blue (1993), White (1994), and Red (also 1994), and Pulp Fiction (1994) originally ranked second and third on Ebert's 1994 list; both were included on his "Best Films of the 1990s" list, but their order had reversed.

In 2006, Ebert noted his own "tendency to place what I now consider the year's best film in second place, perhaps because I was trying to make some kind of point with my top pick," adding, "In 1968, I should have ranked 2001 above The Battle of Algiers. In 1971, McCabe & Mrs. Miller was better than The Last Picture Show. In 1974, Chinatown was probably better, in a different way, than Scenes from a Marriage. In 1976, how could I rank Small Change above Taxi Driver? In 1978, I would put Days of Heaven above An Unmarried Woman. And in 1980, of course, Raging Bull was a better film than The Black Stallion ... although I later chose Raging Bull as the best film of the entire decade of the 1980s, it was only the second-best film of 1980 ... am I the same person I was in 1968, 1971, or 1980? I hope not."

Best films of the decade

Ebert compiled "best of the decade" movie lists in the 2000s for the 1970s to the 2000s, thereby helping provide an overview of his critical preferences. Only three films for this listing were named by Ebert as the best film of the year, Five Easy Pieces (1970), Hoop Dreams (1994), and Synecdoche, New York (2008).

• Five Easy Pieces (1970s)
• Raging Bull (1980s)
• Hoop Dreams (1990s)
• Synecdoche, New York (2000s)

Genres and content

Ebert was often critical of the Motion Picture Association of America film rating system (MPAA). His main arguments were that they were too strict on sex and profanity, too lenient on violence, secretive with their guidelines, inconsistent in applying them and not willing to consider the wider context and meaning of the film. He advocated replacing the NC-17 rating with separate ratings for pornographic and nonpornographic adult films. He praised This Film is Not Yet Rated, a documentary critiquing the MPAA, adding that their rules are "Kafkaesque." He signed off on his review of Almost Famous by asking, "Why did they give an R rating to a movie so perfect for teenagers?"

Ebert also frequently lamented that cinemas outside major cities are "booked by computer from Hollywood with no regard for local tastes," making high-quality independent and foreign films virtually unavailable to most American moviegoers.

He wrote that "I've always preferred generic approach to film criticism; I ask myself how good a movie is of its type." He gave Halloween four stars: "Seeing it, I was reminded of the favorable review I gave a few years ago to Last House on the Left, another really terrifying thriller. Readers wrote to ask how I could possibly support such a movie. But I wasn't supporting it so much as describing it: You don't want to be scared? Don't see it. Credit must be paid to directors who want to really frighten us, to make a good thriller when quite possibly a bad one would have made as much money. Hitchcock is acknowledged as a master of suspense; it's hypocrisy to disapprove of other directors in the same genre who want to scare us too."

Ebert did not believe in grading children's movies on a curve, as he thought children were smarter than given credit for and deserved quality entertainment. He began his review of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory: "Kids are not stupid. They are among the sharpest, cleverest, most eagle-eyed creatures on God's green Earth, and very little escapes their notice. You may not have observed that your neighbor is still using his snow-tires in mid-July, but every four-year-old on the block has, and kids pay the same attention when they go to the movies. They don't miss a thing, and have an instinctive contempt for shoddy and shabby work. I make this observation because nine out of ten kids' movies are stupid, witless and display contempt for their audiences. Is that all parents want from kids' movies? That they not have anything bad in them? Shouldn't they have something good in them — some life, imagination, fantasy, inventiveness, something to tickle the imagination? If a movie isn't going to do your kids any good, why let them watch it? Just to kill a Saturday afternoon? That shows a subtle contempt for a child's mind, I think." He went on to say he thought Willy Wonka was the best movie of its kind since The Wizard of Oz.

Ebert tried not to judge a film on its ideology. Reviewing Apocalypse Now, he writes: "I am not particularly interested in the 'ideas' in Coppola's film...Like all great works of art about war, Apocalypse Now essentially contains only one idea or message, the not-especially-enlightening observation that war is hell. We do not go to see Coppola's movie for that insight — something Coppola, but not some of his critics, knows well. Coppola also well knows (and demonstrated in The Godfather films) that movies aren't especially good at dealing with abstract ideas — for those you'd be better off turning to the written word — but they are superb for presenting moods and feelings, the look of a battle, the expression on a face, the mood of a country. Apocalypse Now achieves greatness not by analyzing our 'experience in Vietnam,' but by re-creating, in characters and images, something of that experience." Ebert commented on films using his Catholic upbringing as a point of reference, and was critical of films he believed were grossly ignorant of or insulting to Catholicism, such as Stigmata (1999) and Priest (1994). He also gave favorable reviews of controversial films relating to Jesus Christ or Catholicism, including The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), The Passion of the Christ (2004), and Kevin Smith's religious satire Dogma (1999). He defended Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing: "Some of the advance articles about this movie have suggested that it is an incitement to racial violence. Those articles say more about their authors than about the movie. I believe that any good-hearted person, white or black, will come out of this movie with sympathy for all of the characters. Lee does not ask us to forgive them, or even to understand everything they do, but he wants us to identify with their fears and frustrations. Do the Right Thing doesn't ask its audiences to choose sides; it is scrupulously fair to both sides, in a story where it is our society itself that is not fair."

