Roger Ebert (1942-2013)
Moviegoers and fellow critics, it is a sad day that has reached this point. Eight weeks ago, the legendary Roger Ebert was one of the two men responsible for popularising the Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down phrase. The inaugural winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, an honorary award only given to newspaper writers and critics for the Chicago Sun-Times for print and online, whose life ended at age 70 on April 4th, 2013.
He began writing for the Chicago Sun-Times and has been a film critic ever since. Ebert became the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1975. That same year, he began hosting a TV show called "Sneak Previews" with Gene Siskel as his co-reviewer and co-host. For many years, the pair became partners. As the years went on, the two began hosting the two "At the Movies" shows on different networks and made appearances, including guest-starring as voices in an episode of the animated prime-time show "The Critic."
In 1999, when Siskel unexpectedly passed away, the producers renamed the show "Roger Ebert & The Movies." Substitute co-hosts took Siskel's place until the following year, when a columnist of the same newspaper organisation Ebert worked for, Richard Roeper, was assigned as his permanent co-host. The show was renamed "At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper." They continued to criticise or review features until 2008. Unfortunately, Roger Ebert's health issues have taken a toll on his physical health, and in 2006, he underwent surgery that removed his jaw, which cost him his ability to speak. It didn't affect his reviewing and returned to the Chicago Sun-Times in 2007, where he continued to write for the rest of his life, and later became active on Twitter.
The revelation of his success in reviewing comes from his love and extensive knowledge of them. He is not just an ultimate movie lover but an intelligent critic. And for his work, fans would genuinely express their love for him. I confess that Roger Ebert was not my inspiration, but the fictional character of "The Critic," Jay Sherman, was the one who got me into that. Here are a few clips of Ebert reviewing movies alongside Siskel and Roeper. I concur that two that might be positive are "Return of the Jedi" and "The Lion King," and the other is negative.
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