Word: pbs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Twelve years ago, Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and now better known simply as "the fat one," was asked if he would appear on a new movie-review program being produced by WTTW, the local PBS station. He was intrigued by the idea but not by the prospective costar: his archrival from the Chicago Tribune, Gene Siskel. "The answer," Ebert recalls, "was at the tip of my tongue: no." Nor did Siskel, now frequently referred to as "the other one," relish the thought of sharing a stage with "the most hated guy in my life...
Siskel and Ebert still do not get along, at least in public, but they have put that antagonism to good use. Their show, originally called Opening Soon at a Theater Near You and later Sneak Previews, went national in 1978 and soon became the highest-rated series in PBS history. In 1982 they moved to commercial syndication. Today, under the title Siskel & Ebert & the Movies, they reach an audience of 8 million, ranking in the Top Ten of all once-a-week syndicated shows...
...some Bartlett's and James. If only PBS and C-SPAN deem your performance worthy of coverage, it is cooler not to whine about it. Instead, haul out the quote books and show off your erudition for this upscale audience. Here, for example, is a useful phrase from The Spoils of Poynton: "The fatal futility of Fact...
...PBS adaptation of Saul Bellow's 1956 novella Seize the Day stands apart from the usual run of prestige TV drama in several respects. First, for its unrelenting bleakness: the only possible relief from Tommy's mounting misfortunes is a bitter laugh at their Job-like extravagance. Then, for its particularity: the movie is a vivid portrait of a fortyish Jewish man on Manhattan's Upper West Side in the mid-1950s, yet it refuses to promulgate a larger message about Jews, New York City or life in the '50s. And finally, for the very fact that it was made...
This modestly budgeted effort, from the producers responsible for a fine PBS adaptation of James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, uses its resources well. The New York setting, for example, might have been sketched more elaborately. But a single scene of Tommy hustling an irascible old man (Tom Aldredge) across the street before the light changes conveys all that is needed. Trying to squeeze his car into a tight parking space, Tommy huffs mightily as he turns the steering wheel back and forth while his front-seat companion, the indomitable Tamkin, rattles on: a perfect visual metaphor...