After reading Anne Thompson’s post on the dismal reception given to the youth-baiting rethink of At The Movies starring Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz, I decided I had better watch The Two Bens’ first episode online to see what all the griping is about. It actually starts off rather well: Mankiewicz is totally qualified for this job, although it’s a bit of a wonder he was even hired, what with his TCM-honed, “I am going to explain this very slowly because my viewers may be aged” manner of speaking. But then he tosses it to Lyons, who says something completely incoherent about Burn After Reading being “almost like an exercise in drama,” and then they cut back Mankiewicz, who struggles to croak out, “Yeah, that’s an interesting point,” whilst swallowing his own testicles. At that point, I stopped.
Interestingly, another thing that I wasn’t able to force myself to watch all the way through this week also had to do with the sorry contemporary incarnation of the former gold standard for televised movie reviews.
It’s not a total surprise, given his health problems and that to-do last year about his iconic thumbs, but Roger Ebert has just sent out a statement announcing his definitive split from his long-running TV show, most recently called Ebert and Roeper. Ebert still co-owns the thumbs and says he’s “discussing possibilities” to keep that brand alive. The full statement is pasted after the jump.
Thoughts?
UPDATE: This CNN story says Richard Roeper will not be part of Disney/ABC’s “new direction,” and in fact plans to “proceed elsewhere … as the co-host of a movie review show that honors the standards established by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert more than 30 years ago. I will be free to share the details on that program in the near future.” We’ll be waiting with bated breath.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
It’s not a total surprise, given his health problems and that to-do last year about his iconic thumbs, but Roger Ebert has just sent out a statement announcing his definitive split from his long-running TV show, most recently called Ebert and Roeper. Ebert still co-owns the thumbs and says he’s “discussing possibilities” to keep that brand alive. The full statement is pasted after the jump.
