Hello, my name's Justin the Clue, and I'm here today with Will Sloan,

and you're listening to The Important Cinema Club.

And today, we're going to be talking about Roger Ebert.

And Roger Ebert, a subject I know inside and out,

and a subject that I think I feel a little ambivalent about these days.

Really? And that you're probably not a particular fan of, right?

Well, I can appreciate Roger Ebert, but it really comes down to the fact that he had no place

in my life as a young cinephile. When people talk about Roger Ebert, they talk about him as the

critic that was the most approachable.

He was like the solid base.

He was in your TVs every week to give you what movies are good and bad.

And at the same time, he was also considered like a mainstream critic to be looked down upon.

He was kind of the midpoint between a scholar and a hack.

Exactly.

He was obviously a very smart guy, a very well-read guy.

He knew film history very well, but he appealed to people most as an ambassador for cinema,

somebody who, with his great movies reviews, for instance, gave people a roadmap to the canon.

And with Siskel and Ebert, I can't imagine how many

bloggers or YouTube critics or even, you know, high-level film critics now probably watched that

and said, hey, I can do that. Yeah, because back in the day, critics like Pauline Kale were like

intellectuals, right? When they talk about film in a very specific and personal way,

and while Roger Ebert was very passionate about what he was doing,

...