Some feared might come of such a project, especially so soon after theħ0-year-old film critic's death in April. Subject, and James ensures that it avoids the hometown-hero ‘attaboy!’ attitude It’s the touching tale of the original fan-boy.“It's a work of taste and generosity, in keeping with its Bursting with enjoyable clips and haunting footage of the dying Ebert soldiering on with astonishing cheer, the movie deals with almost everything important about this man whose great gift (and occasional limitation) was his enthusiasm. Strikingly unsentimental and not uncritical-which is precisely how Ebert wanted James to be-this film actually improves on Ebert’s own fine book, Life Itself: A Memoir. If you don’t know his story, you couldn’t do better than seeing the biographical documentary Life Itself, by Steve James (of Hoop Dreams renown), one of the filmmakers who owe their career to Ebert’s support. And frankly, he was more interesting than most of them. Roger was also a great American story-a colorful, self-created character who pulled off something seemingly impossible for a critic: He became as well-known as the stars he was reviewing. Watching this plump, breezy man be devoured by disfiguring cancer, yet only grow wiser and more gracious-well, Roger was my idea of achieving the ancient goal of having a good death. This was partly because I grew to like him and to admire his democratic instincts-he talked to ordinary people as easily as to his fellow celebrities-and partly because he handled terrible adversity with a grace that I envied far more than his fame. I still think that, but over the years my feelings about Roger (as I came to know him) changed. I didn’t share his taste and thought his TV show with Gene Siskel had made the world worse by reducing movie culture to a question of thumbs.
The first time I met Roger Ebert-this was at the Toronto International Film Festival-he was famous and garrulous, a film-critic grandee, while my feisty younger self was sniffy with disapproval.
0 kommentar(er)
