Those of you looking at the fall schedules trying to find the "At the Movies" TV show on the dial are sure to be disappointed.
The movie review show that originated with reviewers Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert finally left the air in August. Of course, both Siskel and Ebert were long gone from the show by that point: Siskel died in 1999, and Ebert left the air because of complications from thyroid cancer that left him unable to speak. His co-host Richard Roeper, who joined the show to replace Siskel, kept the show going without Ebert around but left in 2008.
The final incarnation of the show featured A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips, and as passionate as they were about movies, they could never conjure up the same kind of heated arguments that Siskel and Ebert would have during their glory days. There was also a short period of time when the two reviewers were Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz, two TV guys whose reviews did not go over well with the movie fans out here.
In the end the distributors at Disney finally put the show out of its misery after years of decline. It was getting to the point where the review show would end up airing in the late hours of Sunday night - or more accurately, early Monday morning. By the time the show got around to airing on these local stations, most of the new movies would have already rolled out in theatres anyway. So the reviews would have been too late.
So the plug was pulled and the Disney incarnation of At the Movies has signed off for good. But fear not, movie fans. Roger Ebert had been working on reviving a traditional movie-critic show similar to what he had hosted in syndication. Finally, the good news came down that a deal had been struck.
The show will be called Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies, and it will be co-produced by Ebert and his wife Chaz. It will air on public television across the USA. The format will be similar to what you used to see on the syndicated At the Movies show, but even though it will have the same name as the old show, Disney has absolutely nothing to do with it anymore. It will be a completely new venture led by Roger and Chaz Ebert.
For Ebert it is going to be a return to the PBS stomping grounds where he and Siskel launched their careers back in the mid-Seventies. They also are planning to go back to showing the reviewers in a balcony giving their "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" - a signature of the old Siskel and Ebert show. Ebert in fact owns the trademark for the thumbs and pulled them off the old syndicated At the Movies show after he left.
The plan is to have Elvis Mitchell and Christy Lemire as the reviewers on the show - both of them respected print critics. At least, they are more respected than Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz were when they hosted At the Movies in syndication. Roger Ebert also plans to be involved and seen on the air from time to time with the new computerized voice he is using now.
Whether the actual presentation will be any good, though, is a different story. Neither Mitchell nor Lemire strike me as being the type of folks who will get into fistfights over whether a movie is any good or not.
The thing is - when Siskel and Ebert were on the air, part of the appeal of the show was the fact that these two HATED one another. They were rivals from competing newspapers from the same city, Chicago. They never skipped an opportunity to one-up one another on the show. When those two disagreed, boy, did the fur fly.
That's what made the original Siskel and Ebert show so great. There was a spark, a chemistry about those two that made it must-see viewing for movie fans. As a result, this was a show that had a lot of populist appeal to it.
I just don't know if Mitchell and Lemire are going to replicate that - they are just totally different personalities. In fact, I wonder whether their show is going to appeal to the populist movie fans at all. I think we might end up with a very serious PBS-style show when this movie review effort gets under way in January.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the new show launches in January. In any event it is good to see Ebert get back involved in TV once again. I'm of the opinion that any show that will give the movies some serious coverage on TV is bound to be a good thing for the movie geeks out there who want to see it.
