5/4/04

Roger Ebert and Joe Bob Briggs

(Jack Pantalones on Joe Bob Briggs in the Atlantic online forums):

He tends to base his evaluations on whether or not a film contains things like jiggling boobs and dismemberment-by-chainsaw.

Jack, they're humor pieces, from a true-blue redneck, in the tradition of Libby Gelman-Waxner (a.k.a. Paul Rudnick). Actually his best moments are when he leaves off reviewing the latest piece of drive-in trash and talks about one of his many girls (Mary Jane Lou, or Mary Lou Ellen, or whoever he's shacking up with nowadays), or his really strange friends, or his sudden obsession with video (I wonder what he makes of DVDs). Read between the lines and you actually get a sense of his aesthetics.

I prefer him over Ebert. Maybe Ebert's finest moment was his reply to Vincent Gallo, but that's a case of preferring the smaller asshole. Ebert gives the plot in detail (including a few spoilers), gives a rating (out of four stars), and that's it. He's basically worthless, and he puts almost nothing into his articles. What little he does is embarrassing, and not in an entertaining way.

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