Reality television far removed from what’s real

Can you put up with watching the boss of a company you work for argue back and forth with his son in front of other employees almost every day?

If you answered yes then you must be the kind of person who craves such so-called reality television shows like “American Chopper,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” “The Apprentice,” and the slew of other such ridiculous programs on the flat screened idiot box. Or you think this stuff goes on and is tolerated in real life.

I am not into reality television shows. In fact, I really don’t watch that much television to begin with. The only reason I have the TV on is to have something to listen to while I’m doing something else. It’s only a rarity that I will stop what I am doing and watch a program thanks to what I am hearing.

That’s the only reason I tuned into such shows as “The Apprentice” (2004) and “Hell’s Kitchen” (2005). What got my attention was hearing Donald Trump in the boardroom listen to excuses why s0-so and so failed at their tasks before Trump said those two famous words, “You’re fired.”

I found “Hell’s Kitchen” twice as entertaining watching celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay lose his temper during lunch and dinner services. When he is not busy calling someone who could be the next head chef at one of his restaurants in Las Vegas a “dumb blonde” or a “fucking donkey,” Ramsay is insulting customers who ask where their food is.



“I will give you more pumpkin risotto right up your fucking ass,” he tells a patron in one episode who has yet to be served the dinner he ordered an hour ago. “Would you like it whole or diced?”

By comparison, I am not into motorcycles. The only reason I have browsed YouTube searching for clips of “American Chopper” recently is to watch Paul Teutel Sr. scold his son, Paul Jr. for always arriving late to work, complaining how the workplace is always a mess, and he never has checklist of what’s been ordered.

Die hard fans of “American Chopper” most likely know how many office doors and windows have been replaced at the Teutel’s motorcycle fabrication company, Orange County Choppers, in Montgomery, New York. I wonder if the number of custom-built motorcycles they’ve done is higher or lower than the number of battles the father and his two sons have had.

If TLC or whoever is the distributor has rights to the series, were to release season box sets on DVD, I’d buy them just to see the fights. Or better still, I’d welcome a compilation of all the arguments that have occurred over the show’s six-year run.



As the elder Teutel’s older son, Michael said on YouTube clip I saw, “Fights around here have become legendary.”

I should have realized that judging how fake most all these other reality shows are with embarrassing background music that builds up whenever someone is either fired, yelled at or put on the spot.

When the elder Teutel fired his son, Paul, during season 6 that ended in February this year, I wondered, for a brief second, if that was for real. Maybe it is and the two just can’t work together. OR maybe it’s all for ratings and to pave the way for a new series called “American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior” that premiered Aug. 12 on TLC. The title explains it all. Both are now working separately with Paul Jr. starting up his own motorcycle company.



“He has never followed through one thing in his life,” the elder Teutel says of his son in the TLC promotion. “They could never in a million years build a bike like we can.”

It reminds me of the run-ins I witnessed at a college newspaper I worked at decades ago, between the editor and his best friend, whom he hired one semester as a photographer who argued on what photos should go in for that week’s issue. When the editor wasn’t busy dealing with him, he was busy fending off other photographers questioning his decision to shoot photos himself of a school fire when he should have assigned other photographer. At other times, the managing editor and his girlfriend, who was the graphics editor at the time, argued with one another.

I admit I enjoyed seeing this play out. The fact is, though, that it was detrimental to the workplace environment.

The activities seen on “American Chopper,” not to mention all the other reality television shows, are all entertainment. Maybe it’s just me but I don’t believe this kind of stuff is likely tolerated in the workplace and if it is, it shouldn’t be.

If these reality television shows prove anything, it’s to show viewers how NOT to act in real life.

©8/24/10

President Obama's vision of ‘best teachers’ questionable

President Barack Obama’s recent remarks about how teachers rather than celebrities like Snooki should be idolized in this country got me thinking about the best teachers I had from grade school on up.

I will be frank here. I didn’t particularly like the instructors who influenced me. The dislike started with practically all the nuns who taught me in grade school.

Sister Petronia, my first-grade teacher, for example, had two trademarks for which I didn’t care. One was when a student stepped out of line, she always declared, “I’m ashamed of you.” And when that student, or any student for that matter, stepped out of line, she’d go out of her way to embarrass that person.

