Siskel & Ebert Advise Young Movie Critics 

now it's job-threatening not to like certain IP products from Hollywood.

@@zogwort1522 you’re so off base. There’s no such thing as “accurately judging the quality of films”. The great thing about film is the subjectivity. I could love a movie and it just hits me in a certain emotional way while it bores you to tears. That doesn’t make the film any worse or better. Are some films objectively poorly made on a technical level? Yes. But, it’s only a part of a critic’s job to judge a film on that level

@@zogwort1522 they’re not conmen when its free to read or view their reviews. Movies are not just a technical science. They are an art. Much like how an art critic can not judge the value a painting will bring to different people or a food critic can’t judge if a different person will like the taste of a dish. In a sense, film critics are just authors who are creating reviews as their own art form to be entertaining and informative reads, letting you know their thoughts on the film rather than it being a definitive guide on if you will or will not see a movie. Whether you see the film and your personal takeaways from it are completely up to you. It’d be pretty boring if a critic could just tell you the answer to if something was good or bad and everyone just held that exact same view about a movie

True, they were champions of so much. Just listening to them here and there is also the one on here where in 1995 they talked Hollywood Culture. What Gene said was so passionate. You could tell they were not crying wolf at all. When Gene died, the era ended, although Roger kept going until his death in 2013.

@@zogwort1522 Zog, you are going to find that many of the truths we cling to, depend greatly on our own point of view.

@@zogwort1522 You hear that, my friend Obi-Wan? Your wisdom is trivial.

@@dr.juerdotitsgo5119 how is this a reply to my comment? Lol. My comment was about political correctness, not objectivity in film.

Damn this is really insightful, well-written stuff. Thank you for this

Go back and watch what he says on siskelandebert.org and think, "Man, was he so wise." I loved his dumping on St. Elmo's Fire, for example.

He did get stuck a lot on what he wanted a movie to be. "Why does it have to be set in Paris with 2 couples? Haven't we seen that enough? How about 2 children, a robot and an orangutan in Ecuador?" But I kind of loved his quirks too.

Right. As did Roger, with films like Blue Velvet, Die Hard, Cabin Fever, etc. I respect the balls of anybody not going with the crowd and just stating their own opinion, whether they happen to like a film others disliked, or vice versa

Zog Wort sciences? It’s art, you moron.

@@zogwort1522 Very few professional critics let alone RU-vid critics ever did a better job at movie criticism than these guys, especially Ebert. Anyone who can't understand the points they make here will continue to fail at any attempt to be a good movie critic.

Yey, and net for anyone who must and need to use their own voice!!!

@@zogwort1522 great point!

True but in the social media/blog/podcast world, people seem to be on the total opposite end of the spectrum and only write their personal feelings and conflate those feelings with facts

@@StephenRahrig Absolutely, confusing facts with feelings is just as bad as confusing feelings with facts.

Go to the website siskelandebert.org. You will see stuff from the early days that is fuckin' great.

@@sha11235 Someone else must have bought that website. There's nothing about Siskel or Ebert there now.

Maybe sitting in a theater all day, every day for 30 years causes cancer

That’s great. I’m actually thinking of starting a film blog (I don’t know how to put together a functioning website to save my life, so I’ll probably need someone else to do that part for me), and I’ve been writing reviews since adolescence, and Ebert played a HUGE part in me finding my own style just by that rule. Using the word ‘I’ injects SO much personality into your review, and it is instantly gonna make people more likely to want to read it, and keep reading your work

Ebert isn't gonna notice you Zog Wart, he's dead

I don't know what you mean, are RU-vidrs going to be the death of entertainment criticism? they're just random people sharing opinions aren't they? the only power they have is what you give them and the amount of viewers/people that watch their content. A much bigger problem is the "Professionals" the brand names that get put in the movie's "Here's what the critics are saying!" ads with "10/10" or "5/5 stars" next to them, that praise a film and ignore the flaws so that they agree with everyone instead of having courage like this video says.

@@webbedshadow2601 Every film has flaws, who gives a shit? That's not how Ebert, or anyone views movies

@@webbedshadow2601 Random YT morons like MauLer who's ability to critique a work begins and ends at bitching at plotholes are trusted more than actual critics who give actual criticism who actually know what they're talking about.

