You Don't Know Where That Thumb's Been

Here is something I found ironic: Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun Times has made a career out of his minimalist school of commentary, his thumb. He has been unable to use his voice for a year to offer his opinions on the current releases at your local superfaplex. He was silenced as a result of a tracheostomy and a number of surgeries he has endured while battling cancer. The ironic part is that if he was ever going to supply his view with a simple gesture, it would seem that now would be the time.
Now it seems that the trademark for ThumbsTM has become a bargaining chip in the ongoing negotiations between Ebert and his employer, the Domestic Television arm of the Disney Company. Along with the family of his late partner, Gene Siskel (the bald guy), Roger (the fat guy) owns the copyright on the whole "Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down" school of film criticism. This will no doubt sent Hollywood into a frenzy as they attempt to find another way to describe films in the same manner that gladiators were dispatched in the Coliseum. Here in the Bay Area we have "the little man". The movie is rated by the position of the "little man" in his seat. In a recent radio interview, Pat Oswalt was told that the review for "Ratatouille" (for which he voiced the epicurious rat) had the little man jumping out of his seat applauding. He expressed his relief, saying that he was just glad that "the little man didn't have a gun in his mouth."
When I was a kid, I used to read Pauline Kael's reviews in the New Yorker. It's part of the reason that I loved film so much, and eventually studied it in college. Film criticism has become almost completely a tool for marketing. What possible coincidence can be found in the fact that "Ratatouille", made by DisneyPixarABCGeneralMills, received "Two Thumbs Up"? Film commentary used to be an art in itself, and the earliest reviews of Roger Ebert show a keen observational sense that has been dulled by too many years "in the balcony". In 1975, he won the first Pulitzer Prize awarded for film criticism. I once attended a lecture he gave at the University of Colorado, where he dissected "Casablanca" scene by scene. His love for that film, and for all film, was obvious to anyone there. My wish is that negotiations with the House of Mouse break down entirely, and he has to return to writing about films the way he once did, and maybe we can go back to having discussions about the relative merits of a particular piece of art, not just the number of hats, stars, or direction a digit is extended.