A few days ago, I started uploading Siskel & Ebert videos again. Please help and thank you! In this 2009 documentary film, he is seen debating with Ebert over the merits of the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Siskel lost both of his parents as a child and, as a result, was raised by his aunt and uncle, moving with them when he was nine years old. In 1986, Siskel and Ebert left Tribune Broadcasting to have their show produced by the syndication arm of The Walt Disney Company. At the Movies also continued a few more years with other hosts. Gene Hackman, Actor: The French Connection. Each show has to be converted, and then I watch the content to identify the show. Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Anna Lyda Elizabeth (Gray) and Eugene Ezra Hackman, who operated a newspaper printing press. It was one of my favorite shows. The old files all look like this –, Opening Soon at a Theater Near You – 1975, Opening Soon at a Theater Near You – 1976, Opening Soon at a Theater Near You – 1977, Johnny Carson and Chevy Chase Along with Roger and Gene, 1986, Siskel & Ebert Collection on Letterman, Part 1 of 6: 1982-89, Siskel & Ebert Collection on Letterman, Part 2 of 6: 1990-91, Siskel & Ebert Collection on Letterman, Part 3 of 6: 1992-93, Siskel & Ebert Collection on Letterman, Part 4 of 6: 1994, Siskel & Ebert Collection on Letterman, Part 5 of 6: 1995-96, Siskel & Ebert Collection on Letterman, Part 6 of 6: 1997-2000, Howard Stern & Roger Ebert Minus Gene, 1996, Howard Stern with Siskel & Ebert 1987 (Audio Only). My goal, now, is to try to find the remaining shows, that Roger hosted, dealing with a variety of guests including Richard Roeper. I took three months off, so I can take care of some personal matters; plus, update another website of mine dealing with astronomy. Good news…I finally figured out (the other day) how to embed the videos from the IMDb website dealing with the Sneak Preview shows. Filmmaker Steve James chronicles the life of film critic Roger Ebert, especially his career highlights, his battle with alcohol, and his sometimes ruthless rivalry with fellow critic Gene Siskel. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. However, they both "could not resist" appearing on an episode of the animated television series The Critic, the title character of which was a film critic who hosted a television show. Each show has to be converted from an flv format to an mp4 (h.264) format. I can't even imagine what it will be like without him. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. Eugene Kal Siskel (January 26, 1946 – February 20, 1999) was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. A very early appearance of Siskel, taken from Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You, the predecessor to Sneak Previews, is included in For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. We were people who came together one day a week and, the other six days, we were competitors on two daily newspapers and two different television stations. A few days ago, I started uploading Siskel & Ebert videos again. ... Roger Ebert was an American film critic best known as one half of the popular Siskel … Bugs Bunny on Loonie Tunes. The final film that he reviewed in print was She's All That, which he gave a favorable review. Overcoming adversity. Normally, Siskel and Ebert would refuse to guest-star in movies or television series, except for talk shows, as they felt it would undermine their "responsibility to the public". [13] His top choices were: Gene Siskel had an abrasive review style, and claimed his film criticism was an individual exercise that should not be swayed by public taste. I am sure there is plenty of room for improvement which I look forward to! So there was a lot of competition and a lot of disagreement. Six times, Siskel's #1 choice did not appear on Ebert's top ten list at all: Straight Time, Ragtime, Once Upon a Time in America, The Last Temptation of Christ, Hearts of Darkness, and The Ice Storm. [3], His first print review was for the film Rascal, which was written one month before becoming the Tribune's film critic. [15], Siskel was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer on May 8, 1998. [13] Interestingly, Roger Ebert gave a "thumbs up" to all of the films that fit the Siskel #1/didn't make Ebert's Top 10 list category, and the only Ebert #1 film of the year that Siskel did not like was, famously, Apocalypse Now. Lead source for cancelled and renewed TV show news + ratings since 2006. So I know some of you are chomping at the bit for your favorite show to be reloaded, but I can’t do anything about it. So, we are here with a WordPress website. Roeper was with Roger from 2000 through 2008. Mortal Kombat received mostly mixed reviews from critics upon its theatrical release, Gene Siskel gave the film a "thumbs up" rating when the film was reviewed on Siskel & Ebert. The old files all look like this – 13072959941c479.flv. [This quote needs a citation]. I like to thank Scott, also from Tennessee, for sending me five VHS tapes of Roger and guest! Instead of being scared, he sings, "Wubba wubba wubba wubba, woo woo woo." [6] In the episode, Siskel and Ebert split and each wants Jay Sherman, the eponymous critic, as his new partner. Anyone else have a cache of Siskel and Ebert tapes buried away somewhere? Hi