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63-612: Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Kempinski Munich ( lit.   ' Hotel Four Seasons Kempinski Munich ' ) is a five-star luxury hotel in Munich , Germany. It is part of the Kempinski chain of hotels. It was opened in 1858 and is located at Maximilianstraße 17 in the centre of Munich. This article about a Bavarian building or structure is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Star (classification) Similar systems have been proposed for electing politicians in

126-478: A "worthless" movie. Roger Ebert occasionally gave zero stars to films he deemed "artistically inept and morally repugnant." Scheuer's guide calls "one and a half star" films "poor", and "one star" films "bad". Not all film critics have approved of star ratings. Film scholar Robin Wood wondered if Sight and Sound readers accepted "such blackening of their characters." Jay Scott of Canada's The Globe and Mail

189-559: A Theater Near You , the predecessor to Sneak Previews , is included in the 2009 documentary film, For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism . In the film, he is seen debating with Ebert over the merits of the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest . Gene Siskel had an abrasive review style, and claimed his film criticism was an individual exercise that should not be swayed by public taste. In an interview for

252-543: A Time in America , The Last Temptation of Christ , Hearts of Darkness , and The Ice Storm . Six times, Ebert's top selection did not appear on Siskel's; these films were 3 Women , An Unmarried Woman , Apocalypse Now , Sophie's Choice , Mississippi Burning , and Dark City . In 1980, Siskel married Marlene Iglitzen, who was then a producer for CBS in New York. They had two daughters, Kate and Callie, and

315-473: A brief impromptu tribute to Siskel: I want to take a moment to acknowledge someone we lost too recently to include in our film tribute. He wasn't a filmmaker, but he definitely was a member of our film community. Now he clobbered some of us with a great big stick and sometimes he touched us with a velvet glove. I'm talking about Gene Siskel. He was a critic but more importantly, he really loved movies, so, Gene, wherever you are, honey, here's to you. She included

378-516: A critic, Siskel was passionate and exacting. I think it was important to Gene that this was the only serious film criticism on television. That made him proud. We had a lot of big fights. We were people who came together one day a week and, the other six days, we were competitors on two daily newspapers and two different television stations. So there was a lot of competition and a lot of disagreement. Ebert once said of his relationship with Siskel: Gene Siskel and I were like tuning forks. Strike one, and

441-529: A game or stage's difficulty (such as in the SNES version of Street Fighter II and its updates), or to rate the attributes of a selectable character or, in sports games , a team. Restaurant guides and reviewers often use stars in restaurant ratings . The Michelin system reserves star for exceptional restaurants, and gives up to three; the vast majority of recommended restaurants have no star at all. Other guides now use up to four or five stars, with one-star being

504-457: A mob of overworked employees so pitifully huddled together in an ill-ventilated factory as are the Asterisks in this Sweatshop of Twaddle." Literary editor Katrina Kenison dismisses O'Brien's grading systems as "excessive at best, fussy and arbitrary at worst." Book reviewers generally do not use a star-rating system though there are exceptions. The West Coast Review of Books rates books on

567-655: A nationwide audience in 1977 when WTTW offered it as a series to the PBS program system. Siskel and Ebert left WTTW and PBS in 1982 for syndication . Their new show, At the Movies , was produced and distributed by Tribune Broadcasting , the parent company of the Chicago Tribune and WGN-TV . Sneak Previews continued on PBS for 14 more years with other hosts until its cancellation in 1996. In 1986, Siskel and Ebert left Tribune Broadcasting to have their show produced by

630-472: A negative review to in 1990 but later gave a glowing positive review in 1994, stating, "I wasn't sure what I missed the first time around, but it just didn't click." Siskel said that he walked out on three films during his professional career: the 1971 comedy The Million Dollar Duck starring Dean Jones , the 1980 horror film Maniac , and the 1996 Penelope Spheeris film Black Sheep . When he mentioned walking out on Black Sheep in 1996, he said it