You can give objective reviews without subjectivity. Objectivity means not influenced by personal opinions or feelings. It’s simply choosing which standard to apply to a piece of art and applying it that way.

Unfortunately, it seems like youtube pseudo-intellectuals took the opposite approach.

It is even more apropos today compared to before.

Siskel’s review of Blue Velvet: “A powerful experience, a masterful exercise in controlling an audience’s attention”

Haha dead on. Not the same depth, but perfect for what it was!

Siskel was describing virtue-signaling before it had a name.

Yep, and then Roger said political correctness was the fascism of 90’s (4:50). I also LOVE that comparison to ventriloquism (5:16) 🤣

Amen! ❤

Here here, mate!

Well said mate. And then we’ll get a 11 hour long EFAP podcast dedicated to this clip, and 6 parts on why “Siskel and Ebert are wrong”/“Ebert: The Fool” something like that

They're talking about speaking with your own voice. I don't know why mauler would have a problem with this advice.

@@insidethefire3711 - I think this is referring to the part where Ebert mentions objectivity vs. subjectivity in film reviews and analyses (00:48 - 01:27, to be specific).

Who's this Mauler, may I ask?

@@Neville60001 He's a YT film critic who has made critiques several hours long that they have to be broken down into multiple parts. He's also a staunch believer in objectivity within the arts, claiming his critiques are "objective."

Political Correctness existed in the 1980s, 1990s and Early 2000s (2000 - 2005) However it was a minor problem. Ever since 2006 political correctness has gone out of control.

NerdMaster John I would say 2012. Don’t remember anything like this during the mid 2000s

Wow.... Wow. I knew these guys weren't politically correct but to hear them talk about it directly this long ago is amazing. Way ahead of there time.

If they thought that not treating people like shit because they were a bit different was bad, then I'm not sure if their definition of bad can be trusted too much in such matters.

@@nerdmasterjohn8028 political correctness ahs always been a thing and is never only about being "progressive" or "liberal" but about belonging to a majority or agreeing with mainstream ideas, what "being politically correct" means shifts as fast as what the mainstream thinks.

We must remember that they built this relationship over many years. It didn't start that way.

Indeed! I definitely agree with their opinions on that everyone should be able to critique a film however they please, and not worry about how offended others may get over it. Of course, that does not mean you should avoid criticism, obviously. However, I disagree with Ebert’s take on how all criticism is subjective, as criticism can be objective as well as subjective.

@@markparkinson6947 Even the value of the criticism that is objective is applied subjectively.

@@knowledgeanddefense1054 What would be an example of this?

@@markparkinson6947 How much objectively worse does the disappearing dagger make The Last Jedi? If this was an actual objective field, like math, we would know-wouldn't we? Whether it makes TLJ a bad film is dependent on how much it as well as other inconsistencies matter to you which varies from person to person, how much do inconsistencies in general affect a movie's overall quality to a certain viewer both in general and compared to other aspects of filmmaking, the subjective limit of minor/major continuity errors (which mauler even admitted at 1 point depends on each person's own scale before forgetting how this affect the rest of his argument) to differentiate an "objectively" good movie from bad? People like mauler can only answer these questions from a subjective standpoint, because the truth is there is no existing definition for an objectively good and bad film, he made that up.

@@knowledgeanddefense1054 That's interesting. Inconsistencies can be very hard to find sometimes, especially in a critically acclaimed film, and without the story being able to backtrack to acknowledge how the supposed flaw affects the movie, it can be very difficult to determine. And I am loving how spot on you can be about Mauler's critiques on objective film criticism. I would love to know which part of the video did Mauler admit the "depends on each person's own scale" part, and I would also like to see you make an entire video where you critique Mauler's entire Force Awakens critique, so I can understand the scope of the arguments he makes, as you act as a very good guide on the subject.

Why do you think they didn't?

What were the films you disagreed with their reviews of? I’m curious

@@Overseer2579 mainly slashers and comedies

Siskel and Ebert and the movies......sometime in the mid to late 90s

LOL. I wonder..

