Thumbs up, Uncle Roger
Roger Ebert, the dean of American film critics — the only writer ever to win a Pulitzer Prize exclusively for film criticism — is recovering today from emergency surgery, necessitated by complications from a cancer-related operation two weeks ago.
I don't believe I'm overstating the case when I say that Ebert has been my single greatest influence as a writer. Although many Americans know him primarily as the avuncular cohost of the weekly TV show he began with the late Gene Siskel and continues with Richard Roeper, it's as a master of the written word that I appreciate Ebert the most. His reviews form an integral component of my daily online information-foraging. In particular, his essays about cinema's greatest films are classics of analysis — they should be required reading for everyone with even the slightest interest in motion pictures as a communication medium.
Our opinions don't always coincide (although we're in agreement that Alex Proyas's Dark City is one of the truly great films of the past decade) but I always feel that I've learned something valuable — about film, or writing, or both — after reading one of Ebert's reviews.
Get well soon, Uncle Roger.
I don't believe I'm overstating the case when I say that Ebert has been my single greatest influence as a writer. Although many Americans know him primarily as the avuncular cohost of the weekly TV show he began with the late Gene Siskel and continues with Richard Roeper, it's as a master of the written word that I appreciate Ebert the most. His reviews form an integral component of my daily online information-foraging. In particular, his essays about cinema's greatest films are classics of analysis — they should be required reading for everyone with even the slightest interest in motion pictures as a communication medium.
Our opinions don't always coincide (although we're in agreement that Alex Proyas's Dark City is one of the truly great films of the past decade) but I always feel that I've learned something valuable — about film, or writing, or both — after reading one of Ebert's reviews.
Get well soon, Uncle Roger.
Labels: Celebritiana, Cinemania
SwanShadow was randomly pounding the keyboard at 10:48 AM
2 insisted on sticking two cents in:
Happy Fourth of July!
...and leave us not forget Roger's earliest major contribution to film: the inimitable, brilliant and dangerous Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. His barbed genius will keep Jacqueline Susanne rolling over on her valium for many a decade to come.
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