Weekend Economists Give Two Thumbs Up for Roger April 5-7, 2013

[bread_and_roses]

42. My two quarrels with Roger

I did read Ebert occasionally - we rarely go to see movies (or "films" as my friends in college would have corrected me) on the big screen -but sometimes when considering one I would check out what he had to say - simply because he was the only reviewer who's name I knew off the top of my head. Also, sometimes I would watch a movie on TV and be puzzled by it - liking it when I thought I shouldn't or the reverse, and would check out what he had to say to help me figure out why. This is only since the internet, of course - in the "olden days" that was not possible. Overall, I enjoyed his reviews. I mostly only really enjoy big special effect action films, so his nuances were lost on me, I'm afraid (I overstate somewhat - I do enjoy other movies - but I would never bother going to the "theater" to see "The Pianist," or "Cold Comfort Farm." )

However, I read his reviews of "Seabiscuit" and "Secretariat" just now - they were linked in tribute to Ebert off a racing site I visit - and both are - quite simply - dead wrong. I saw both these films and - evidently unlike Ebert - I know a little about racing and quite a lot about both the horses. I also read both books that the films are based upon - both are excellent and in both cases the films do them great injustice.

Ebert acknowledges that he is a very good friend of Bill Nack, who wrote "Secretariat: The Making of a Champion" and was a consultant on the film. Ebert doesn't think the friendship affected his opinion - and all I can do is . Nack is a good writer - very good - and the film that Ebert gave 4 stars is piss-poor, formulaic, sentimental, dishonest, and totally absent any hint for a casual viewer of how great this horse was. Ebert even mentions with approval one of the stupidest and most ridiculous moments in the film: Lane as Chenery looking deep into Secretariat's eyes and "communing" with him to decide he was fit to run. Blech. He says the film "has no time for foolishness" when it has little else. It spends endless time establishing Chenery as a sort of "ordinary housewife" when she was not - her family had bred and raced Riva Ridge, who won 2/3 of the Triple Crown, including the Derby, the year before Secretariat.

And that is only one of many glaring flaws - not to mention endless boredom - between the few racing scenes, which are mostly botched. They couldn't even find a TB to even approximate Secretariat's exceptional looks and bearing: there is one shot of about two seconds in a pre-race scene where the horse "actor" has an arched neck and looks to be near-prancing - the one and only shot where the horse even hints at an animal that brought grown men to tears - literally.
Ebert's review here: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101006/REVIEWS/101009986
Nack's article on Secretariat's career and death: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1005832/1/index.htm (a very good piece of writing, here's Nack describing Secretariat:

The colt had filled out substantially since I had last seen him ... he looked like some medieval charger—his thick neck bowed and his chin drawn up beneath its mass, his huge shoulders shifting as he strode, his coat radiant and his eyes darting left and right. ... Turcotte headed toward the pole and let Secretariat rip...
... the sight and sound of him racing toward us is etched forever in memory: Turcotte was bent over him, his jacket blown up like a parachute, and the horse was reaching out with his forelegs in that distinctive way he had. raising them high and then, at the top of the lift, snapping them out straight and with tremendous force, the snapping hard as bone, the hooves striking the ground and folding it beneath him.

And finally the film does the almost unforgivable - it makes a hash of the Belmont call - arguably the most famous racing call in all of racing history and one of the best known moments in sport. Secretariat's immortal Belmont with the real, inimitable call:

Some photos of Secretariat



http://www.kentuckytourism.com/!userfiles/Things%20To%20Do/kentucky-derby-secretariat.jpg



(one of the best known - and best - photos of Secretariat in a race)

On Seabiscuit, which Ebert gave 3 stars, he got three things right: The racing scenes are exceptional. William Macy's performance is a lot of fun, and Chris Cooper is very good as the trainer. Other than that, when Ebert says the movie is "a slow starter" he's right - but he neglects to mention that except for the racing scenes it's also a very very very slow goer. We get to watch what feels like forever of Jeff Bridges sitting doing nothing in front of his bicycle shop and also what feels like the entire months of his courtship of his second wife. The book - by Laura Hillenbrand - is truly excellent. The movie is a cornball formula that makes an interesting story boring, prettifies the great Depression, and is sentimental and almost uniformly trivial. But the racing scenes are wonderful.
Eberts review: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030725/REVIEWS/307250304/1023

edit to correct Nack spelling, to add a link I left out, and also to note that the photos appear automatically from the links - I did not copy and paste them.