693-549: A piece of toast on which jam was spread in the shape of a swastika. Siskel graduated from Yale University with a degree in philosophy in 1967. While at Yale, Siskel was classmates with poet Paul Monette and future New York Governor George Pataki . Siskel studied writing under Pulitzer Prize -winning author John Hersey , whose reference would later help Siskel get a job at the Chicago Tribune in 1969. Siskel's first print review, written one month before he became

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756-412: A purely mathematical basis, 2 1/2 stars would be the dividing line between good and bad on a 0–5 scale. Common Sense Media uses a scale of one to five, where 3 stars are "Just fine; solid" and anything lower is "Disappointing" at best. There is no agreement on what the lowest rating should be. Some critics make "one star" or a "half-star" their lowest rating. Dave Kehr believes that "one star" indicates

819-572: A rating. Star ratings are also given out at stand-up comedy performances and theatre productions. Star ratings are given at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe , the largest arts festival in the world. Since 2010, the British Comedy Guide has collected over 4,300 reviews of around 1,110 different acts, across 83 different publications in the form of a star rating. The use of star ratings is controversial because

882-555: A scale of one ("poor") to five ("superior") stars. According to editor D. David Dreis, readers love the ratings but publishers don't. In the 31 July 1928 issue of the New York Daily News , the newspaper's film critic Irene Thirer began grading movies on a scale of zero to three stars. Three stars meant 'excellent,' two 'good,' and one star meant 'mediocre.' And no stars at all 'means the picture's right bad,'" wrote Thirer. Carl Bialik speculates that this may have been

945-469: A son, Will. Their daughters graduated from Siskel's alma mater, Yale University. He is the uncle of Ed Siskel , a lawyer and current White House Counsel under U.S. President Joe Biden . Siskel was diagnosed with a malignant, terminal brain tumor on May 8, 1998. He underwent brain surgery three days later. For a few weeks during his recovery, he participated on Siskel & Ebert by telephone, calling in from his hospital bed while Ebert appeared in

1008-488: A star rating to rank the safety of transportation. EuroRAP have developed a Road Protection Score which is a scale for Star Rating roads for how well they protect the user from death or disabling injury when a crash occurs. The assessment evaluates the safety that is 'built into' the road through its design, in combination with the way traffic is managed on it. The RPS protocol has also been adapted and used by AusRAP, usRAP and iRAP. Euro NCAP awards 'star ratings' based on

1071-466: A star rating, with a bullet reserved for movies that the magazine didn't like." The highest rating any film earned was five stars. The British film magazine Sight and Sound also rated films on a scale of one to four stars. Some critics use a "half-star" option in between basic star ratings. Leonard Maltin goes one further and gives Naked Gun 33 + 1 ⁄ 3 : The Final Insult a 2 + 1 ⁄ 3 star rating. Critics do not agree on what

1134-476: A thumbs sideways ratings, and goads the two men into an argument about whether or not that would be acceptable, as Ebert likes the idea, but Siskel does not. The two were also seen that same year in the show's celebrity version of " Monster in the Mirror ". In 1993, Siskel appeared as himself in an episode of The Larry Sanders Show entitled "Off Camera". Entertainment Weekly chose his performance as one of

1197-400: A truly great movie made you so happy that you'd tell me a week later your spirits were still high." Some of Siskel's most treasured movies included My Dinner with Andre (1981), Shoah (1985), Fargo (1996), and the documentary Hoop Dreams (1994). One of Siskel's favorite films was Saturday Night Fever ; he even bought the famous white disco suit that John Travolta wore in

1260-615: Is equal to the assignment. I look forward to seeing her in her next movie." In 1975, Siskel teamed up with Ebert, film reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times , to host a show on local Chicago PBS station WTTW which eventually became Sneak Previews . Their "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" system soon became an easily recognizable trademark, popular enough to be parodied on comedy shows such as Second City Television , In Living Color , Bizarre , and in movies such as Hollywood Shuffle and Godzilla . Sneak Previews gained

1323-457: Is so big that you can't do that." Siskel declined to comment on the new arrangement, but Ebert publicly criticized Siskel's Tribune bosses for punishing Siskel for taking their television program to a company other than Tribune Entertainment. Ebert privately suggested that Siskel join him at the Chicago Sun-Times , but Siskel remained a freelancer for the Tribune until his death in 1999. He

