From CNN:

Quote :

"I’m coming to this a bit late, but a CNN.com user pointed me to a controversy involving Roger Ebert and his review of a film called “Tru Loved.” It seems that Ebert reviewed the film, ticking off its deficiencies one by one, and then — in a twist — revealed that he’d only seen the first eight minutes. Knowing that such a practice was dicey, he ran it by his editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, who in the end acceded to Ebert’s wishes to run the review as is. Ebert then talked about the whole controversy on his blog, and received hundreds of responses, pro and con, for his position. (One critique in particular was submitted by the person who sent the story to CNN.com, Margaret Nowak, who wrote an e-mail to Jim Romenesko’s journalism site. Read Ebert’s response here.) It’s an interesting issue. Book editors frequently winnow their slush piles by reading the first chapter of a submission — or even less. Music reviewers might listen to a few seconds of each cut of a new CD before deciding to discard it. And how many times have you popped a DVD into your player, watched 10 minutes and decided you’d wasted enough time? But those are ways of sorting. Ebert was supposed to be reviewing the film, right? If he was only going to watch the first few minutes, he should have either not reviewed the film at all or led his review with the caveat that he’d watched the first eight minutes and decided the rest wasn’t worth his time. Right? Or does Ebert have a point? He was honest, though in a tricky way, that he hadn’t watched the whole thing. And, along the same lines, have you ever been asked your opinion of a film/show/CD/book and said, “I hated it so much I could only get through the first part”? Is that not a review? What do you think? – Todd Leopold, CNN.com Entertainment Producer "

10/21/2008 2:21:25 PM

while there are some movies that I can tell 8 minutes in that I will not like it, I could never review a movie that I had only watched 8 minutes of...

10/21/2008 2:25:09 PM

I played 4 minutes of Where's Waldo for SNES in 2nd grade and declared right then and there that the game sucked.

10/21/2008 2:28:54 PM

I think it's wrong if he wrote the review in a manner that misled people into thinking he had seen the entire thing. Link to the actual published review?

If he has always watched movies in their entirety before, he probably should have done the same here. I mean he IS paid to watch movies. It's not like he stopped watching a movie he paid to see.


[Edited on October 21, 2008 at 2:47 PM. Reason : asdf]

10/21/2008 2:29:53 PM

^^ but that doesnt mean you could give an in depth review of the entire game. I agree that you can tell if something is bad or not pretty quickly. However, that is not the question here, the question is whether or not it is ethical to pass it off that you watched an entire movie when you are reviewing it.

10/21/2008 2:40:41 PM

Roger Ebert can do whatever the fuck he wants, because he wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

10/21/2008 2:47:34 PM

Here's the review.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081015/REVIEWS/810150277
I'll read it when I get home tonight but I'm intrigued by this. I've always liked Ebert but I find this to be very lazy if it is true.

And there is a difference between someone on a message board reviewing a film compared to someone like Ebert who gets paid to give his opinion on an entire film.

[Edited on October 21, 2008 at 2:52 PM. Reason : forgot the link]

10/21/2008 2:50:57 PM

if your occupation is to review movies...then you need to do your job and review the entire movie. IF you can't stand sitting through shitty movies then pick a new career path.

10/21/2008 2:54:51 PM

His reviews have always sucked

although to be fair ive only read the first 8 words of each of them

10/21/2008 3:10:07 PM

I like Ebert..

10/21/2008 3:12:30 PM

he probably fell asleep because hes fat

10/21/2008 3:23:39 PM

I pay more attention to TWW reviews than Ebert

10/21/2008 3:40:43 PM

Quote :

"His reviews have always sucked although to be fair ive only read the first 8 words of each of them"

lol

10/21/2008 3:45:17 PM

I only read the first and last post in this thread.

10/21/2008 5:47:17 PM

Was Ebert trying to make a point by doing this? That's what it sounds like, because it sounds ridiculous in and of itself.

10/21/2008 6:40:26 PM

what if the first 8 minutes of the movie was the beginning of a story line about someone making a horrible movie? a movie within a movie... then he would have been fucked

10/21/2008 8:12:52 PM

He gave Independence Day a thumbs down. That means his opinion means nothing to the 1996 version of me.

10/22/2008 11:00:04 AM

Quote :

"Roger Ebert can do whatever the fuck he wants, because he wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."

no shit, i love that movie. i had no idea he co-wrote it

10/22/2008 11:02:22 AM