Remembering Siskel and Ebert’s great debate: Mel Brooks or Woody Allen?
In 1980 the critics sparred over whose films were better — it’s an eerie watch in 2026
Roger Ebert
The Latest
-
Film & TV -
The Schmooze The Movies According to Roger Ebert
One of the great things about Roger Ebert, who died April 4 at age 70, is that he wrote — or seemed to write — about every movie ever made. The man was encyclopedic. In his last blog post, two days before he died, he reported that he typically wrote 200 reviews a year, and…
-
The Schmooze Twitter Mourns Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert, America’s most famous film critic, died yesterday at the age of 70. Every celebrity he had ever lauded with praise or declared inapt — cough Rob Schneider —rushed to give his life a thumbs up. Ebert, an avid tweeter himself, would have been proud. Saddened to hear of the passing of Roger Ebert….
-
The Schmooze Out and About: Iran beats Israeli Chess Record; Thorstein Veblen on Jewish Intellectualism
The finalists for the 2011 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature have been announced. Philadelphia’s Rosenbach Museum and Library has become home to Maurice Sendak’s only mural. Jonah Lehrer retrieves Thorstein Veblen’s forgotten essay on why Jews become intellectuals. An Iranian grandmaster claims to have beaten an Israeli chess record after playing 614 people simultaneously…
-
The Schmooze Out and About: National Book Critics Circle Finalists; Sacha Baron Cohen to Play Saddam Hussein
Film Criticism is doing better than ever, according to Roger Ebert. Finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award include novelists David Grossman for “To the End of the Land” and Hans Keilson for “Comedy in a Minor Key”; Christopher Hitchens for his autobiography “Catch 22”; Tom Segev for his biography of Simon Wiesenthal, and…
-
Books Jewish Impostors, Past and Present
Although Shabbetai Zevi naturally gets most of the attention, Jewish history has been marked by a series of impostors. On February 16, Bloomsbury USA publishes a collection by the late New Yorker reporter St. Clair McKelway, “Reporting at Wit’s End,” which includes the complete 1968 book “The Big Little Man from Brooklyn” about the Jewish…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News A pioneering Reform synagogue makes way for a booming Iranian Jewish community
- 2
News Hampshire College closure reverberates for alumni who treasured a Yiddishist hub
- 3
Opinion Who’s responsible for deadly antisemitism? Everyone will hate the answer
- 4
Opinion Viktor Orbán may fall. Netanyahu should be next
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Who’s responsible for deadly antisemitism? Everyone will hate the answer
-
Looking Forward Stumbling across Jewish history in a vintage store
-
Film & TV Remembering Siskel and Ebert’s great debate: Mel Brooks or Woody Allen?
-
News A Jewish gun club teams up with the NRA, in pursuit of self-defense
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
