On Thursday evening Roger Ebert, a long-time film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and one of the unofficial spiritual gurus of twitter, died after a decade-long battle with cancer of the thyroid and salivary glands. Ebert was a prolific and elegant writer, both on the subject of cinema during his day job and on the stuff of life in general on his blog. You can read more about his life and career here:
Roger Ebert
Ebert's life nearly ended seven years ago on an operating table (in his words he "came within a breath of death") after his carotid artery, weakened by neutron beam therapy and surgical scarring, burst. Fortunately Ebert was still in the hospital recovering from surgery at the time of the burst, and he eventually recovered, though he lost most of his mandible and his voice during the lifesaving artery reconstruction. After this he rarely appeared on camera again, and became much more active online, where he gained a tremendous following (myself included) on his blog and on twitter. Though his larynx was out of commission, his written voice was as lively as ever, and Ebert discussed interesting things across the gamut of human thought in an interesting way.
Generally I agreed with most of his opinions of movies, and found his thumbs-up or thumbs-down a reliable indicator of whether I would enjoy a film. That said, I think he completely missed the point of O Brother, Where Art Thou, and I don't understand what he enjoyed about Melancholia at all. Oh well. People are complicated and people are different.
So long, Mr. Ebert. You made Chicago and the internet brighter places while you were around.
Also: If you're confused about where the tags on this post came from, one is a reference to this recent piece Ebert posted on his Catholic upbringing and how it influenced his later views on philosophy, art, politics, and other whatnot. Insight!
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