{"id":11606,"date":"2021-08-22T12:09:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-22T19:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=11606"},"modified":"2021-08-23T12:14:15","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T19:14:15","slug":"the-birth-of-thumbs-up-thumbs-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2021\/08\/22\/the-birth-of-thumbs-up-thumbs-down\/","title":{"rendered":"The Birth of Thumbs Up\/Thumbs Down"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from InsideHook<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Was It About Siskel and Ebert?<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

The podcast “Gene and Roger” delves into the sometimes-contentious relationship that catapulted two Chicago film critics to legendary status<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY\u00a0MICHAEL STAHL<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?time_continue=8&v=qd8wAyYcRXc&feature=emb_title\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the PG-rated 1993 film Cop and a Half<\/em>, Burt Reynolds portrays a curmudgeonly police officer who\u2019s seen it all \u2026 almost. Despite his protest, Reynolds\u2019s no-nonsense detective is tasked with babysitting an eight-year-old boy while on the job. He has to show him the ropes so that the kid, who\u2019d witnessed a mafia hit, will finger the offender. The boy\u2019s biggest dream in life is to become a cop, and he seizes the opportunity when it presents itself by blackmailing the police force into a ride-along. Hijinks ensue<\/a>, and the kid\u2019s meddlesome ways torture Reynolds\u2019s character. He wants to catch the bad guys; the boy just wants to have fun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s David vs. Goliath, directed by \u201cThe Fonz\u201d himself: Henry Winkler. In spite of earning more than $26 million in profit<\/a> for its producers and spawning a 2017 spinoff<\/a> starring Lou Diamond Phillips, Cop and a Half <\/em> holds a pitiful score of 14 percent on Rotten Tomatoes\u2019 Tomatometer<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critics hated it. With one shocking exception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roger Ebert, already a legendary film critic who\u2019d won a Pulitzer Prize, said upon its release that Cop and a Half <\/em> was \u201camusing\u201d and that it \u201cmoves.\u201d He also praised the performances of Reynolds and Norman D. Golden II, as the titular \u201cHalf.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSomewhat to my surprise, I liked it,\u201d he said, concluding his onscreen TV review. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ebert then\u00a0turned away from his lens<\/a>\u00a0and faced his broadcast partner, Gene Siskel, a highly respected film critic in his own right, to hear his remarks.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWowee,\u201d the fellow Midwesterner Siskel began, gobsmacked by Ebert\u2019s upbeat take. Through syncopated crosstalk, Siskel panned the performances, insisting there was no chemistry between Reynolds and Golden II, who he said seemed to be \u201clooking for his lines.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGee, I thought it was dumb,\u201d Siskel added about the movie as a whole. \u201cNot colorful whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barbed disagreements like this one \u2014 though it was hardly contained to a single exchange \u2014 helped keep Siskel and Ebert on the air, together, for the better part of a quarter century. Beginning in 1975, Gene Siskel, a\u00a0Chicago Tribune\u00a0<\/em>reviewer, teamed up with Roger Ebert, critic at the\u00a0Chicago Sun-Times<\/em>, for a series of television programs that pitted the local newspaper rivals against each other, thereby providing audiences with distinctive, nuanced but uniformly astute observations on feature films.\u00a0It was Goliath vs. Goliath, and the legacy of these programs, as well as the personalities of the cohosts, is the subject of a compelling new audio documentary series,\u00a0Gene and Roger<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at InsideHook<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from InsideHook What Was It About Siskel and Ebert? The podcast “Gene and Roger” delves into the sometimes-contentious relationship that catapulted two Chicago film critics to legendary status BY\u00a0MICHAEL STAHL In the PG-rated 1993 film Cop and a Half, Burt Reynolds portrays a curmudgeonly police officer who\u2019s seen it all \u2026 almost. Despite his protest, Reynolds\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}