Back to the Screen:
After hearing Roger Ebert pitch his new book, The Great Movies on City Arts & Lectures, I’ve decided I must make it mine, even though it’s still in hardcover. It’s a collection of the essays Ebert has been doing bi-monthly for the Chicago Sun-Times, re-examining Great Movies of the past. It’s not a Great Movies of All Time list per se but more movies that have moved Ebert significantly over his 30 year career and giving them another look.
There’s also a mission at work here: Ebert claims that, with the demise of late shows on TV, repatory movie theatres and the proliferation of Blockbuster Video, many young film fans think cinematic history began with Star Wars. A valid point perhaps, but it also discounts the growing influence of DVDs and Netflix and the boon I believe obsessing over the minutae of film will be for classic cinema, the success of Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics on cable TV and, as uninspired as they are, the extent to which those AFI Top 100 lists have movie fans making lists of movies they “should see.”
In the end, really, Roger Eberts is just another advocate, albeit a powerful one, for concerted, intelligent, arms-wide-open movie-watching. And I’m all about that. So on my wall his list goes, along with several others.
I have a lot of watching to do. And I couldn’t be happier about it.
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I’m amazed at how much of a film buff I’ve become in the past ten years or so. Attending the Toronto International Film Festival has really helped. And reading biographies and other books on the film industry. DVDs have also helped. Some are so full of extra stuff that they’re like a film school in themselves. Which has caused me to buy many many of the shiny silver discs!
I’m amazed at how much of a film buff I’ve become in the past ten years or so. Attending the Toronto International Film Festival has really helped. And reading biographies and other books on the film industry. DVDs have also helped. Some are so full of extra stuff that they’re like a film school in themselves. Which has caused me to buy many many of the shiny silver discs!