News for
"Second City TV" (1976)

photos

board

trailer

details

2 articles from 2008

23 July 2008 1:23 PM, PDT | From avclub.com | See recent The AV Club news

You can’t be a film critic and not feel melancholy about the passing of Ebert & Roeper, yet another sad milestone in the imminent death of film criticism. It is truly the end of an era. Ebert’s always been a hero and an inspiration. At the risk of sounding disingenuous, it was an honor just be rejected as a guest critic on Ebert & Roeper. It really was. So I couldn’t help but feel a little wistful when today’s kick-ass episode of Sctv opened with “Gene Shalit’s Critic’s Special”, a variety-show spoof where the owner of the world’s greatest walrus mustache and caterpillariest eyebrows mugs and sings his way through songs and sketches alongside Dave Thomas’ Roger Ebert, Joe Flaherty’s Gene Siskel and Catherine O’Hara’s Rona Barrett. It’s a pitch-perfect spoof of both tacky variety shows (that trickiest, most elusive of

18 June 2008 1:30 PM, PDT | From avclub.com | See recent The AV Club news

The producer of my old television show liked to reference what he claimed was Gene Siskel’s mantra: “Write it once, sell it five times”. Siskel apparently took great pride in being able to recycle reviews in myriad forms: in print, on the radio, on Siskel & Ebert and on Johnny Carson’s couch as a frequent guest of The Tonight Show. I am nowhere near as enterprising or as sought-after. But in this TV Club Classic piece I’m going to channel Siskel, another nice Jewish boy from Rogers Park, by recycling some observations I previously made in my original A.V Club review of Sctv and my radio review of the same for Npr. Namely, I would like to gush about the mind-boggling genius of the legendary David Brinkley pot sketch. Christ, this blog is so threatening to turn into the Rick Moranis Appreciation Society. That’s O.K,

2 articles from 2008