Contrarian reviews

Writing in an online magazine Hazlitt about Ebert's reviews, Will Sloan argued that "[t]here were inevitably movies where he veered from consensus, but he was not provocative or idiosyncratic by nature." Examples of Ebert dissenting from other critics include his negative reviews of such celebrated films as Blue Velvet ("marred by sophomoric satire and cheap shots"), A Clockwork Orange ("a paranoid right-wing fantasy masquerading as an Orwellian warning"), and The Usual Suspects ("To the degree that I do understand, I don't care"). He gave only two out of four stars to the widely acclaimed Brazil, calling it "very hard to follow" and is the only critic on RottenTomatoes to not like it.

He gave a one-star review to the critically acclaimed Abbas Kiarostami film Taste of Cherry, which won the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. Ebert later added the film to a list of his most-hated movies of all time. He was dismissive of the 1988 Bruce Willis action film Die Hard, stating that "inappropriate and wrongheaded interruptions reveal the fragile nature of the plot". His positive 3 out of 4 stars review of 1997's Speed 2: Cruise Control, "Movies like this embrace goofiness with an almost sensual pleasure" is one of only three positive reviews accounting for that film's 4% approval rating on the reviewer aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, one of the two others having been written by his At the Movies co-star Gene Siskel.

Ebert reflected on his Speed 2 review in 2013, and wrote that it was "Frequently cited as an example of what a lousy critic I am," but defended his opinion, and noted, "I'm grateful to movies that show me what I haven't seen before, and Speed 2 had a cruise ship plowing right up the main street of a Caribbean village." In 1999, Ebert held a contest for University of Colorado Boulder students to create short films with a Speed 3 theme about an object that could not stop moving. The winning entrant was set on a roller coaster and was screened at Ebertfest that year.

Other interests

Ebert was an admirer of Werner Herzog, and conducted a Q&A session with him at the Walker Arts Center in 1999. It was there that Herzog read his "Minnesota Declaration" which defined his idea of "ecstatic truth." Herzog dedicated his Encounters at the End of the World to Ebert, and Ebert responded with an open letter of gratitude. Ebert often quoted something Herzog told him: "our civilization is starving for new images."

Ebert was a lifelong reader, and said he had "more or less every book I have owned since I was seven, starting with Huckleberry Finn." Among the authors he considered indispensable were Shakespeare, Henry James, Willa Cather, Colette and Simenon. He writes of his friend William Nack: "He approached literature like a gourmet. He relished it, savored it, inhaled it, and after memorizing it rolled it on his tongue and spoke it aloud. It was Nack who already knew in the early 1960s, when he was a very young man, that Nabokov was perhaps the supreme stylist of modern novelists. He recited to me from Lolita, and from Speak, Memory and Pnin. I was spellbound." Every time Ebert saw Nack, he'd ask him to recite the last lines of The Great Gatsby. Reviewing Stone Reader, he wrote: "get me in conversation with another reader, and I'll recite titles, too. Have you ever read The Quincunx? The Raj Quartet? A Fine Balance? Ever heard of that most despairing of all travel books, The Saddest Pleasure, by Moritz Thomsen? Does anybody hold up better than Joseph Conrad and Willa Cather? Know any Yeats by heart? Surely P. G. Wodehouse is as great at what he does as Shakespeare was at what he did." Among contemporary authors he admired Cormac McCarthy, and credited Suttree with reviving his love of reading after his illness. He also loved audiobooks, particularly praising Sean Barrett's reading of Perfume. He was a fan of Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin, which he read in French.

Ebert was also an advocate and supporter of Asian-American cinema, famously coming to the defense of the cast and crew of Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow (2002) during a Sundance Film Festival screening when a white member of the audience asked how Asians could be portrayed in such a negative light and how a film so empty and amoral could be made for Asian-Americans and Americans. Ebert responded that "What I find very offensive and condescending about your statement is nobody would say to a bunch of white filmmakers, ‘How could you do this to 'your people'?...Asian-American characters have the right to be whoever the hell they want to be. They do not have to represent 'their people'!" He was a supporter of the film after the incident at Sundance, and also supported a number of Asian-American films, such as Eric Byler's Charlotte Sometimes and screened them at his film festival.

