Rumblings from Roger

Film critic Roger Ebert recently posed an interesting rhetorical question. “Why is it you never see this headline: ‘Psychic wins lottery’?”

Roger Ebert on "Citizen Kane" and "La Dolce Vita"

Film critic Roger Ebert has a great read today on his blog explaining why he considers "Citizen Kane" the most important film of all time (Two reasons, Ebert argues: "It consolidated the film language up until 1941 and broke new ground in such areas as deep focus, complex sound, and narrative structure. The other reason is that it demonstrated the auteur theory 25 years before it was being defined (of course that theory was already being demonstrated in silent days). It was 'a film by Orson Welles.' It dramatized that the controlling author of a film, especially a great film, is usually its director, not its studio, producers, writers or financial backers. A movie studio, Welles said, is the best toy train set a boy could ever hope for.") and why "La Dolce Vita" might be perhaps his favorite film or, at least, the "film I would most like to see again right now").

Good news on the Roger Ebert front

Roger Ebert has always been one of my favorite film critics, not because of his TV programs, but because of his reviews that have appeared on the Chicago Sun Times for more than 40 years now. In the last couple of years, Ebert has been battling cancer that sent him to the hospital twice for long periods of treatment. I feared the worst. But, from the looks of this, his health must be improving remarkably because he's in Toronto right now actively covering that city's 33rd film festival, which marks the official start of "Oscar Season."