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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.430973
EAN num: 9781401307691
ISBN number: 1401307698
Label: Hyperion
Manufacturer: Hyperion
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 224
Printing Date: February 02, 2005
Publishing house: Hyperion
Release Date: February 02, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 819497
Studio: Hyperion
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
A hilarious collection of essays, riffs, and lists that celebrate the insanity of Hollywood -- for anyone who loves the movies.
Richard Roeper, like the rest of us, adores the movies. In this uproarious, offbeat book, he gives us a whole new set of critical lenses for assessing the movies and the people and the industry that make them. With his characteristic acerbic wit, he weaves short essays with lists that work together to explain where Hollywood succeeds -- and where it so often frustrates, disappoints, and fails us. But while Roeper devotes most of the book to mockery and ridicule, this book is, in the end, a love letter to film.
Some of the essays and lists included in Schlock Value:
--Comical statistical breakdowns, including career batting averages of actors
--Reviews of Hollywood finances, including budgets, salaries, and ticket prices
--A proposed moratorium on pet projects, e.g., Kevin Costner's The Postman or John Travolta's Battlefield Earth
--The age differences between Woody Allen and his various leading ladies
--Actors appearing around the world in television commercials, including a list of the biggest stars that do overseas commercials -- and the products they push
Schlock Value is the perfect book for anyone who loves grumbling and complaining about the movies -- but still can't help spending their weekends and evenings in front of the screen.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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The interesting part about Richard Roeper is that he seems to me to be a critic that speaks his mind, even at his angriest. While Roger Ebert would call a bad movie, well, a bad movie, Roeper opens up his insult box and would, at the very least, call it a disgusting piece of garbage, or something along those lines. The fact is, the world needs more critics like Richard Roeper. His accuracy is amazing to the point that it's insanely funny. Though he does not make his political views known on the show (he doesn't hide them either), he lets it all fly in Schlock Value. He takes aim at everyone from Joel Siegel (on his positive review of Cat in the Hat), to idiot liberal-hater Ann Coulter, to Wireless Magazine's Earl Dittman. Roeper leaves no holds barred and points out the idiocy of some of Hollywood's worst. One of my favorite sections in the book is Roeper's attack on "Quote Sl*ts" like Earl Dittman, the completely braindead Shawn Edwards (Fox-TV), and Mark S. Allen. The only critic that he left out that I wish he would have taken down was Jeffrey Lyons of NBC-TV. Find me an awful movie and I will show you that the only people to give it good reviews are these critics. Roeper also takes aim at the complications of the Academy Awards, especially regarding the long speeches of the lesser winners ("All due respect to these people, but nobody knows who you are and nobody has seen your work and nobody knows anyone you're thanking."). Roeper ranges from career "batting averages" to "Most Disappointing Careers After Winning the Academy Award," a list that includes F. Murry Abraham, Cher, Whoopi Goldberg, and Cuba Gooding Jr. Roeper is insanely funny, yet he is insanely accurate. Nobody points out the obvious better than he does.
Rated by buyers -
I have always liked Richard Roeper's column. He is a normal, reasonable, sensible guy who is also one of the most influential critics in the country. In general I don't pay much attention to most critics because they are more full of themselves than politicians on average, and have no more real-world knowledge or sense than anyone else I come across in a typical day. Roeper is different because he grew up from centrist Midwestern, roots, and doesn't hide from that history as if it was a skeleton in the closet.
This book is wonderful at pointing out the wretched excesses and self-centeredness of Hollywood and much of the critical world. I am particularly amused by the observations from Aspen, and never tire of Roeper exposing self-serving, hypocritical talking heads for the shallow hacks they are. Don't get me wrong, neither Roeper or I believe in censoring anyone's right to free speech, but we both believe that if a celebrity says something absolutely asinine, it deserves to be exposed as surely as if someone else said it.
