Youthanasia should be illegal!

So this weekend, At The Movies was taken over by Ben Lyons and that other guy, whose name I don't know, and don't really care about looking up, so he will hence forth be known as 'that guy', took over the show.  This is a very sad moment for me, I remember being a kid and watching Siskel & Ebert.  That would be the main way my family would pick out what movies to go see, if it got a good review from them you knew it had to be good.  The Gene Siskel died of, I think, some sort of cancer, and I remember, at the age of 10, being kind of upset.  Who would I go to to get my movie recommendations from.  I kind of just stopped watching, hearing in passing that they picked Richard Roeper as a permanent host, blah blah.  Then like a couple of years ago, I started watching again, and I found Richard Roeper to be a suitable cohost, even though he wasn't a film critic, but a columnist.  I found myself, liking Richard Roeper, just because he was a film enthusiast, like me, but he also has a lot of film knowledge about him, and he was pretty funny at times.  He really just told it as it was.  Plus it doesn't hurt that he and I appear to have a similar taste in movies. 

Then came news that both Richard Roeper and Roger Ebert would not be on the show any more,  and this saddened me, more so when I fucking found out who was taking their place.  Ben 'moron' Lyons and That Guy.  Really I have no beef with That Guy, mainly because I have no fucking clue who he is, never fucking heard of him. My only beef is with fucking Ben Lyons, who's a fucking moron.  Every one in a while, I will turn on the E [exclamation point], and that one show will be on, the one that follows E [exclamation point] news live, Daily 10, and he will be fucking on, and my god, I have not heard such idiocy come out of some 'expert's' mouth since some guy on MSNBC was saying that Bill and Hilary were going to go vote for John McCain [WTF?].  It's like, the way Ben Lyons fucking picks which movies are good and which ones are bad, are based solely on which ones have a) hype and b) big stars.  If a movie has both of these things, then it is considered 'good' by his standards.  If a movie has 'bad hype' then it is obviously a bad film.  I just remember at the Golden Globes last year, when they did that weird press conference thing, that he thought Angelina Jolie was going to win best actress in a drama, when clearly all the real analysts were saying that Julie Christie was the one who was going to win,  I mean the woman was favored to win the oscar way back in like July or whenever the movie came out.  Also he thought that Nikki Blonsky was going to win Best actress in a comedy/musical, just because he's like 'friends' with her or something.  Give me a fucking break.  I think I did better with my globes predictions than Ben fucking Lyons.  That guy's an idiot.  

I mean, I guess I get why they decided to bring in these two jokers, to youthenize the show.  But these guys are stupid.  I watched like two reviews from this week's show, Burn After Reading and Hamlet 2, but their Burn After Reading review was laughable.  I'm not fully convinced they actually saw the movie, granted neither have I, but that's just because it hasn't come out in theaters yet.  From what I have heard, the movie is either pretty good and funny or dumb, depending on how you swing with Coen Brothers comedies [see Big Labowski].  But one thing I have heard is that it is not an oscar contender in any stretch of the imagination, mainly because it is like a screwball comedy.  The only reason some critic have put it on their oscar watch is because of last year with No Country for Old Men, but as soon as they see the movie they realize that it's not.  This is why I'm not convinced they fucking saw the movie, since Ben Lyons was like 'Frances McDormand is going to nominated for an oscar'.  Ummm...Ok and you have to authority to say this because you're a film critic from E[exclamation point]?  

Which I guess is the real problem with the show now.  It was supposed to be two well versed film critics who have an intelligent debate about the movies that they saw that week.  And from what I have seen, these two guys are more interested in the sound bite then the whole of the debate.  Which is why I really hate this whole 'youthy' thing that they are trying to do.  I fell like there are enough intelligent people out there who want to here to smart people having a smart debate about movies.  I think that Siskel and Ebert proved that 30 or so years ago when they started the show.  I would seriously rather be watching Roeper and who ever was filling in for Ebert that week [one of my favorites being Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune], over these two knuckleheads.  In and ideal world Roeper and Phillips and some of the more intelligent film critics out there, maybe a Dave Karger from EW [I like him too], could get together and make a new show that, as Richard Roeper put it [or at least something to the effect of what he said], "uphold the standards that siskel and ebert started years ago.'  I'd so watch that show.