Ebert Presents: At the Movies

Roger Ebert debuted his long-awaitied return to TV, Ebert Presents: At the Movies, this past weekend on PBS.  It's been 36 years since Roger, along with his co-host Gene Siskel started their weekly hour-long movie review show, originally called Sneak Previews.  This new show largely has Mr. Ebert working behind the scenes as producer.  Throat and salivary cancer has robbed his voice but you can't stop this man's ambition.  He will have a short segment at the end of each show, where he will review a new film.  The first episode had director Werner Herzog narrate Roger's review which was pretty cool to hear.  It would be awesome if he talked for Roger every week!

So with this new show, Roger's left the bulk of the movie reviewing to movie critics Christy Lemire of The Associated Press and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of Mubi.com.  The first thing you'll notice is how young the Russian-born Ignatiy is (24).  During the first show, the two hosts didn't really seem to have much chemistry,  but we'll see how that develops once they get into a groove.  Interestingly, Christy gave a "thumbs down" to all 5 films they reviewed, while Ignatiy gave a "thumbs up" to each of them.  It's just one show, but to me it did seem like Ignatiy was way too forgiving when it came to a lot of the movies' flaws.  But, maybe the contrast will keep things interesting.

Being a huge Orson Welles fan, it was cool to see all the Wellesian references throughout the first show.  They reviewed the great, classic noir film, The Third Man, probably Welles most famous acting role.  Plus, they introduced the critics in the style of Welles famous trailer for Citizen Kane.  Then they finished off the show with Ebert's face replacing Welle's famous entrance in The Third Man.  Not to mention using Anton Karas' Third Man theme as the theme for the show!  The vain Welles would have been sick with pride.