Lemire had already been announced but was originally set to co-host with the New York Times’ Elvis Mitchell. However, after some test shows were taped, Mitchell was dropped because of, reportedly, a lack of chemistry between the two. Vishnevetsky is only 24 and will hopefully gain more good will from viewers than the last young host, Ben Lyons, who was rejected by fans as not knowledgable enough and even incurred a subtle criticism from Ebert himself in a piece that didn’t mention his name but was widely accepted as being directed towards him. In the press release sent out today, Ebert describes first seeing Vishnevetsky speak and how he was “struck by the depth and detail of his film knowledge, and by how articulate he was.”

The new version of the show will premiere on January 21st and will be syndicated on PBS as well as the Armed Forces Network. It will return to the “Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down” format that the previous iteration, which was canceled by ABC last year, had dropped following Ebert’s departure for health reasons. The new show will be called Ebert presents At the Movies, although the press release spells it Ebert Presents at the Movies which is probably a typo considering it doesn’t make any sense unless this is a show of Roger Ebert presenting things in a movie theater and not, as one would assume, a new version of At the Movies that he is presenting.

Sorry. Like I’m in any position to correct other people’s typos.

Famed film critic Roger Ebert just saw a YouTube video that he not only gives two thumbs way up, but also thinks is deserving of an Academy Award for best short film. New York City filmmaker Jamie Stuart shot his film, called both “Idiot with a Tripod” and “Man in a Blizzard,” during the recent snowpocalypse in New York, quickly edited it, and send it to Ebert.

Ebert’s excited praise from his blog:

This film deserves to win the Academy Award for best live-action short subject. (1) Because of its wonderful quality. (2) Because of its role as homage. It is directly inspired by Dziga Vertov’s 1929 silent classic ‘Man With a Movie Camera.’ (3) Because it represents an almost unbelievable technical proficiency.

Although the film is undisputedly visually impressive, it’s a bit too boring for my taste, but what do I know? Movie fans get your popcorn ready and watch the video below to see if you agree with Ebert.

Watch the film below from Roger Ebert‘s Youtube page:

(h/t On The Red Carpet)

Anyway, comedian Lisa Lampanelli‘s remarks are getting some attention this morning (though it seems they are not out of line with previous appearances) for pushing the envelope; she apparently made jokes about the Holocaust, Roger Ebert, and noted “Hasselhoff’s liver was so black it could have sex “with two of the Kardashian sisters.”

Not to be outdone, Whitney Cummings roasted a blue streak. You can watch it below. It is not safe for work. The rest of the clips are here. In one of them Pamela Anderson recounts the acting advice she once received from Hasselhof.

Webby Awards were last night.
Internet Famous, Cipriani Wall Street.
Oddly, no Foursquare super-swarm.
I, personally, liked BJ Novak.
Great show, free-flowing Bellinis.
Jimmy Fallon: Super-nice dude.
Amy Poehler hugged me. Jealous?
Isabella Rossellini: Sexiest Gulf message!
Roger Ebert: We love you.
No, really, we LOVE you.
Standing O, so well deserved.
One more time: LOVE YOU!
OK Go were ok great.
Auto-tune sang in harmony.
P.S. 22 also sang – adorable, inspirational.
Chicken or fish? Have both!
Bonus! There were also muppets.
Eclectic Method mashed it up.
Vint Cerf: Cool name, made Internet.
Lisa Kudrow thanked some peeps.
Amy Poehler: Super-duper pregs!
Will Arnett is Canadian, yo.
Jason Bateman, better with age.
(I loved “It’s Your Move“)
Jake minus Amir seemed lonely.
Arianna turned heads walking by.
So did Pete Cashmore. Rawr.
Gilbert Gottfried – Iago the Parrot!!!
Chatroulette dude was young, sweet.
Ben Folds was hilarious, talented.
Pretty damn impressive lineup, Webbys.
Later on, bros iced bros.
Photobooth line at afterparty: Nuts.
I left. Party raged on.

Some great 5-word speeches:

Roger Ebert (didn’t need 5): “Veni, vidi, vici!”

Amy Poehler: “Me, you, P.S.22 — Dance Party.”

Jake from College Humor: “Holy fucking shit — BUZZ ALDRIN!”

Buzz Aldrin: “Humanity. Colonization. Phobos. Monolith. Mars!”

Auto-Tune the News (sung): “Everything sounds better Auto-Tuned!”

