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Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

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Dryden

Dryden

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http://www.suntimes.com/17320958-761/roger-ebert-dies-at-70-after-battle-with-cancer.html

Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

Roger Ebert loved movies.

Except for those he hated.

For a film with a daring director, a talented cast, a captivating plot or, ideally, all three, there could be no better advocate than Roger Ebert, who passionately celebrated and promoted excellence in film while deflating the awful, the derivative, or the merely mediocre with an observant eye, a sharp wit and a depth of knowledge that delighted his millions of readers and viewers.

?No good film is too long,? he once wrote, a sentiment he felt strongly enough about to have engraved on pens. ?No bad movie is short enough.?

Ebert, 70, who reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years, and who was without question the nation?s most prominent and influential film critic, died Thursday in Chicago. He had been in poor health over the past decade, battling cancers of the thyroid and salivary gland.

Cont'd ...
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The aisle seats will never be the same.

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VBSJ;2325107; said:
I can only imagine Roger Ebert reuniting with Gene Siskel in the afterlife.
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My first thought was to wonder who will be the first to draw a comic strip of Gene in a theater sitting next to open aisle seat saying to a standing Roger ... "I've been saving it for you".
 
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DubCoffman62;2325139; said:
I always read his reviews, I didn't always agree with his opinions but I loved his writing style
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Ebert was fantastic because he was so consistent. Reading him I always knew if I would enjoy a movie regardless of whether his review was positive or negative.

His obvious love of movies in general and his lack of pretension when it came to what he enjoyed also contributed to why I would lfollow him over any other critic.
 
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Muck;2325208; said:
Ebert was fantastic because he was so consistent. Reading him I always knew if I would enjoy a movie regardless of whether his review was positive or negative.

His obvious love of movies in general and his lack of pretension when it came to what he enjoyed also contributed to why I would lfollow him over any other critic.
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Exacto
 
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Roger Ebert, the Enthusiast
Why we'll miss him.

.../snip/...

But what has always struck me about Ebert is the way he approached criticism not as a theorist but as an enthusiast. The movies he loved, he truly loved. And the movies he hated, he truly hated. (Like many, I will never forget his review of Rob Reiner's North.) He knew his opinions were just that, opinions, but that didn't lead him to hold them any less fiercely.

Many movie critics grow jaded or embittered over time. They decide (not without cause) that Hollywood only produces crap, or that filmmaking is in inexorable decline. You see it in their writing: a souring, a weariness, a lack of curiosity or joy.

Throughout his thousands of reviews and more than 20 books, Ebert didn't succumb to this trap. His writing, at the end as at the beginning, was full of optimism. He seemed never to prejudge movies, whether high art or low, and he was always open to being entertained.

That's why he kept writing at such a furious pace, over all these years, even after his diagnosis with thyroid cancer in 2002 and the severe complications that followed in 2006. He kept writing about movies because he cared about movies, cared so much that he couldn't bear not to be writing about movies. And that's why so very many of us will miss him so dearly.
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What Roger Ebert Knew About Writing
"If you pay attention to the movies they will tell you what people desire and fear."

Roger Ebert was making 90 cents an hour when he started working at the Champaign News-Gazette in high school, and that was more than enough. "To be hired as a real writer at a real newspaper was such good fortune that I could scarcely sleep," Ebert remembered in his new memoir Life Itself. His love for writing still remains; you can sense it on each page of Life Itself, as the Pulitzer-winning film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times tells of growing up in central Illinois, struggling with alcoholism, traveling the world, hanging out with movie stars, and battling the cancer that left him without a lower jaw—unable to speak, eat, or drink ever since 2006.

The book charms and entertains, but it also teaches. Ebert's TV talk shows with Gene Siskel brought him to fame, but some of the most striking passages in Life Itself are where Ebert talks about his first craft: journalism. Below, a few of the lessons Ebert has learned from a lifetime of written words.
.../cont/...
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