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amartyrosian's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
krobcecil's review against another edition
3.0
As a college freshman, I attended the Ebert/Scorsese Wexner Center interview which acts as the centerpiece to this critical/career retrospective. This was over 15 years ago now, so much of the content felt absolutely fresh; but there were many ideas that I've since owned to a point I truly believed they were my own thoughts. When people claim to not like horror, musicals, melodramas, etc. I often try to explain that genre doesn't matter, what is done within the genre matters*. I now suspect this has roots in Ebert's line "A film is not about its subject; it's about how it's about its subject." The interview is fantastic, full of wisdom, trivia, humor and humility. The problem with the rest of the book is that it is a compilation rather than a whole. While the interview is a naturally flowing dialog, the rest of the book is a complied chronological overview. Ebert's reviews and articles on each film are given, but no editing has been done in the assembly. The same brilliant insights are offered over and over and over, until the depth of an observation is lost to familiarity. This may work better as a reference book where, after reading the essential interview, it is kept handy and picked up only after viewing a specific film.
*To be fair, I have a tendency to avoid War films.
*To be fair, I have a tendency to avoid War films.
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