Biz Stone: “Every character counts. Thank you.”

Isabella Rossellini: “I say: Plug the hole!”

T: The New York Times Style Magazine: “The Grey Lady wears Prada.”

All About Birds: “Save the Gulf Coast birds.”

NewYorker.com: “Wanna read it all? Subscribe!”

Here is a photo gallery:

Videos of a few speeches:

More speeches here. More videos here. Bros icing bros here.

All photos by Rachel Sklar, except for screengrabs of people getting Webbys, from the Webby YouTube page. Writing this felt like haiku.

I do this sometimes. Late at night, typically. Angrily for the most part. Drunkenly on occasion. Twitter is real life and in real time, after all. Isn’t that what we all love and hate about it?

Knowing all this, I hatched a plan that’s been going swimmingly all week. You see, Roger Ebert is on Twitter too. And he can be exceedingly … unkind. He compared Arizona’s immigration law to the Holocaust. Twice. He routinely mocks “TeePees,” his adorably dismissive shorthand for tea party protesters. And most recently, in an exceedingly ill-advised and poorly-received tweet, he suggested that “Kids who wear American Flag t-shirts on 5 May should have to share a lunchroom table with those who wear a hammer and sickle on 4 July.”

Let us not today go into the ins and outs of the students sent home after refusing to cover their American flags on Cinco de Mayo. Suffice it to say that from my perspective this was an unconscionable outrage, and therefore Ebert’s escalation of the rhetoric to the level of hammer and sickle doubly so. It was an insight into him. Twitter, as we addicts believe, is real life. And in real time. And so … the plan.

It was amazingly easy to do. First, I warned Media Matters what was about to happen. Second, I began attacking Ebert with increasingly awful tweets mocking his cancer. Third, I waited.

When the hits started rolling in, I infuriatingly taunted the naysayers with non-sequiturs and your momma jokes. That’s when they started getting real. Saying awful things. Well you see, it’s ok with me. I had earned it.

And therein lay my plan. I’d wait a few days, gather the most insulting tweets, and publish. The fact that they felt free to “go there” with me proves they implicitly accept my premise. For they were using my logic, you see. Ebert had “earned” it, so I was free to open fire. Now I had earned it, so they were free to open fire. Media Matters was a no-brainer. I’d invited them in advance. But imagine my delight when bomb-throwing gossip site Gawker linked to my twitter feed. I fairly twisted my mustache and rubbed my palms greedily. Everything was proceeding as I had foreseen it; better, even.

This morning, I started in on the final phase: gathering the evidence. I started with Ebert. I spent hours poring over months of his twitter feed. I found he had a distinctive “dirty old man” streak. Screenshot. I saw how fond he was of mocking Creationism, intelligent design, Noah’s Ark, and Christianity in general. Screenshot. I found countless dismissive tweets about the ignorance of TeePees. The countless veiled accusations of racism. The endless tweeting and retweeting of anything critical of Sarah Palin. Screenshot, screenshot, screenshot. I found a totally right-on movie review of the movie Kick-Ass that mirrored my own thoughts perfectly. Screens … wait. What?

It is here. I’ve read Ebert before of course. He’s as good as his reputation. But this was more than a movie review. The objection was on a moral ground that I share. It was my objection to the movie too. Hmm.

Back to the Twitter I go. A little more uneasy, now. Ahhh, another TeePee reference. My righteousness has been restored. A-digging I continue. Screenshot. Screenshot. Appreciative chuckle. Dammit!

I started seeing quotable quotes. Witticisms I appreciated. Depth.

Ebert tends to appreciate the same sorts of lyrical turns of phrase on Twitter that I appreciate. I saw when he was being savaged about his position on whether video games can be art, he let the savagery wash over him. He even got a few quick quips out of it. I kept thinking “I should like this guy.” And then, TeePees, Michael Moore, and Markos. I couldn’t like him, even though I actually started wanting to. But his tweeting is so hot and cold. It’s like there are two of him. The one that everybody appreciates, and then the rabid lefty tweeter. I couldn’t figure it out.

And then I figured it out. That’s exactly how I am. Half of my tweets are normal, off-topic, funny (if I do say so) or conversational. And half must set afire the blood of any left-wing tweeter. I’m just like Ebert, minus the fame, fortune, education, writing talent, and painful disease. It’s like he was … human.

And that’s when it suddenly dawned on me. Twitter isn’t real life. It’s 140 characters. It’s a window, not a door, and certainly not the whole house. We all know this, of course. But we act in a manner that indicates we do not.

