WTF HAPPENED TO “AT THE MOVIES”?
Friday, December 19th, 2008
For a while they were shuffling local media critics such as WBZ’s Joyce Kulhawik through the set of At The Movies. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Joyce flex her film crit chops when she appeared w/Herr Roeper. But Lohan behold, In between SNL skits I flipped over to At The Movies, only to listen to some douche kid reviewing the hard campaigning Streep-Hoffman-Adams extravaganza, Doubt.
This youngster, who was sitting in Roger Ebert’s seat, said something to the effect of, “Wait for DVD….Doubt should have never left the stage as it should have never been made into a film.” Listen whippersnapper, I haven’t even seen the film yet and already the close-quarter, formal, claustrophobic symmetry I saw in the previews, tells me already that I’m going to find this film worth seeing.
Oh and by the way, Ben, I also don’t think P.S. Hoffman, Meryl Streep, and Amy Adams do much work on the stage these days – why the fuck wouldn’t I want to watch a Pulitzer Prize winning play performed by award winning actors?
The worst part is, this sallow young sap didn’t even come up with the point he was arguing. It was clearly something regurgitated from his William Morris days, yet another lame idea pilfered from one of those old time office bull sessions. Contrary to the metrics, we actually want our critics to say something that we haven’t heard before. No, really.
This derth in popular film criticism is indicative of the tenuous state of the newspaper industry. At The Movies used to be a summit of two at-large Chicago film critics. And even though Mr. Ebert got softer over the years (despite getting skinny), and despite Mr. Roeper carrying the torch after the shocking death (?) of the noble Mr. Gene Siskel, I always got the sense that all of them were not just fluent, but more importantly, original. From what little I saw of the “new-look” At The Movies, I now understand why Marco Pierre White stopped cooking.
Grade: F, for Forget about “At The Movies”.
