Oh you can say there’s nothing to be gained by seeing The Wizard of Oz on the big screen of a real theater, and you can say we knew all these things before, and you can say a big screen at home is big enough for anything we want to see. But with the principle in mind that knowledge of something from a little picture is different from knowledge of that same thing from a big picture, and in the spirit of refreshing the familiar, here are just six thoughts I had while watching, for the first time in a theater, a movie we’ve all seen dozens of times before.
Continue ReadingCategory: Film Theory
Ebert and Writing
- “Eventually you’ll know more than I do, and then you can have the job.” Roger Ebert.
This is from Ebert’s “A Memo to Myself and Certain Other Film Critics,” first published November 17, 1991 and included in the collection Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert (432). In this brief essay, Ebert considers some of the tensions inherent in his writing, since his reviews are read by both general audiences and film experts. Another good line: “Writing daily film criticism is a balancing act between the bottom line and the higher reaches, between the answers to the questions (1) is this movie worth my money? and (2) Does the movie expand or devalue my information about human nature?” (Originally posted April 4, 2013)