People like me, or anonymous Twitterer @shoq, and many others who do what we consider to be battle on Twitter “know” we are right. We know we are right because those we oppose are so very wrong. It’s all quite easy. You’re a TeePee. Yeah well you’re a moonbat! Tit for tat. Jab for jab. Round and round we go. The race to the most cutting insult never ceases. Do a search on twitter, some time, for “sub-human,” and/or “filth.” Try “despicable”. I bet it comes up a lot more than “beautiful.” Try “scum.” I bet it comes up more than “person.” Try “hate.” I think you get the picture.

You know what? It’s a polarized country we live in. Often rabidly so. I play that game. Most of you reading this, you play it too. We play for ratings, for clicks, for retweets. We play to satisfy bloodlust, vengeance, self-righteous fury. We play because we have contempt. And contempt is the one thing you will see on display more often than any other emotion in political tweeting. Because that’s not a person, it’s a TeePee. Not a man, a target.

Roger Ebert cannot be measured by his Twitter feed. Not even by his collective writings. Because he is human, and what’s more a human in pain. As am I. As are we all.

I can’t say that I like Roger Ebert very much. But I like people. I can’t say I care much for how he chooses to treat tea partiers, or the substance of his political views, or his position regarding Cinco de Mayo. But I can say he is a man. He lives his life, he loves others, he appreciates beauty. He is a man. A human. Just like Bob the tea partier, just like Arizona politicians, just like the Mexican students at that high school in California. I can’t say I like him, but I can say I shouldn’t hate him. And I shouldn’t have flippantly picked what I thought would hurt him the most, just because I thought I had a point to make on Twitter. Cheaply. Callously.

Twitter, as we should say, isn’t real life. It isn’t even real time. I forgot about humanity. And for that, I am suddenly very sorry.

I’m not going to pretend that I’m going to be nice all the time. Vodka cometh. But I’ve too long relished the race to the bottom. To be frank, I’ve reveled in the sarcasm and nastiness, and, yes, even the negative feedback. This morning I was wallowing in self-righteous glee at what I had wrought. But I was wrong. And it took reading Roger Ebert’s twitter feed for about five hours to make me realize that. To make me chastened. To humble my pride.

So though I think I still don’t like Roger Ebert very much, I do believe that I owe him one. So thank you. And I sincerely apologize.

When Caleb Howe isn’t raising hell on Twitter you can find his well-crafted and lyrical rants on Redstate.com

The story got national news attention, but gratifyingly doesn’t seem to have caught on with many people (beyond Roger Ebert). Still, there are some surreal elements to this story that deserve closer inspection.

Before I get started, though, I have to mention that, as I was Googling articles for this piece, I inadvertently discovered that there are a lot of instructions on the internet about turning an “ordinary t-shirt” into a halter top/tube top/other sexy top. Allow me to simplify this process for you. Step 1: put on t-shirt. Step 2: hand scissors to random dude and hold still.

But, I digress. Here’s what happened at Morgan Hill’s Live Oak School, according to local NBC reporter George Kiriyama:

Galli says he and his friends were sitting at a table during brunch break when the vice principal asked two of the boys to remove American flag bandannas that they wearing on their heads and for the others to turn their American flag T-shirts inside out. When they refused, the boys were ordered to go to the principal’s office.

Hold on. Brunch break? Really? What kind of school is this? Are there dedicated “nooks” for this purpose? Sorry, I digress again.

“They said we could wear it on any other day,” Daniel Galli said, “but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it’s supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it today.”

The boys said the administrators called their T-shirts “incendiary” that would lead to fights on campus.

Film critic Roger Ebert took offense to the 5 kids’ patriotic display, tweeting that “Kids who wear American Flag t-shirts on 5 May should have to share a lunchroom table with those who wear a hammer and sickle on 4 July.”

Shockingly, to my knowledge, no conservative has yet replied that there’s no way such kids could get into the White House cafeteria (rim-shot).

Seriously, though, what school did Ebert attend where they served lunch on July 4?

In the context of Arizona’s immigration law, it’s not completely out of left field that Mexican-American students might feel a little bit defensive about the display. It sounds to me, though, like the kids were handling things just fine. According to the flag-wearing kids, they were approached by several Mexican-American students who asked them about their choice of apparel. Handled properly, this is exactly how the diversity that we pay lip service to is achieved, and new understanding arrived at.

