Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

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

by tptacek • 13 years ago

841 167 13 years ago

jgrahamc• 13 years ago

Well, fuck.

rquantz• 13 years ago

I probably shouldn't have upvoted you, but that really sums up my feeling. Ebert was another old man who I loved, and they seem to keep dying. Which makes sense. Maurice Sendak, Kurt Vonnegut, Paul Newman, my Grandpa... folks who populated my childhood and who I never really pictured leaving. Well, fuck.

hyperbovine• 13 years ago

I feel the same way. It's as much to do with our getting old as it is with theirs.

e40• 13 years ago

One of the truly good humans on the planet. I will miss him.

markgx• 13 years ago

Wow, he just wrote his "A Leave of Presence" post the other day.

publicfig• 13 years ago

This is such a shame to hear. He was one of the people who really got me into film (amongst many others I can presume). He'll be missed.

A friend shared an article Ebert wrote in 2011 about death that I absolutely love that I feel is incredibly relevant now. In the article he states “I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear.", which I feel is a beautiful attitude to take. The whole article is worth a read and can be found here:

http://www.salon.com/2011/09/15/roger_ebert/

octernion• 13 years ago

Holy cow, what a loss. One of the few film critics whose reviews I always enjoyed (even if I didn't always agree with him).

And he just wrote about having a leave of presence! I will miss him immensely.

zwieback2• 13 years ago

He was a national treasure.

marquis• 13 years ago

A good conversation right now with his friends on WBEZ, his home NPR. http://wbez.ic.llnwd.net/stream/wbez_91_5_fm

Great quote from Rick Hogan: when he was writing a review about a movie he loved, "He was writing a love letter to a friend".

rubyrescue• 13 years ago

The shear breadth of his career is just astounding, his consistency in reviewing film after film for years. Inspiring for all of us.

astrodust2• 13 years ago

"Long live the new flesh" applies here. His corpus of writing lives on, immortal.

DilipJ• 13 years ago

surprised to read that he was an early investor of Google. I wonder how that came about?

smacktoward3• 13 years ago

He was active in tech circles long before that sort of thing was cool. He was a passionate advocate for Apple and the Mac during the dark days before The Return of Steve, for instance, and used to write a regular column in one of the big Mac magazines (can't remember which one, unfortunately). You couldn't read the columns without realizing that he wasn't a non-techie posing as one -- he really was a power user, a gigantic nerd who loved everything Mac at heart.

xxpor• 13 years ago

Wait what? I thought I had just read this morning the cancer had returned. I guess he really pushed on til the very end.

tsotha• 13 years ago

I was wondering about that too. He takes a leave of absence and dies two days later? Makes me wonder if there was some event (like a stroke) related to his cancer but not the cancer itself.

wcfields• 13 years ago

I'll just leave one of my favorite quotes from Ebert about a movie that is actually one of my all time favorite comedy.

"This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels." [1]

- Roger Ebert review of "Freddy Got Fingered"; April 20, 2001

[1] http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20...

tptacek7• 13 years ago

"It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and [Vincent Gallo] will still be the director of The Brown Bunny."

jusben1369• 13 years ago

Which is stealing/paraphrasing Winston Churchill "yes I may be drunk. But my Dear in the morning I'll be sober and you'll still be ugly" or something close to that.

deltron• 13 years ago

Ebert really was an eloquent wordsmith.

smacktoward3• 13 years ago

My favorite line of his is the one he ended his review of 1996's Mad Dog Time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Dog_Time) with:

"Mad Dog Time should be cut up to provide free ukelele picks for the poor."

cafard2• 13 years ago

Not half bad, but drawing on a line of S.J. Perelman's about a movie that "... provided a snug return for its investors, and was retired to be cut into ukulele picks."

And if you like entertaining reviews, the "Cloudland Revisited" pieces from The Most of S.J. Perelman are well worth the price.

nsxwolf2• 13 years ago

Also:

"'Mad Dog Time' is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time."

atonse• 13 years ago

I always preferred his 0-1 star reviews to his 4 star reviews, only because he would skewer them with such masterful language. Ahh now what do I do when I want to laugh at a review about a woefully bad movie?

smacktoward3• 13 years ago

You can always buy the two books Ebert published that are nothing but collections of reviews he wrote for movies he gave 2 stars or less: I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie and its follow-up, Your Movie Sucks.