Ebert first visited London in 1966 with his professor Daniel Curley, who "started me on a lifelong practice of wandering around London. From 1966 to 2006, I visited London never less than once a year and usually more than that. Walking the city became a part of my education, and in this way I learned a little about architecture, British watercolors, music, theater and above all people. I felt a freedom in London I've never felt elsewhere. I made lasting friends. The city lends itself to walking, can be intensely exciting at eye level, and is being eaten alive block by block by brutal corporate leg-lifting." Ebert and Curley coauthored The Perfect London Walk.

Ebert attended the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado Boulder for many years, where he hosted a program called Cinema Interruptus. He would analyze a film with an audience, and anyone could say "Stop!" to point out something they found interesting. He wrote "Boulder is my hometown in an alternate universe. I have walked its streets by day and night, in rain, snow, and sunshine. I have made life-long friends there. I was in my twenties when I first came to the Conference on World Affairs and was greeted by Howard Higman, its choleric founder, with 'Who invited you back?' Since then I have appeared on countless panels panels where I have learned and rehearsed debatemanship, the art of talking to anybody about anything." In 2009, Ebert invited Ramin Bahrani to join him in analyzing Bahrani's film Chop Shop a frame at a time. The next year, they invited Werner Herzog to join them in analyzing Aguirre, the Wrath of God. After that, Ebert announced that he would not return to the conference: "It is fueled by speech, and I'm out of gas... But I went there for my adult lifetime and had a hell of a good time."

Views on technology

Ebert was a strong advocate for Maxivision 48, in which the movie projector runs at 48 frames per second, as compared to the usual 24 frames per second. He was opposed to the practice whereby theaters lower the intensity of their projector bulbs in order to extend the life of the bulb, arguing that this has little effect other than to make the film harder to see. Ebert was skeptical of the resurgence of 3D effects in film, which he found unrealistic and distracting.

In 2005, Ebert opined that video games are not art, and are inferior to media created through authorial control, such as film and literature, stating, "video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful," but "the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art." This resulted in negative reaction from video game enthusiasts, such as writer Clive Barker, who defended video games as an art form. Ebert wrote a further piece in response to Barker. Ebert maintained his position in 2010, but conceded that he should not have expressed this skepticism without being more familiar with the actual experience of playing them. He admitted that he barely played video games: "I have played Cosmology of Kyoto which I enormously enjoyed, and Myst for which I lacked the patience." In the article, Ebert wrote, "It is quite possible a game could someday be great art."

Ebert had reviewed Cosmology of Kyoto for Wired in 1994, and had praised the exploration, depth, and graphics found in the game, writing "This is the most beguiling computer game I have encountered, a seamless blend of information, adventure, humor, and imagination — the gruesome side-by-side with the divine." Ebert filed one other video game-related article for Wired in 1994, in which he described his visit to Sega's Joypolis arcade in Tokyo.

Personal life

Ebert and his wife Chaz Hammelsmith Ebert (left) giving the thumbs up to Nancy Kwan (right) at the Hawaii International Film Festival

Marriage

At age 50, Ebert married trial attorney Charlie "Chaz" Hammel-Smith in 1992. Chaz Ebert became vice president of the Ebert Company and has emceed Ebertfest. He explained in his memoir, Life Itself, that he did not want to marry before his mother died, as he was afraid of displeasing her. In a July 2012 blog entry, Ebert wrote about Chaz, "She fills my horizon, she is the great fact of my life, she has my love, she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed to be heading... She has been with me in sickness and in health, certainly far more sickness than we could have anticipated. I will be with her, strengthened by her example. She continues to make my life possible, and her presence fills me with love and a deep security. That's what a marriage is for. Now I know."

Alcoholism recovery

Ebert was a recovering alcoholic, having quit drinking in 1979. He was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and had written some blog entries on the subject. Ebert was a longtime friend of Oprah Winfrey, and Winfrey credited him with persuading her to syndicate The Oprah Winfrey Show, which became the highest-rated talk show in American television history.

Здоровье

Эберт (справа) на конференции по мировым делам в сентябре 2002 года, вскоре после того, как ему поставили диагноз рака.

В феврале 2002 года у Эберта диагностировали папиллярный рак щитовидной железы , который был успешно удален. В 2003 году он перенес операцию по поводу рака слюнной железы , за которой последовала лучевая терапия . В 2006 году ему снова поставили диагноз «рак». В июне того же года ему сделали мандибулэктомию по удалению раковой ткани на правой стороне челюсти. Неделю спустя у него возникло опасное для жизни осложнение: сонная артерия разорвалась недалеко от места операции. Он был прикован к постельному режиму и какое-то время не мог говорить, есть и пить, что потребовало использования зонда для кормления .

