the joys of roger ebert

I love Roger Ebert....especially lately, when he seems to have become particularly fed up with the facile silliness of Hollywood plots and stereotypes. Thank goodnes someone besides me gets annoyed and depressed when Hollywood tells us that this is what people are supposed to be: women coo over shoes and lament exhaustingly about their love lives to their girlfriends; teenagers act snarky and rightfully embarrassed about their parents; men are macho and smart-alecky with the women in their lives while meanwhile thinking Deep Thoughts about saving the world with their own personal shotguns. Give me a freakin' break. Is it just me, or is it a lot worse lately than usual?

Plus Ebert just asks such good questions. Like this one, from his review of Liam Neeson's new thriller:

"Taken" reopens a question I've had. A lot of movies involve secret clubs or covens of rich white men who meet for the purposes of despoiling innocent women in despicable perversity. The men are usually dressed in elegant formalwear, smoke cigars and have champagne poured for them by discreet servants. Do such clubs actually exist? Since every member would be blackmailable, how could they survive? If you lost everything in a Ponzi scheme, would you betray your lodge members? Just wondering.

Yeah, I've been wondering about that, too!

I'm so glad to have the call-it-like-it-is Ebert back....for a while there he'd gotten so nicey-nice about this mindless crap that I was beginning to wonder. I figured after his surgery he was giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, probably out of the sense of gratitude and wonder we all feel after an extraordinarily trying experience. And good for him for doing so.

Still, this grouchy skeptic is a lot more fun.