Whenever she’d look inside a student’s desk and find a mess, she’d pick up the desk, allowing everything inside to slide out in front of the class. The embarrassed student was left to pick up a month’s worth of assignments and parental notices that should have gone home.

I suspect if she caught a student with food, even God wouldn’t be able to bail him out.

My second-grade teacher, Sister Cresentine, was a humorous elderly lady when in a good mood. If you got on her bad side, she’d throw a textbook at you from across the room, telling you to go back and re-study the material.

My seventh-grade teacher, Sister Julleta, who taught religion classes and was in charge of the altar boys, was like Sister Cresentine when it comes to exhibiting her wrath on a student if they stepped out of line. If a student was not careful, Sister Julleta could be their own worst enemy. To this day, I still wonder if she actually struck a student I saw her disciplining in the hallway one year.

There were lessons to be learned from those nuns. I assume in Sister Petronia’s case; she wanted the students to have some respect for themselves. On the other hand, their goal was to not be liked anyway. They were there to teach and administer discipline when the situation warranted it.

By comparison, the best teachers I had in high school were far fewer than the handful of survivors rescued at the end of the ocean liner disaster movie, “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972).

I was thankful that my freshman algebra teacher, Mr. McClusky, doubled as the school’s winning basketball coach and, I was told by a fellow classmate that the guy supposedly hated freshman to the point he came off as a drill sergeant when conducting class.

I wouldn’t be surprised if any students heard his voice from across the hall as he yelled at students for making stupid mistakes when doing algebra problems. He always called me “Joseph,” a name only used by my mother.

Whenever students scored poorly on their tests, McClusky would make them redo the problems again and then write ten times, “I will not make silly mistakes.”

I could have used someone like him for the Algebra II course I took my sophomore year and geometry my junior year as I learned next to nothing. Taking those two upper-level courses, I still to this day wonder who was more of a joke. My fellow classmates, most of whom did nothing but pass notes, talked during class, stole others’ homework, and cheated on tests? Or the instructors who didn’t know shit about how to control a f-----g, g-----n class so the rest of us could learn?

I did not care much for Mr. Poundstone, my junior-year ethics instructor who attended the University of Oxford because he wouldn’t administer multiple choice tests nor did he advocate giving extra credit assignments. His tests were always essay and short-answer questions to determine if you knew the material.

The same went for Father Martin, the instructor who taught social issues my senior year like a college course, which in a way, it was.

When I started college, I got the impression the professors didn’t give a damn whether you attended class. If you didn’t show up and study, you failed. Their job wasn’t to keep after you like your parents.

Dr. Bridges, my media law instructor, who also doubled as my Reporting II professor, got onto me for not taking his journalism courses seriously. Like my first-grade teacher, Sister Petronia, who had no qualms about embarrassing students, Dr. Bridges one time asked me why I didn’t show up for his Reporting II class one day. My reason being was because I was working on a story for the campus newspaper, which I got drafted into doing. An excuse he didn’t accept and rightfully so. He told me in front of other students in the lab that I had better get my priorities straight.

Given the great number of red marks I got on my reporting assignments in Dr. Bridges’ Reporting II course, which suggested I did not know how to write worth a damn, I wondered if the professor who taught me Reporting I, where I got a better grade than the C I received from Dr. Bridges, knew what she was doing.

Are these nuns, high school teachers, and college professors the kinds of instructors President Obama would like to see “idolized” on the front covers of magazines, as opposed to celebrities? Were these the kinds of instructors who made a difference in my life? I am not sure. As I said, I didn’t care much for their strict teaching methods. At least, however, I walked away either having learned the material or realized there was no such thing as an easy A.

©8/17/10

"Torture Porn" - the new craze in disgustingly violent movies!

“It’s just torture and murder. No plot, no characters. Very, very realistic. I think it’s what’s next.”

So said Max Renn, the sleazy cable TV programmer as played by James Woods in director David Cronenberg’s "Videodrome" (1983) who stumbles upon a phantom satellite signal that shows young women being tortured 24/7 by men in leather masks.

The comment Woods’ character says seems certainly appropriate in today’s movie world unfortunately. The past few years filmmakers have attempted to pass their sick works showing innocent characters in despicably unthinkable predicaments as so-called entertainment. Watching them go through such imaginative acts of masochism, the only hope I could have for the characters is that death comes quickly, even if it's just a movie.

