Wh- what? If you have the nerve to ask that question, I'll answer your question with another question: Under from which rock did you climb out from under? Marc Fisher is to tambourine players what Michael Jordan is to basketball players, what Gene Frenkle is to cowbell players. 

Here, just watch this. (Unfortunately, Windows Live™ Spaces doesn't let one embed YouTube clips, which gets one's goat. So one will just have to click the link.)

Writing about music is like writing about comedy. Sure you can say that Chris Rock achieves humor by combining non sequiturs with both verbal and situational irony, but you come off sounding as pompous as Dug. In the same way that the best critique of a comic is loud laughter, the best critique of a tambourine player is saturnine swaying to his rheumatic rhythms.

That doesn't mean we can't try to break down Fisher's technical prowess. In this song, a cover of Neil Young's "Down by the River," Fisher layers a tambourine part with an accent placed on the first beat of each bar. The tambourine plays throughout the middle eight, punctuating the last quarter of the bar with a subtle trill. While the norm is to use tambourines to create patterns, Fisher isolates his play to punctuate a certain section within a composition. Yet Fisher does not overdo the isolation. He recognizes that he is a member of the band and that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. His subdued performance may go unnoticed by the masses, but not to the eagle eye of this random reviewer.

Do you mean, How do Marc Fisher's dance moves compare to those of the Lord of the Dance? I thought so, because it's difficult to compare dance moves to a person. Marc Fisher's dance moves are frenetic yet lovely while the Feet of Flames is a carbon-based biped. But now is no time to lecture on the fine points of grammar. As much as it pains me to say this, Michael Flatley is the better dancer of the two.

Yes. The influence of a brilliant tambourinist.

Almost. Marc Fisher gets seven stars. To put this in perspective, Buddha, Vishnu, Jesus and Zeus combined for only nine stars.

-Bob

Attending a movie is an expensive proposition. Apart from the cost of the tickets, the concession foodstuff, the babysitter, and the $309/hour (my rate, just in case you ever wanted to hire me to write something for you) I’m not earning because I’m watching a movie, there’s the additional cost of brain cells which are going to be dedicated—for the rest of my life—to remembering the film, whether I liked it or not.

In short, at this stage of my life, before I commit to going to a movie, I want some assurance that the movie is good.

And that is Roger Ebert’s job.

Roger Ebert is well-paid for his job. He is well-known, and is widely respected. A casual moviegoer, then, might take it for granted that Ebert is doing his job well.

Which is all fine and good, if you’re the kind of person who takes things for granted.

I am not that kind of person.

Here, then, is a review of Roger Ebert.

Writing Style

Let’s start with what I consider Ebert’s strongest point: his writing style. Even when he’s demonstrably wrong (I’ll get to that in a minute), he’s entertainingly wrong. Ebert’s writing is never bad.

Think about that assertion for a moment: Ebert’s writing is never bad. On the strength of that alone, I can heartily recommend reading every single review Ebert writes.

I cannot, however, heartily recommend believing what he writes.

I will explain.

Automatic Fail / Automatic Pass

There are certain types of people that Ebert is going to give a good review to, regardless of the quality of film. These people can be described as “hot chicks.” Consider—and I’m about to ask you to do something quite painful—the movie Tomb Raider. It was mind-blowingly bad. It scored 18% on RottenTomatoes.com, an aggregator of movie critics.

That’s bad. Real bad.

But Ebert gave it three stars, saying it is “...so wondrous to look at, that only a churl could find fault.” Which means that 82% of the rest of the critics are churls. And I am, too. And so are all the people I’ve ever mentioned this movie to. Horrible, stupid plot. Remedial acting. Addle-brained special effects. Boring action sequences. Whether I’m a churl (I am) has nothing to do with it. Tomb Raider sucked, and Ebert cheerfully recommended it because (and I am speculating here) of the Lara Croft Boobs special effect.

Interesting trivia tidbit: Did you know that Ebert wrote the screenplay for several skinflicks (Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, Up!, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls)? Not that the “Hot Chick” rule could have anything to do with that.

A second demonstration of the “Hot Chick Automatic Pass” effect is the movie Gigli, which Ebert did not quite recommend (2.5 stars), but which he should have eviscerated. He didn’t, though…because Jennifer Lopez is hot.

The flip side of the Automatic Pass effect is the Automatic Fail. For years, Tim Burton could simply not buy a break from Ebert. Consider the review Ebert gave the original Batman (2 stars), Beetlejuice (2 stars), and Edward Scissorhands (2 stars).

Does anyone see a pattern here? I’ll give you a hint: Tim Burton tends to have very few hot chicks in his films, does not treat hot chicks especially well in his films, and is himself not an especially hot chick. Too bad for him.

Note: Ebert finally started occasionally recommending Tim Burton, beginning with  Ed Wood, which indicates there’s an “important movie you have to pretend to like” caveat to the Automatic Fail rule.

Comic Sensibility

I admit to being baffled by Roger Ebert’s sense of cinema humor. I mean, he himself is pretty good at being funny. Consider his incredibly funny—and vitriolic—review of North (which he gave 0 stars):

"I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."

That’s funny, lucid stuff. Which is why I can’t understand how he managed to give Raising Arizona: 1.5 stars. Read his review. How can someone who writes so well be so completely clueless about one of the most brilliant comedies of our generation? How?

I’ve got myself all worked up now, so I may as well mention that Ebert also panned Grosse Pointe Blank (2.5 stars from Ebert, while getting a very positive 76 on the review aggregator Metacritic.com) and The Wedding Singer (1 star? Is Drew Barrymore not a hot enough chick, or does Ebert simply not understand the 80’s?).

