Jim Emerson alerts us to some good news and some bad news in regards to Roger Ebert. The good news: Roger now has a blog! The bad news: last night he used the blog to announce that he won’t be attending this year’s installment of his Overlooked Film Festival as planned, due to a broken hip:
Sigh. I was really happy with this one…A broken hip adds to my tour of medical adventures. My current plan is to take it easy, obey the doctors orders, and start writing reviews again.
In the meantime, my heart will be in Urbana. Old friends like Bill and Carolyne Nack, Richard and Mary Corliss and Barry Avrich and Hannah Fisher will meet new ones. Chaz [Ebert's wife] will be the Emcee. Again, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson will add their gravitas and wit to the proceedings.
We wish Roger well, and will be keeping an eye on Jim’s reports from the festival, as well as Ms. Lisa Rosman’s blog.
IFC Blog has a visual breakdown of the references employed by critics to describe Javier Bardem’s haircut in No Country For Old Men. Prince Valiant references were most abundant; ever the lone wolf, Armond White was the only critic to namedrop Richard III. Jim Emerson seems to have dropped his Tony Danza reference too late to make it into IFC’s calculations, but I think it’s spot-on (and period accurate, if we’re buying the contention that No Country takes place in 1980). Although, for the record, I’m with Andrew Tracy of Reverse Shot––it may engender colorful pie charts, but unnecessary quirk/kitsch like that haircut makes this film weaker, not stronger.
“No filmmaker has more daringly and relentlessly explored what it means to be human than David Cronenberg,” writes Jim Emerson at Scanners. He’s put together a 12 minute highlight reel to prove that point. Written in the Flesh: A Crash Course in David Cronenberg incorporates images from nine Cronenberg classics, including Videodrome, The Fly and A History of Violence. It doesn’t seem to be embeddable, but you can watch it here.
