We'll be talking about the piece in the reviewing/blogging class that birthed this Cyclops; I'll share some thoughts as they emerge in a month or so. For now, a few observations:
1) When Roger Ebert speaks, I listen. It's well-known among those who work in the film industry (both production and criticism) that he is one of the few critics who actually knows and cares about what he's discussing. You can always argue with his taste on individual films, but few have been able to make any form of art as understandable to as many as Ebert has.
2) That being said, I do have some qualms about the generational argument he's making here. The notion that current (i.e., young) movie audiences are responsible for dumbing down the industry could just as easily have been made 20 years ago, and indeed was made 50 years ago: Go look at the mainstream reviews of the Roger Corman et al. schlockfests that have been (rightly, for the most part) held in reverence by filmmakers from Scorsese to Tarantino since: They make Adorno and Horkheimer look like writers for Rolling Stone.
3) That being said -- and this is where it'll get good with 20-year-old college students -- I do agree that there is a greater general lack of curiosity among current young moviegoers than among previous generations. And a key culprit, it seems to me, goes unmentioned in his argument: DVD commentary tracks. Why bother to see things for yourself and ask questions like "Why this shot and not that one? Why that angle? That closeup?" when McG and Drew Barrymore are there on audio to Explain It All To You? The saying "Trust the tale, not the teller" should, if'n you ask me, be as required a part of the beginning of the DVD as the antipiracy notice.
Any comments you might have about Ebert's piece -- or this rambling -- are more than welcome.
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