The delightful Mr. Pepys
Realizing I would never read his great book, I got the audiobook and entered the world of the charming Mr. Pepys. Ambitious, lustful, a gossip, well-connected, he witnessed the Great London Fire, the Black Plague and Shakespeare's plays at court, buried gold in his back yard, became Secretary of the Admiralty, seduced servant girls.
Branagh's reading is conversational, confiding and funny. The prose can appear daunting on the page, but he makes it conversational. Pepys' voice comes through, as if he's confiding the low-down on things.
This is good for listening to in the car, because each daily entry is brief, so you don't get stranded in the middle of a long chapter when you have to park.
The "home page" of Pepys' Diary.
Tweets rhymes with Pepys. Samuel Pepys on Twitter.
Drawing by Richard Levine from the New York Review of Books.
The Webby Awards
Person of the Year
Best Blog: Natl. Soc. of Newspaper Columnists
One of the year's best blogs -- Time
Year's best blog: Am. Assn. of Sunday and Feature Editors
Roger Ebert
Ebert's latest books are "Life Itself: A Memoir," "The Great Movies III," "Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2012." Volumes I and II of "The Great Movies" and "Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert" can also be ordered via the links in the right column of RogerEbert.com
Search
About this Archive
Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.
Buy from Amazon.comBuy from Barnes & Noble
Buy from Borders
Buy from Indiebound
___________________
Read intro and buy
___________________
Buy from Amazon.com
Buy from Barnes & Noble
Buy from Borders
___________________
Tweet / Facebook
Pages
- A Monty Python Christmas
- Angel on My Shoulder
- Chico and Rita and Fernando and Billy
- Edward R. Murrow calls on Sinatra
- Gazzara and Bukowski read a poem by Hank
- Hydroponic greenhouse farms at or near supermarkets
- If you love The Daily Illini, it needs your help
- Intro: "A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length"
- Introduction to Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2012
- Jean Dujardin, Kristen Wiig and Zooey Deschanel on Saturday Night Live
- Meet Anthony Pisano. He lives here.
- Michael Caine talks like this
- Obama and Jagger sing at the White House
- Public Edition #9
- recent Two Thumbs Up® reviews
- Six of Herzog's less-known documentaries, streaming
- The Best B-Rated Movie Trailers Ever!
- The birthday of the cinema
- The birthday of the movies
- The Golden Globes Tribute to Scorsese
- the Your Movie Sucks™ files
- Top 16 movies involving parakeets
- Wait! Is that 2011 Playmate of the Year Claire Sinclair in the "related" celebrity shot?
- Was Jack the Ripper the Devil in the White City?
- Whitney Houston is dead at 48
- Who goes there? A map of science-fiction
- Wingsuits. So much faster than climbing down.
- 3D
- Animation
- Archives
- Art in many forms
- "I don't know anything about architecture, but I know Brutalism when I see it"
- "In the Morning," a short fim inspired by Edward Hopper
- First five minutes of Soderbergh's "Haywire"
- Gregg Toland, cinematographer
- Have you ever seen a Tintin story?
- Is The Phantom the only sexually-active superhero?
- Outta da way of this steampunk wheelchair!
- Painting with water
- Pogo's lament on Earth Day
- The most incredible card trick I've ever seen
- The world's largest indoor photo in 360 degrees
- This is art! Do not throw away!
- This is not a page about Rene Magritte
- Being here
- "Best Society," by Philip Larkin
- A photo of a little girl, and memories of two beloved aunts
- Hitchens is eloquent in the face of death
- How to be alone
- Jean Shepherd reads his original "A Christmas Story"
- Let's get together and feel all right
- My master thinks this is art
- Oprah remembers our big date
- To be young and mixed in America
- Werner Herzog meditates on The Bear
- West Virginia 8th grade test in 1931
- Why was the dog swimming so far from shore?
- C'est moi
- "Memory." How my memoir "Life Itself" opens
- Best films 1967-2009: Siskel & Ebert & Scorsese
- Helicopter crashes in our house!
- I didn't notice that was Ron Galella. Is he everywhere?
- I have no arms and I must play
- I read these in my bedazzed youth. Now it's the covers I love.
