Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever

A deeply entertaining, thoroughly researched biography of rival movie critics, Siskel and Ebert, and how they came to define modern film criticism.

Cinephiles will find much to savor in Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever, a comprehensive, immensely entertaining biography by film critic Matt Singer. In meticulous detail, he probes the lives of the legendary film critics and newspaper rivals, whose opinions became as popular as the movies they reviewed in print--and, later, fervently debated on TV--from the 1970s to the late 1990s. 

Throughout their partnership, Siskel and Ebert remained “mortal enemies. Each considered it an essential aspect of their job to beat the other: to write the best review, to land the biggest interview, to score the best scoops. And they took their jobs very seriously.” Despite their seriousness, David Letterman, who often hosted the duo on his late-night talk show, once remarked that their popular appeal was due to their honest, passionate debates, and how they broke “the stuffy traditions of old-fashioned print film criticism.” The trademark of Siskel and Ebert film reviewing was a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down rating system. 

Singer paints a fascinating portrait of the critics, sharing quotes and stories of how their upbringings developed their personalities; their respective roads to journalism and film criticism; and what they each brought to the reviewing table--how their contentious relationship actually increased their viewership. This thoroughly researched narrative makes a strong case that Siskel and Ebert were, as Ebert once put it, true "film lovers" and "fans." That innate passion is what led to their overwhelming, two-thumbs-up success and their enduring appeal.

Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever by Matt Singer

Putnam (Penguin/Random House), $29 hardcover, 352p., 9780593540152

Publishing Date: October 24, 2023

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (October 27, 2023), link HERE 

To read the longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (September 1, 2023), link HERE

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures

A spellbinding true-crime story about an underdog inventor believed to have birthed motion pictures who vanished before his invention ever went mainstream.

Paul Fischer (A Kim Jong-Il Production) is a meticulous writer, screenwriter and film producer known for dismantling the secretive worlds of true-crime stories. In The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures, Fischer probes the life of Louis Le Prince, a struggling independent inventor largely lost to history, who, in 1888, first captured moving images of his family, and later secured patents in four countries for his innovation. But, in 1890, one month prior to unveiling his brainchild far and wide, Louis visited his estranged brother in Dijon, France. At the reunion of these now middle-aged siblings, Louis, with fervent passion and zeal, shared details about his creation and how he believed motion pictures "could alter the course of humankind" and "revolutionize the human experience, as drastically as the railroad and the telephone." After their visit, Louis set off to take an express train back to Paris, en route to the U.S., but somewhere between Dijon and Paris, he vanished and was never seen again.

His disappearance was never solved, but his devoted, long-suffering wife spent the remainder of her days trying to prove her husband had been kidnapped and killed--all arranged by Thomas Alva Edison, who she claimed stole his invention and, in 1894, launched it as his own. Edison claimed that his Kinetoscope technology marked the birth of motion pictures.

With a spellbinding presentation supported by painstaking research, Fischer puts forth evidence to try to unravel the mystery of Le Prince's life and death. The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures is a work of art unto itself.

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder and the Movies by Paul Fischer

Simon and Schuster, $28.99 hardcover, 9781982114824, 416 pages

Publication Date: April 19, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (April 19, 2022), link HERE

 

To read the longer form of this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (February 15, 2022), link HERE