Из-за осложнений Эберт долгое время не появлялся в эфире. Эберт впервые с середины 2006 года появился на публике на Эбертфесте 25 апреля 2007 года. Он не мог говорить, вместо этого общался через свою жену. Он вернулся к рецензированию 18 мая 2007 г., когда три его рецензии были опубликованы в печати. В июле 2007 года он сообщил, что все еще не может говорить. Эберт применил компьютеризированную голосовую систему для общения, в конечном итоге используя копию своего собственного голоса, созданную на основе его записей с помощью CereProc .

В феврале 2010 года Крис Джонс написал длинный обзор Эберта и его здоровья в Esquire . В марте 2010 года его медицинские испытания и новый компьютеризированный голос были показаны на Шоу Опры Уинфри . В 2011 году Эберт выступил на TED с докладом под названием «Переделка моего голоса» при поддержке его жены Чаз и друзей Дина Орниша и Джона Хантера. в котором он предложил тест на определение правдоподобия синтезированного голоса.

В январе 2008 года Эберт перенес еще одну операцию, чтобы попытаться восстановить голос и устранить осложнения, возникшие после предыдущих операций. 1 апреля Эберт объявил, что его речь не восстановлена. Эберт перенес повторную операцию в апреле 2008 года после перелома бедра при падении. К 2011 году Эберту сделали протез подбородка, чтобы скрыть часть повреждений, нанесенных его многочисленными операциями.

В декабре 2012 года Эберт был госпитализирован из-за перелома бедра, который впоследствии был признан результатом рака .

Эберт писал, что «что грустно в отказе от еды»:

Потеря обеда, а не потеря еды. Это может быть личное, но для меня, если я не один, это не предполагает ужина, если не связано с разговорами. Еда и напитки, без которых я легко могу обойтись. Я скучаю по шуткам, сплетням, смеху, спорам и общим воспоминаниям. Предложения, начинающиеся со слов: «Помнишь то время?» Я бегал в толпе, где любой мог в любой момент начать декламировать стихи. Я тоже. Но уже не я. Так что да, это грустно. Возможно, именно поэтому мне нравится этот блог. Ты этого не понимаешь, но мы сейчас ужинаем.

Политика

Сторонник Демократической партии , он писал о том, как католическое образование привело его к политике: «Посредством умственного процесса, который к настоящему времени стал почти инстинктивным, эти монахини побудили меня поддержать всеобщее здравоохранение , правоту профсоюзов , справедливое налогообложение, благоразумие в войне, доброту». в мирное время помощь голодным и бездомным и равные возможности для всех рас и полов. Меня продолжает удивлять то, что многие, считающие себя религиозными, отворачиваются от меня». Во время дискуссии в 1996 году на Университета Колорадо в Боулдере Эберт конференции по мировым делам придумал Боулдерское обещание, согласно которому он поклялся никогда не покупать ничего, предлагаемое в результате нежелательных сообщений электронной почты, а также не пересылать цепочки электронных писем или массовые электронные письма на другие.

Эберт выступил против войны в Ираке , написав: «Я против войны? Конечно. Поддерживаю ли я наши войска? Конечно. Их послали подвергнуть опасности свою жизнь фанатики с оккультными целями». Он поддержал Барака Обамы переизбрание в 2012 году , сославшись на Закон о доступном медицинском обслуживании как на одну из важных причин своей поддержки Обамы. Он был обеспокоен неравенством доходов, написав: «Я не возражаю против финансового успеха. Богатство следует получать законными и традиционными способами – другими словами, работая, – а не путем манипулирования финансовыми махинациями. Вы знакомы с тем, как банки навязывали плохие ипотечные кредиты людям, которые не могли их себе позволить. которых не волновало, что кредиты были плохими. Банки выдавали кредиты и получали прибыль, продавая их инвесторам, одновременно делая ставки против них за свой счет. В то время как Уолл-стрит сознательно торговала бесполезными бумагами, что привело к После финансового краха 2008 года руководителям платили огромные бонусы». Он выразил предварительную поддержку движению «Оккупай Уолл-стрит» : «Я считаю, что оккупанты выступают против беззаконной и разрушительной жадности в финансовой индустрии, а также нездорового распределения в этой стране между богатыми и остальными». Говоря о кризисе субстандартного ипотечного кредитования , он писал: «Я также чувствовал отчаяние от того, как финансовые инструменты создавались и манипулировались ими с целью преднамеренного обмана простых людей в этой стране. инвесторам продавались бесполезные «ценные бумаги», основанные на этих плохих ипотечных кредитах. Уолл-стрит не чувствовала стыда, поддерживая бумаги, которые должны были обанкротиться, и продавая их клиентам, которые им доверяли. Это ясно и задокументировано. Это ошеломляющее воровство и мошенничество. шкала." Он также симпатизировал Рону Полу , отметив, что тот «говорит прямо и ясно, без лишнего шума и взмахов губ». В обзоре документального фильма IOUSA 2008 года он назвал Пола «одиноким голосом, говорящим о долге », предположив на основе фильма, что правительство США «уже разорено». Он выступал против войны с наркотиками и смертная казнь .

