Wednesday, August 01, 2007

The Siskel and Ebert Archives

Starting tomorrow, Thursday, August 2, 2007, the entire library of Siskel & Ebert episodes (as well as those of the less engaging spin-off, Ebert & Roeper) will be available for viewing online. When I was a kid (and then an adolescent) I used to love watching this show.

In its present incarnation, the show strikes me as one more pull-quote factory. But before movie studios fabricated hyperbole-prone critics (like "Jeff Craig of 60 Second Preview") and cobbled adjectives together to make it sound like a writer was gushing over a film, Siskel and Ebert had a show that was about movies, and movie watching.

Anyway, perhaps the show has not aged so well, and maybe I'll discover that it was always a shameless promotional outlet (and that I was a naive dork). We can all find out at the show's website.

2 comments:

ryan said...

I used to watch that show all the time too. I also always watched that one on MTV hosted by Chris Connelly, though I can't think of what it's called right now. I remember the MTV one being on on Saturday afternoon, and I would watch it to try to decide what movie to go see that weekend. And then I'd have my mom drive me to the mall. That was always fun.

Anonymous said...

The Big Picture!

I loved it too.

I just watched Scorsese & Ebert do their top films of the 90s. This is a gift from the movie gods.

-kurt