Instead, the conformity-loving, path of least resistance-following school administrators stepped in and screwed everything up. To their credit, the school district has already thrown the principal under the bus, saying “The district does not concur with the Live Oak High School administration’s interpretation of either board or district policy related to these actions.”

Now, I don’t entirely buy the flag kids’ contention that they “didn’t mean anything by it.” It wasn’t just shirts, but bandanas and, in one case, shorts as well. It’s fair to argue that their display was directly related to Cinco de Mayo, but so what? If they had been marching in formation, with fife and drum, singing “America, F**k Yeah!” it would make no difference. This is America. They get to do that.

Another weird, non-sequitur aspect of this story is that the Live Oaks School’s sports team mascot is…the ACORN! Call Andrew Breitbart! Obama must somehow be pulling the vice-principal’s strings! To the Breitmobile!

The following day, Seis de Mayo, many of the school’s students staged a walkout to attend a rally at the Morgan Hill Civic Center to protest the fact that the flag-wearing kids weren’t punished more harshly!

The students rallied at the Morgan Hill Civic Center, calling the actions of the students who wore the shirts offensive, and demanding to speak with the mayor.

“I think they should apologize because it is a Mexican heritage day,” Annicia Nunez, a Live Oak High student, told NBC BayArea. “We don’t deserve to be disrespected like that. We wouldn’t do that on Fourth of July.”

Aside from the fact, again, that school’s not in session on 4th of July, how do either of these scenarios equal disrespect? I mean, a Confederate flag on Martin Luther King Day makes sense as an outrage, but this is more like wearing a Che Guevara shirt on St. Patrick’s Day. It ain’t green, but at least it’s not orange.

Ironically, it’s the kids who walked out to protest the lack of punishment who should be punished, since they’re the only ones who actually broke a rule. In the spirit of civil disobedience, I’m sure they’ll happily accept that. Given the recent demonization of Latinos emanating from Arizona (in addition to the “Show me your papers” law, Arizona has targeted teachers with accents and ethnic studies programs), perhaps Mexican-Americans can be forgiven some oversensitivity, but these protesters were pretty clearly wrong to ask for these boys to be punished. Once again, though, in America, they get to be wrong.

Here’s the strangest part of this story, for my money. A friend of mine fumed to me that he had seen video of the student protesters assaulting a guy in a wheelchair, which seemed like the kind of thing that would get a lot of attention. I tracked down the video, and it turns out the guy actually snatched a Mexican flag away from the protesters, and they snatched it right back. In a strange way, that almost seems like progress.

The article comes with the simple headline “Why I Hate 3-D (And You Should Too)” and serves as a list of all the reasons that this trend of stretching every single movie into the third dimension is an awful idea. Some of the points are simple, like the fact that the 3-D glasses will always make the images look dimmer. Anyone who doubts that should have tried taking their glasses off for a few minutes during Avatar, the movie that is widely considered the best example of 3-D filmmaking. The “bioluminescent” world of Pandora was 10 times more beautiful without the glasses.

Even if the color issue is resolved, the fact remains that the movie studios are only pushing towards 3-D as a way to rip off audiences by adding an extra charge of $5 or more. Consider the recent Clash of the Titans remake. The movie was not made in 3-D. It was filmed to be projected in 2-D and then hastily converted once Avatar proved to be the giant blue cash cow that it was. Unsurprisingly, the 3-D effects that were shoehorned in got terrible reviews, but the studios still charged the ridiculous extra costs. Ebert’s article is strongest when he’s pointing out this exorbitant nonsense.

“7. THEATERS SLAP ON A SURCHARGE OF $5 TO $7.50 FOR 3-D.
Yet when you see a 2-D film in a 3-D-ready theater, the 3-D projectors are also outfitted for 2-D films: it uses the same projector but doesn’t charge extra. See the Catch-22? Are surcharges here to stay, or will they be dropped after the projectors are paid off? What do you think? I think 3-D is a form of extortion for parents whose children are tutored by advertising and product placement to “want” 3-D. In my review of Clash of the Titans, I added a footnote: “Explain to your kids that the movie was not filmed in 3-D and is only being shown in 3-D in order to charge you an extra $5 a ticket. I saw it in 2-D, and let me tell you, it looked terrific.” And it did. The “3-D” was hastily added in postproduction to ride on the coattails of Avatar. The fake-3-D Titans even got bad reviews from 3-D cheerleaders. Jeffrey Katzenberg, whose DreamWorks has moved wholeheartedly into 3-D, called it “cheeseball,” adding: “You just snookered the movie audience.” He told Variety he was afraid quickie, fake-3-D conversions would kill the goose that was being counted on for golden eggs.