Films like the Saw franchise (2004-2010), which has been going strong at the box office since the first one was released in 2004, P2 (2007), Captivity (2007), Eli Roth’s "Hostel" (2005) and "Hostel: Part II" (2007), and The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009), currently in limited theatrical release, all feature characters, women in particular, being brutally terrorized. Perhaps a new category should be created. Instead of a horror or psychological section, these movies, some of which boast unrated extended versions when released on DVD and Blu-ray, should be placed into a category called “Torture Porn.”

I came to that conclusion after reading a May 11 article on CNN about the most recent horror film, "The Human Centipede" (2009), which got a lot of attention last Spring after being granted a limited release in theaters showing independent movies. The controversy over the film was far from the positive word-of-mouth last October's unexpected supernatural box office hit, "Paranormal Activity" (2009), received.

The highest amount of praise "The Human Centipede" received came from Entertainment Weekly movie critic, Owen Gleiberman, who awarded it a B+. Gleiberman opened his April 30 review saying how certain horror-film junkies, which he calls himself, "craves the extreme and the dosage of awesome ickiness has to keep getting upped."

The worst review came from Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert who gave it no stars in his May 5 critique saying, "the star rating system is unsuited to this film."

"Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine," Ebert wrote.

For those not familiar with the never-been-done before premise which on that level I do give Centipede director Tom Six a small, miniscule of credit, let me enlighten you. Two American women on vacation overseas are kidnapped by a brilliant yet demented German surgeon (Dieter Laser) who has plans of connecting their digestive tracts from mouth to anus to a male victim he’s already got imprisoned in his secluded home, hence “the human centipede.” Just try watching that as you and your significant other are munching down on your popcorn and Raisinets in the privacy of your own home as the first victim in the chain has to defecate, as described in the CNN article.

Don’t lie. I know for a fact just reading that description is enough to peak your grim curiosity. You know you want to watch. Personally, I don’t see where the entertainment value is in any of this. I challenge anyone who can offer up a good enough reason to justify sitting through such celluloid junk that if it were any worse and people were actually murdered on screen, they’d be snuff films.

I, for one, am thankful I still have not seen the original "Saw" (2004) and "Hostel" (2007) and won’t be seeing them anytime soon except maybe to bash them in a review. I did not like "P2" (2007) and the most I saw of "Hostel: Part II" (2007) was about five- or ten-minutes' worth while flipping channels. I was just in time to see some poor female character hung upside down and having her back torn to shreds by a nude woman wielding a scythe as she bathes in the victim’s blood. Then there was the ending I later caught of a group of young kids kicking around a woman’s decapitated head like a soccer ball. Nice, huh?

The way I see it movies like these are for two, if not three groups of viewers. The first are those who continue to annoy the living crap out of me every time there is a bad accident on the interstate. They always slow down when I am trying to get somewhere, and I could care less what the Hell’s going on.

There is only one reason why drivers do this and it's not to stop, get out and help. They slow down in hopes they will see some bodies, buckets of blood, body parts or a combination of all three lying on the road.

The second group is those who want to sexually get off seeing themselves as either the one in the films doing the terrorizing or as the victim.

I don’t mind controversial movies so long as the filmmaker is trying to make a point with the unpleasant subject matter. I did not like Videodrome and found it to be a trashy, weird, sci-fi, horror movie that featured Deborah Harry of the singing group, Blondie. I did, however, see the point Cronenberg attempted to get across. That point was no matter how disgusting and violent a movie is, some, if not all people can’t bring themselves to NOT watch it. It’s almost like a sick addiction.

If there is any point in making graphically violent movies today like "The Human Centipede" or the upcoming remake of "I Spit on Your Grave" (2010) due out this October, I suspect it’s to see how far a filmmaker can go in grossing out their viewers. There is no entertainment in that.

As Woods’ Max Renn says when he stumbled upon that satellite signal in Cronenberg’s film, these movies being released today, even if they’re just films, have no plot and no characters. It’s just torture and murder.

Oh, how I really wish that wasn’t so.

©8/7/10

No way to understand why some people go off the deep end

For as long as I live, I am never going to understand why people choose suicide or murder/suicide as a way out of their problems.

I didn’t understand it before hearing the tragic news of Coppell Mayor Jayne Peters murdering her 19-year-old daughter, Corrine, on the morning of July 12 before taking her own life.

I don’t understand it now, nor will I bother attempting to. I just don’t want to believe it.

