All apologies (and new reviews)

I'm looking forward to what you think of Scoop and Little Miss Sunshine, but especially The Descent. I thought the trailer was terrifying, and I just hope the movie can live up to the expectations that trailer raised.

I hope you get a chance to take a breather here and there too. Great to hear about Roger too.

"Baritone laughter erupted from... two adult males in the crowd. Other than that, stone silence."

I've had many an experience like this one, and they're always fond to look back on. As obvious as they are, the Scarface references and Scorsese dialogue improvisations in Shark Tale (on the whole, just a bad movie) are fairly amusing, but not to five and ten year olds (and their tag-along parents) who've never seen GoodFellas. My friends and I laughed harder at a collective three minutes of the movie than the rest of the audience for its entire duration.

I've been reading your reviews. But I gotta say that it took me a little time before I started reading them. Before Roger was taken out of commission, I'd been looking forward to his opinions on some forthcoming films both good and bad, A Scanner Darkly in particular (I've been eagerly awaiting that one. I do hope Ebert will talk about it when he returns to reviewing.) And then some other people started writing reviews, but they seemed pointless. "Who are these people? I've never heard of them. Why are they filling in for Ebert? Why do I care what they think." A little arrogant, but then again, it's Ebert fans who visit Ebert's site, and they're not liable to warm up to people they've never heard of.

But I'd gotten into your work because it'd been here for so long (whether you think it's a long time or not,) so a couple days after you reviewed Lady in the Water, I finally relented and read it. And I like what you've written. You might even be more fun than Ebert when you tear a bad movie to pieces.

But I still am reluctant to read those other guys. Like I said, why do I care what they think? They're nobody I've ever heard of. Unknown quantities.

I saw Little Miss Sunshine at a preview screening a couple of weeks ago and I'm interested to hear your thoughts on it.

I'm also interested in reading any reviews of The Descent by anyone besides online critics. Everything i've read about it has pretty much unanimously praised it, but the last time I caved in and agreed to see a mainstreem horror movie I ended up seeing the trite, cliche, terrible Hostel, so I'm hesistant.

Enjoying your reviews while Ebert's out.

Side note, I thought of your John Tucker review ("she's deep") during Miami Vice when Jamie Foxx (Tubbs I believe), made a threat about making someone's head explode by saying there would be Jackson Pollock wallpaper after he was done. Not many responsive audience members to that line.