June 19, 2006

Has Ebert finally lost it (and did I mention my RSS feed)?

As an admirer, reader and overall fan of Mr. Roger Ebert, it deeply saddens me to see him in such a sorry state. This review of "Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties" and this review of "Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" had me reeling when I read them yesterday. These two are the kind of movie I can safely say are crap without having actually seen them.

I couldn't believe what I saw. Three stars? It's pure insanity.

But watching "Ebert and Roeper" last night, I found Ebert's enjoyment of the films to be genuine. He really liked them. I couldn't believe it. Ebert has made some bad calls before, but thumbs up to both of them? He had Roeper giggling like a girl during his review on the air. I think Roeper was just as shocked as I was to hear the words "I liked Tokyo Drift" leak out of Ebert's mouth.

Ebert has cancer. He's had it for years. It's a tumor in his mouth, I believe. It's a very sad state, and Ebert has had several surgeries trying to correct it. I read recently an article saying that Ebert's cancer troubles had re-surfaced and that he'd be going in for surgery again to stem the problem.

I'd like to think that poor Mr. Ebert was loopy on pain killers when he watched those two flicks. There is no other explanation whatsoever. The man is just too smart to have actually liked "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" and "Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties."

Also, another item of note: my blog now has an RSS feed. For those of you who don't know what that is, here's a quick explanation: an RSS feed is a link that you place on your Google, Yahoo, Hotmail etc. homepage. This link is updated everyday, and in the case of a blog feed, you can see, from your homepage, if I've posted anything new. Nifty, eh? The feed is located on my sidebar, next to my "Blogger" icon.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In Ebert's defense, he does sometimes review movies with a specific audience in mind. The people who like the Fast/Furious movies (I'm assuming those people exist) probably will like the 3rd one.

Sometimes I like his approach when he gives a positive review to a movie that I feel is underappreciated, but other times I can only shrug and say "What the?"

I definately felt as though he was off the rails during last Sunday's show when he gave both Tokyo Drift and Garfield II a thumbs up. What is the combined total for these two on rotten tomatoes? Added together I doubt they are even close to fresh.

Sometimes Ebert can be a bit infuriating, but he's almost always interesting. For some fun reading, and perhaps to restore your faith in him, you can go to his site and search for some of his zero star reviews. I'd recommend you start with his review of "Jaws: The Revenge"