The closest I have come to understanding what might be going through the mind of a suicidal individual was watching director Peter Jackson’s depressing child abduction movie, "The Lovely Bones" (2009), earlier this year.

The film is told from a young dead girl’s perspective as she watches over her grieving family from where I assume is Heaven. The best scenes I found were those imaginative “heavenly” sequences. They were so beautiful that I thought that fantasy world was much better than the one inhabited by the living.

I have to wonder if the kind of Heaven seen in "The Lovely Bones" is the type of world clinically depressed individuals believe they will be going to minutes after they’ve ended their lives here on Earth. If so, I’d venture to say depending on one’s beliefs about God, Heaven, Hell and eternal damnation, that person is in for a rude awakening.

I have gone through bouts of depression and encountered financial difficulties in my life. I don’t know of anyone who hasn’t in these trying economic times. For every moment I have been down in the dumps, however, I have always bounced back. As someone once told me, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” I just don’t see how things could be so bad as to not only want to end their own life but the life or the lives of someone close to them, if not complete strangers.

Much has been revealed in the weeks since the tragedy. Peters, who ran unopposed for mayor of Coppell in May 2009, was about to be investigated for personal charges she made on her city issued credit card. The Peters’ home had almost been foreclosed three times over the past year.

A recent news story revealed that Coppell High School where Corrine graduated from earlier this past spring had no records of her requesting her transcripts be sent to the University of Texas at Austin where friends assumed she would be attending this fall.

Internet readers and radio listeners have voiced their opinions on local talk shows citing possible factors that might have brought Jayne Peters to commit such a heinous, selfish act. Perhaps it was the husband, who passed away in January 2008 from cancer, who failed to make sure his family was financially secure after he died.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some say the Peters tragedy is the latest reason why America SHOULD have government run health care. People will probably argue that it doesn’t take long for families to be put in the poor house when their medical insurance doesn’t cover all the life-threatening treatments a family member suffers from.

Some probably blame the high school counselors at Coppell High School who wonder why they failed to ask Corrine, who may have been led to believe her mother had handled all the admissions requirements, had she not requested that her transcripts be sent to any colleges. Would such inquiries have been enough to prevent the unthinkable?

Then there are others who have made jackasses of themselves showing their true colors writing disgustingly hateful remarks in the comments sections of various news stories on the web. They were not just about Jayne Peters, but about her daughter as well. I am convinced now, more than ever of the saying, “Opinions are like a--holes. Everyone has one.” I firmly believe the number of a--holes who leave these sickening messages on the Internet far exceeds the number of Facebook users which stands at over 500 million.

There are lessons to be learned from the Peters saga though I am fairly certain they will fall on deaf ears. I believe the only time anyone will truly be sorry asking themselves, “Did I miss something,” is when something like this happens again. In the weeks since such unfortunate incidents have happened from the recent murder-suicide July 27 of a Mesquite couple whose children were not home at the time to the British father who murdered his two daughters and wife and then himself possibly due to financial difficulties.

The lessons to be learned from the Peters tragedy are two-fold. For family, friends and co-workers who might know someone who may be going through a tough time in their life don’t be afraid to ask them, “Hey, how are you doing?” Even if that person is perfectly fine with the world, at least it lets them know you care.

The second is for those contemplating going off the deep end because they have lost all hope in resolving their current situation, know that there are people to turn to. One of the seven deadliest sins is pride. Jayne Peters could have been too proud or too embarrassed given her status as a government official to confide in anyone, perhaps even her own daughter in the two years since her husband passed away to tell others about the financial troubles she was having.

If one is too embarrassed to talk to a family member about their problems, then contact a suicide prevention hotline or a psychologist. If one can’t afford a counselor, go to church and talk to God. You never know. He might just answer.

I am not going to state the obvious citing the person responsible for this tragedy is Jayne Peters regardless of the possible contributing factors. The bottom line is we’ll never know what drove her to do this. The only way one can understand the private Hell she might have been going through behind closed doors is to ask her. The only answer that comes back is silence.

Just as I refuse to believe something like this could happen, I would much rather believe that on the morning of July 12, Corrine was finally going to attend that Freshman orientation at the University of Texas at Austin to major in the health profession. I’d much rather believe that of all the things that could end the life of a son or daughter, the person a child should least suspect who could do them in is their own parent. I’d much rather believe Corrine had no idea what lay in store for her that fateful morning after walking back into the house.

