Sneak Previews-"Best of 1980"-WTTW-TV11 Chicago (12-30-80) 

Agreed. I've argued it should have been nominated for... anything. My mom took my brother and I to see it in the theatre for his birthday. We were 10 and 7. It is even more awesome now as it was then.

so is The Shining

"Ordinary People" is a masterpiece. I never saw Coal Miner's Daughter.

This has been my paradigm shift in the past few years. I've been rejecting nuMedia for the classics I missed in decades past. Hopefully one day America cinema becomes an art form again.

Many are classic movies now.

Just like we didn't know how good we had it then in just about every aspect.....it seems every few years "quality" of anything and everything (including society, quality of life) drops lower and lower

Qualitatively speaking, 1980 was a significant decline from the heady highs of the 70s that made their job such a delight. The 80s was a bummer decade for pretty much every form of media, and Siskel & Ebert's coverage of the movie beat during that time certainly reflects it. I actually think they'd each be enraptured with the availability of so many great movies today from around the world. Certainly in the last few years of his life (1996-98), Siskel embraced the rise of the indie/off-Hollywood scene and gave more Thumbs Up reviews than in years prior. And from 2003-2013, Ebert lauded movies with such joyful abandon in the final decade of his life that many people regularly accused him of having gone soft! I don't see why that trend would have stopped had he lived longer. Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory. Or a selective one, as the case may be. And it's worth pointing out that Mr. Baca's observation about societal conditions and quality of life dropping "every few years" is empirically wrong in almost every way.

@@flaccidusminimus2170 What are some notable films/studios in the indie/non-Hollywood scene?

@@Urlocallordandsavior From what era? Are you asking me about what I like among recent releases? American movies only?

Agreed, but in 1980, The Shining was released to mixed reviews at best and did not make back its budget domestically. Likely the film was a bit much for the two critics at the time.

Oh God Book II? NO way... thats a decent list, but not that forgettable junk.

y'all are some lazy boomers if you think there aren't amazing and wonderful movies being made today.

"The Fog" was an excellent horror film.

You read Gene's mind here exactly.

But in 1990, Kevin Costner made a visionary achievement

I'm watching the 4k blu ray now. It's very slow. I've seen this movie before, many years ago, but I forgot just how boring most of it is. There are a few classic scenes.

@@CoolhandLukeSkywalkr It's a movie about music that happens to be funny. It's a living tribute to shitty band life.

@@blastbeatindustries3191 I like the movie overall, I just give it a slight thumbs up, rather than enthusiastic. Have you watched the 4k disc, the audio sound quality on the 4k disc is crazy. Can't believe how good it sounds, actually.

@@CoolhandLukeSkywalkr I do agree with Ebert that all of the car chases could have been cut from the movie. Then there would be more time left for more music stuff.

@@blastbeatindustries3191 Would have made it less boring to me, the car chases are slow parts. That DTS:X audio track sure is good though.

_The Black Stallion_ was released in 1979, yes, but only in New York and Los Angeles. It did not make it to the rest of the country (including Chicago) until 1980. You may also notice that _Being There_ and _The Great Santini_ are also on Gene and Roger's top ten, since the same is true of those two films.

@@jessecoffey4737 - I thought it was probably something like that. Odd that it took over two months before it was released in Chicago after its New York premier. I think Roger must have been at the New York premier, since his written review for the film was dated Oct 17th, 1979.

@@Jim_Wolf It was possible that Roger was previewing the film in New York for the Chicago market; _The Black Stallion_ had its Chicago premiere on April 4, 1980.

Gene and Roger gave it three-and-a-half stars. Here's Roger's: www.rogerebert.com/reviews/my-bodyguard-1980 Gene's was clipped by a user named rarollins2003 on newspapers.com and can be found at: www.newspapers.com/clip/91229161/chicago-tribune/

Cool 😎 !

Siskel and Ebert did not like the 80s at all. It was a decade when directors diminished power and the studios regained control, making the 80s a very box office hungry decade for movies. It was a decade for high-concept, amusement park filmmaking that has been established by Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the trend has gotten overblown year after year.

Code Of Silence

@@oldfashionedguy1368 Code of Silence is a good movie.

The film was considered to be a complete dud when it came out by most everyone [critics and movie-goers alike].

I have reason to believe they saw it in late March or early April; Gene's four-star review of _The Black Stallion_ appeared in the April 4, 1980 edition of the _Chicago Tribune._ Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, Chicago was a mixed bag as far as certain limited-release films acclaimed by NY/LA critics were concerned; this also is evidenced by Siskel's and Ebert's print reviews of _The Muppet Movie_ showing up on August 3, 1979 even though it showed up in LA and NY on June 22. In one of Roger Ebert's first non-film-review columns, written in January 1968, he observed that exhibitors in the Chicago market were particularly slow in their acquisition of foreign films for showing in a downtown theater (www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/why-those-films-dont-get-here ).

Most films didn't debut nationwide immediately unless they were what was considered a "major motion picture" or an "a-film". Instead films traveled region to region. It wouldn't be till the arrival of the multiplex which began to dominate in the 1980's where films began to see nationwide release at their debut. This is why TV spots ended with taglines "now playing at a theater near you" and "now playing nationwide/everywhere".

That's not an error, that's the fallibility of humanity attempting to quantify emotion.

@@bigduke5902 Partly. Aesthetics aren't purely about emotion, nor is list-making. One film grew on him over time, The Black Stallion probably faded. Yet his end of the decade Best Of list effectively revises the top of this one.

