dhmac

"Misogyny" (and its variants) is both an overused and overly misused term. But I love the original "Halloween" and don't like any of the "Friday the 13th" movies aside from the effective music. The original "Halloween" is superb Hitchcock-esque filmmaking on a low budget while the "Friday the 13th" movies are universally terrible movies (IMO). I don't call them misogynistic, I just call them bad.

JeffTheAlpaca

Jim Carrey said on the Hollywood Reporters how Siskel and Ebert trashed Ace Ventura but when the Truman Show came out they dedicated a whole show to it and that made boosted his spirits and made him happy.

Bluelitespecial

They vary in quality but I'd never say they are terrible. My Favorites are part 4,5,6 and 2.

brayzie

Well that's just the thing. How many people care about just that? It seems like the show could have been just as good without that yay or nay-type rating. But if the thumbs up scale didn't have a negative, dumbed down, negative effect on films, then it's whatever to me.

I'm watching Siskel & Ebert's review of Jacob's Ladder. I could have sworn that Ebert's Sun-Times review was negative, but no, both give it an adequate amount of praise. Listening to them discuss the film is just a joy, fascinating and extremely refreshing compared to video reviews I'm used to watching.

Crocker Jarmen

Ebert's print review of Jacob's Ladder is one of my favourites. Although it is mean to be positive, he spends a lot of space talking about how the movie effected him emotional, that it made him depressed, that when the movie was over he didn't want to talk to anybody. Depending on what kind of movie you're looking to watch, that could read like a negative review.

Shannon Nutt

Both Siskel and Ebert, but PARTICULARLY Ebert, didn't like the whole ratings system of giving a movie stars or rankings from 1 to 10. They felt either you recommended a movie to someone or you didn't. They used a Yes/No system on PBS, but had to come up with something else when Disney started to produce their show, hence the thumb system. Ironically, few complained when they just used Yes/No, but that could have just been because they were less known/popular until Disney started syndicating their show.

orangerunner

I guess the marketers at Disney were a little more savvy than those at PBS to come-up with the Thumbs Up/Down concept. Even though they didn't really like the designation or the newspaper star ratings, it did make for good advertising material. I suppose "Two Thumbs UP!" in a newspaper ad looked better than "Two 'Yes' Votes!".

Roger Ebert's stars-to-thumb translation was; Thumbs Up = *** or higher and Thumbs Down = **1/2 or lower.

Mabuse

dhmac

I think it's funny how NetFlix went from a multi-star-based rating system to just "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" on their stuff. I wonder if Siskel & Ebert's heirs should sue for stealing their idea.

Kurt D

I don't see anything wrong with such an assessment.

(Great thread, though, going to go spent the next two hours watching ...)

Jack Straw

Will definitely be watching these show clips. While I may not agree with a review their combined enthusiasm for movies is infectious.

Norm de Plume

Amazing! Thanks for the heads-up, orangerunner. Another site that had quite a few old S&E episodes went down about a year ago.

dhmac

It has the video of their review of The Thing (although, as a DVD Talk callback, call this review "The Thing vs. Siskel & Ebert")




(In hindsight, can see in this review how the gory special effects is what turned reviewers off to the movie at the time, but good for Siskel being able to look past that inital reservation, unlike Ebert)

Norm de Plume

The main gripe detractors of Carpenter's The Thing have is the ostensible lack of characterization.

dhmac

I've seen some reviews say that, but I think the characterization in the film is fine. The movie gives a good enough impression of each of the characters in the film (well. aside from the Norwegians) without overdoing it with sentimental scenes.

orangerunner

I always thought the low-key, interchangeable personalities among the secondary characters added to the suspense as you never really knew who was a clone and who wasn't.

Josh-da-man

I was thinking the same thing. If the characters were more developed it would have worked against the growing paranoia that permeates film.

That said, the characters in Alien were barely more developed than those in The Thing, and everybody loved that movie.

Norm de Plume

Yes, I agree. I was just pointing out what I read in many contemporary reviews of the film. Critics seem to have come around to thinking highly of the film in the decades since its release.

dhmac

A perfect example. Any critic who thinks these movies needed more scenes of characters talking about their families and how much they missed them and stuff like that to "flesh them out" would be terrible filmmakers who made boring movies.

greensmoke

Siskel isn't too bad. But I really can't stand listening to that prissy prick, Ebert.

Troy Stiffler

dhmac

Here's Siskel & Ebert's 1979 review of George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" which is an example of them getting a genre movie review completely right at the get-go:

Norm de Plume

OK, friends, check out this gold mine of S&E reviews. Lots of full episodes that aren't available on Youtube.

https://siskelebert.org/

orangerunner

Thanks for the post! This looks to be very complete, I'll have to check it out when I have a few hours (days?) to kill.

I just hope it doesn't suffer the same fate as www.siskelandebert.org.

Norm de Plume

It seems to be from the same guy who ran that other website. I haven't had a chance to look at it in detail yet, but it looks to have many more episodes than the other site, and on the home page the webmaster writes of being in possession of hundreds of episodes he has yet to arrange/title properly and post.