Likewise, I have a hard time accepting the whole reason Jayne Peters did this was not only because she could no longer maintain the growing mountain of lies and deceit but because she had trouble "keeping up with the Joneses."

May God have mercy on the soul of Jayne Peters and may both she and Corrine rest in peace.

©7/31/10

My Personal Worst Films: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

A Nightmare on Elm Street «
R, 95m. 2010

Cast & Credits: Jackie Earle Haley (Freddy Krueger), Kyle Gallner (Quentin O’Grady), Rooney Mara (Nancy Holbrook), Katie Cassidy (Kris Fowles), Thomas Dekker (Jesse Braun), Kellan Lutz (Dean Russell), Clancy Brown (Alan Smith), Connie Britton (Dr. Gwen Holbrook), Lia D. Mortensen (Nora Fowles). Screenplay by Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer based on characters by Wes Craven. Directed by Samuel Bayer.

There is only one reason why this most unnecessary remake of Wes Craven’s 1984 horror classic grossed over $32 million opening weekend making it number one at the box office. The answer has to do with Jackie Earle Haley, last seen as the faceless Rorschach in last Spring’s anti-hero epic, "Watchmen" (2009). Here Haley is practically unrecognizable with his burned, scarred face, the black and red striped sweater, hat, and four bladed metallic hand as a supernatural child serial murderer who haunts the dreams of high school teenagers on Elm Street.

I know in the minds of horror geeks were it not for the desire to see Haley as Freddy Krueger in a macabre role, first made famous by Robert Englund back in over a handful of follow-ups the past two decades, there would be no reason to see this retread of "A Nightmare on Elm Street."

Like so many remakes of twenty plus year old classics Hollywood seems intent on destroying all because they have run out of original ideas, this latest redo begs the question, “Why even bother when the original was practically flawless to begin with?” That depends on who you talk to, that is. I already know the answer. Like last year’s successful box office reboot of "Friday the 13th", whose sequel is now officially dead, or the redo of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (2003), the whole purpose of studios bringing these dormant horror franchises back to life is not just to lure a whole new generation of fans of such notorious movie psycho slashers as Jason, Leatherface, and Freddy Krueger, but to show how much better today’s filmmakers stupidly think their versions are when they have a larger budget to play with.

When will horror want-to-be movie makers learn the reason films like Craven’s original Nightmare was so effective in a fun, creepy way, and maybe even suspenseful, was because they were made on very low budgets. The original was by no means a classic, but the idea was clever in a grotesque way. It’s been over twenty years since I saw the first one, but I remember some of the horrific eye-popping visuals. I vaguely recall Johnny Depp, for example, in his first movie role as one of the victims whose innards and blood decorate an entire bedroom. I can’t remember if in the first one when one of the high school teens answers the phone in her dreams if Freddy’s bulging tongue comes out from the receiver to lick her face. I do remember one poor soul though turning into a cockroach but that was in a later installment.

This latest Elm Street reincarnation is literally a nightmare and not the kind where you are scared to go to sleep. It’s the kind where you are so bored watching what’s on screen, you are actually fighting to stay awake. There is no jump out of your seat surprises like in the predecessor as Freddy terrorizes his young victims with that metallic four bladed clawed hand of his wherever and whenever they are sleeping from classrooms and basements to bathrooms and bedrooms. Every shot of that deadly weapon whether it’s making an appearance inside a bathtub while a teenager is dozing off or having a doctor in the emergency room give a sedative that turns out to be a metallic hand instead has been shown in the trailer. In addition to those scenes of victims waking up to find themselves bloodily scared by that infamous metallic claw.

The only unexpected revelation the film offers is how Haley’s child molesting school janitor met his fiery fate at the hands of the parents who took justice into their hands years before upon learning what the guy is doing to their little kids behind closed doors. That was not exactly covered in graphic detail in Craven’s original but was explained by one of the adult characters.

You will note I haven’t mentioned any of the teenage characters here, a couple of whom survive Freddy Krueger’s vengeful wrath close to the end or who meet their grisly fates early on. I see no point in it. The ones who get knocked off early are only on screen for a few moments. The others who manage to last the entire film don’t give us any reason to root for their characters in hopes they can beat Freddy at his own game. That’s not their purpose here anyway. They’re just pawns for Freddy to terrorize and eventually mutilate.