- I will never, ever, ever, do this
- I'll be honest and fight sqare
- If you were a kid in the 1950s, you remember...
- It's hard to believe it's been 12 years, Gene. I miss you.
- It's like so uncool to like sound like you know what you're like talking about
- Matinees and horse manure
- My drinking days, recalled in a noirish oil
- My other neighborhood on Red Arrow Highway
- My talk at TED 2011
- Portrait of the critic at home
- Siskel & Ebert and Howard Stern
- Cooking
- CyberWorld
- Directors
- A conversation with Atom Egoyan
- Claude Chabrol, RIP. The master at midpoint
- Herzog looks ahead to the Cave
- Jason Reitman in conversation
- Louis Malle: A do-it-yourself interview
- Manuel de Oliveira is 102: A tribute
- Scorsese on Elia Kazan: Watch the documentary
- The heart of the world and other organs: The singular cinema of Guy Maddin
- The secret of Jacques Tati
- Ebert Club
- Ebert Presents
- Ebert presents at the movies
- Ephemera
- Film Festivals
- Film classics
- Funny
- A personal letter from Steve Martin
- Aid rushed to movie overdose victims
- An economist makes it all perfectly clear for you
- At this point, we all need a good laugh
- Attack of the Second-Rate Monsters
- Avengers Assemble! Superheroes need health care
- Buddy Hackett: Up at drama, down at comedy.
- Dan and Dan: The Daily Mail Song
- David Mamet's "Lost Masterpieces of Porn," with your host, Ricky Jay
- Do the Creep!
- Down memory lane: Nic Cage goes batshit
- Dr. Tongue's Evil House of Wax in 3D
- George W. Bush and Mike Tyson in "The President's Speech"
- Harpo Marx, the most articulate brother
- Haven't I seen him somewhere before?
- Helen Mirren's breasts are the answer to everything
- Henny Youngman: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this!"
- How Michael Caine Speaks
- How to get a guy to notice you during sex (nsfw)
- I don't know WTF it's saying, but thumbs up!
- I know every single word. So do you.
- I love it when I'm quoted correctly
- Push the dragon's head, and the marble runs down here, and...
- The 1982 Tron Holiday Special
- The helpful Robert Benchley
- Walken the Walk, by Walkin' Walken
- When Harry met Sally 2, with Billy Crystal and Helen Mirren
- Who cut the cheese?
- Yes! I won the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest!
- Literature
- "Fight Club," by Jane Austen
- "In Love with Raymond Chandler," by Margaret Atwood
- "The Premature Burial," by Edgar Allan Poe
- Gatsby in Scott Fitzgerald's handwriting
- In memory of the memories of W. G. Sebald
- Jack Kerouac: 3/12/22 - 10/21/69
- Kurt Vonnegut's chalk talk on the shape of a story
- Let's hear it for the Oxford Comma!
- On 4/13/1906, Samuel Beckett started waiting
- Some bookstores just feel this way
- Stephen Colbert reads "The Lie," by T. C. Boyle
- Studs and Algren and Patterson, N.J.
- The Black Mask Boys
- The books everyone should read
- The enigmatic case of the oddly persistent mystery writer
- Vladimir Nabokov meets Gregor Samsa
- Walt Kelly, an immortal
- Werner Herzog reads "Go the F**k to Sleep"
- Why is film criticism important?
- London
- Meaning of it All
- Movies
- "As Penny Chenery's youngest son..."
- "Man in a Blizzard," by Jamie Stuart
- "Rosebud" was a rather tawdry device
- "The most beautiful film ever made"
- "Whose birthday, Lou?" "Yours, Bud!" "Mine?!? Waitaminit! You were born before me." "That's why your birthday is first." "Who's second?" "You. I was born first."
- "Why, you rotten SOB! Take that!" (Slaps him)
- "You just don't get it, do you?"
- 100 Great Moments in the Movies
- 36 Hitchcock death scenes all at once
- A blind film critic reviews "Scre4m"
- A double feature every day!
