Gene Siskel

The surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert (1942-2013): his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer.

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Throughout the ’80s John Hughes defined the teen movie genre and spoke not only to that generation’s teens, but every generation that has followed. Then in 1991 he hung up his director’s hat and disappeared into obscurity ala J.D Salinger. In 2008, a group of young Canadian filmmakers set out to complete a documentary about the man with what they hoped would culminate with an interview, which would be his first since 1999.

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By the mid-1980s, the fabled animation studios of Walt Disney had fallen on hard times. The artists were polarized between newcomers hungry to innovate and old timers not yet ready to relinquish control. These conditions produced a series of box-office flops and pessimistic forecasts: maybe the best days of animation were over. Maybe the public didn't care. Only a miracle or a magic spell could produce a happy ending. Waking Sleeping Beauty is no fairy tale. It's the true story of how Disney regained its magic with a staggering output of hits - "Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast ," "Aladdin," "The Lion King," and more - over a 10-year period.

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A documentary feature that reveals the creative process of Chicago moviemakers. Using the city's famous river as a location, directors are placed in a variety of boats and share stories of how Chicago has influenced their careers.

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Documentary featuring director David Lynch, stars Dennis Hopper, Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern and Isabella Rossellini, cinematographer Frederick Elmes, editor Duwayne Dunham, composer Angelo Badalamenti, and producer Fred Caruso. Produced for the "Blue Velvet" DVD.

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Trace the history of television and its impact on American culture with clips, newsreels, and exclusive interviews from television greats like Walter Cronkite, Carol Burnett, and Jay Leno.

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Jay Sherman is a TV movie critic who is forced to review the most pathetic films which he always rates as "It stinks." In addition to the film parodies, the show also deals with his personal life: working for a tyrannical media mogul boss, his lovelife and his family.

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Sesame Street's 25th Birthday: A Musical Celebration is a special produced for the beloved series' 25th anniversary. Released in a slightly different form on video in October 1993, the special was shelved for its broadcast premiere on PBS until 1994, during pledge drive season, and in many markets, aired as part of a marathon block with three show episodes.

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David Letterman uses mature humor to appeal to his audience in this weeknight series, which gets its music from a house band led by Paul Shaffer. Among the show's most-famous segments are the Top Ten List and Stupid Pet Tricks, the latter of which subsequently led to an additional recurring segment called Stupid Human Tricks.

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Comic Garry Shandling draws upon his own talk show experiences to create the character of Larry Sanders, a paranoid, insecure host of a late night talk show. Larry, along with his obsequious TV sidekick Hank Kingsley and his fiercely protective producer Artie, allows Garry Shandling and his talented writers to look behind the scenes and to show us a convincing slice of behind the camera life.

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Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert slug it out with SNES tennis in this hour-long syndicated special. Includes Gene using a camcorder with a steadicam attachment, a Danny DeVito interview and plenty of classic home video recommendations.

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A morning talk show with A-list celebrity guests, top-notch performances and one-of-a-kind segments that are unrivaled on daytime television, plus spontaneous, hilarious and unpredictable talk.

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A Confessional Documentary is a 1-minute long short film directed by noted film critic Gene Siskel, originally shown alongside his partner Roger Ebert's short film (Citizen Yuppie) on the 1987 broadcast of their annual Holiday Gift Guide program. It was shot entirely on a (then-new) Fisher Price PixelVision PXL2000 low-fidelity camcorder in monochrome on compact audio cassette, inspiring Richard Linklater to utilize the same technique in his 1991 feature SLACKER. The film recontextualizes the image of Roger Ebert's face to provide some humorous jabs at the nature of film criticism.

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At the Movies is a movie review television program produced by Disney-ABC Domestic Television in which two film critics shared their opinions of newly released films. The program aired under various names. Its original hosts were Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times and WLS-TV and Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune and WBBM-TV. Richard Roeper of the Sun-Times became Ebert's regular partner in 2000 after Siskel died in 1999.

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At the Movies is a movie review television program that aired from 1982 to 1990. It was produced by Tribune Entertainment and created by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, who had left Sneak Previews the previous year. Siskel and Ebert left in 1986 in a dispute with Tribune Entertainment; they went on to create Siskel & Ebert with Buena Vista Television. They were replaced by film critics Rex Reed and Bill Harris, a gossip correspondent for Entertainment Tonight. Under Reed and Harris, the show expanded beyond movie reviews, adding show business news. Harris left in 1988 and was replaced by former ET host Dixie Whatley.

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A late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels. The show's comedy sketches, which parody contemporary culture and politics, are performed by a large and varying cast of repertory and newer cast members. Each episode is hosted by a celebrity guest, who usually delivers an opening monologue and performs in sketches with the cast, and features performances by a musical guest.

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The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is a talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under The Tonight Show franchise from 1962 to 1992. It originally aired during late-night. For its first ten years, Carson's Tonight Show was based in New York City with occasional trips to Burbank, California; in May 1972, the show moved permanently to Burbank, California. In 2002, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was ranked #12 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.

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Sneak Previews was an American film review show, running for over two decades on Public Broadcasting Service. It was created by WTTW, a PBS affiliate in Chicago, Illinois. It premiered on September 4, 1975 as a monthly local-only show called Opening Soon at a Theater Near You, and was renamed in 1977 when it became a biweekly show airing nationally on PBS. By 1979, it was a weekly series airing on over 180 stations, and was the highest rated weekly entertainment series in the history of public broadcasting. It was finally cancelled in 1996.

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