Word: rogerism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...reviews. He's covered mainstream movies like Shrek the Third and Bug, and artier fare on the order of Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain and Hal Hartley's Fay Grim. Today he has a review of A Mighty Heart. It's a phrase that certainly applies to Roger, and Chaz too, for their year-long battle against his debilitating illness. With open arms ready to embrace a trusted friend - which Roger has been to Mary C. and me for three decades, and is to any reader or viewer of his work - we can say: He's back...
...know how Roger feels about this, but it makes me uncomfortable to think that, of all the millions of words he has written and spoken, the one most associated with him is "thumb." As in his and his TV partners' shorthand for a favorable review, "two thumbs up!" This tactic is handy for branding the show, and an effective marketing tool (it's the words all movie publicists want to banner at the top of their ads), but as critical discourse the slogan has its limits. More Manichaean than the star rating system he and other newspaper critics...
...review on his weekly TV show, he typically would give a thumbs up to two or three of them, making me wonder who in the civilian community has time to see all these movies. But as one of the few critics with a practical familiarity with filmmaking, Roger knows that the machinery of film production is so cumbersome, the pressure for commercial success so great and the odds against making anything good near-astronomical, that the best intentions often get dashed on the rocks of compromise. So he's nearly as sympathetic to the attempt to make a good film...
...That is, unless he doesn't. Roger's latest book is called Your Movie Sucks - a collection of his thumbs-down reviews - and the anecdote that inspired the title is worth recounting. In an Oscar preview story two years ago, Los Angeles Time writer Patrick Goldstein made a joke about Rob Schneider's Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, "a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic." Schneider, in a response that ran as a trade paper ad, wrote: "Well...
...Even the butts of Roger's "buts" understand that there's nothing personal in his negative reviews - as indicated by a comment Roger made last year on his website: "A bouquet arrives... A beautiful bouquet of flowers was delivered to the house the other day. A handwritten note paid compliments to my work and wished me a speedy recovery. Who was it from? A friend? A colleague? An old classmate? The card was signed, 'Your Least Favorite Movie Star, Rob Schneider...