There's enough skewering between their covers to keep you occupied for quite some time :-D

chjj• 13 years ago

I'm just going to link to one of my favorite reviews of his. You can __taste__ the contempt he has for this movie and all its characters in his words: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19...

I'll also never forget when Ebert lambasted that ridiculous "Benjamin Button" movie. At the time, I felt like he was the only one on earth that agreed with me. The film recieved nothing but praise, and I was sitting there wondering if I had seen the same film as everyone else. I was so delighted to read his review: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20...

enneff2• 13 years ago

While it was satisfying to watch him hate the films I hate, it was incredibly validating to see him love the films I love.

Synecdoche, New York http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20... Paris, Texas http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19...

(I just notice the similar form of those film titles. Curious!)

tptacek7• 13 years ago

What do you ask a snowman inhabited by your father? After all, Dad's been dead a year. What's it like on the other side? Is there a heaven? Big Bang or steady state? When will the NBA lockout end? Elvis--dead? What's it like standing out on the lawn in the cold all night? Ever meet any angels? Has anybody else ever come back as a snowman? Do you have to eat? If you do, then what? Any good reporter could talk to that snowman for five minutes and come back with some great quotes.

But Charlie, self-centered little movie child, is more concerned with how Jack Frost (his father's real name) can help him. His dad has been dead for a year and comes back as a snowman and all he can think of is using the snowman to defeat the school bully in a snowball fight. Also, the kid tries to keep Dad from melting. (What kind of a half-track miracle is it if a snowman can talk, but it can't keep from melting?) Does the snowman have any advice for his son? Here is a typical conversation: Jack Frost: "You da man!" Charlie: "No, YOU da man!" Jack: "No, I da SNOWMAN!"

tptacek7• 13 years ago

Fitzgerald said "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Ebert seemed to have a knack for thinking all the thoughts simultaneously, and then getting their product onto a page:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind....

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2013/03/how_i_am_a_roman_cat...

One of the truly great Internet writers. My favorite:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/11/the_pot_and_how_to_u...

(It's not what you think!)

The blog is getting crushed right now but most of this content is in Google's cache.

JPKab• 13 years ago

Wow. The Fitzgerald quote is amazing. Thanks for sharing.

As a kid growing up in a poor, rural community, I wasn't exposed to much intellectual writing. The exception was the reprint in the local paper of Ebert's movie reviews, and of course seeing him on one of the two channels that came in on the antenna.

When so many around me thought that being dissatisfied with the intellectual equivalent of McDonald's was elitist, Ebert reminded me that it wasn't cynical to look down on thoughtless garbage; rather, it was hopeful to demand that movie studios realize that we weren't as dumb as they think we are.

gnosis• 13 years ago

It's a sad comment on society that Ebert is considered an intellectual.

Homunculiheaded• 13 years ago

If you like the Fitzgerald quote, you'd probably also be interested in the idea that it essentially summarizes "Negative Capability"[0] which was originally developed by the poet John Keats.

Particularly relevant I feel in a world of comment thread polemics

0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_capability

bobwaycott4• 13 years ago

If you're interested, the quote comes from The Crack-Up, which "tells the story of Fitzgerald's sudden descent at age thirty-nine from a life of success and glamor to one of emptiness and despair, and his determined recovery."[1]

[1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16893.The_Crack_Up

nsxwolf2• 13 years ago

There's no replacement. I honestly can't see myself reading movie reviews ever again.

podperson• 13 years ago

Not a replacement, but my favorite movie reviewer is Anthony Lane (New Yorker).

barce• 13 years ago

Yes, Ebert was the only critic who could tell you how to improve as a film maker. His integrity was incorruptible. He knew things about film that none of the critics around today seem to know: a complete knowledge of films of the past, what it takes to make a film since he did one himself in the 60s, and how to make a film better. He will be terribly missed.

shrikant• 13 years ago

Mark Kermode from the BBC? Granted you mostly have to listen instead of read, as he's primarily a radio reviewer, but he's damned good. And obstinately opinionated, which makes for some fun review rants.

Check out his "Sex and the City 2: The Movie". Legendary among his fans.

username111• 13 years ago

Caches that worked for me (though some styling was off):

1. http://web.archive.org/web/20130130054900/http://blogs.sunti...