Убеждения

Эберт критиковал разумный замысел . и заявил, что люди, которые верят либо в креационизм , либо в убеждения Нью Эйдж, такие как исцеление кристаллами или астрология, не должны быть президентом. Эберт выразил недоверие к заявлениям о сверхъестественном в целом, назвав их « угу-уу ». хотя он утверждал, что реинкарнация возможна с «научной, рационалистической точки зрения». Он писал, что в католической школе он узнал о « Теории эволюции» , которая в своей элегантности и ослепляющей очевидности стала одним из столпов моих рассуждений, объясняя так много вещей разными способами. Это было введением не только в логику, но и в символизм, открывая тем самым окно в поэзию, литературу и искусство в целом. Всю свою жизнь я сожалел о тех, кто интерпретирует что-либо только на самом упрощенном уровне».

Эберт по крайней мере один раз назвал себя агностиком: но в других случаях явно отвергал это обозначение; биограф Мэтт Сингер писал, что Эберт выступал против любой категоризации своих убеждений. В 2009 году Эберт написал, что он «не хочет, чтобы [его] убеждения сводились к слову», и заявил: «Я никогда не говорил, хотя читатели свободно сообщали мне, что я атеист, агностик или, по крайней мере, светский гуманист – каким я и являюсь». Он писал о своем католическом воспитании: «Я верил в основные учения Церкви, потому что считал их правильными, а не потому, что этого хотел Бог. В моем уме, в том смысле, как я их интерпретирую, я до сих пор живу ими. Например, в вопросе абортов я за выбор, но мой личный выбор - не иметь ничего общего с абортом, я думаю, ни в коем случае не с абортом моего собственного ребенка. по свободной воле, и считаю, что я не имею права указывать кому-либо, что делать, прежде всего, государство». Он писал: «Я не верующий, не атеист, не агностик. Я все еще не сплю по ночам и спрашиваю, как ? Я больше доволен вопросом, чем ответом». Он пишет: «Сегодня за обедом меня спросили, кому или чему я поклоняюсь. Вопрос был задан искренне, и в том же духе я ответил, что поклоняюсь всему, что может быть за пределами знания. Я поклоняюсь пустоте. Тайне. И способности нашего человеческого разума познать неразрешимую тайну. Сводить такую ​​вещь к упрощенным названиям — это оскорбление как для нее, так и для нашего интеллекта».

Он писал: «Я много лет пил в таверне, на стене которой висела фотография Брендана Бехана , а под ней — цитата, которую я запомнил: « Я уважаю прежде всего доброту в людях и доброту к животным». Я не уважаю закон; я испытываю полное неуважение ко всему, что касается общества, за исключением того, что делает дороги безопаснее, пиво крепче, еду дешевле, стариков и старух теплее зимой и счастливее летом. . «В 57 словах это довольно хорошее подведение итогов». Подводя итог своим убеждениям, Эберт писал:

Я считаю, что если, в конце концов, в соответствии с нашими способностями, мы сделали что-то, чтобы сделать других немного счастливее, и что-то, чтобы сделать себя немного счастливее, это, пожалуй, лучшее, что мы можем сделать. Делать других менее счастливыми — преступление. Все преступления начинаются с того, что мы делаем себя несчастными. Мы должны стараться приносить радость миру. Это правда, независимо от наших проблем, нашего здоровья, наших обстоятельств. Мы должны попытаться. Я не всегда это знал и рад, что прожил достаточно долго, чтобы это выяснить.

Смерть и наследие

4 апреля 2013 года Эберт умер в возрасте 70 лет в больнице Чикаго, незадолго до того, как ему собирались вернуться домой и попасть в хоспис .

Президент Барак Обама написал: «Для поколения американцев – и особенно жителей Чикаго – Роджер был фильмом… [он мог уловить] уникальную силу кино, которая переносит нас в волшебное место. … Фильмы не будут то же самое без Роджера». Мартин Скорсезе опубликовал заявление, в котором говорится: «Смерть Роджера Эберта — это неисчислимая потеря для кинокультуры и кинокритики. И это потеря лично для меня… между нами была профессиональная дистанция, но тогда я мог с ним поговорить». гораздо более свободно, чем с другими критиками. На самом деле, Роджер был моим другом.