Everyone! Siskel was born in Chicago and was the son of Ida (née Kalis) and Nathan William Siskel. [20] However, he had changed his opinions on films years after his initial review, such as Tremors, which he gave a negative review to in 1990 but later gave the film a glowing positive review in 1994, stating "I wasn't sure what I missed the first time around, but it just didn't click.". I have three shows embed already from 1982. [2] He attended Culver Academies and graduated from Yale University with a degree in philosophy in 1967, where he studied writing under Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Hersey. I have decided to reopen this website with some changes as you can see. From 1969 until his death in early 1999, he and Ebert were in agreement on nine top selections: Z, The Godfather, Nashville, The Right Stuff, Do the Right Thing, GoodFellas, Schindler's List, Hoop Dreams, and Fargo. Hard-luck cabbie John Winger (Bill Murray) -- directionless after being fired from his job and dumped by his girlfriend -- enlists in the U.S. Army with his close pal, Russell Ziskey (Harold Ramis). I liked what I saw with this website, so I did the same to my other, Now, in relationship to the shows, I only have ~, Plus, I have to review each show for content. I am still on his first tape! "[3], Siskel died from the brain cancer shortly after a second surgery on February 20, 1999, at the age of 53. [9] Another all-time favorite was Dr. I have a PayPal page which you can find on the menu bar, above, and here. One of Siskel's favorite films was Saturday Night Fever; he even bought the famous white disco suit that John Travolta wore in the film from a charity auction. In an interview for The Academy of Television and Radio, his TV co-host Roger Ebert said of him, “I think Gene felt that he had to like the whole picture to give it a thumbs up”. Siskel and Ebert left WTTW and PBS in 1982 for syndication. Ebert's longtime television partner, Gene Siskel… Entertainment Weekly chose his performance as one of the great scenes in the year's television. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit about the movie is that it was written by esteemed film critic Roger Ebert, who was both a friend to and an admirer of Meyer's. Well, I will be having outpatient surgery tomorrow in Nashville, so I will not be posting for a few days (hopefully less). Now, in relationship to the shows, I only have ~ 150 uploaded out of five or six hundred. The people I bought the software from wanted several hundred dollars for each correction! At the 1999 Academy Awards ceremony, after its In Memoriam montage of deceased stars and film contributors (which did not include Siskel, as he was not an Academy member) host Whoopi Goldberg gave a brief, impromptu tribute to Siskel in which she said: I want to take a moment to acknowledge someone we lost too recently to include in our film tribute. [18], Following his death, his long-time partner Ebert wrote:.mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, Gene was a lifelong friend, and our professional competition only strengthened that bond. Plus, I have to review each show for content. Many movies from 1971 are still well worth ... It’s a quirky comedy with a catchy soundtrack that many people consider a personal favorite. He was a critic but more importantly, he really loved movies, so, Gene, wherever you are, honey, here's to you.[22]. Sneak Previews continued on PBS for 14 more years with other hosts. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted a series of movie review programs on television from 1975 until his death in 1999. There were corrections that needed to be made on a constant basis, and I could not do it. Yet, Ebert also noted in a memoriam episode of Siskel and Ebert that when Siskel found a movie that he truly treasured, he embraced it as something special. This increases the file size by 30%, so normally; each file upload is around 130 megabytes in size. When we were in a group together, we were always intensely aware of one another. What do you think? For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, Farewell To Siskel Honors Private Side Of Public Man, "Gene Siskel, Half of a Famed Movie-Review Team, Dies at 53", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NYARpevi-k, "Funeral plans announced for film critic Gene Siskel", "Playboy Interview: Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert", "Siskel and Ebert Top Ten Lists (1969-1998)", "SISKEL & EBERT: A Tribute to Gene Siskel", "In Tribute: Legendary film reviewer leaves thumbprint on a nation of moviegoers", "A Thumb Falls Silent: A Short Tribute to Gene Siskel", "Oscar Night Salute To Siskel Was All Whoopi", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gene_Siskel&oldid=1022953487, 20th-century American non-fiction writers, American people of Russian-Jewish descent, Official website different in Wikidata and Wikipedia, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 13 May 2021, at 13:29. Their "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" system soon became an easily recognizable trademark, popular enough to be parodied on comedy shows such as Second City Television, In Living Color, Bizarre, and in movies such as Hollywood Shuffle and Godzilla. I then upload each file, and then place it into WordPress which takes around thirty