Tag: roger ebert

Ebert clarifies Jackass drunk death Tweet

Commenting on the news that “Jackass” star Ryan Dunn and two others were killed in a car crash at 3AM, Roger Ebert tweeted the following yesterday afternoon:

“Friends don’t let jackasses drink and drive.”

Some were angry with the judgement call.

Today, Ebert backed off and somewhat apologized:

I don’t know what happened in this case, and I was probably too quick to tweet. That was unseemly. I do know that nobody has any business driving on a public highway at 110 mph, as some estimated — or fast enough, anyway, to leave a highway and fly through 40 yards of trees before crashing. That is especially true if the driver has had three shots and three beers. Two people were killed. What if the car had crashed into another car?

Something called “Hollywoodland” on Breitbarts Big Hollywood site disapproved of this (my guess is because Ebert is a big liberal and Big Hollywood is a Conservative outfit) first setting it up with “Before knowing for sure if alcohol contributed to the awful car crash…” and then posting the tweet and elaboration, going on to say:

There’s a time and place for this discussion. No doubt about that. But before stepping onto your sanctimonius soapbox, it’s a good idea to know the facts.

Blah blah. Eberts original tweet may have jumped to a (very logical) conclusion at a not-s0-tactful time, but his followup is crushingly valid. We’re all allowed to publicly comment our opinions on public news items concerning public people and everyone else is allowed to say it’s wrong or in bad taste or whatever they think, but factually, it’s difficult to argue with Ebert on this one.


Why you should hate 3-D

Roger Ebert explains why the format must be stopped. Not as an option, he says, but as a way of life. 3-D should not become the new standard. It can be fun on a nice big-&-bright IMAX screen like Avatar (the only 3-D IMAX ive seen outside of a museum) but when I saw UP and Alice and Wonderland on a regular screen in 3-D, I was left seriously disappointed in the experience vs the extra ticket price…

That’s my position. I know it’s heresy to the biz side of show business. After all, 3-D has not only given Hollywood its biggest payday ($2.7 billion and counting for Avatar), but a slew of other hits. The year’s top three films—Alice in Wonderland, How to Train Your Dragon, and Clash of the Titans—were all projected in 3-D, and they’re only the beginning. The very notion of Jackass in 3-D may induce a wave of hysterical blindness, to avoid seeing Steve-O’s you-know-what in that way. But many directors, editors, and cinematographers agree with me about the shortcomings of 3-D. So do many movie lovers—even executives who feel stampeded by another Hollywood infatuation with a technology that was already pointless when their grandfathers played with stereoscopes.

That’s the summary and it’s really all you need, but if you’re thirsty for more detail you can go read the heretics’ case, point by point.

Ebert acknowledges that Avatar was awesome in 3D-IMAX but points out what I’ve been saying on that in how it was a movie made mostly on computers specifically for the purpose of being 3D. When movies add 3D as an afterthought, it sucks horribly, and its not a medium that is suited to anything other than kids and action films (Ebert brings up Fargo, Casablanca and Precious as “can you imagine that shit in 3D” examples).

The article contains info that explains the details of things like the darker picture in more complex ways:

Lenny Lipton is known as the father of the electronic stereoscopic-display industry. He knows how films made with his systems should look. Current digital projectors, he writes, are “intrinsically inefficient. Half the light goes to one eye and half to the other, which immediately results in a 50 percent reduction in illumination.” Then the glasses themselves absorb light. The vast majority of theaters show 3-D at between three and six foot-lamberts (fLs). Film projection provides about 15fLs. The original IMAX format threw 22fLs at the screen. If you don’t know what a foot-lambert is, join the crowd. (In short: it’s the level of light thrown on the screen from a projector with no film in it.) And don’t mistake a standard film for an IMAX film, or “fake IMAX” for original IMAX. What’s the difference? IMAX is building new theaters that have larger screens, which are quite nice, but are not the huge IMAX screens and do not use IMAX film technology. But since all their theaters are called IMAX anyway, this is confusing.

confusing indeed.