2. http://web.archive.org/web/20130324015956/http://blogs.sunti...

3. http://web.archive.org/web/20130117072812/http://blogs.sunti...

username3• 13 years ago

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind.... doesn't read like he could hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time.

tptacek7• 13 years ago

On second thought, maybe you're right; Ebert was just another down-the-middle atheist Roman Catholic.

apas2• 13 years ago

Well, Aristotle said something very similar:

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

backprojection• 13 years ago

This one is much better and on the mark. Fitzgerald's quote needs a corollary, which appeals to intelectual honesty. If reason definitively tells you x, but you want to believe y, then you might be tempted to abuse Fitzgerald's quote.

bobwaycott4• 13 years ago

Despite what the internet would have you believe, Aristotle never said such a thing. That quote may be a product of the Fitzgerald quote being mangled and misattributed, or of someone thinking they could say what Aristotle said better than Aristotle did.

The closest we get to such a statement is from Nichomachean Ethics 1094b23-25:

> "It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible." -- Aristotle Actual

vacri4• 13 years ago

the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function

This is the same guy who said "video games cannot be art, and I will not consider debate about it". The second part in particular was what I found disturbing.

tptacek7• 13 years ago

I admired him for that. He's not a technophobe. It was a quirky, provocative position to take, and not the easy one.

I don't think games had any reason to feel threatened by him.

schiffern• 13 years ago

I can't find a source for your quote, but he seems to consider quite a bit of debate in this article: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_neve...

He also clarifies that he thinks video games can in principle be art, but that no video game yet made could hold its own among the great works of art.

suyash• 13 years ago

Someone needs to find 100% cure against this deadly disease. So much money is spent on cancer research every year and what are the results..almost zero.

jpxxx• 13 years ago

Wrong, stop, I can personally name forty people working on it right now. Cancer is not a single thing, and progress is made on every front, every day.

tomjen32• 13 years ago

I won't challenge you for their names, but if so many people are working on the issue, why don't we see any progress?

Sure we have 30 ways to cure cancer in rats, but the best we can do for humans is either to poison them with chemicals (some of them radioactive, no less) or laser beams that are only slightly less likely to kill normal cells than cancer cells.

Meanwhile we throw a fortune at the problem and throw a fortune at ever more expensive treatments -- for what?

The only recent success I know of is against prostate cancer but that was only because some ex-con got rich and started to found actual, aggressive, of the beaten path research - and that is still not a cure and only against one form of cancer.

So since you know these people, what do they need to get some useful research out there? Money and fame upon success is a given (Jonas Salk comes to mind) but what stops them?

GFischer• 13 years ago

I know a lot of people (including my grandmother) that extended their lifespan significantly thanks to cancer research.

It's still far from perfect - my grandmother ultimately died from cancer-related complications, but she got a 10-year extension on life, I'd say it has advanced.

bitwize• 13 years ago

As it turns out, fighting cancer is hard. Really, really fucking hard. "We have met the enemy and he is us." Or rather our own cells, mutated through a million different gene changes with a million different causes. Progress is being made every day; it only seems like nothing compared to the massive multidimensional scope of the problem.

tomjen32• 13 years ago

I am not quite sure that makes sense - polio is was pretty complex too and yet there weren't that many years between the early attemps by Maurice Brodie (36) and Jonas Salks success (52).

astrodust2• 13 years ago

Results are not almost zero. Cancers that were once a death sentence before are now an inconvenience. Even though Roger Ebert ultimately died because of cancer, his life was extended at least a decade entirely because of treatments. This is progress.

The term "cancer survivor" didn't even exist prior to modern research.

krschultz• 13 years ago

I just read "The Emperor of All Maladies", an absolutely great book about cancer, the history of cancer discovery and history of cancer treatment. It goes into a lot of detail about exactly what progress is being made, why it is so hard, and what is on the horizon.

After reading it, I came away with the impression that the scientific fight against cancer is 50-60 years, but only the last 20 years has been very fruitful. Prior to that the treatments that worked were found largely through trial and error.

joeblossom• 13 years ago

Seriously -- My mother died when I was 2, 24 years ago. The type of cancer she had took her quickly -- however, today, the available treatments would have likely given her a relatively normal life.