…

Consider Tim Burton, who was forced by marketing executives to create a faux-3-D film that was then sold as Alice in Wonderland: An IMAX 3D Experience (although remember that the new IMAX theaters are not true IMAX). Yes, it had huge grosses. But its 3-D effects were minimal and unnecessary; a scam to justify the surcharge.

Even Cameron plans to rerelease Titanic in 3-D, and it’s worth recalling his 3-D documentary, Ghosts of the Abyss, which he personally photographed from the grave of the Titanic. Titanic 3-D will not be true 3-D, but Cameron is likely to do “fake 3-D” better than others have. My argument would nevertheless be: Titanic is wonderful just as it stands, so why add a distraction? Obviously, to return to the No. 2 cash cow in movie history and squeeze out more milk.”

There’s one point in the article that I have to protest. At the beginning, Ebert lists Jackass 3-D, the upcoming movie from the gross-out MTV pranksters, as an example of the 3-D excess. I disagree. Jackass 3-D is the exact kind of movie that should be in 3-D. It’s a gimmick movie that would fit perfectly with a gimmick format. Very few movies belong in 3-D. Only the silly ones with objects being thrust at the camera work because, as much as James Cameron and crew claim the 3-D techniques of today are more advanced than the cardboard glasses days of the 50s, they aren’t different enough to be anything more than a gag that belongs in 2 or 3 movies a year. Tops.

So, please, read Ebert’s article. The 3-D fad won’t go away anytime soon if people keep happily forking over there hard earned cash every time the studios send a fake, up-converted movie into theaters. I for one refuse to pay for another dumb 3-D epic.

Except for Tron: Legacy. That movie looks bad ass.

Before Ebert was hoisting his famous thumbs with Gene Siskel on TV, he was a screenwriter. He wrote one of the most famous comedies of the 70s in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, the insane Russ Meyer classic featuring lots of drugs, transexual serial killers, and lesbian sex scenes. Yesterday’s blog post, written to memorialize the passing last week of famed rock and roll producer Malcolm McLaren, details the pre-production of the Sex Pistols movie he wrote for Meyer that never got filmed.

While the post is long, we recommend you all give it a read. It’s got everything you’d want in a great celebrity memoir: cameos by other famous people, details about cultural movements as they were just beginning, and hilarious anecdotes about rock stars that seem unbelievable yet completely fitting at the same time (At one point, Meyer, McLaren, and Ebert show Sid Vicious the script for a scene where he and his mother do heroin and then have incestuous sex. Vicious studies it thoughtfully before giving one note, “I don’t think me Mum will like the part about the heroin.”).

The blog post also contains sections from the un-produced screenplay like this one where Johnny Rotten ends up at “The Church of Scientometry”, a Scientology parody that is run by a car manufacturer instead of a science fiction writer.

“He sees an automobile seat, facing a steering wheel, a gas pedal, and a speedometer.

JOHNNY ROTTEN
I’ve got my provisional license — and I haven’t got a car anyway.

GIRL
The H-Meter has nothing to do with driving.

JOHNNY ROTTEN
What the fuck is it then?

GIRL
This is the Church of Scientometry. And this is the H-Meter, named after our leader, the Holy Man from Italy, Guru Vaser-Rati.

JOHNNY ROTTEN
I’ve heard of him somewhere.

GIRL
Just grasp the steering wheel, which picks up the electrical vibrations from your hands, and when I ask you questions, push down hard on the accelerator for “yes,” and on the brake for “no.:

JOHNNY ROTTEN
What if I don’t know the answer?

GIRL That’s about 36 miles per hour.”

In the hands of Ebert, all of this is a great read (how could any story involving personalities like Meyer, McLaren, and the Sex Pistols not be?) and a great reminder how lucky we are that Ebert beat the cancer. He may have lost his jaw, but thank God he still has his fingers to type (including those famous thumbs)!

Read the full blog post here.

