News

Way before Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, Roger Ebert — the most influential film critic of all time — was the person both fans and moviemakers looked at to see if a movie had passed the quality test. Interestingly, he hardly ever glanced at television. The Pulitzer Prize winner reserved his sophisticated reviews for cinema, even though networks were kind to him. Apart from writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert hosted three review shows over the years, namely Sneak Previews, At the Movies, and Siskel & Ebert & the Movies.

Ebert’s preference for cinema is understandable, considering tons of new movies were coming out each month. If he chose to review TV shows too, he wouldn’t have had the time to watch everything. The latter would especially have been extremely time-consuming. Consequently, he would never have become the great prolific critic we remember him as. However, Ebert and his equally influential review buddy,...

The effect of The Simpsons on pop culture can’t be overstated. In the early nineties, the show tapped into the cultural zeitgeist in a way few others had before. Indeed, no other cartoon show could reasonably emulate it- but Hollywood couldn’t help but try. Capitol Critters, Family Dog, and Fish Police were just a few of the shows that tried to be “the new Simpsons.” Still, the only one that really came close was ABC’s The Critic, starring the voice of Jon Lovitz as Jay Sherman, perhaps the world’s least-loved film critic and the subject of this Gone But Not Forgotten episode.

Unlike other wannabe animated hits, The Critic could boast a legit connection to The Simpsons, with it also being a production of James L. Brooks’ Gracie Films. At the same time, creators Al Jean and Mike Reiss had been showrunners on The Simpsons during...

Stars: Will Hay, Charles Hawtrey, Peter Croft, Barry Morse, Peter Ustinov, Anne Firth, Frank Pettingell, Leslie Harcourt, Julien Mitchell, Jeremy Hawk, Raymond Lovell | Written by Angus MacPhail, John Dighton | Directed by Basil Dearden, Will Hay

I always enjoy reviewing re-releases of old films, they remind us – and in some cases introduce us to – some classics. One such release is The Goose Steps Out which is getting a special 75th Anniversary release, and is a comedy great from the 1940s…

Will Hay plays William Pots, a bumbling teacher who turns out to be the double of a German general. Sent to Germany to impersonate the general and steal a new bomb the Nazis are working on, he finds himself having to teach a group of students how to spy on the British.

Watching The Goose Steps Out it is easy to see this was a piece of propaganda used to...