@@flaccidusminimus2170 Vis a vis per se. Ergo.

Artistically speaking, 1980 was a very significant decline from the personal films of the 70s that made their jobs so delightful. The 80s were generally considered by many critics and film historians as the worst decade for American cinema and Siskel and Ebert’s coverage certainly reflected that. In the mid 90s, they embraced the indie film movement and their thumbs up reviews have gradually increased. And a few years after Siskel’s death, Ebert gave so many thumbs up reviews with abandon.

Comparing apples and sailboats.

@@applescruff909 It’s S&E’s prerogative to prefer those (all fine) movies to The Shining but your comment suggests that it is such a different kind of film that it shouldn’t be considered at all.

Not really insane at all, if you happened to be living at the time. I saw all these films in 1980, was an avid watcher of Siskel and Ebert, and was a film reviewer for the high school and college papers that year. It was not immediately apparent at the time that The Shining was any kind of masterwork, and I didn't see it that way either. Coal Miner's Daughter and The Black Stallion were, and are, indisputably fine films, so it's no mystery at all why they preferred them. I was not a fan of Ordinary People, which was against the grain at the time, and, despite fine ensemble acting, it has faded in the public memory, even though it was the most acclaimed movie of the year at the time.

There not normies like you, what’s the problem?

Roger later added _The Shining_ to his Great Movies column.

They did not do a television review of the film, it debuted in Chicago on May 23, 1980, while the series was in hiatus. Nor did they appear to review it in print; a search of _Tom Horn_ on Ebert's website comes up empty in the review department, and it was reviewed in the _Chicago Tribune_ by then-critic-at-large Richard Christensen, who filled in for Siskel and gave the film two and a half stars. Siskel later did a capsule review and gave it three stars, finding it routine yet well-acted.

*Roger

The series was out of production during the summer of 1980, which the film was released in.

The film was on Roger's top ten for 1980 and was a runner-up on Gene's list for that year.

"Airplane" got three stars from Siskel and Ebert in print on its initial release. A full review of the film in the Tribune was published by the paper's rock critic, Lynn Van Matre, who also gave the film three stars.

^It was on Roger's Top 10 list as noted near the end of the show.

​@@condor7810 And, as I mentioned in the description, it was one of the seven runner ups for Gene's Top 10 in 1980.

Gene hated 1980 so much, at least, because, in his view, it had been "a year of big budget bombs and small budget cruelties" in which "a $30 million musical and a $36 million western closed in a week", "women in films were stabbed, garroted, hatcheted and raped in record number", "the actors struck for 10 weeks for a share of cable and cassette profits", "films with black actor in major roles were scarce [and] films about black anger were non-existent", a lot of "corporate Hollywood" movies were born out of tax shelter deals, movies seemed to be made for a direct sale to TV and to home video, and movies featured "television stars who can't act" just because they were popular. He also hated 1980 for it being the year where Alfred Hitchcock, Mae West, Peter Sellers and Steve McQueen (the actor) all died. "The year's biggest losers" in Gene's opinion were Michael Cimino (with his one-stroke going from THE DEER HUNTER, which Gene loved, to HEAVEN'S GATE, which Gene despised), Allan Carr (who flopped with CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC after a series of smash hit musicals that continue to be popular today, most notably GREASE), Farrah Fawcett, Suzanne Somers (the TV actresses' films SATURN 3 and NOTHING PERSONAL respectively petered out after a few weeks, proving "that a smile and a tight sweater can make you a star on TV, but you need more than that to support a motion picture"), Charlton Heston (who he named the Worst Actor of the Year on the basis of THE MOUNTAIN MEN and THE AWAKENING), Woody Allen (whose STARDUST MEMORIES was deemed to be an ice-cold-hearted rant about the filmmaker's fans according to Gene), and Stanley Kubrick (whose adaptation of Stephen King's THE SHINING was something Gene found extraordinarily depressing; Stephen King himself agreed, hence his involvement in the 1997 miniseries of that title). So what did he like about 1980? That it carried a bright future for American acting in the form of Robert De Niro and Sissy Spacek, and that it was the year in which romantic and family-centric pictures started to abound, "pointing away from the recent trend toward films set in outer space"; Gene felt it was especially important to highlight the latter fact "as today's young filmmakers get married and have children." Another of the very few things he liked about 1980 was that it was the year that the Illinois Film Office began bringing Hollywood cameras to Chicago on a regular basis. Gene remarked that the now-classic disaster film spoof AIRPLANE! was 1980's biggest surprise hit, and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (later to be named Episode V of the STAR WARS saga) was the year's only runaway smash hit. SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, December 28, 1980.

@@jessecoffey4737 I wonder they they took the summer off from PBS?

@@patrickshields5251 Apparently, they did.

@@jessecoffey4737 I meant why they did. Was that because Gene was getting married at the time?

Tell me about it. I was born in 1980. April 15th

Lol

I actually saw it in the theater. When you're a little kid, it's awesome.

It should be noted that what is known as Phase One of what is known as the Infinity Saga was the only portion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that Roger Ebert lived to see. He liked four of the films in that Phase (giving IRON MAN a four-star rating and respectively applying three stars to IRON MAN 2, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER and THE AVENGERS) but he didn't enjoy THE INCREDIBLE HULK or THOR.

one of the most overrated films.