Back then there was nothing. No one knew really what to do with her particular type. It was all a gamble with a lot of "Go to Mexico to try some experimental treatments"

harveyj• 13 years ago

A "cure for cancer" is roughly the equivalent to saying "a cure for disease". Ph.D Comics did a great piece on this a few years back.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1162

adrianhoward• 13 years ago

When I was a kid - childhood leukemia - pretty much a death sentence.

Now - 5 year+ survival rates are well above 80%.

Long, long, way from zero.

michaelochurch2• 13 years ago

Cancer is about two hundred diseases, at least. It's a case of undesirable evolution: cells evolve toward radical individual fitness at the expense of the organism. The body has ways of protecting against that, but the most "fit" cancer cells can sometimes overcome those. It's an ongoing arms race. This selection phenomenon (clonal evolution) similar to anti-biotic resistance is what makes it so hard to treat.

This is one reason why I have little patience for creationists. One of the most important problems (curing cancer) is an issue directly involving evolution (at the cellular level).

The cancer research is returning a lot of yield, but this is just a very hard problem. The body has about 10 trillion cells. Some are good, some are bad. The bad ones become increasingly able to survive treatments due to clonal evolution. The good ones die as well, because these are systemic treatments (highly powerful drugs) that interfere with cell reproduction. You have to kill all the bad ones, or the cancer will probably return. If you kill too many good ones, the patient dies a horrible death that's much worse than a regular cancer death. It's not easy to do.

It's just a fucking hard problem. We should be putting 10-20 times as much money into it. How many things are more important than fighting cancer? Not these fucking social media startups.

chaz• 13 years ago

Just two days ago, he announced he was taking a "leave of presence."

  Typically, I write over 200 reviews a year for the Sun-Times that are
  carried by Universal Press Syndicate in some 200 newspapers. Last year,
  I wrote the most of my career, including 306 movie reviews, a blog post
  or two a week, and assorted other articles. I must slow down now, which
  is why I'm taking what I like to call "a leave of presence."

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2013/04/a_leave_of_presense....

psychometry• 13 years ago

He writes quite a bit about his immediate business plans. It would suggest his death was actually quite unexpected, even though we all knew he was ill.

hans0l074• 13 years ago

R.I.P Mr.Ebert - I've spent many an idle hour reading his works, many of which, quite frankly, were more entertaining than the movies themselves and opened a whole world of cinema to me.

danso• 13 years ago

Ebert made his name in movie criticism but he was one of my favorite writers, period. I've read him since I was in junior high...it sounds silly now, but the way he would give four stars to what seemed like just a shallow blockbuster action movie but then justify it for doing shallow action wonderfully...that taught me a lot about how to judge things on what they purport to do, rather than just against what you, the writer, prefers.

As good as his four-star reviews were, I still loved reading his 0 to 1 star reviews. He was at great at ripping movies as he was as exalting them.

chimeracoder• 13 years ago

> As good as his four-star reviews were, I still loved reading his 0 to 1 star reviews. He was at great at ripping movies as he was as exalting them.

It's typically harder to write a good positive review than a good negative one. It's often hard to come up with praise and word it so that it doesn't sound like a bunch of thinly-veiled cliches strung together. This was actually Ebert's greatest strength, in my opinion.

ryanmolden• 13 years ago

His "Your Movie Sucks" book (http://www.amazon.com/Your-Movie-Sucks-Roger-Ebert/dp/074076...) has some pretty humurous, scathing reviews.

incision• 13 years ago

>I've read him since I was in junior high...it sounds silly now, but the way he would give four stars to what seemed like just a shallow blockbuster action movie but then justify it for doing shallow action wonderfully...that taught me a lot about how to judge things on what they purport to do, rather than just against what you, the writer, prefers.

Exactly.

As a kid watching one of his reviews was the first time I'd seen a reviewer, or anyone on TV say something like that. Even today, he remains the only example that readily comes to mind.

crapshoot1013• 13 years ago

Jesus. What a brilliant effing writer, whether you agreed or not, and a fundamentally decent man.

sho_hn• 13 years ago

While it might be cheap to remember a critic by something as sensationalist as a scorcher - and Ebert was of a higher caliber than to build a career on the entertainment value of them - his review of "Highlander 2" has been a favorite of mine for its good-natured bickering about the gaping holes in the film's logic: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19... (Cache: http://web.archive.org/web/20121026130620/http://rogerebert....)

