Dear lord, that Ebert article was very, very hard to read. That is one dedicated man.

The part about Siskel just killed me.

I shouldn't have read it at work, it's hard to talk tech support on the phone when you're all choked up.

I will think of Roger Ebert every time I see a movie shopping bag with a baguette popping out the top or a dude walking by with a pane of glass. Because on one of his shows with Siskel, they did some kind of Cliche Roundup thing, and those were Roger's 'faves"...I guess I remember his more than Siskel's because I had never thought about them, and then, bang, there they were, everywhere. ETA: I know our disabilities are very different, but I was struck by his writing so much in long-hand. When I write in longhand, my style totally suffers. I get spare, and stuff, but more in a fragmented way than a Hemingway way. Also, Ebert gets both fanboy and humanity points for not writing reviews that would be essentially "Fuck you, how can you still care about this? My life is pretty fucked."Sometimes I write and take stuff out on people so I couldn't blame him if he did, but he doesn't. That is a standup human being, let alone movie critic.But I think to him, that would be like peeing in baptismal water or something.

That was a beautiful and heartbreaking piece.

I'm glad I stopped reading that at work and saved it for home. Such a great article.

Disney certainly does not come off well. Not that they deserve to.

Esquire has an utterly heartbreaking and beautiful article about Roger Ebert: [link]

That was a beautiful and heartbreaking piece.

Disney certainly does not come off well. Not that they deserve to.

I'm typing through tears. Disney can go fuck themselves!

They've cast the young Conan. I guess if you squint. He'll need tanning spray, though.

Hey! Hammer's excellent Brides of Dracula is up on YouTube. This one gets overlooked because no Christopher Lee, but it's got Peter Cushing and Terence Fisher directs and it's pretty spiff.

I'm reading up some blog reviews of old Hammer movies and Teleport City (one of my favorites) has this to say about Christopher Lee's Dracula (mind, this was written well before Stephanie Meyers vampires):

Christopher Lee’s interpretation of the count, based as fast and loose on the book as every other cinematic adaptation, has an air of sophistication about him, but it is quick to dissolve as Dracula acts more on his animalistic impulses. Here he is a monster, through and through, ferocious and terrifying. He does not woo the women; he simply takes them. He does not dazzle salon audiences with his wit and intelligence. He is a beast, a stalker, a predator without remorse or pity. In short, he’s the Dracula you thoroughly believe will kick your ass. My number one complaint about vampires, besides the fact that modern tales of vampires so often give them silly names, is that they’re generally played up as lonely, tortured souls given to self-indulgent whining about the sad state of their damnation. They’re not as likely to overpower and kill you as they are likely to bore you to tears with their moping and reading of bad teen angst poetry....

But here is a vampire who, for my tastes, does everything right. Christopher Lee isn’t a man or a monster so much as he is a barely contained forced that overpowers anything with which it comes into contact. He is strong, towering, and above all, menacing. When Christopher Lee as Dracula shows up, you believe with every inch of your soul that’s he going to put the serious hurt on you, not ask you to waltz or listen while he reads some verse to you. When this Dracula looks at you, he sees nothing but food. That Lee’s performance is so mesmerizing, so memorable, is testament to how good it truly is – he is on screen a total of less than ten minutes, and only has a handful of lines at the very beginning.