minutes per file. Six times, Ebert's top selection did not appear on Siskel's; these films were 3 Women, An Unmarried Woman, Apocalypse Now, Sophie's Choice, Mississippi Burning, and Dark City. The last film that Siskel reviewed on television with cohost Ebert was The Theory of Flight on January 23, 1999. [11] On the other hand, Siskel said that he walked out on three films during his professional career: the 1971 comedy The Million Dollar Duck starring Dean Jones, the 1980 horror film Maniac, and the 1996 Penelope Spheeris film Black Sheep. I did receive some static about adding these shows (that did not include Gene) on the old site. Sadly, but with some patience from you, I should have everything back up by March or April. The old software would convert each upload to the flv format with no indication what the show was! In 2000, the Film Center was renamed The Gene Siskel Film Center in his honor. [4] Siskel served in the US Army Reserve, graduating from basic officers training in early 1968; he was a military journalist and public affairs officer for the Defense Information School.[5]. Hersey's reference assisted him in gaining a job at the Chicago Tribune in 1969. He wasn't a filmmaker, but he was definitely was a member of our film community. They had two daughters, Kate and Callie, and a son, Will. Original movie reviews untainted by time! Strangelove. "Monster in the Mirror" is a Sesame Street song sung by Grover. ISP I won’t get into, but the software on the site was horrible. ... Not real popular, but I remember it well. I'm talking about Gene Siskel. Roger Ebert or Gene Siskel on Siskel and Ebert and The Movies. 1971's Cheech & Chong introduced their loopy, wordplay-heavy schtick to … Please register and comment! The film currently holds a 5.8 on IMDb, a 33% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 58% on Flixster, and 58 out of 100 on Metacritic. What do you think? And finally, and to not to belabor the point, but would you please help me with the cost of maintaining this website? Prior to marrying Siskel, his wife, Marlene Iglitzen, was a producer for CBS in New York. Sneak Previews gained a nationwide audience in 1977 when WTTW offered it as a series to the PBS program system. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. She included the iconic "thumbs-up" gesture; it received a great round of audience applause. Ghostbusters is a 1984 American supernatural comedy film directed and produced by Ivan Reitman and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis.It stars Bill Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis as Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, and Egon Spengler, a trio of eccentric parapsychologists who start a ghost-catching business in New York City. Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper headline the cast of this basketball movie that your hoops-obsessed uncle will absolutely cite as his personal favorite. He is of Pennsylvania Dutch (German), English, and Scottish ancestry, partly by way of Canada, where his mother was born. In this song, Grover wakes up one morning and sees a monster in his mirror (his reflection). My main reasons for closing the first site were due to the ISP, software and money. I think it was important to Gene that this was the only serious film criticism on television. Now he clobbered some of us with a great big stick and sometimes he touched us with a velvet glove. There would have been a tenth, but Ebert declined to rank the documentary Shoah as 1985's best film because he felt it was inappropriate to compare it to the rest of the year's candidates. I liked that he was interested in other things, and that he was a proud member of the bald community. You wouldn't hit a guy with glasses would you? Dear Monsieur Robert: For years, I would have said Gene Siskel.I liked that he was enthusiastic about movies without being a weird introvert as some film critics are. Sometimes this took the form of camaraderie, sometimes shared opinions, sometimes hostility. Siskel was also a member of the advisory committee of the Film Center at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a strong supporter of the Film Center mission. I will stay working on 1982, until I have all the Sneak Preview shows embed. I will be having some bone spurs removed from my right elbow (of all places) which is my writing arm! I took three months off, so I can take care of some personal matters; plus, update another website of mine dealing with astronomy. We had a lot of big fights. [12] When he mentioned walking out on Black Sheep in 1996, he said it was the first time he'd walked out on a movie he was reviewing since 1971 (the aforementioned Million Dollar Duck) and later explained that he didn't include Maniac (which he also did walk out on) because he did not review Maniac as an assignment for his newspaper or part of his and Ebert's weekly TV reviews; it was included on the show only as a "Dog of the Week", a feature that lasted for years on the TV show where each critic would single out the absolute worst movie they'd seen that week. Their new show, At the Movies, was produced and distributed by Tribune Broadcasting, the parent company of the Chicago Tribune and WGN-TV. The new incarnation of the show was originally titled Siskel & Ebert & the Movies, but later shortened to Siskel & Ebert. [1] His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. This even extended to several films that went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture: The Silence of the Lambs and Unforgiven. On Siskel & Ebert & the Movies, both agreed that the "A" ending was the best while the "C" ending was the worst. Stating directly to his late colleague, Ebert said: “I know for sure that seeing a truly great movie made you so happy that you’d tell me a week later your spirits were still high.”