Something’s happening this morning. I noticed it first last night when Roger Ebert posted the link to his review, and then Pat Kiernan, Mediaite contributor and the guy who, in my head, will always be the host of the World Series of Pop Culture, noted that New York Daily News was also fairy complimentary:

I’m sorry, but how can you not want to see a movie called “Hot Tub Time Machine”? I’ve been intrigued since I read about it months ago. The premise is that a group of male friends is transported back to the 1980s via, of course, a hot tub. The New York Daily News says “this guys-gone-wild comedy is actually pretty damn funny,” due in large part to Rob Corddry, whose role is the most “memorable showcase for a goofball co-star since Michael Keaton in 1981’s ‘Night Shift.’”

Now I just may have to go check it out, and that scares me. Could this year’s Hangover really involve meta-80′s jokes and a jacuzzi that breaks the time-space contiuum? Let’s see how it does come the release of box office numbers on Sunday…

It is worth noting that Mediaite’s Smart Hollywood started this trend, with a super smart and insightful review from Wednesday. Check that review for the real deal.

According to Variety editor Tim Gray, the change in staffing — a technically accurate euphemism as McCarthy, along with film writers Derek Elley and Sharon Swart, plus theater critic David Rooney, have been offered freelancer positions to continue their role — is due to a need to cut back on costs for the industry rag. Gray cites the economy and the need to cut costs; either way it’s clear that advertising revenue has dropped precipitously at the once-mighty industry bible. As LA Times “Big Picture” blogger Andrew Goldstein noted explained the situation in an earlier post:

As anyone who regularly reads the venerable trade paper has surely noticed, even at the height of Oscar season Variety has been thinner than most of the starlets who walked the red carpet Sunday night. In years past, the trade paper was so fat with ads in January and February that — at least in my house — a week-old copy of Variety was a perfect fly swatting machine, guaranteed to flatten the biggest house pest. But no more. Most of last week’s issues of Variety wouldn’t harm a flea.

Even with 10 films in the best picture race, the ads simply weren’t plumping up the paper the way they had in the past. It was inevitable that Variety would once again have to find ways to cut costs, though it was definitely a shock to see the paper get rid of its top critics, especially McCarthy, who after the death of Army Archerd and the departure of former editor Peter Bart is easily the most iconic presence at the paper.

Meanwhile, from Gray’s memo, this bit of head-scratching logic:

Last year we ran more than 1,200 film reviews. No other news outlet comes even close, and we will continue to be the leader in numbers and quality. It doesn’t make economic sense to have full-time reviewers.

Er, isn’t that exactly when it makes economic sense to have full-time reviewers? Put differently, a paper with that many reviews — never mind this paper with that many reviews! — that can’t afford an on-staff review team is a paper that is in serious trouble.

Or, as McCarthy told The Wrap: “It’s sad… It’s the end of something. You can say it’s the end, or you can say it’s the end of the way it’s always been done.”

Someone who remembers the way it’s always been done: venerable film critic Roger Ebert, who does not approve, and doesn’t plan to let this one slide. He gave this one a “thumbs down” in the definitive post on the matter:

I flew home from the Oscars to find half a dozen e-mails awaiting with the same unbelievable message: Variety had fired its chief film critic, Todd McCarthy. Its spokesman was hopeful Todd and its chief theater critic, David Rooney, who was also fired, could continue to review for the paper on a free lance basis. In other words, Variety was hopeful that without a regular pay check, McCarthy would put his life on hold to do a full-time job on a piecemeal basis.

…He knows everybody. He is known throughout the film world. He was Variety’s ambassador at film festivals, always the best-known Variety person there. He stood for Variety. We now discover it did not stand from him.

It’s a long piece which gives due to McCarthy’s decades-long tenure at Variety — but it’s also summed up by Ebert’s first reaction tweet: “Variety fires Todd McCarthy and I cancel my subscription. He was my reason to read the paper. RIP, schmucks.”

(In one more twist of the knife, Ebert recommended the Wrap’s take thusly: “The Wrap does the kind of story about Variety that Variety always wrote about others.”)

It’s hard to miss the significance of this move, especially coming as it did right after the Oscars (as Goldstein notes, “in showbiz, timing is everything”). If a must-read trade like Variety can’t hack it after a ten-best-picture Oscar season like this one, then where does the future lie? Is it yet a canary in the coal mine for entertainment publications — or for critics? (Lord knows they’ve both had birdcages worth already.) As Goldstein notes, “when you turn your chief reviewer into a freelancer, it certainly tells you, loud and clear, how little value the job has in today’s increasingly critic-unfriendly market.” Then again, new entrants into the market like The Wrap and the beefed-up Deadline Hollywood suggest there is still room in the market. Maybe, as Goldstein points out, there’s “economic reality” and the bad choices Variety has made within it.