I think what set Ebert apart is that he consistently judged films in the context of their ambitions. An action film was good so long as it had effective action; films purporting to be more cerebral in nature had rather more to answer for. He resisted the ivory tower most other writers with his level of film knowledge would climb.

rodgerd• 13 years ago

Your final paragraph was Ebert's great value for me: there are no shortage of critics who can tell me interesting things about the canon of great films; there are almost none amongst them who can also meet less elevated fare on its own ground.

stcredzero4• 13 years ago

As I've mentioned elsewhere, Ebert wasn't trying to impress anyone. He told the truth as he saw it. Keep doing that while being a good writer, and people will recognize you for it.

Cowen• 13 years ago

> I think what set Ebert apart is that he consistently judged films in the context of their ambitions.

A great example of this was his review of The Human Centipede. He said that the film perfectly accomplished its ambitions, but those ambitions were so dark, so far outside the norm that his rating system was simply incapable of properly rating the film. In his own words[1]:

> I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine.

[1]http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20...

teach• 13 years ago

I managed to hack your last paragraph into 140 characters, in case anyone else wants to tweet it and look smart like I did.

"Ebert judged films by their ambitions, eschewing the ivory tower: action films needed but good action while cerebral ones had a higher bar."

(Minus the quotation marks, that's 139 characters.)

papsosouid• 13 years ago

>I think what set Ebert apart is that he consistently judged films in the context of their ambitions

Yet he consistently dismissed films that I would describe as "low brow humour" as being terrible films. He said Ace Ventura was one of the worst films he had seen for example, and his reasoning appeared to be "the character is annoying, and the jokes are crude".

raganwald• 13 years ago

True, but there is a difference between well-crafted jokes about a crude subject and crudely fashioned jokes.

crapshoot1013• 13 years ago

From the THR review - part of the reason I liked Ebert - he wasn't fundementally getting his rocks off on being a cynical asshole:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/roger-ebert-dies-film-... “I am, beneath everything else, a fan. I was fixed in this mode as a young boy and am awed by people who take the risks of performance.”

crapshoot1013• 13 years ago

PS, one more: for those of you who know Jay Mariotti (sports "commentator - all around ass), Ebert's note on his way out was brilliant:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20...

leejoramo• 13 years ago

I can think of no better way to learn about the art and history of movies than to read through Ebert's Great Film articles. He did such a great job of putting films in context. I loved how his "Great Films" articles always had a good mix of films from the first movies to recent years.

http://rogerebert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=REVIEWS...

shill• 13 years ago

mprinz• 13 years ago

I loved his critics. Except those where I had a different opinion.

clicks• 13 years ago

Very sad to hear. I read his reviews, not really to know how a movie was received and whether or not it is worth watching (though you can do that too), but to get a nice summary eloquently discussing the motifs, symbolism, and story line of a movie after actually having watched one. I don't know where I'll get that now.

Two big thumbs down :-(. RIP Ebert.

mtoddh• 13 years ago

Wow, sad to hear that - ironic that cancer was what got Siskel too back when the two of them were doing reviews together - remember "two thumbs up"?

sergiotapia• 13 years ago

His name is synomymous with film reviews. A legend passed away, his reviews will remain in the ether, ready to be read by the generations to come.

parfe• 13 years ago

Ebert wrote an article in 1997 about 2001: A Space Odyssey which changed the way I watch movies. He made me start thinking about why the director and his characters do things rather than caring specifically about what they were doing. His work will stick with me for the rest of my life.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19...

stormbrew• 13 years ago

That's fantastic. Puts into words so well why I've loved that film so much since the first time I saw it, even though I've actually fallen asleep to it several times. This is basically concise proof that Ebert loved film for its merits and not for being just another way to tell a story.

stcredzero4• 13 years ago

A lot of young people look at his scathing wit and try with varying degrees to emulate that. His hallmark, and one of the fundamental sources of his scathing wit was his integrity. If you're careful about writing/saying what's true, and if you're doing it because writing/saying what's the truth is your motivation, then you can be great like he was.

