"Not that any of us could hope to match his productivity. Nor could we entertain the comforting fantasy that the daunting quantity of the man’s work — four decades of something like six reviews a week, as well as festival reports, learned essays on classic films and the occasional profile — must entail a compromise in quality. As A. J. Liebling said of himself, nobody who writes faster can write better, and nobody better is faster. The evidence is easy enough to find: in the Web archive, in his indispensable annual movie guides and in a dozen other books."Thanks Annette! Along with Mark Kermode, Ebert's the man I usually listen to in relation to films and a couple of his reviews were the basis for my MA Screen Studies dissertation topic. I so pleased he's still able to continue his written work.
In a similar vein, The Observer's main film writer, Philip French is soon to be honoured by Bafta and here ruminates on his career:
"Cinemas came to be for me what pubs were for boozers, places to celebrate for their character as much as for the quality of the intoxicating fare they provided. The smarter picture houses belonged to the national chains - the Odeons, the Gaumonts and the ABCs. But I came to prefer the small, sometimes insalubrious independent cinemas, often described as 'fleapits', that dotted every town in the country. They offered better value for money and you could always find old flicks, still in distribution in ragged prints after several decades, at these places."Which is an experience largely lost in a world were dvd is king and cinema runs are largely extended adverts for the home release. Shame.
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