Стивен Спилберг заявил, что «рецензии Эберта были гораздо глубже, чем просто одобрение или одобрение. Он писал со страстью, обладая настоящим знанием кино и истории кино, и тем самым помог многим фильмам найти свою аудиторию… [Он] поставил телевизионная критика на карте». Многие знаменитости отдали дань уважения, в том числе Кристофер Нолан , Опра Уинфри , Стив Мартин , Альберт Брукс , Джейсон Рейтман , Рон Ховард , Даррен Аронофски , Ларри Кинг , Кэмерон Кроу , Вернер Херцог , Говард Стерн , Стив Карелл , Стивен Фрай , Диабло Коди , Анна Кендрик , Джимми Киммел и Паттон Освальт .

Майкл Филлипс из « Чикаго Трибьюн» вспоминал: «Я поздно пришел к кинокритике в Чикаго после того, как написал о театре. Роджер любил театр. Он был театральной личностью: рассказчик, рассказчик застольных историй, человек, который не стеснялся своих достижений, но освобождал место в этой театральной, невероятной, огромной жизни для других». Эндрю О'Хехир из Salon написал, что «он стоит на одном уровне с Уиллом Роджерсом , Х. Л. Менкеном , Эй Джей Либлингом и не слишком отстает от Марка Твена как один из величайших откровенных комментаторов американской жизни».

The Onion отдал должное Эберту: «Назвав человеческое существование в целом «острым», «заставляющим задуматься» и «полным проявлением силы», кинокритик Роджер Эберт похвалил существование как «дерзкий и захватывающий триумф»... «Иногда это жестоко грустно, но удивительно забавно и всегда совершенно честно. Я искренне рекомендую существование. Если вы еще этого не испытали, чего вы ждете?» Позже Эберт сказал, что, хотя продолжительность человеческого существования была «немного длинной», оно могло продолжаться гораздо, намного дольше, и он был бы совершенно счастлив».

Сотни людей присутствовали на похоронной мессе, в Чикаго состоявшейся в соборе Святого Имени 8 апреля 2013 года, где Эберта прославляли как кинокритика, газетчика, защитника социальной справедливости и мужа. Отец Михаэль Пфлегер завершил службу словами: «Райские балконы заполнены ангелами, поющими «Большой палец вверх»». Преподобный Джон Ф. Костелло из Университета Лойолы произнес проповедь для Эберта.

Мемориалы

Статуя Эберта, показывающего большой палец вверх возле театра Вирджиния в Шампейне, штат Иллинойс.

Почти трехчасовая публичная дань уважения под названием «Роджер Эберт: Праздник жизни » прошла 11 апреля 2013 года в Чикагском театре . На нем присутствовали личные воспоминания, видеоотзывы, видео- и киноклипы, а также звучали госпел-хоры, и, по словам Chicago Tribune Марка Каро из , «наполненные смехом и скорбью проводы из мира развлечений и средств массовой информации». "

В сентябре 2013 года организаторы в Шампейне, штат Иллинойс Эберта в натуральную величину , объявили о планах собрать 125 000 долларов на строительство бронзовой статуи в городе, которая была открыта перед Театром Вирджинии на Эбертфесте 24 апреля 2014 года. Композиция была выбрана его вдовой Чезом Эбертом, и на ней изображен Эберт, сидящий посередине трех театральных кресел и поднимающий большой палец вверх.

2013 года Международный кинофестиваль в Торонто открылся видеопосвящением Эберту в Рой Томсон-холле во время мировой премьеры фильма «Пятая власть» , основанного на WikiLeaks . Эберт был ярым сторонником фестиваля с момента его основания в 1970-х годах. Чаз присутствовал, чтобы принять мемориальную доску от имени Роджера. На том же фестивале Эррол Моррис посвятил свой фильм «Неизвестное известное» Эберту, сказав: «Он был действительно потрясающей частью моей жизни, хорошим другом, чемпионом, вдохновляющим писателем. Я любил Роджера».

В августе 2013 года фестиваль классического кино Plaza в Эль-Пасо, штат Техас , отдал дань уважения Эберту, показав семь фильмов, сыгравших роль в его жизни: «Гражданин Кейн» , «Третий человек» , «Токийская история» , «Сладкая жизнь» , «За долиной реки». Куклы Фитцкарральдо . и Славные парни

На 86-й церемонии вручения премии «Оскар» Эберт был включен в мемориальный монтаж, что является редкой честью для кинокритика.

В 2014 году документальный фильм «Сама жизнь» вышел . Режиссер Стив Джеймс , фильмы которого широко пропагандировал Эберт, начал снимать документальный фильм еще при жизни Эберта. Мартин Скорсезе выступил исполнительным продюсером. В фильме изучается жизнь и карьера Эберта, а также снимаются его последние месяцы, а также интервью с его семьей и друзьями. Он получил всеобщую оценку критиков. Рейтинг одобрения на Rotten Tomatoes составляет 98% .