- All of Hitchcock's cameos
- Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
- George Takei brokers Star Peace
- How Tom Cruise shot the skyscraper scene
- I could watch a Fellini film on the radio
- Jeff Bridges: The Starman within
- Marni Nixon: The secret voice of Hollywood
- Nick & Nora's hangover cure
- Revenge on "Revenge of the Sith"
- Richard Harris: Don't let it be forgot
- Robert Duvall: "Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that"
- Rock Hudson's secret
- Street scene: Movie theater, snow, rain, promise
- The 100 greatest movie threats of all time
- The Akira Kurosawa Song
- The Bechtel Test
- The Blanche DuBois Death Match: Vivien Leigh v. Woody Allen
- The Duke on Rooster: "My first good part in 20 years"
- The Kowalski Smackdown: Marlon Brando v. Diane Keaton
- The magic of Hugo: A behind-the-scenes featurette
- The shower scene
- When Lynch met Lucas & Werner saved Joaquin
- Why Pauline Kael never saw a movie twice
- Movies free online
- "Alma," award-winning short by Rodrigo Blaas
- "Breathless:" Modern movies begin here
- "Cyrano de Bergerac" (1950)
- "Inspired by Bret Easton Ellis," by Matthew Ross
- "Out of Sight." A magical anime
- "Plan 9 from Outer Space," by the Worst Director of All Time
- "Sita Sings the Blues"
- "The Bat." When it flies, someone dies
- "The Big Combo"
- "The Corporation"
- "The Kid," by Charlie Chaplin
- "The Whales of August"
- Buster
- Chaplin: "The Circus," "The Kid" and "The Gold Rush"
- Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast"
- Dante's "Inferno," a 1911 Italian film with music by Tangerine Dream
- Freddie Mercury: The Untold Story
- Harold Lloyd in "An Eastern Westerner"
- Harold Lloyd: A rare early short and an interview
- John Huston's "Beat The Devil"
- Pauline Kael's favorite film: "Menilmontant"
- Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in Richard Lester's "The Bed-Sitting Room"
- Rene Clair's "And Then There Were None"
- Sherlock Holmes: The Woman in Green
- Ten great films about horror
- The BBC's 1954 adaptation of "1984"
- The Haunted World of Ed Wood, Jr.
- The Kennel Murder Case
- Thomas Edison's "Frankenstein" (1910)
- Music
- "Chanda Mama" around the world
- "Gimme Shelter" by Playing for Change
- "Making Giant Hands," by Dog and Panther
- "Redemption Song" around the world
- "Swan Lake" by the Great Chinese Circus
- "What'll I do?" by Julie London
- A Farm Aid concert from 1985
- A Labor Day concert
- A new Mozart? 12-year-old composer hailed as genius
- A xylophone in a forest
- Bob Marley: One Love around the world
- Concert for an uncertain world
- Did Leonard Cohen save my life?
- Ella: It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing
- Esperanza Spalding. Yes.
- Four-year-old Jonathan conducts conducts the Chandler Symphony Orchestra
- Freddie Mercury vs. the Platters & Wayne's World
- Gene Siskel covers Paul McCartney in 1976
- George Shearing, 1919-2011
- Hallelujah Chorus, by the Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat 5th Grade, Quinhagak, Alaska
- Happiness is being on the road again
- Hazel Dickens, the Rebel Girl
- I could listen to Ronnie play guitar all day long
- I went to school with Andy Cohen
- I'll never smoke weed with Willie again
- If Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" had been a tango
- Jammin' cellos: Stjepan Hauser and Luka Sulic
- Joan Baez: There is a clearing where one is almost happy
- John Prine: A concert in Ireland
- John Prine: American Legend
- Jonathan is three and loves great music
- Joni MItchell: "Big Yellow Taxi"
- Julie London: The torch is burning
- New Year's with Steve: In tribute to a great heart
- Que sera, sera
- Sing a song of newspapers
- Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee
- Still Bill: The life and songs of Bill Withers
- Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" and "Firebird"
- Sunglasses and jazz on a summer's day
- Sweet Dreams, Baby: For Patsy Cline
- The Platters perform "The Twist"
- The night Hank Williams came to town
- The triumph of the day-fly
- The ukulele orchestra of Great Britain
- Tom Waits serenades New York harbor
- We need Punk Vaudeville. Jarmean?