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1386-501: The Baedeker Guides (starting in 1844) borrowed this system, using stars instead of exclamation points, first for points of interest and later for hotels. The Michelin restaurant guide introduced a star as a restaurant rating in 1926, which was expanded to a system of one to three stars in 1931. In 1915, Edward O'Brien began editing The Best American Short Stories . This annual compiled O'Brien's personal selection of

1449-535: The Chicago Tribune announced that Siskel was no longer the paper's film critic, and that his position with the paper had been shifted from that of a full-time film critic to that of a freelance contract writer who was to write about the film industry for the Sunday paper and also provide capsule film reviews for the paper's entertainment sections. The demotion occurred after Siskel and Ebert decided to shift production of their weekly movie-review show, then known as At

1512-523: The Tribune ' s film critic, was for the film Rascal . His review of the film was not favorable ("Because of the excessive gimmickry, most kids will miss the tenderness," he wrote). Prior to this, he served in the U.S. Army Reserve ; he was a military journalist and public affairs officer for the Defense Information School . For a time afterwards, he was acquainted with Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner . In 1986,

1575-453: The "SNL Film Festival" for their last appearance. In 1991, Siskel, along with Ebert, appeared in a segment on the children's television series Sesame Street entitled "Sneak Peek Previews" (a parody of Sneak Previews ). In the segment, the critics instruct the hosts Oscar the Grouch and Telly Monster on how their thumbs up/thumbs down rating system works. Oscar asks if there could be

1638-651: The "death doughnut". Roger Ebert used a thumbs-down symbol. Other critics use a black dot . Critics also do not agree on what the lower ratings signify, let alone the lowest rating. While Maltin's and Scheuer's guides respectively explain that lowest rated films are "BOMB(s)" and "abysmal", British film critic Leslie Halliwell instead writes that no star "indicates a totally routine production or worse; such films may be watchable but are at least equally missable." Like Halliwell and Dave Kehr, film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum believes one-star films have some merit, however unlike Halliwell, Rosenbaum believes that no stars indicate

1701-462: The Academy of Television and Radio, his TV co-host said of him, "I think Gene felt that he had to like the whole picture to give it a thumbs up." In particular, he often gave negative reviews to films that became box office champs and went on to be considered mainstream classics: Poltergeist , Scarface , Beverly Hills Cop , The Terminator , Aliens , Predator , Indiana Jones and

1764-659: The Film Center's distinctive programming and lent the power of his position as a well-known film critic to urge public funding and audience support. In 2000, the Film Center was renamed The Gene Siskel Film Center in his honor. Only once during his long association with Ebert did Siskel ever change his vote on a movie during the review. He initially gave the film Broken Arrow a "thumbs up", but after hearing Ebert's criticism, Siskel changed his mind to "thumbs down". However, he had changed his opinions on films years after his initial reviews, as with Tremors , which he gave

1827-614: The Last Crusade , Thelma & Louise , and Independence Day . This even extended to several films that went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture: The Silence of the Lambs and Unforgiven . Yet, Ebert also noted in a memoriam episode of Siskel and Ebert that when Siskel found a movie that he truly treasured, he embraced it as something special. Directly addressing his late colleague, Ebert said: "I know for sure that seeing

1890-472: The Movies (later known as Siskel & Ebert ), from Tribune Entertainment to the Walt Disney Company 's Buena Vista Television unit. Editor James Squires stated on the move, "He's done a great job for us. It's a question of how much a person can do physically. We think you need to be a newspaper person first, and Gene Siskel always tried to do that. But there comes a point when a career

1953-545: The Movies (renamed Siskel & Ebert in 1987, and renamed again several times after Siskel's death). Known for their biting wit, intense professional rivalry, heated arguments, and trademark "Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down" movie ratings system, Siskel and Ebert became celebrated in American pop culture. Siskel was diagnosed with brain cancer in May 1998 but remained in the public eye as Ebert's professional partner until his death