Вернер Херцог рассказал Entertainment Weekly , что Эберт был «солдатом кино»: «Я всегда любил Роджера за то, что он был хорошим солдатом, не только хорошим солдатом кино, но и раненым солдатом, который годами выдерживал свои страдания и пахал, сражался и удерживал форпост, от которого отказались почти все: монументальный сдвиг заключается в том, что интеллектуальный, глубокий дискурс о кино исчез за последние, может быть, два десятилетия... Я всегда пытался самому быть хорошим солдатом кино, поэтому, конечно, с тех пор, как его больше нет, я буду пахать, как пахал всю свою жизнь, но я буду делать то, что должен делать, как если бы Роджер смотрел мне через плечо. Я не разочарую его».

Эберт был удостоен звания лауреата Академии Линкольна в Иллинойсе . В 2001 году губернатор Иллинойса наградил его высшей наградой штата — Орденом Линкольна в области исполнительского искусства. В 2016 году Эберт был введен в Зал литературной славы Чикаго.

Веб-сайт RogerEbert.com содержит архив всех обзоров, написанных Эбертом, а также множество эссе и мнений. Сайт, которым управляет Ebert Digital (партнерство Чаза и друга Джоша Голдена), продолжает публиковать новые материалы, написанные группой критиков, выбранных Эбертом перед его смертью.

Награды и почести

Эберт получил множество наград за свою долгую и выдающуюся карьеру кинокритика и телеведущего. Он был первым кинокритиком, когда-либо получившим Пулитцеровскую премию , получив Пулитцеровскую премию за критику в 1975 году, когда работал в газете Chicago Sun-Times, «за кинокритику в 1974 году».

В 2003 году Эберт был удостоен награды Американского общества кинематографистов за особые достижения. В 2005 году Эберт получил Звезду на Аллее славы в Голливуде за работу на телевидении. Его звезда находится по адресу 6834 Hollywood Blvd. В 2009 году Эберт получил премию Гильдии режиссеров Америки за почетного пожизненного члена. В 2010 году Эберт получил премию Уэбби как «Человек года».

В 2007 году Эберт был удостоен премии Gotham Awards, получив дань уважения и награду за его жизненный вклад в независимое кино.

15 мая 2009 года Эберт был удостоен чести Американского павильона на Каннском кинофестивале переименованием его конференц-зала в «Конференц-центр Роджера Эберта». Мартин Скорсезе присоединился к Эберту и его жене Чаз на церемонии перерезания ленточки.

Год	Премия	Категория	Номинированная работа	Результат
1979	Премия Эмми Чикаго	Выдающаяся специальная программа	Скрытые превью	Выиграл
1984	Премия «Эмми» в прайм-тайм	Выдающаяся информационная серия	В кино	номинирован
1985				номинирован
1987			Сискель, Эберт и кино	номинирован
1988				номинирован
1989	Дневная премия «Эмми»	Выдающаяся программа специального класса		номинирован
1990				номинирован
1991				номинирован
1992	Премия "Эмми" в прайм-тайм	Выдающаяся информационная серия		номинирован
1994				номинирован
1997				номинирован
2005	Премия Эмми Чикаго	Премия Серебряного круга	—	Выиграл

Почести

• 1975 – Пулитцеровская премия за критику.
• 1995 - Премия Гильдии публицистов Америки в области прессы
• 2003 - Американского общества кинематографистов за особые достижения. Премия
• 2004 - Премия кинофестиваля в Саванне за заслуги перед жизнью
• 2007 - Премия Gotham Award за заслуги перед жизнью
• 2009 - Премия Гильдии режиссеров Америки «Почетный пожизненный член»
• 2010 - Премия Уэбби «Человек года»

Опубликованные работы

Каждый год с 1986 по 1998 год Эберт публиковал «Домашний компаньон Роджера Эберта» (последние пять выпусков которого был переименован в «Видео-компаньон Роджера Эберта» ), в котором собраны все его обзоры фильмов на тот момент. С 1999 по 2013 год (кроме 2008 года) Эберт вместо этого публиковал Ежегодник фильмов Роджера Эберта , сборник всех его рецензий на фильмы за предыдущие два с половиной года (например, издание 2011 года, ISBN   978-0-7407-9769-9 , охватывает период с января 2008 г. по июль 2010 г.) Обе серии также включали ежегодные эссе, интервью и другие статьи. Он также написал следующие книги:

