Ebert, Roger

• Roger Ebert's Home Movie Companion

  • I'm a not-so-devoted fan of Siskel and Ebert, but I catch their syndicated show when I can. I find that of all critics, I end up agreeing with Ebert the most (about 75% of the time), and he writes fairly entertaining columns to boot. This book is a collection of such columns and can give you some good ideas for movie reviews. New versions come out each year and make good gifts.

• I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie

  • This title is a little misleading. These movie reviews range from mild displeasure (2 out of 4 possible stars) to disgust. There are some real gems in here, and the book reads pretty well straight through. Ebert writes a negative review in a very entertaining way, and I have to say from my own experiences, he's very brave. Based on the amount of hate mail I get over even mildly negative comments about some authors (like Weis and Hickman, for example, and see my Sour Grapes page for my generic response), I can only imagine the blizzard of venom he must subject himself to on a daily basis. To be honest, though, this is just a subset of his much larger home movie companion series, so I would only buy this as a bargain book or a gift for an Ebert fan. I'd much rather own the companion for sheer usefulness.

• Ebert's Bigger Little Movie Glossary

  • This is a satirical deconstruction of the most commonly seen movie cliches, collected over the years by Ebert, thanks mostly to readers who send them in. Examples include the bomb defusion rule, which says "No bomb can be defused if it is more than ten seconds away from detonation." and the law of relative walking speeds, which says "No matter how fast the would-be victim runs, the slasher can always keep up just by walking steadily." Lots of good laughs here, depending upon how big of a movie buff you are.

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