{"id":1596,"date":"2004-08-20T11:09:07","date_gmt":"2004-08-20T15:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1596"},"modified":"2010-07-12T09:33:30","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T13:33:30","slug":"why-roger-ebert-is-so-damn-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1596","title":{"rendered":"Why Roger Ebert Is So Great"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because of reviews like this one<\/a>. I would never have thought to go see a documentary about surfers called “Riding Giants” – never. Not that I’m not interested, mind you. I’m pretty much interested in everything. But you gotta make <\/i>me interested, if the topic isn’t already on my radar . See what I’m saying? I don’t need to be convinced to be interested in Central Asia, the American Revolution, or Humphrey Bogart. But if I don’t know nothin’ ’bout the topic already, then I need a translator<\/i>. I need you to be able to tell me WHY this is interesting.<\/p>\n

It was like when I read Into Thin Air<\/i>. Mountain climbing and Everest are not one of my built-in passions. But damn – Krakauer made me give a crap about it. He was an excellent translator.<\/p>\n

So now I must see “Riding Giants” – the story of those lone-wolf surfers who get towed by jet-skis onto the backs of monster waves, 60, 70 feet high … Who are these people? What are they like?<\/p>\n

Roger Ebert writes:<\/p>\n

“Riding Giants” is about altogether another reality. The overarching fact about these surfers is the degree of their obsession. They live to ride, and grow depressed when there are no waves. They haunt the edge of the sea like the mariners Melville describes on the first pages of Moby Dick<\/i>. They seek the rush of those moments when they balance on top of a wave’s fury and feel themselves in precarious harmony with the ungovernable force of the ocean. They are cold and tired, battered by waves, thrown against rocks, visited by sharks, held under so long they believe they are drowning — and over and over, year after year, they go back into the sea to do it again. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gotta see it. Any surfers out there?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because of reviews like this one. I would never have thought to go see a documentary about surfers called “Riding Giants” – never. Not that I’m not interested, mind you. I’m pretty much interested in everything. But you gotta make … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[1169,1280],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17448,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions\/17448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}