For horror buffs younger than twenty with little or no knowledge that there was an original "A Nightmare on Elm Street" decades before, they will probably be more than happy to accept Haley as their Freddy Krueger. For us old folks like me who tire of Hollywood revamping the old stuff, there is only ONE Freddy Kruger, and he was the nightmarish ghoul Robert Englund played.

This redo makes me want to say, “Goodnight Freddy and good riddance.”

©5/5/10

Where have all the notable movie critics gone?

Are there any wannabe amateur film critics out there who think their writing could one day be the equivalent of such opinionated and popular film critics as Vincent Canby, Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael, Gene Siskel and Bruce Williamson?

It's a question I have been asking myself now more than ever, given the recent firing in March of top film critic Todd McCarthy by the editors of Variety magazine. McCarthy had been with the publication since 1979 and was among several employees the publication laid off as a cost-cutting measure, according to a March 8 article on www.thewrap.com.

"We are not changing our review policy," said Variety's Group Editor Tim Gray. "Last year we ran more than 1,200 film reviews. No other news outlet comes even close, and we will continue to be the leader in numbers and quality. It doesn't make economic sense to have full-time reviewers but Todd, Derek (Elley), and David (Rooney} have been asked to continue as freelancers."

The larger blow to fans of film criticism, however, came late March with news that after 24 seasons, "At the Movies" (1986-2010), the popular show that started with Chicago film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, was canceled. Its roots date back to 1975 when the show was called "Sneak Previews" on PBS. The program's final broadcast with current critics, A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips, will air Aug. 14.

I know there are a lot of movie-goers out there who apparently can't make up their mind and don't feel like wasting two hours of their time sitting through a movie they may not like. They need guidance when it comes to movies, or anything else for that matter. So, they rely on the likes of Ebert, Rolling Stone's Peter Travers and reviewers in their local city paper, or they ask some underpaid, overworked customer service representative in a blue shirt at their neighborhood Blockbuster Video if a certain new release on the shelves is worth their money.

Back when I lived in Chicago in the '70s and early '80s, I made it a weekly Friday and Sunday ritual to go through the entertainment sections of the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times to see what Siskel and Ebert said about the week's latest releases. It wasn't that I was hoping they would like a movie that I liked.

God knows they've endorsed movies I loathed, like "Howard's End" (1992), "The English Patient" (1996), and "The Last Temptation of Christ" (1988), all of which I should keep on my shelf as a means to cure insomnia.

I looked to their reviews, whether they were positive or negative. It's the only reason why today, I still sometimes download their review segments on www.youtube.com and www.atthemoviestv.com. I want to hear them argue passionately why one disagrees on a title the other likes, such as "Benji the Hunted" (1987), "Full Metal Jacket" (1987), and "The Doors" (1991).

Back then, my reason for referring to such reviews that Pauline Kael wrote or Bruce Williamson of Playboy wrote is because I was interested in what they had to say. [Yes perverts -- there was more than one reason to read Playboy, and it wasn't just for the X-rated pictorials].

Today, that's not the case. Movie reviews today read like press releases. Every time I read someone's review that says, "for a good date movie," or "for a good action-adventure movie," I cringe, because the writer has no idea what I like. I don't want to know if they claim I am going to like it. I want to know what they thought about it.

There is a wealth of information on the Internet and in magazines now that I can go to for information and reviews on the latest movies from Film Comment and Empire magazine to Entertainment Weekly and even Variety, which says despite McCarthy's departure, the publication is still going to run reviews from other writers. They just won't be by the ones readers have come to know over the past three decades.

Despite "At the Movies" cancellation, Ebert has said on his blog that he is working on a new film review program to feature two new critics. The thumbs will return he has said. The question is, who he gets? I doubt they will have the same cultural impact as he and Siskel, who passed away in 1999, or Siskel's replacement, Richard Roeper, did.

Whoever is in the balcony, I don't think we will see their likenesses parodied in Mad magazine, in a Batman comic book, in an animated cartoon called "The Critic" (1994-1995) or in movies like "Summer School" (1987) and "Godzilla" (1998). Nor do I see them making appearances with Jay Leno and David Letterman.

There will always be film critics, probably more, now that anyone can do a blog, just not the notably famous writers I enjoyed reading on a regular basis. For me personally, the balcony closed a long time ago.

©4/28/10