Thinking of Chicago’s Roger Ebert and His Half Movie Star Reviews
Back in the day the best reads in the Chicago papers came on Thursdays or Fridays when Roger Ebert was presented with a really bad movie. One of the finest of film reviewers in America, Ebert was at his best (and funniest) when he had a chance to sharpen his pencil and scribble notes about the whys and wherefores of some particularly smelly film he had witnessed that week.
I thought of Roger earlier today as I read a review in the New York Times about Sandra Bullock’s latest cinematic expression.
Since The Times doesn’t give its readers a head start by using stars in reviews you have to muck through the prose to gain a sense of what the reviewer thinks. And even then sometimes you are left with a blank look, unaware of the plus or minus of a particular movie. Trust me, today’s review of “The Blind Side” leaves no doubt.
While reviewer A.O. Scott doesn’t seem to have an ink pot at his disposal that lends itself to the scalding words that Ebert might use, there is no doubt what his sentiments are after being subjected to the “two hour holiday greeting card” that he finds “The Blind Side” to be.
But what really struck me in his review was a single line that may have broader application when he said the movie was guilty of
shedding nuance and complication in favor of maximum uplift.
So it’s a case of the energizer bunny being bright-eyed and bushy tailed over and over and over and over, pushing us and cajoling us to look on the bright side. No matter what.
Heck, it’s something most of us are guilty of doing occasionally. Jeez, some might say the real estate industry as a whole suffered from the collective amnesia of pursuing “maximum uplift” all the way up to the start of our current economic downswing.
The question, though, is in the face of revised information, what is the next choice.
In the “The Blind Side” the movie’s title was perfect because Bullock’s character never moved out of the darkness of her blindness. She continuing to saunter forth, blithely and daftly. The good news is that such daftness is not permeating the Chicago real estate market as I see more and more of a shift away from the darkness.
In other words more and more realtors and their selling clients are taking constructive steps to, as Dr. Phil would admonish us, “get real.”
An important question that has yet to be fully and completely answered relates to whether lenders are going to step up to the plate to constructively assist prospective buyers get funding to take advantage of the shift toward more realistic and pragmatic pricing.
Stay tuned.
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