Movie critic Roger Ebert, who along with the late Gene Siskel made movie reviewing a pop culture sensation and paved the way for many lesser followers, died today at 70.
Siskel and Ebert, movie writers for rival newspapers The Chicago Tribune and The Chicago Sun-Times, respectively, first showed up on television in the 1970s as co-hosts of the PBS show "Sneak Previews." The pair's willingness to talk intelligently and probe movies that might show at the local theater, along with their quick wits and sometimes contentious disagreement, gave the show a popularity that propelled it first from monthly to weekly, then to two different shows as they moved on.
I've mentioned before that I preferred Siskel to Ebert because Siskel seemed a little more prone to calling trash out as trash. But Ebert's thrashing of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo was a classic smack to the face of its self-important and rarely funny star, Rob Schneider (the Schneidinator! The Schneid-man! Makin' copies of unfunny movies and calling them sequels! for those of you who may not remember Schneider. Sorry if I reminded you). And in recent years, Ebert's politics grabbed hold of more of his movie writing than I liked, and his forays into theology now and again showed him to be an excellent movie critic.
But he faced his battle with cancer with grace, grit and determination, not allowing it to keep him sidelined from his chosen field nor turn him into an invalid. He earns my two thumbs up for that part of his last act and for insisting that movies everyday people might want to see are also worth the time to examine and discuss.
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