So — maybe this is how Variety plans to innovate. Who knows, they’re not the first to go with the freelancer model. And if their coverage suffers as a result, well, there are always understudies waiting in the wings. That’s showbiz, folks. One hopes, at least, that Todd McCarthy will be waiting in the wings, too — to pen the perfect review.

Variety: This Thumb’s For You [Roger Ebert's Journal]
Variety Drops Chief Film and Theater Critics [The Wrap]
Variety lays an egg: Is firing its critics really ‘economic reality’? [LAT]

Roger Ebert

That was the subject of an amazing and amazingly poignant column from Ebert earlier this week, called “Nil by Mouth.” I can’t recommend it enough. It’s the furthest thing from self-pity that you’ll ever read; on the contrary, it really makes you appreciate the simple things that really give quality to life, and his appreciation for those things. Here is an excerpt:

Nobody said as much in so many words, but it gradually became clear that it wouldn’t ever be right again. There wasn’t some soul-dropping moment for that realization. It just…developed. I never felt hungry, I never felt thirsty, I wasn’t angry because the doctors had done their best. But I went through a period of obsession about food and drink. I came up with the crazy idea of getting some Coke through my g-tube. My doctors said, sure, a little, why not? For once the sugar and a little sodium wouldn’t hurt. I even got some tea, and a little coffee, before deciding that caffeine addiction was something I didn’t need.

I dreamed. I was reading Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree, and there’s a passage where the hero, lazing on his river boat on a hot summer day, pulls up a string from the water with a bottle of orange soda attached to it and drinks. I tasted that pop so clearly I can taste it today. Later he’s served a beer in a frosted mug. I don’t drink beer, but the frosted mug evoked for me a long-buried memory of my father and I driving in his old Plymouth to the A&W Root Beer stand (gravel driveways, carhop service, window trays) and his voice saying “…and a five-cent beer for the boy.” The smoke from his Lucky Strike in the car. The heavy summer heat.

For nights I would wake up already focused on that small but heavy glass mug with the ice sliding from it, and the first sip of root beer. I took that sip over and over. The ice slid down across my fingers again and again. But never again.

Wow. Ebert may not be able to eat, drink or speak, but man can he write — which he proves by the one-two punch of this next paragraph:

One day in the hospital my brother-in-law Johnny Hammel and his wife Eunice came to visit. They are two of my favorite people. They’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, and know I’m not. I mention that because they interpreted my story in terms of their faith. I described my fantasies about root beer. I could smell it, taste it, feel it. I desired it. I said I’d remembered so clearly that day with my father for the first time in 60 years.

“You never thought about it before?” Johnny asked.

“Not once.”

“Could be, when the Lord took away your drinking, he gave you back that memory.”

He goes on to detail memories, as triggered by food, and it’s all suffused with longing and bittersweetness in a way that will just get you. (I personally choked up several times, especially hearkening back to one of my favorite memories-by-food moments: New Year’s Day 1991, and the unsliced rye my mom brought home that was still hot. We tore into that bread like savages, which was precisely how you are supposed to eat bread, in my opinion.) It’s also an amazing reminder of what this guy is capable of, still — I had known he was ill, but confess to forgetting completely of late — he just seems so active through his columns and (very snappy) Twitter feed.

And — that’s the point. He is active. He can’t eat or drink, but he can produce something like this to make the rest of us appreciate it a bit more. It was one of the more moving things I’ve read in a while. I highly recommend it.

Nil by Mouth [Roger Ebert's Journal]

“Sitting through this experience is like driving a pickup in low gear though a sullen sea of Brylcreem. ”

–Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times

In a blistering review, famed film critic Roger Ebert slammed the much anticipated sequel The Twilight Saga: New Moon. In fairness, there were many soundbites to choose from:

• The characters in this movie should be arrested for loitering with intent to moan. Never have teenagers been in greater need of a jump-start. Granted some of them are more than 100 years old, but still: their charisma is by Madame Tussaud.

• “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” takes the tepid achievement of “Twilight”, guts it, and leaves it for undead.

• You know you’re in trouble with a sequel when the word of mouth advises you to see the first movie twice instead. Obviously the characters all have.

• Long opening stretches of this film make utterly no sense unless you walk in knowing the first film, and hopefully both Stephanie Meyer novels, by heart.