Woah.. Why are you so convinced they didn't sincerely like that film? I thought it was fantastic.

@@davidlevy4291 Michael Medved was one of the few critics to publicly slam that movie, and he claimed to know critics who actually hated it but wrote glowing reviews because they didn't want to be seen as agreeing with Christians. I've seen the movie, and it stinks.

It’s almost as if definitions of terms change and are reappropriated overtime ;)

@@britneyhochman5204 I rather call it using the term wrong long enough so lot of people have wrong idea about it.

@@MIloszKluski also valid!

Have you ever visited The Unitarian Universalist Church of Studio City? It's great.

@@thebrushpainter I haven’t

No, it really isn't. PC back then was literal government institutions trying to censor media that percieved as corrupting children. PC now is just a bunch of people on Twitter telling you not to be a dick, and private companies caring about their personal interests.

@@robertbarrass9176 Uhhh, I didn't know anyone in fear of losing their job back then for their opinions. Nowadays you have many. And nowadays it is a lot more than what you just said. There are many people who are cancelled and censored, like Paula Dean for something she said 30 years before. You didn't have that kind of crazy stuff. You must be really young or have severe memory problems.

Ah, who am I kidding? They'll just memorize the part about political correctness and block out the rest.

They'll just make a 5 hour breakdown where they distort every single syllable spoken by Silkel and Ebert.

Zog Wort How dare somebody make fun of your precious Mauler!

Zog Wort If anybody’s offended it’s you. You see somebody make fun of Mauler and you just have to defend him.

Zog Wort I’m not even defending Ebert dumbass, I’m just making fun of Mauler and his EFAP buddies.

I was thinking the same thing. I would even go further. It is much much worse today to the point that Siskel's advice on being brave would not apply anymore. I can speak from personal experience where I myself gave a review for a guidebook which was honest yet not PC.

Comparatively, its a whole lot better now then it was back in the 1990's and even before that. In the 1900's, there was far more organizations in the highest echelons of power (Government and Church) that were actively trying to ban media for potentially corrupting young children into Satanism and Communism. This especially reached a peak in between the 1970's to the 1990's. Films were more widely banned, mostly because of the increase in gore, violence and Satanic imagery that would often be displayed in them. Comics were actively censored by the United States government due to fears that the violent actions taken in them would corrupt children into doing violent actions. Violent Video Games have always been on the brink of destruction since they are a great scape-goat for any school shooting that has happened over the last God knows how many years. Comparatively, now the worst you will get is a brigade on Twitter, maybe an article or two talking about whatever the controversy is, and someone getting fired from the production of the media being created. Government intervention (which is what Political Correctness is) isn't as bad as it use to be.

@@robertbarrass9176 No it wasn't. I lived through the 1990s. And I don't remember anyone in fear of losing their job just because they had a certain political opinion. The crap you are talking about the fear of communism was gone by that time with the fall of the Berlin wall. I don't remember hearing much about satanism either. There was a push to put labels on records with "offensive" language, but not to ban them because of it. I personally actually think that is a good thing since it gave the purchaser a choice. But regardless of what one thinks, that by no means is comparable to the cancel culture today where many artists are actually banned, which is a whole different level. You don't really seem to know what you are talking about.

@Geralt of Trivia then he'll say it's about consistency, not realism, despite spending a great deal of time questioning realism in a space wizard franchise; he'll then fail to prove how the supposed inconsistency hurts the franchise in any meaningful level.

@@zogwort1522 being dishonest would make it dishonest.

@@zogwort1522 I can never tell if EFAP's defenders apparent lack of text interpretation habilities and overall inability to criticize a statement on any level beyond "face value" are just an attempt to purposefully mimc Edmunds' and his dogs "style", or if it's just sincere lack of undertanding; probably both, but it never fails to amuse.

Also, can anyone tell me what happened to Geralt of Trivia? Was he/she/they mass flagged by EFAP stans, or the account was willingly deleted?

Goodfellas is one of my favorite films and it is indeed not objectively better than anything else that was ever filmed, and criticism has no inherent value. Art is created for us to give it that value, not the other way around... It's like how Goodfellas' director can say that comic book films aren't cinema, even if some of those are (in my opinion) amazing.