I actually prefer Roeper's daily columns to his books, but I found this book an entertaining expose that was fun to read, and was not a bit self-serving. Best of all, Roeper is still a normal guy with a normal ego, and I can't tell you how wonderful I find that to be.
Rated by buyers -
I've been watching Roger Ebert's show since the early PBS days in the 70's. Have rarely missed a week. Agree or disagree with them, it is one of the only shows on TV with serious discusion about movies. So, I have been following Richard Roeper since he began on the show a few years ago. While I've watched him, I'll be honest, I've never read his column in the Sun Times.
While in a bookstore, I saw SCHLOCK VALUE on the shelf. After being plugged on the show for the past few months, I decided to pick it up and look at it. I immediately brought it to the checkout counter to buy.
What a great book!
Among the topics covered in the book, an analysis of the top "movie stars" and what percentage of bad films they make, a look at the faulty obsession with box office grosses, the Oscars, the Golden Globes and why they shouldn't be taken seriously, bloopers in films, how critical blurbs work (the quotes in movie ads), a behind the scenes look at the Ebert and Roeper show (including a sample schedule of screenings for the week), politics and film stars, and (in the best section of the book) a description of Lost films, films that never played theatres, playing on video or never released in any way.
The only problems with the book, at times, it seems a little disorganized. He bounces around from one topic to the next, even in the same chapter. Plus, a couple times he repeats himself, saying the same thing in different chapters. And, most of all, it is too short. The book is 210 pages, but it is the size of a TV Guide. I read it in one night. I wish the Lost Films section was an entire book on its own.
The book is a lot of fun. Roeper is more movie fan than film scholar and his writing shows that. He loves what he does.
Now, I'm going to have to read his columns more.
Rated by buyers -
The very first reviewer takes film far too seriously. Modern cinema is most decidedly not "our greatest art form." Sheesh! Most of what comes out of Hollywood these days is mindless pap. That's not to say that a lot of it is not entertaining. Even some of the stupid stuff entertains some Saturday nights after a long week's work. There are still even a few great films out there, and Roeper acknowledges this.
Guess what, critics are supposed to be critical, not sycophantic. I enjoyed the sarcastic wit of this book a lot more than I enjoyed some of the movies I've seen.
Rated by buyers 
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Richard Roeper is the worst thing to happen to movies since the corporate take-over of the studios in the 1980's. He cares far more about celebrities, his own image, and behind the scenes gossip than he does for any film. Whereas a good critic would find ways to help people love movies (or any artform) more, Roeper almost never does this, choosing instead to focus on the most negative elements of many of the films he writes about. Even the descriptions above, by the publisher, highlight this fact: he writes about "Reviews of Hollywood finance." (Rather than encouraging people to care more about the story than the budget.)
"Actors who appear in television commercials." Does Roeper want us to focus on who does commercials, or focus on each movie, and decide whether its story is told well or not? Citing two unsuccessful films, Roeper proposes a "moratorium on pet projects." But Roeper wants to oversimplify films so he can snarkily make his point, when he ignores the reality that many, many successful (i.e., well-told) films are "pet projects." Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, or Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ are two strong (and very different) examples. But Roeper just wants to dumb everything down (including the movies and movie audience) for his jokey complaints. I do believe that this very shallow man loves movies, but he uses a tremendous amount of power and energy encouraging and teaching people to utterly dismiss entire movies because of one or two irrelevant elements. A quick example: When the film "Chicago" was in theatres, Roeper nearly bent himself double complaining fiercely about the fact that the movie wasn't filmed in Chicago - EVEN THOUGH THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT IS ON THE SCREEN. I heard him being interviewed on a radio show, and the host was scoffing at "Chicago," saying that he wouldn't go see a musical. Rather than stepping into the role of film critic and defending the film as sexy and fun (Roeper gave a thumbs up to it), Roeper merely complained about the location of the shoot again, and never said another word about it. Disgraceful. This book is NOT, "a love letter to film." It is a course in learning how to diminish and dismiss film, our greatest artform.
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