If you're just after attention and want to be known as a scathing wit, please sit down, pipe down, and refrain from adding to the noise.

Basically, if you do it, do it because you have something to say.

jfb2• 13 years ago

The great thing about him, to me, was his unabashed love of movies; and all he wanted to do was share this with his readers. He introduced me to the work of Werner Herzog, and through that, a whole huge world of movies that I might not otherwise have seen. Thanks, Robert, and RIP.

jfb2• 13 years ago

"Robert"? Sheesh.

brownbat• 13 years ago

I've been digging through talk show clips with the duo on Youtube. There are some good ones, but really, if you have a similar impulse, save yourself some time. Just watch Red Coat Black Coat's retrospective, a little commentary, but a lot of just clips of their interaction:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFPMlnc2Zm8

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXk3N8EvnWc&feature=youtu...

jstalin• 13 years ago

Ebert and Siskel did a show on gay cinema back in the early 80's that treated the issue seriously, without snark or contempt. I saw a video of that episode a few years ago and my respect for both men increased dramatically.

http://www.ebertpresents.com/episodes/episode-208/videos/269

3am• 13 years ago

I am maybe a little older than some of the readers here, pushing on the lower end of middle age, ie, I had to memorize phone numbers/rotary phone at home when I was very young, I had a Walkman, MTV had only one station and it played music, etc. Perhaps I could have said Gen-X and saved some time.

Anyway, I remember Siskel and Ebert on television before there was much of an internet to speak of. Now if you look out over the landscape of people who successfully adapted to the new landscape of social media it's predominantly much younger. I think it takes a special kind of mind to reinvent one's self past a certain age, and Ebert did so very well (for whatever reason, George Takei comes to mind, also). But it was brave of him to do so and I think it is ...helpful to all of us that have grown up online that some members of his generation are/were willing to put themselves out of their comfort zones and share their viewpoints and experiences in that way. RIP.

edit: " ...and get up to change the TV channel" of which there were ~10 outside of cable, and some would require rabbit ear contortions. If I could give you more than one upvote I would have :)

jmj422• 13 years ago

...and get up to change the TV channel

In 1990, I was in high school. We moved to a small town near Urbana, IL. I was impressed then, and continue to be today, that Ebert would return to Urbana, Ebert's home town, every year in April (health permitting) to headline Ebertfest. Ebertfest is a local film festival held to honor him.

With Ebertfest only 2 weeks away, it will be truly sad knowing that the world has lost a great man.

http://www.ebertfest.com/

edit: Link to Eberfest

cpher• 13 years ago

I grew up just outside C-U and remember that very well. I think back in early 1997 he hosted a special screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Virginia Theater. One of the actors was there (Keir Dullea, maybe?) and they had a "fireside chat" about the movie and a Q&A session. It was a great experience.

buf• 13 years ago

"I'll see you at the movies" - Roger Ebert's last words. I still remember seeing his TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks/roger_ebert_remaking_my_voice.html

webwanderings2• 13 years ago

I was bowled over by Ebert's fascination with Dark City and I really liked it the first time I watched. However, many years later, I watched it again and it left me bewildered as to why I liked this movie in the first. As much as I like and respect Roger Ebert, I think he was dead wrong on his fascination with this movie. Great movies do not fall off of the imaginative pedestal, only the bad one does.

As a professional movie critic, he earned respect through his craft, but I think world of cinema is better off without any movie critic.

Rest in peace. One of my favorite quote of his:

“I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state.”

http://www.salon.com/2011/09/15/roger_ebert/

bcgraham2• 13 years ago

>As a professional movie critic, he earned respect through his craft, but I think world of cinema is better off without any movie critic.

Totally disagree - the critic, at his best, spotlights movies you would have missed, unlocks movies you would have found confusing, and rescues movies you would have hated. They facilitate love of cinema.

webwanderings2• 13 years ago

I don't disagree with what you're saying, but you missed my context. The professional movie critic is not necessarily a good idea for moviegoers who are themselves fond of the craft of movies and are critics in themselves.

wahnfrieden2• 13 years ago

Many of the great directors since the late 50's/60's have come from a background in film criticism. Analysis can help a lot. Criticism isn't exclusively about making value judgments.

afreak• 13 years ago

It's really sad to see him go. There are very few movie critics out there left who have an objective point of view rather than those who are just doing it because the seat needed to be filled and luxurious tickets were passed to the publisher.