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2016-481: The Right Thing , Goodfellas , Schindler's List , Hoop Dreams , and Fargo . There would have been a tenth, but Ebert declined to rank the 9 + 1 ⁄ 2 -hour documentary Shoah as 1985's best film because he felt it was inappropriate to compare it to the rest of the year's candidates. Six times, Siskel's number one choice did not appear on Ebert's top ten list at all: Straight Time , Ragtime , Once Upon

2079-444: The cutoff is for a recommendation, even when they use the same scale. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert "both consider[ed] a three-star rating to be the cutoff for a "thumbs up" on their scales of zero to four stars. Film critic Dave Kehr —who also uses a 0–4 star scale—believes "two stars is a borderline recommendation". On a five-star scale, regardless of the bottom rating, 3 stars is often the lowest positive rating, though judging on

2142-676: The eventual replacement for Siskel, Richard Roeper . Siskel and Ebert were known for their many appearances on late-night talk shows, including appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman sixteen times and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson fifteen times. They also appeared together on The Oprah Winfrey Show , The Arsenio Hall Show , Howard Stern , The Tonight Show with Jay Leno , and Late Night with Conan O'Brien . In 1982, 1983, and 1985, Siskel, along with Ebert, appeared as themselves on Saturday Night Live . For their first two appearances, they reviewed sketches from that night's telecast and reviewed sketches from

2205-450: The facilities provided. Some consider this disadvantageous to smaller hotels whose quality of accommodation could fall into one class but the lack of an item such as an elevator would prevent it from reaching a higher categorization. In recent years hotel rating systems have also been criticized by some who argue that the rating criteria for such systems are overly complex and difficult for laymen to understand. It has been suggested that

2268-604: The fall, stating, "I'm in a hurry to get well because I don't want Roger to get more screen time than I." Siskel died at a hospital in Evanston, Illinois , on February 20, 1999, nine months after his diagnosis and surgery; he was 53 years old. His funeral was held two days later at the North Suburban Synagogue Beth El . He is interred at Westlawn Cemetery in Norridge, Illinois . Siskel

2331-590: The film from a charity auction. Another all-time favorite was Dr. Strangelove . A favorite from childhood was Dumbo , which he often mentioned as the first film that had an influence on him. Siskel compiled "best of the year" film lists from 1969 to 1998, which helped to provide an overview of his critical preferences. His top choices were: From 1969 until his death in February 1999, he and Ebert were in agreement on nine annual top selections: Z , The Godfather , Nashville , The Right Stuff , Do

2394-421: The film has redeeming facets, and instead uses zero stars as his lowest rating. Examples of rating scales: Critics have different ways of denoting the lowest rating when this is a "zero". Some such as Peter Travers display empty stars. Jonathan Rosenbaum and Dave Kehr use a round black dot. Leslie Halliwell uses a blank space. The Globe and Mail uses a "0", or as their former film critic dubbed it,

2457-472: The first time a film critic used a star-rating system to grade movies. "The one-star review of The Port of Missing Girls launched the star system, which the newspaper promised would be 'a permanent thing.' According to film scholar Gerald Peary , few newspapers adopted this practice until the French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma "started polling critics in the 1950s and boiling their judgment down to

2520-472: The following year. Siskel was born in Chicago on January 26, 1946, the youngest of three children born to Ida (née Kalis) and Nathan William Siskel, who were Russian Jewish immigrants. His father died when he was four and his mother died when he was nine; thereafter, he was raised by his aunt and uncle. He attended Culver Academies , where he experienced anti-Semitism firsthand when a schoolmate gave him

2583-496: The form of score voting and STAR voting . Repeated symbols used for a ranking date to Mariana Starke 's 1820 guidebook, which used exclamation points to indicate works of art of special value: ...I have endeavored... to furnish Travellers with correct lists of the objects best worth notice...; at the same time marking, with one or more exclamation points (according to their merit), those works which are deemed peculiarly excellent. Murray's Handbooks for Travellers and then

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2646-498: The great scenes in that year's television. In 1995, Siskel and Ebert guest-starred on an episode of the animated TV series The Critic entitled "Siskel & Ebert & Jay & Alice". In the episode, Siskel and Ebert split and each wants protagonist Jay Sherman, a fellow movie critic, as his new partner. The episode is a parody of the film Sleepless in Seattle . An early appearance of Siskel, taken from Opening Soon at

