It’s awfully nice to have a couple of real film guys — serious Catholics, I mean — back on the At The Movies beat. So who will be the Roger Ebert (i.e., the cerebral, highly knowledgable know-it-all) and who will be the Gene Siskel (the “yes but” guy who comes from a gut place as well as a head place and will sometimes say “naah, not buying it, this is bullshit”)?
My sense is that both A.O. Scott and Michael Philips are Genes at heart. They’re both trying to emphasize their Roger aspects right now, but it’ll eventually boil down to a Gene vs. Gene thing. Or maybe that’s just what I want to see. I know that gut skepticism is generally more fun to hang with than impassioned dweeby cinephile musings.
My only concern (and I’m not trying to be an asshole) is that Scott’s hair is too closely clipped. He needs to exude a little more of that slightly frazzle-haired coffeehouse poet thing — more suede and jeans, less starch in his shirt, maybe a toke or two of pot.
So what happened to the video? It played when I first posted and now it’s saying it’s no longer available. No, wait…it’s back. What?