at the movies - The Screengrab

Ben Mankiewicz: 12 million died in the Holocaust

Over at Defamer, Stu VanAirsdale has received an anonymous tip about graceless behavior in the screening room. The subject: a "well-known but little respected TV critic whose son is also a well-known but little respected TV critic, trash-talking highly respected older critic who was replaced by his son." This, the site and commenters agree, can point in no other direction than Jeffrey Lyons and his spawn Ben, who — along with Ben Mankiewicz — makes up the tag-team that's replaced Roeper & Ebert on "At The Movies." Apparently Lyons senior went on to label Ebert a "pathetic old putz" and was cackling over the fact that no one wants to watch "two geeky guys."

Now, frankly, Roeper's departure from the air is no great loss; he was just a place-holder with guests of varying quality until Ebert could talk again, and who knows when that'll happen. People talk shit about Ebert and his extremely generous standards these days, and the two thumbs up/down system surely did no favors for serious criticism in the public eye. (Anthony Lane once made a sarcastic crack about "the rotation of a chubby thumb through 180 degrees." On the Brazil commentary track, Terry Gilliam more succinctly announced that Siskel and Ebert could go fuck themselves.) But Ebert did a lot of important work in the '70s, championing Herzog as fervently as anyone and generally doing a lot to expand the general public's understanding of film. He gets a lifetime pass. His successors display none of his commitment, fervor or knowledge.

But, for all their graceless, hacky evaluations and banal pronouncements, people seem to have missed Lyons and Mankiewicz's biggest blunder so far: they think 12 million died in the Holocaust.

Richard Roeper to Grant Wishes of Millions of Cinephiles

In how-can-we-miss-you-if-you-won'-go-away news, At the Movies co-host Richard Roeper has announced that this month will be his last on the popular movie review program. Unfortunately for those who have been wishing he would stop reviewing movies since he first started doing it in 2000, he will not be quitting film criticism altogether, but rather starting his own show as parent company Disney turns At the Movies into a new magazine-format entertainment-based talk show. "Over the last two seasons," Roeper said, "as (co-host) Roger (Ebert) has bravely coped with his medical issues, I've continued the show with a number of guest co-hosts, such as Jay Leno, Harold Ramis and John Mellencamp," all of whom share with Roeper the fact that they are not actually movie critics.