See You, "At The Movies"

This past week, the program "At The Movies" ended its very long run. It's tough to compete in this day and age when you can find movie reviews just about anywhere. I watched the show ever since it started on public television and was called "Sneak Previews."
 I always got a kick out of seeing Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel have a heated disagreement then give those famous "Thumbs Up" or "Thumbs Down" recommendations for any given movie.
It later years, the name of the show changed many times. As I recall, it went from "Sneak Previews," to "Siskel & Ebert: At The Movies," to "Ebert & Roeper: At The Movies," then finally just "At The Movies."
Part of the change was because sadly, co-host Gene Siskel died of a brain tumor in 1999. After a number of fill-in guest hosts, Richard Roeper sat in to review movies with Roger Ebert. Ebert fought (and is still vigorously fighting) cancer himself, and he eventually had to leave the show, yet still maintains his own website where he reviews movies--a lot of movies. The guy won't be beaten down by disease even though he can no longer speak. The show's final two hosts were A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips. They were both watchable enough, but no pair can ever hold a candle to the team of Siskel and Ebert. I even modeled the opening of a movie review program I hosted in college after one of their early openings, where the two argue as they walk into a movie theatre. Roger Ebert, a longtime film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, won a Pulitzer Prize, and is the author of several books about film. I'm glad he's still around to give us his take on movies today, and I hope he stays around for many years to come. I have many fond memories of "At The Movies," which won't be forgotten (by me, anyway) for a long, long time (I hope).
As they used to say at the close of each program, it looks like "The balcony is closed," but this time, for good.

"At The Movies" Cancelled

Well, I guess it had to happen sometime, the long running movie review program "At The Movies" has been cancelled.
As you'll see from the article in the above link, the show was made popular by the late Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, who continues to churn out regular film reviews of his own. I had watched it since its early days (before it was called "At The Movies,") and it inspired me to be a movie critic in college. That was where I launched "The Screening Room," which aired weekly on the college TV station.
That venue allowed me access to people like Today Show movie critic Gene Shalit, with whom I once spoke on the telephone.  I also wrote to Roger Ebert, got his autograph and some advice about movie reviews. I later became Facebook friends with another of the show's hosts, movie critic Richard Roeper.
There are many places you can now go to get reviews of movies, but the real trend setters are becoming few and far between. Not too long ago, "Variety" dismissed its longtime film critic, and with the popularity of blogs and other forms of social networking websites, it's easy to follow the notion that, really, the only true opinion of a movie that really matters is your own.
Although, I still believe it's good to sample what critics have to say about a new film. You can do that a lot easier now by going to sites like rottentomatoes.com and others.
In any case, "At The Movies" was a groundbreaking show, and it will be missed.