Movie Guide

Kirk Baird

Friday, Feb. 27, 2004 | 4:28 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

Feb. 29, 2004

With the Oscars telecast airing tonight, who better to talk with than Roger Ebert, the longtime Chicago Sun-Times movie critic whose reviews run Fridays in the Las Vegas Sun.

As well known for his Pulitizer Prize-winning print reviews as his weekly critiques on the nationally syndicated "Ebert and Roeper and the Movies," with fellow critic Richard Roeper, Ebert is arguably the most influential film critic in the nation.

The critic has also written several books on films, with "The Great Movies" ($15.95, Broadway), his list of 100 must-see films, just released in paperback.

In a recent phone interview from his office in Chicago, Ebert discussed tonight's Academy Awards -- beginning at 5:30 p.m. on ABC (KTNV Channel 13) -- Hollywood's crackdown on movie piracy and his favorite Las Vegas films.

Las Vegas Sun: You and most film critics are predicting "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" to win best picture tonight. How big of an upset will it be if it doesn't win?

Roger Ebert: The bigger upset would be Charlize Theron (not winning for "Monster"). It would be the second-biggest possible upset that I can imagine (if "Rings" lost). I think that this is just kind of like the year when the trilogy has been completed, it's a great box-office triumph, artistically successful -- it's time for it to be crowned. So that would be a big upset.

Sun: Do you feel that Oscar generally gets its selection right or wrong when it comes to best picture?

RE: Well, let's put it this way: The year that "Citizen Kane" was nominated, "How Green Was My Valley" won. And "Citizen Kane" has been named the greatest film of all time routinely ever since, including in the AFI (American Film Institute) poll.

Sun: Is there too much of an emphasis placed on Academy Award winners and losers?

RE: It's odd that they vote on an art form. You can't really imagine in the Renaissance Titian and Canaletto and the others being nominated for big awards at the Ducale Palace, one of them winning and the other four losing.

Each piece of art is unique. And yet at the same time, the awards are important because they sell tickets. And that's why we have Tonys and Emmys and National Book Awards as well as Oscars. It's a way to promote the work and, presumably if the selection is any good, it's promoting good work. And in general the Oscar nominees are, by and large, good films. They may not be the ones that would be on every critic's list, but so what?

Sun: If you could make changes to the voting system, what would you do?

RE: That's really hard to say because it involves analyzing exactly who is in the Academy. It's been said that the Academy is old, out of touch, that they don't go to all of the movies and they let their nieces and their secretaries mark the ballots. I mean, you've heard that time and again. And yet, when you looked at this year's list of nominees, it was brilliant. I said in my article Tuesday morning that they announced the awards ... "Are these the Oscar nominations or still more awards from Sundance?" Because coming down the red carpet you're going to have nominees in the acting categories from Africa, New Zealand, Japan and Iran, instead of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe.

Sun: Is there one awards show or critics' choice you feel best reflects the top movies, performances and direction?

RE: Well the one that I vote in, is every 10 years, Sight and Sound, which is the publication of the British Film Institute. (It) polls the world's film critics and the world's directors for the 10 greatest films of all time. And I just feel that's a very interesting poll because they cast the net very widely and they have very qualified people voting.

Sun: With millions spent by studios to promote their Oscar nominees, has Academy Award campaigning gotten out of hand?

RE: I feel that it's a retail business and every studio since the dawn of time has existed in order to promote its product. For Hollywood to complain that Miramax does so too effectively is hypocrisy. It doesn't mean that the voters have to agree with what Harvey (Weinstein, co-chairman of Miramax Films) tells them is the best film of the year, and this year they kind of overlooked "Cold Mountain." But come on, now they're trying to limit the campaigning and shorten the season and maybe that's all too well. I was amazed that even with a month less time that the Academy managed to see these films like "Whale Rider" and "City of God" and "House of Sand and Fog."

Sun: While Hollywood is desperate to crack down on piracy, are the studios losing the battle?

RE: I was talking about this with Robert Altman, who insisted on sending out DVDs of his movie even though he was told he couldn't. And he said the piracy takes place in the labs. The picture is already on the streets of Hong Kong before a DVD exists. It's stolen as code. The proof of it is you can get bootleg movies in Hong Kong that are rough cuts. The problem with digital is that it is so easily transformed into a piratable medium. And that's one reason why all that talk about digital projection has died off, because it's a lot harder to steal a picture from a 35-millimeter print than a digital file.

Sun: What are some of your favorite Las Vegas-oriented films?

RE: Well, "Leaving Las Vegas" is a brilliant film. Nicolas Cage is good in that. I also love "The Cooler" this year. I liked a movie called "Hard Eight" by Paul Thomas Anderson. It was his first major film. It's a good film. "One From the Heart," I didn't think it really worked when I first saw it. I'm looking forward to having a better look at it on this new DVD, which is the director's cut. But it certainly had a fabulous vision of Vegas. I was on that set. They used that set with force shortened perspective in order to make it appear like you were looking down the Strip. And it was visually very interesting.

Nicolas Cage was also the parachuting Elvis himself in a very funny movie, "Honeymoon in Vegas." That was a great movie.

Sun: What do you think of Las Vegas?

RE: I like the city. I play poker at the cheapest table because I'm not good enough to play against the great players. But at the $5 table you're playing against people just as bad as you are and it's enormously entertaining.

We come out two or three times a year, business and pleasure. We love to go to the shows, especially the various Cirque de Soleil shows are awesome. We took our grandchildren once to see "O." At the time they were 4, 7 and 10 and they didn't move a muscle the entire show, they were so fascinated. I saw "Siegfried & Roy" and I am a big fan of Penn & Teller.