10 SURE SIGNS A MOVIE CHARACTER IS DOOMED, and OTHER SURPRISING MOVIE LISTS by Richard Roeper (Hyperion), 289 pages, $20 paper. Rating: N
Rating: N
This is less a book than something Richard Roeper, Gilligan to Roger Ebert’s Skipper, put together over a long lunch hour browsing Internet movie chat groups.
It’s the sort of book a real film critic would be embarrassed to propose to a publisher unless he’s a TV boob and no doubt being offered a shitload of money.
I’m not terribly fond of Ebert, but he’s a good writer and he does the work – his books are honestly books. Roeper, on the other hand, has assembled lists with a lot of white space around them on the page, and often a blank page before the next list.
Browse it in the bookstore. Don’t buy it. You’ll only encourage them.
