If you're in the vicinity of a television at 3:30 p.m. today, youmight want to tune in to Channel 17. And if you're not, you might want to fire up the DVR.
The last thing you might have expected has happened. Somewhat incredibly, movie critic Roger Ebert is back, even if not always on camera or on mic.
The name of the show is "Ebert Presents 'At the Movies.' "It's not much better than it was when Ebert was physically able tobe a part of it, but I must say the edition I saw last week was abit smarter.
Ebert's plight in the past few years is one of the most famous inAmerican journalism history. He is still the most famous film critic in America (not the best, but then he never was, despite the prizes). Because of cancer, though, and several bouts with radical surgery, he can no longer speak or eat.
He can write, though. My, can he ever. And he can watch moviesand then write about them. It has seemed to some of us that hiswritten work since his health took him off TV has never been betteror, at times, nobler. His recent blog on the disparity of wealth inAmerica had nothing to do with movies but is typical of the stubborn integrity that is among the few things physical privation can't besmirch.
If he were to win a Pulitzer Prize on Monday, it woulddistinguish the award, rather than be a marketing device for him,as it was after he did win in 1975.
His fame and his difficulties though have given him privilegesnot shared by other film critics (not least, of course, his unique ability to bring his fantastically helpful wife, Chaz, a co-producer of his new show, to movie screenings, even at crowded festivals where others wait in lines to get in for 90 minutes). It's as it should be, of course, given his frailty and his position (i.e., his fame and marketing importance), even if it can cause difficult spur-of-the-moment seating decisions for those who might be exhausted from standing in a cattle car line for 90 minutes.
But then no one ever said that etiquette is always easy.
His new show, similarly, causes rather difficult etiquette decisions among those who'd evaluate it.
I still dislike the frick-and-frack stuff rather heartily, no matter who's charged with doing it. It's not as bad now as it was when Ebert and the late Gene Siskel were pillow fighting, but it's artificial enough.
Ebert's reviews, in the edition I saw, were read by Bill Kurtis, which seemed to me a clever way to deal with the physical silence that illness has enforced on an articulate and voluble man.
The Heckle-and-Jeckle act on the edition I saw was performed byAP film critic Christy Lemire and a young Chicago critic namedIgnatiy Vishnevetsky (who was, yes, born in the Soviet Union).
Both are attractive young people. Lemire was no less bland and inconsequential than she usually is in print, but the virtue of the new Ebert TV show was Vishnevetsky, a feisty fellow of unpredictable, maverick opinions that don't come in a can purchasable at the local supermarket.
And that's where the show is so much smarter than in the past. Ithas been Ebert's contention that despite budgetary lacerations to the profession by newspaper managements no longer interested in supporting film junkets, the Internet has given us a kind of Renaissance in film criticism.
Nor is he wrong. The din of stupidity on the Web is loud indeed, but the number of knowledgeable and independent-minded people who don't produce opinion in a can stamped with a freshness date has also become impressive.
Yes, you can see good old garden-variety youth pandering and homogenization on the new Ebert show, but you can also see an older, wiser Ebert including lessons from life and media that give the show more promise than it ever used to have, despite the current frailties of its presiding "brand."
What has become obvious in the era of the Film Critic Massacre isthat Ebert's fame -- so fatuous and spurious at its height -- served the useful purpose of insisting that the profession he shared with others mattered, even if the show never deserved to matter.
His fame kept a lot of critics busy, in his prime. In a differentway, it still does -- on a show you can now watch on Channel 17.
***
"Body of Proof:" The newest star coroner on the TV block is Dana Delany, who's certainly more attractive than the late Jack Klugman in "Quincy," though not quite as temperamental as Jill Hennessy in "Crossing Jordan." She plays an ex-brain surgeon who was such a workaholic that she lost custody of her teen daughter in her divorce. Jeri Ryan is her boss; John Carroll Lynch is the annoyed cop in the vicinity.
At this stage of her career, there is no one on television whocan do the all-knowing expressions Delany can -- that perpetualsmirk on her face that tells the world, "I know what you did lastnight, but don't worry, I won't tell unless you cross me." You'veseen it many times before in every new TV season. If you nod off inthe middle of every show and wake up at the end, you won't missmuch.
e-mail: jsimon@buffnews.com
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