Roger Ebert dies

[Ashton]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/movies/roger-ebert-film-critic-dies.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[Tooker]

That is a bummer.  He had just recently announced that he was cutting back his reviewing because he was so sick.

I know that gamers generally found themselves on the opposite side of the "art" issue from him, but he was still a cool, interesting guy who I think appreciated movies just for being fun more than a lot of critics do.

[Yoda]

He gave Shoot 'em Up 3.5 stars so I will always love him.

[Dice]

^ love that movie.

Yeah, I like the "thumbs up/down" approach.  It's simple and based more on general entertainment than ever-lasting appeal.  Enough writers do the latter.

I give him credit for fighting the good fight against cancer and really giving it all until the end.

[Yoda]

I loved watching Siskel and Ebert when I was a kid.

Check out how out of control the into was
http://youtu.be/UVCA9_OxNio

So goddamn jazzy it bleeds late 80s early 90s all over your computer. Seriously it's practically the Perfect Strangers intro.

[insertnamehere]

I never really got the popularity of that thumbs up/down thing, it seemed even worse than giving out review scores, as if any movie movie could be summed up one way or the other but never in between.
And it was pretty ironic that he claimed movies were often art for being emotional, and he never saw that in video games.

[Starmongoose]

He was an old man who probably still saw videogames being akin to Tetris or Pacman, or at worst CoD.

[Dice]

I never really got the popularity of that thumbs up/down thing, it seemed even worse than giving out review scores, as if any movie movie could be summed up one way or the other but never in between.
And it was pretty ironic that he claimed movies were often art for being emotional, and he never saw that in video games.

Depends on the game.  Likely when he saw it, it was still really kiddy looking, and yeah, he was old -- not exactly part of his demographic.  Perhaps something like Journey or whatever would have changed his mind.

But like I said earlier with the thumbs thing:

I like the "thumbs up/down" approach.  It's simple and based more on general entertainment than ever-lasting appeal.  Enough writers do the latter.

[Tooker]

He actually felt like the interactive nature of video games disqualified them from being art.  Ebert's opinion, overly simplified, was that art is a thing to be consumed and experienced, not a thing in which you participate.  He definitely saw impressive things in video games, and as far as I know, he wasn't saying games are bad or unsophisticated, or even necessarily "not as good" as things that are art.  He just saw them as a different category of stuff.

[Kevadu]

There's tons of "performance art" that has audience participation.  Not a new thing.

Look, I like a lot of stuff Ebert did and I don't want to badmouth a dead man, but I can't help but think you're being way too kind.  I've read the stuff he wrote about video games and was of it was extremely ignorant.  Not stupid or anything, but ignorant.  It's pretty obvious that he didn't play video games and didn't really know much about them.  Which is fine, I don't expect everyone to play video games or understand video games.  But you shouldn't write about them without doing your homework first, and he didn't.

[Yoda]

It didn't bother me, what he said. Because in the grand scheme of things, who gives a shit?

[PotRoast]

There are a few reviewers of media that have had a tremendous impact not only on what media I consume, but how I consume said media. Roger Ebert is one of them, and probably the most important overall. Within the last year or so I had gotten to the point where I no longer really read his reviews unless I'd already seen it, but still checked his website frequently either way. So in a sense, I had moved on from needing his input. That said, I still value it greatly. And while his output has been gigantic, it does sadden me that it is now complete.

---

I think the whole business about his 'anti-videogame' opinion pieces has always been overblown. Especially because in the end, Roger effectively admitted defeat (something hard to get a man as stubborn and full of pride as Roger to do). So yeah, Roger was wrong about video games, but his argument was fascinating, well-written, and thought provoking. It was challenging to deal with, and few handled it successfully (I can't remember a single one now that I thought did a decent job rebuking it). Most it just turned into blubbering idiots.

[Yggdrasil]

It didn't bother me, what he said. Because in the grand scheme of things, who gives a shit?

A lot of people did...

[MeshGearFox]

Rule of threes, guys.

We got Roger and Maggie. Who's next?

[Agent D.]

A critic, a prime minister.....I think next is a video game icon.

Crossing my fingers for Robert Kotick.