Siskel, Ebert, and the Secret of Criticism
Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, who went on the air together for the first time in 1975, have been off the air for a long time now. Siskel died in 1999, and Ebert bowed out in 2011, two years before his death. But, for many people, they remain the very exemplars of film criticism. Fellow-critics still admire their vigorous, wide-ranging discussions while, for the public at large, their thumbs-up/thumbs-down gimmick, which they came up with in 1982, has proved indelible. The story of their rise to fame is told in enticing detail by Matt Singer in a joint biography titled—what else?—“Opposable Thumbs.” For Singer, the critic at ScreenCrush and the current chairperson of the New York Film Critics Circle, the book is clearly a labor of love. He writes that his own aspiration to be a critic was s...