- Won't you ride in my little red wagon?
- Yankee Doodle Dandy: Born on the Fourth of July
- Your Christmas morning concert
- ♫ Deck us all with Boston Charlie, Walla Walla, Wash., and Kalamazoo! ♫
- ♫ Don't know much about history... ♫
- ♫ My funny valentine, sweet comic valentine, you make me smile with my ♥
- ♫ Nestor Torres and the spirit in the music
- New Yorker captions
- News
- Newspapers
- O'Rourke's magazine
- Oscars
- Pages for Twitter
- People
- "By the age of 50, every man has the face he deserves."
- "It's not like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Cher said.
- Bill Mauldin, American
- Bob Hope: Thanks for the memories
- Bronson: Coming of age in Scoop Town
- Dorothy Dandridge: In Memory
- Falling in Love Again: Marlene Dietrich
- Farewell, First Lady of the Air
- Keanu thought his two years were running out
- Kirk Douglas: I've killed so many Romans, so many Vikings, so many Indians...
- Lars von Trier, meet Klausi Kinski
- Leslie Nielsen, RIP. "And don't call me Shirley"
- Liza, when all was still ahead
- Mae West and Rock Hudson: "Baby, It's Cold Outside!"
- Maria Schneider comes to America
- On the 69th birthday of the greatest
- Orson Welles sells peas
- Pete Postlethwaite: 1946-2011
- Robert Mitchum remembers Marilyn Monroe
- Susannah York, 1939-2011
- The last days of Tiny Tim
- Werner & Erroll & the mystery of Ed Gein's grave
- What Oscar Wilde taught Stephen Fry
- Who is Billy "Silver Dollar" Baxter?
- Woody Allen interviews Billy Graham
- Zuppke of Illinois: A football coach
- Photos in need of a caption
- Photos in need of comment
- Poetry
- "Hell is a Lonely Place," by Charles Bukowski
- "Hollywood Jabberwocky," by Frank Jacobs
- "Love 20¢ the first quarter-mile," by Kenneth Fearing
- "Nirvana," by Charles Bukowski
- "Poetry Readings," by Charles Bukowski
- "Portrait of a Lady," by T. S. Eliot
- "The Charge of the Light Brigade," by Tennyson
- "The Day the Saucers Landed," by Neil Gaiman
- "The Machines Mourn the Passing of People"
by Alicia E Stallings - "The Perfect High," by Shel Silverstein
- "This Be the Verse," by Philip Larkin (nsfw)
- "You being in love," by e. e. cummings
- 'Twas the Night Before Pogo
- A nursery rhyme for our times
- All the world's a stage
- Dylan Thomas goes not gently
- Emily Dickinson's life closed twice before its close
- Evening Prayer
- Good-bye to All That
- Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
- I love this sweet grandmother
- In Just-Spring, when the world is mud-luscious...
- Marilyn Monroe and Carl Sandburg
- Remembering Bukowski
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
- So anyway, Charles Bukowski, Errol Morris and Roger Ebert walk into this bar...
- So much depends upon a red wheel barrow
- W. B. Yeats: "Horseman, pass by!"
- Walt Whitman: I sing the body electric
- When icicles hang by the wall
- William Blake: Of innocence and experience
- e. e. cummings lives in a pretty how heaven
- e. e. cummings talks dirty (nsfw)
- Politics
- "If you think it's a socialist plot, give up your federal health care"
- Christopher Hitchens at length on BBC's Newsnight
- Pogo says it for the very first time
- Saul Alinsky pours for the Tea Party
- The Battle Hymn of the Tea Party
- The financial crisis explained (nsfw)
- The rich are waging war on America
- The smoker and the Cheshire Cat
- Update on the TSA breast milk incident
- Will Rogers on unemployment
- Willam F. Buckley was not an Ayn Rand fan
- Satire
- Science and not
- A reality far beyond my imagination
- Ants have built-in pedometers
- Do Creationists make good science students?