• Век Иллини: сто лет студенческой жизни (1967) - история первых 100 лет существования Университета Иллинойса . (без ISBN)
• Поцелуй все еще поцелуй (1984) ( ISBN   0-8362-7957-3 )
• Идеальная прогулка по Лондону (1986) с Дэниелом Керли - экскурсия по Лондону, любимому зарубежному городу Эберта. ( ISBN   0-8362-7929-8 )
• Две недели в полдень: Каннский блокнот (1987) - репортаж о Каннском кинофестивале 1987 года , который также был посвящен 40-летию фестиваля, а также комментарии о предыдущих 12 фестивалях, которые посетил Эберт. Интервью с Джоном Малковичем , Барбарой Херши и Изабеллой Росселлини . ( ISBN   0-8362-7942-5 )
• Будущее кино (1991) с Джином Сискелом - сборник интервью с Мартином Скорсезе , Стивеном Спилбергом и Джорджем Лукасом о будущем кинофильмов и сохранении фильмов. Это единственная книга, написанная в соавторстве Сискелем и Эбертом. ( ISBN   978-0-8362-6216-2 )
• За маской призрака (1993) - единственное художественное произведение Эберта, в котором рассказывается об убийстве на сцене и последующем внимании, обращенном на ранее неизвестного актера. ( ISBN   0-8362-8021-0 )
• Маленький словарь кино Эберта (1994) - сборник киноклише. ( ISBN   0-8362-8071-7 )
• Книга кино Роджера Эберта (1996) - антология Нортона, посвященная кинофильмам за столетие. ( ISBN   0-393-04000-3 )
• Вопросы для киноответчика (1997) - его ответы на вопросы, заданные читателями. ( ISBN   0-8362-2894-4 )
• Большой маленький словарь кинофильмов Эберта (1999) - «значительно расширенный» сборник киноклише. ( ISBN   0-8362-8289-2 )
• Я ненавидел, ненавидел, ненавидел этот фильм (2000) - сборник рецензий на фильмы, получившие две звезды или меньше, относящиеся к началу его в Sun-Times карьеры . (Название взято из его 1994 года с нулевой звездой рецензии на фильм « Север» .) ( ISBN   0-7407-0672-1 )
• Великие фильмы (2002), Великие фильмы II (2005), Великие фильмы III (2010) и Великие фильмы IV (2016) - четыре книги очерков о великих фильмах. ( ISBN   0-7679-1038-9 , ISBN   0-7679-1950-5 , ISBN   978-0-226-18208-7 ) и ISBN   978-0-226-40398-4
• Пробуждение в темноте: Лучшее из Роджера Эберта (2006) - сборник эссе за его 40 лет работы кинокритиком, включающий интервью, профили, эссе, его первоначальные рецензии после выхода фильма, а также критические обмены мнениями между фильмами. критики Ричард Корлисс и Эндрю Саррис .
• Ваш фильм - отстой (2007) - сборник рецензий на фильмы, выпущенные в период с 2000 по 2006 год и получивших менее двух звезд. (Название взято из его обзора с нулевой звездой на фильм 2005 года «Двойка Бигалоу: Европейский жиголо »). ISBN   0-7407-6366-0 )
• Четырехзвездочные обзоры Роджера Эберта 1967–2007 (2007) ( ISBN   0-7407-7179-5 )
• Скорсезе Эберта (2008) - освещает работы режиссера Мартина Скорсезе с 1967 по 2008 год, а также 11 интервью с режиссером за этот период. ( ISBN   978-0-226-18202-5 )
• Горшок и как им пользоваться: Тайна и романтика рисоварки (2010) ( ISBN   0-7407-9142-7 )
• Сама жизнь: Мемуары . (2011) Нью-Йорк: Издательство Grand Central Publishing . ( ISBN   0-446-58497-5 )
• «Ужасный опыт невыносимой длины» (2012) - третья книга с рецензиями менее двух звезд на фильмы, выпущенные в 2006 году и позже. (Название взято из его однозвездной рецензии на фильм «Трансформеры: Месть падших» 2009 года .) ( ISBN   1-4494-1025-1 )

См. также

• тест Эберта

Дальнейшее чтение

• Брюс Дж. Эвенсен. «Эберт, Роджер (18 июня 1942–04 апреля 2013 г.)» Американская национальная биография (2015) [www.anb.org/viewbydoi/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1603924 онлайн]
• Певец, Мэтт (2023). Противопоставленные большие пальцы: как Сискель и Эберт навсегда изменили кино . Нью-Йорк: Сыновья ГП Патнэма . ISBN  978-0-593-54015-2 .

Внешние ссылки

• Официальный сайт
• Роджер Эберт на интервью: устная история телевидения
• Критическая страница Роджера Эберта на сайте Rotten Tomatoes
• Страница знаменитостей Роджера Эберта на Rotten Tomatoes
• Роджер Эберт на IMDb  
• Роджер Эберт на TED
• Появления на C-SPAN
• Роджер Эберт о Чарли Роузе
• Роджер Эберт на Muck Rack сайте списка журналистов