2709-414: The half star is positioned to the left of one or more whole stars. Gene Siskel Eugene Kal Siskel (January 26, 1946 – February 20, 1999) was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune who co-hosted movie review television series alongside colleague Roger Ebert . Siskel started writing for the Chicago Tribune in 1969, becoming its film critic soon after. In 1975, he

2772-499: The lack of a unified global system for rating hotels may also undermine the usability of such schemes. In the UK, providers and comparison websites often use stars to indicate how feature-rich financial products are. The most senior military ranks in all services are classified by a star system in many countries, ranging from one-star rank which typically corresponds to brigadier , brigadier general , Commodore or air commodore , to

2835-443: The lowest rating. The stars are sometimes replaced by symbols such as a fork or spoon. Some guides use separate scales for food, service, ambiance, and even noise level. The Michelin system remains the best known star system. A single star denotes "a very good restaurant in its category", two stars "excellent cooking, worth a detour", and three stars, "exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey". Michelin stars are awarded only for

2898-582: The most senior five-star ranks , which include Admiral of the Fleet , Grand Admiral , Field Marshal , General of the Army and Marshal of the Air Force —some five-star ranks only exist during large-scale conflicts. Recruits entering American college football are commonly ranked on a five-star scale, with five representing what scouts think will be the best college players. International organisations use

2961-639: The number of predicted stars. The Unicode Standard encodes several characters used for star ratings in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows block: The STAR WITH LEFT HALF BLACK and LEFT HALF BLACK STAR are intended for use in left-to-right contexts where the half star is positioned to the right of one or more whole stars, whereas the STAR WITH RIGHT HALF BLACK and RIGHT HALF BLACK STAR are intended for use in right-to-left contexts (such as Arabic or Hebrew ) where

3024-475: The other commented on his partner. When asked what he thought was the biggest difference between himself and Ebert, Siskel unhesitatingly replied: "I'm a better reviewer than he is", but a few moments later, he said that anyone who read an Ebert review would read "an extremely well-written review". At the 1999 Academy Awards ceremony, after its in memoriam montage of deceased stars and film contributors (which did not include Siskel), host Whoopi Goldberg gave

3087-461: The other would pick up the same frequency. When we were in a group together, we were always intensely aware of one another. Sometimes this took the form of camaraderie, sometimes shared opinions, sometimes hostility. When both men appeared together on The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers , Joan Rivers conducted a "together and separately" interview with them, which at one point had each of them wear Walkman-style headphones, playing loud music, while

3150-729: The performance of vehicles in crash tests, including front, side and pole impacts, and impacts with pedestrians. The United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also uses a star ranking to rank the safety of vehicles in crash tests, including front, side, pole impacts, and rollovers, with 5 stars being the most secure. Some web content voting systems use five-star grades. This allows users to distinguish content more precisely than with binary " like buttons ". Many recommender systems , such as MovieLens or Amazon.com , ask people to express preferences using star ratings, then predict what other items those people are likely to enjoy. Predictions are often expressed in terms of

3213-508: The player to repeat and fully master previously beaten levels in order to receive a perfect 3-star rating, which may confer other benefits or bonus content. Another use of star ratings is to denote the rarity of characters in video games where players are tasked in collecting numerous characters, such as Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes and Marvel: Contest of Champions , in which stronger and rarer characters are marked with more stars to make them appear more valuable. Stars are also used to rank

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3276-542: The previous year's best short stories. O'Brien claimed to read as many as 8,000 stories a year, and his editions contained lengthy tabulations of stories and magazines, ranked on a scale of zero to three stars, representing O'Brien's notion of their "literary permanence." He further listed stories with a ranking of three stars "in a special 'Roll of Honor.'" In this list, O'Brien attached an additional asterisk to those stories that he personally enjoyed. Oliver Herford 's essay Say it with Asterisks , quips "Never, I think, were