- If Disney had animated mushrooms
- Jeez, Dr. Feynman, I'm sorry I asked
- Our beautiful, awesome, terrifying universe
- Snakes on mathematical planes
- Starting with one cell, we arrive at Prof. Hawking
- The God Gene. A breakthrough
- The python's dinner
- We are part of all worlds
- Werner Herzog explains radioactive albino crocodiles to Stephen Colbert
- Sex and stuff
- Siskel and Ebert
- Letterman, Siskel & Ebert go door-to-door in New Jersey
- Letterman: "The lovely & talented Siskel & Ebert"
- Siskel & Ebert & Stern
- Siskel & Ebert fight over a toy train
- Siskel & Ebert on home video in 1988
- Siskel & Ebert on how to be a film critic
- Siskel & Ebert recommend great summer movies
- Siskel & Ebert's 1980s Holiday Gift Guides
- Siskel & Ebert's animated appearance on "The Critic"
- When Siskel & Ebert were on "Sneak Previews"
- Strange
- "The Tell-Tale Heart," by Edgar Allan Poe
- At last, a trailer that doesn't give away the whole story
- Do I dare to eat a peach?
- Fifteen minutes of my life, gone forever
- Sigmund Freud's friendly couch
- Take my hand, I'm a stranger in Paradise
- The Man Who Foretold the Future
- This bike path is just plain batshit
- Top 10 reasons I want to be cremated
- Television
- Jack Benny, 1894-1974: The man who was funny just by standing there
- Jones, Jonze, Spike & Co.
- OK, already! I PLAYED a video game! Now are you happy?
- The Orson Welles Program
- Tom Shales lunches with Siskel & Ebert
- When television had a brain in its head
- Young Jon Stewart interviews George Carlin (1997)
- Trailers
- Videos
- "La Vie en Rose"
- Australians are so much better at this
- By Arnold: The most literal DVD commentary in history
- Comeback of an underdog dog
- Filmography 2011: 230 films in 4:58
- Idiot with an iPhone
- Michael Shannon as you've never seen him
- Star Feud: William Shatner vs. Carrie Fisher
- Taekwondo: How do they absorb the punishment?
- Tarantino vs. the Coen Brothers
- The flooding of Paris
- Why, you...I oughta slap yer face!
- Woody Allen meets Jean-Luc Godard
- You feel uneasy in this ominous audience
- What could go wrong?
Categories
- 3D (5)
- Best film lists--and worst (15)
- Books and reading (5)
- Books and such (3)
- Cannes 2009 (10)
- Cannes 2010 (10)
- Darwin, My Hero (9)
- Deeper into movies (35)
- Film festivals (3)
- Just for Twitter (1)
- My Life and Times (47)
- My Old Gang (13)
- People (23)
- Political (30)
- Popular entries (17)
- Specific films (27)
- Supposedly funny (13)
- The Immensity (32)
- The Seasons (3)
- The Webopolis (8)
- The show (9)
- Toronto 2009 (11)
- Toronto 2011 (6)
Monthly Archives
- February 2012 (4)
- January 2012 (4)
- December 2011 (8)
- November 2011 (7)
- October 2011 (4)
- September 2011 (11)
- August 2011 (6)
- July 2011 (6)
- June 2011 (4)
- May 2011 (6)
- April 2011 (3)
- March 2011 (4)
- February 2011 (4)
- January 2011 (7)
- December 2010 (6)
- November 2010 (4)
- October 2010 (7)
- September 2010 (12)
- August 2010 (5)
- July 2010 (5)
- June 2010 (5)
- May 2010 (13)
- April 2010 (6)
- March 2010 (5)
- February 2010 (4)
- January 2010 (7)
- December 2009 (9)
- November 2009 (4)
- October 2009 (7)
- September 2009 (15)
- August 2009 (9)
- July 2009 (7)
- June 2009 (6)
- May 2009 (13)
- April 2009 (7)
- March 2009 (7)
- February 2009 (10)
- January 2009 (6)
- December 2008 (5)
- November 2008 (8)
- October 2008 (6)
- September 2008 (6)
- August 2008 (6)
- July 2008 (4)
- June 2008 (5)
- May 2008 (11)
- April 2008 (4)
Leave a comment