[14] Some of Siskel's most treasured movies included My Dinner With Andre (1981), Shoah (1985), Fargo (1996), and the documentary Hoop Dreams (1994). Only once during his long association with Ebert did Siskel ever change his vote on a movie during the review. The film-critics aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 65% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 31 reviews, with an average score of 6.06/10. I will try to slip one more show in tonight (Wednesday). He announced on February 3, 1999, that he was taking a leave of absence, but that he expected to be back by fall, stating: "I'm in a hurry to get well because I don't want Roger to get more screen time than I. [10] A favorite from childhood was Dumbo, which he often mentioned as the first film that had an influence on him. That made him proud. Those qualities have made it an enduring cult classic. Both critics had specific sensitivities and feelings that would often vary in extremes to certain kinds of bad films. Strike one, and the other would pick up the same frequency. Indiana. The clip features a number of camera tricks, such as a sequence in which a full-body Grover walks in front of a store window showing his animated reflection. The ditzy pinup girl in The Notorious Bettie Page and the brainy predator in Basic Instinct 2 are two sides of the same coin. Siskel compiled "best of the year" film lists from 1969 to 1998, which helped to provide an overview of his critical preferences. In 1975, Siskel teamed up with Roger Ebert, film reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times, to host a show on local Chicago PBS station WTTW which eventually became Sneak Previews. ... As a critic, Siskel was passionate and exacting. Hi Everyone! I liked what I saw with this website, so I did the same to my other site. ... Roger Ebert or Gene Siskel on At The Movies. Thanks! Siskel & Ebert Collection on Letterman, Part 4 of 6: 1994 Siskel & Ebert Collection on Letterman, Part 5 of 6: 1995-96 Siskel & Ebert Collection on Letterman, Part 6 of 6: 1997-2000 Ebert was very sensitive to films about race and ethnicity, and Siskel was sensitive to films about families and family relationships and had a special hatred for films like House Arrest (1996) and Like Father Like Son (1987), both of which were about parents and their children. Their daughters graduated from Siskel's alma mater, Yale University. Referenced by NY Times, LA Times, USA Today, ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, BBC, PBS, TV Guide, EW, and many other respected outlets. [17] and while Buena Vista television was producing a new episode, Siskel phoned in his reviews from his hospital bed. [21], When asked what he thought was the biggest difference between him and Ebert, Siskel unhesitatingly replied: "I'm a better reviewer than he is", but a few moments later, he said that anyone who read an Ebert review would read "an extremely well-written review". Gene Siskel had an abrasive review style, and claimed his film criticism was an individual exercise that should not be swayed by public taste. Siskel also appeared as himself on an episode of The Larry Sanders Show. [19], Siskel was a Chicago sports fan, especially of his hometown basketball team, the Chicago Bulls, and would cover locker-room celebrations for WBBM-TV news broadcasts following Bulls championships in the 1990s.[6]. I personally have very few shows on hand dealing with Richard Roeper. In an interview for The Academy of Television and Radio, his TV co-host Roger Ebert said of him, “I think Gene felt that he had to like the whole picture to give it a thumbs up”. [7] They also once appeared in an episode of the children's television series Sesame Street. He wrote hundreds of articles applauding the Film Center's distinctive programming and lent the power of his position as a well-known film critic to urge public funding and audience support. So far, I like what I see. This will allow me to free-up some disk space on the server I am using – which is great! Ebert once said of his relationship with Siskel: Gene Siskel and I were like tuning forks. Movies 'Breaking Away' and ... (1981), costarring Gene Hackman and Barbra Streisand. [8] Hi everyone! The film Broken Arrow had initially been given a "thumbs up" but after hearing Ebert's criticism, Siskel changed his mind to "thumbs down" to make it unanimous. In particular, he often gave negative reviews to movies that became box office champs and went on to be considered mainstream classics: Poltergeist, Beverly Hills Cop, The Terminator, Aliens, Predator, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and Independence Day. [16] He underwent brain surgery to remove a brain tumor three days later. Throughout the early-to-mid '70s, the pair racked up a slew of hit comedy records.

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