Really, though, Ebert can be trusted with his comedy reviews, as long as you’re willing to treat him as an anti-pattern generator.

I don’t think that’s what he’s going for, though.

Experiential Bias

Ebert once made a good point, somewhere: a film stands on its own, independent of reality or source material. Basically, he’s saying that you review a movie on its own merit, not in the context of what you anticipated based on your own experience.

Or if he didn’t make that point, he should have.

The thing is, if Ebert knows something about the topic of the film or otherwise has history with it, he forgets to review the movie and instead talks about how the movie on the screen stacks up against the one in his head.

Ebert gave the film adaptation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (84% on RottenTomatoes, which indicates a very strong movie)—get this—zero stars. I’m so dumbfounded by this I spelled “zero” and italicized it instead of just putting down a “0.” And why did he give it zero stars? Because it wasn’t the stage production he had really enjoyed in London.

Same deal applies to his review of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Ebert actually gives this movie three stars, which is technically a recommendation, except for two facts:

• This movie deserves 5 stars. Even though his scale doesn’t go that high. It was a genre-changing film.
• Ebert actually doesn’t spend much time reviewing the film. Instead, he rebuts it, taking it to task because it didn’t match up to the book as much as he’d have liked.

Miscellaneous Observations

• Ebert is a Sci Fi Goober: He gave Star Wars, Episode I (by which I mean the fourth movie that was really awful) 3.5 stars, which goes to show that Dug wasn’t the only adult in the universe to like this film. Seriously, Dug: admit that was a dumb film, OK? Because it had Jar Jar Binks and a really lame pod race that looked completely dead on screen, and the flying Jewish bug embarrassment, and it had that moment where Anakin (who will eventually become Darth Vader but whose nickname is currently “Annie,” and who will furthermore become a little orphan Annie before long) yells, noncommittally, “yippee.”
• Ebert’s Great Movies: You know what? So far, all of the movies in his Great Movies list—the ones I’ve seen anyway—are actually great. If Ebert says a movie is great, it almost certainly is. It’s the other movies—the ones with 1-3 stars—you’ve got to do criticism analysis on.

Final Recommendation

I give Roger Ebert 2.5 stars. I’d probably have given him 3 stars, but—unfortunately for him—Ebert’s not a really hot chick.

- Elden

I was moved by dug’s recent grandiloquence regarding clichés. So much so that I decided to touch on the cliché’s little brother, the colloquialism. Some novelist types might be able to offer colloquialisms in foreign languages, but I can only offer those I learned from the academicians and brilliant minds of Southern Missouri, where I grew up.

Whereas dug traced lifestyle clichés to Jung, our modern use of colloquialisms is all Twain. He brought (at least a limited) acceptability to their use, and was a way better story teller than Jung, who tended to be long winded and pedantic, often going on and on about societal norms and other crap.

Like clichés, using colloquialisms can get you labeled, and therefore there must be a balance: use them too much and people will assume (rightly) that you are half a brick shy of a full load; use them too little people will assume you went to Yale, or even worse, BYU.

I offer for your benefit, a brief review of Southern Missouri colloquialisms from my youth (since this is a review and not a ranking I will not score the colloquialisms).

Unfathomable

“You’re up in the night.” Yeah, so? So what? There’s nothing wrong with being up in the night. It just means I’ll sleep in a little later.

“You’re whistling in the dark.” You see, whistling works perfectly well in the dark, and maybe even enhances the experience. I really just never understood this saying, and never thought to ask anyone about it.

“That dog won’t hunt.” My step-brother’s half-brother’s cousin was fond of saying this as Copenhagen tobacco juice dribbled down his chin. I’m not kidding. I once heard a democratic senator from Tennessee using this one, and he (like most people) had it all wrong. It doesn’t mean “it won’t work/it’s not appropriate/it’s not good enough.” It actually connotes laziness; the dog won’t hunt, because he’s a biscuit eater. I hope you won’t make the same mistake. I’m pretty sure it cost this guy the presidency.

Mamma used to say (a lot)

“Useful as tits on a boar hog.” Mamma often said this while appearing to look in my direction. I always assumed she was looking past me, into the abyss of post-modern life and its trivial and meaningless exigencies, and it was in that light that I understood the meaning of this saying. It was only later in life, as an adult, that I understood the true meaning.

“I’m so mad I could just spit.” Um, you are spitting.

The most memorable time she said this was after the police had hunted down me, Clint and Bubba for throwing rocks at a Cadillac parked in the motel 6 parking lot across the fence from our apartment complex. I never knew who ratted us out, but I know mamma wasn’t just whistling Dixie when she said it.

Uncle Turkey (I’m still not kidding)

“You could f#%*k up a crowbar in a sand pile.” Three people, independently, over the space of 10 years said this to me. I’m pretty sure it was coincidence.

Whores

“Sweating like a whore in church.”  This one is actually said by my friend in Wyoming, and for the sake of academic honesty, I never heard this one in Missouri.

“Busier than a hundred dollar whore on dollar night.”

The cognate to this one is “Busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest.”  I really like both of these, but find them difficult to use due to their length and the fact that they are not appropriate for use during scientific presentations or church.

Pepa said

“Well, I’ll be a suck-egg mule.” Pepa used to say this one after missing a shot playing pool. To really understand this one, you have to hear how it is properly said, and it often misstated.  The first part is actually spoken as a free-standing clause: “Waaayyyylll. (pause) Ahhhllll be a suck-aiig muhle”. This was often followed by “that’d make a man mad enough to eat road-kill possum”. 

“Hot as a pistol.” I said this once up at the University. They tried to have me arrested for creating “an intimidating atmosphere that was inconducive to learning and the free expression of thought”.

- BotchedExperiment