I also will have to say the best portrayal of him was in Jon Lovitz "The Critic", where Siskel and Ebert were having a feud and it was up to Mr. Jay Sherman to reunite them.

Animaniacs did a good portrayal of them too.

mikec3k• 13 years ago

Fuck.

waterlesscloud• 13 years ago

Ebert wasn't just America's Foremost Film Critic, though he was that.

He was also America's Foremost Film Lover.

Universal sadness being expressed across the film community today.

zwieback2• 13 years ago

Roger Ebert on the mystery of how the rice cooker knows your rice is done:

"How does it know? There are no dials and settings on the Pot. As far as you can tell, there is only a heating element beneath. There doesn't look like room for anything else to hide. How does the Pot know how long to cook the rice? It is a mystery of the Orient. Don't ask questions you don't need the answers to. The point here is to save you some time and money. If you want gourmet cooking, you aren't going to learn about it here."

source: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/11/the_pot_and_how_to_u...

fudged71• 13 years ago

I was blessed with the opportunity to interview Ebert for an IAmA interview on reddit in 2010. People still message me thinking that I'm him.

gpmcadam• 13 years ago

A wonderful (and timely) tribute to Ebert from The Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/roger-ebert-hails-human-exi...

jellicle• 13 years ago

Ebert was a great film critic, but oddly, no one here seems to be talking about his one gigantic blind spot, which is his enduring and impenetrable belief that video games are not art, could never be art, and have no artistic merit whatsoever. His half-hearted apology - "I still believe this, but I should never have said so." - is in no way a retraction or backdown from that belief.

This is totally wrong. Movies are a subset of video games. Eventually, Ebert's remarks on video games will stand as a laughable monument to a by-gone era.

So. Ebert had the potential to be the first great video game critic, ever. His massive background in movies would have served him well. But he didn't have the fortitude to make the jump.

Who's going to be the first great video game critic ever?

hristov• 13 years ago

Nobody really cares about that. He never really got video games but he was old and nobody expected him to. Also, only pretentious fools spend anytime arguing about what is or isn't art.

I think we will have to look for great video game critics from our generation.

iansimon• 13 years ago

Ian Bogost. Example review: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/01/hun...

tiredofcareer4• 13 years ago

> This is totally wrong.

That's your opinion, just as he had his. I find it interesting that you question his fortitude mere hours after his death, simply because he doesn't have the same opinion that you do on a topic that resonates with you and that you are passionate about. He probably didn't give two shits until the video game community ate him alive for saying it, then he had to pretend to give one shit.

You're also assuming he would have wanted to review video games, even if he saw them as art. He chose to review film and rarely wandered, with the rest of his writing being mostly commentary on things not related to film or the arts; who are you to question his courage based on his choices and preferences? That's like me demanding that you write software for Windows Phone, with the caveat that I'll question your technical chops if you don't.

I work with a lot of people that don't like video games. I don't like Brussels sprouts, and some people do. Who cares? Move on.

enneff2• 13 years ago

Who cares? He didn't even play them. He's right, he has every right to believe what he wants, but he shouldn't have said anything about it because he's not qualified to comment.

doomlaser• 13 years ago

He actually did play the infamous NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game quite a bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=g...

objclxt• 13 years ago

> This is totally wrong. Movies are a subset of video games.

That seems a little...subjective? There is certainly far more critical literature suggesting the opposite thing. Seems to me what you're saying is just as much an opinion as Ebert's.

AlexandrB• 13 years ago

> Movies are a subset of video games.

This is just my opinion, but they are not.

Videogames are not about the same things movies are. This is most clearly illustrated by how we define film genres vs. video game genres. Film genres are generally organized by thematic content or visual style, e.g. science-fiction, western, horror, etc. Video game genres are generally organized by their interactive element - platformers, first-person shooters, role-playing games, etc.

Many of the best games are not about the plot or the visuals. Consider games like Minecraft, SimCity, Super Mario Brothers, or Tetris. These games connect with you because of what you do. Good cinema connects with you because of what you see.

KevinMS3• 13 years ago

What can you say about a film reviewer that gives Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 3.5 out of 4 stars?

