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When I was a kid, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were like superheroes to me. I wanted to be a movie critic when I grew up, and I remember tuning in for the series premiere of PBS’ Sneak Previews in 1975 and being amazed to see film reviewers on TV who weren’t cartoonish like the Today show’s Gene Shalit or local D.C. TV personalities like Davey Marlin-Jones. These guys took the cinema—and themselves—seriously. Now they’re both gone, and there’s no one in the TV universe to replace them. (I did enjoy the final iteration of At the Movies, with A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips, but it was sadly cancelled.)
I watched Siskel and Ebert for decades, before and after I became a professional critic, and their dialogue always influenced me, whether I was debating my college roommate, Arnold Wayne Jones, in the pages of the University Journal at…
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"You Jivin' Me, Turkey?" 