3339-433: The public may ignore the reviews and concentrate more the star ratings alone. Star ratings are not often used to rate the quality of a video game but are rather used within certain games for varying purposes. One notable use of the star system is to grade a player's performance in completing a level with up to three stars, used in many modern multi-level games like Angry Birds . This three-star rating system challenges

3402-510: The quality of food and wine; the luxury level of the restaurant is rated separately, using a scale of one ("quite comfortable") to five ("luxury in the traditional style") crossed fork and spoon symbols. Hotel luxury is often denoted by stars. Other classifiers, such as the AAA Five Diamond Award , use diamonds instead of stars to express hotel rating levels. Hotels are assessed in traditional systems and rest heavily on

3465-560: The show, they reviewed At First Sight , Another Day in Paradise , The Hi-Lo Country , Playing by Heart , and The Theory of Flight . Siskel gave thumbs up to all of them, except for Playing by Heart . Following Siskel's death, Ebert continued the series with rotating guest hosts, which included Martin Scorsese , Janet Maslin , Peter Bogdanovich , Todd McCarthy , Lisa Schwarzbaum , Kenneth Turan , Elvis Mitchell , and

3528-439: The studio. Siskel did not disclose the severity of his illness to anyone outside of his family; publicly, he said that the surgery removed an unspecified "growth" on his brain, and that he was recovering well. He eventually returned to the studio, but was noted to appear more lethargic and mellow than usual. On February 3, 1999, he announced that he was taking a leave of absence from the show, but that he expected to be back by

3591-422: The syndication arm of the Walt Disney Company . The new incarnation of the show was originally titled Siskel & Ebert & the Movies , but later shortened to Siskel & Ebert . At the Movies also continued for a few more years with other hosts until its cancellation in 1990. The last five movies Siskel reviewed with Ebert on the show before his death aired during the weekend of January 23–24, 1999. On

3654-658: Was a Chicago sports fan, especially of his hometown basketball team, the Chicago Bulls , and would cover locker-room celebrations for WBBM-TV news broadcasts following Bulls championships in the 1990s. Siskel was also a member of the advisory committee of the Film Center at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago , and a strong supporter of the Film Center mission. He wrote hundreds of articles applauding

3717-456: Was an opponent of using symbols to summarize a review and wrote in 1992 that "When Globe editors first proposed the four-star system of rating movies about a year ago, the response from Globe critics was, to put it mildly, underwhelming." More recently, Mark Kermode has expressed a dislike of star ratings (assigned to his online reviews but not his print or radio reviews) on the grounds that his verdicts are sometimes too complex to be expressed as

3780-600: Was paired with Roger Ebert to co-host a monthly show called Opening Soon at a Theater Near You airing locally on PBS member station WTTW . In 1978, the show, renamed Sneak Previews , was expanded to weekly episodes and aired on PBS affiliates across the United States. In 1982, Siskel and Ebert left Sneak Previews to create the syndicated show At the Movies . Following a contract dispute with Tribune Entertainment in 1986, Siskel and Ebert signed with Buena Vista Television , creating Siskel & Ebert &

3843-463: Was replaced as film critic by Dave Kehr . The last review published by Siskel for the Chicago Tribune was for the film She's All That , published on January 29, 1999, in which he gave a favorable review, giving it three stars out of four and wrote that " Rachael Leigh Cook as Laney, the plain Jane object of the makeover, is forced to demonstrate the biggest emotional range as a character, and she

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3906-635: Was the first time he walked out on a movie he was reviewing since Million Dollar Duck in 1971; he later explained that he did not include Maniac because he did not review Maniac as an assignment for his newspaper or part of his and Ebert's weekly TV reviews but only as a "Dog of the Week", a feature of the TV show in which each critic would single out the very worst movie they had seen that week. Both critics had specific sensitivities and feelings that would often vary in extremes to certain kinds of bad films. Ebert

3969-483: Was very sensitive to films about race and ethnicity; Siskel was sensitive to films about families and family relationships, and had a special hatred for films like House Arrest (1996) and Like Father Like Son (1987), both of which were about parents and their children. Following Siskel's death in 1999, Ebert wrote: Gene was a lifelong friend, and our professional competition only strengthened that bond. I can't even imagine what will it be like without him. ...As

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