Useless.

I don't get all this praise I'm reading here. Despite being witty, a national treasure, and whatever, he had one core job to do, and he was terrible at it.

tiredofcareer4• 13 years ago

> What can you say about a film reviewer that gives Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 3.5 out of 4 stars?

That he enjoyed it and you didn't? Some people really love that film, but I'm perfectly willing to accept that you don't. You should be just as willing to accept that others do.

Your comment sucks.

KevinMS3• 13 years ago

> That he enjoyed it and you didn't?

This is what a film reviewer does? He liked it watching it, so it gets a high score? How about whether the readers of his review would like it?

> Your comment sucks.

This is HN, not reddit.

bcgraham2• 13 years ago

Ebert rated movies by how well they succeeded at what was trying to be accomplished - by that measure, isn't his rating accurate? That movie did almost everything its makers were trying to accomplish.

KevinMS3• 13 years ago

> That movie did almost everything its makers were trying to accomplish.

No, its widely regarded as a disaster of a movie.

See this review, which I believe Ebert said that he enjoyed watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI

xentronium• 13 years ago

I don't understand all the hate on the episode one. Except for Jar Jar Binks, the movie was quite entertaining, actually.

acuozzo• 13 years ago

http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/star-wars-episo...

sage_joch• 13 years ago

He was an incredible writer. Any critic who reviews as many movies as he did will get the occasional one wrong (see his rating for Fight Club for another example). As an aside, I recommend his review of The Wizard of Oz. I never really understood why the movie was considered great until I read that.

gensym• 13 years ago

One of the many reasons I value Ebert is that when I read his reviews, I can tell if a movie will be worth my time, regardless of his assessment of the film. I love some films he hated and I hate some films he loved, but I've never felt like a single review has led me to waste my time on a bad film, even though he personally enjoyed many bad films.

The trick is to actually read his writing and ignore the stars. The stars are secondary, and he says as much - he only attaches them to reviews because the customers demand them. See, here's the thing: Ebert was great as a writer, not as a movie star-giving guy.

yarou• 13 years ago

A sad day indeed. Roger Ebert had the courage to stick to his intellectual integrity, unlike many film critics in this day and age.

stevewillows• 13 years ago

I admire Roger Ebert so much for the way he dealt with his cancer and the problems that resulted from it. Truly someone who took a really bad situation and rose above it.

He will be missed.

avenger123• 13 years ago

I definitely concur.

For him to get out in public, keep producing work and showing the world that he can be above the disease is very commendable.

We are never given a choice with the cards that life sometimes throws our way, but we always have a choice with how we respond.

jfc• 13 years ago

One thing I admired about Roger Ebert was his ability to demonstrate wit without rancor, something very few writers seem able to do.

When I read his letter to Jay Mariotti--in response to Mariotti's less-than-dignified departure from the Sun-Times--I couldn't help but be impressed by Ebert's thoughtfulness. I found myself going back to the letter, sensing that I had overlooked something. I finally realized what it was: the tone of the letter. It was ultimately hopeful!

The conclusion of that letter made it clear that Ebert was no fan of Mariotti's, but it acted as more of a rebuke than an indication of deep disdain.

A rare talent, indeed.

jennyjenjen• 13 years ago

My best memories of Roger Ebert were at the Conference on World Affairs at an event called Cinema Interruptus. The CWA lasted five days and was open to the public. Every single day of the conference, there was a Cinema Interruptus session. On the first session, attendees watched an film in its entirety. Over the next four sessions, the film was stopped - sometimes after a few minutes, sometimes after mere seconds - and Mr Ebert discussed the film with the attendees. Attendees were welcome to make their own comments, too; sometimes it was a hassle as there are people who just enjoy hearing themselves talk. But it was a great memory of mine that Mr. Ebert called one of my observations "astute." I was able to say hi and shake his hand after one of the sessions, and I was certainly impressed at how a person of such extraordinary merit would contribute his time every year to our beloved CWA in Boulder.

He will most definitely be missed.

bobthedino• 13 years ago

I always loved Ebert's re-appraisal of The Big Lebowski in 2010:

"If a man has a roof over his head, fresh half-and-half for his White Russians, a little weed and his bowling buddies, what more, really, does he need?"

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20...

Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

Related Stories