R.I.P., ROGER EBERT

With great sadness we just learned of the death of Roger Ebert.

Please see my homage from 2011:

We have been fans of Roger Ebert since we first saw him and Gene Siskel in 1978 on PBS. Les usually agreed with Gene and I usually agreed with Roger. We have all of Roger's books and we read his movie reviews online from The Chicago Sun-Times. Roger and Gene had several permutations of their show when moving from network to syndication, beginning with "Sneak Previews" followed by "At The movies With Siskel and Ebert" and then "Siskel and Ebert". They were together for twenty-three years and Gene's death in 1999 was a devastating blow to Roger but he continued on with many substitutes, finally settling on Richard Roeper. After their show was cancelled Roger started a new show in January, 2011 named "Ebert Presents The Movies. The new TV show has Bill Kurtis reading his reviews and his wife Chaz making some appearances but the two youngins leave much to be desired although they are obviously Roger's choices.

Roger began his battle with cancer in 2002 which has left him horribly disfigured and he was so brave to appear at Cannes Film Festival recently.

Roger and Gene Siskel's widow still own the trademarked "Two Thumb Up!" phrase. Roger was the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Roger is the only film critic to have a Star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. Forbes Magazine once listed him as the most important pundit.

Although Roger considers "Citizen Kane" the "most important" movie of all time, he will not say it's his favorite. His all-time favorite actors were Robert Mitchum and Ingrid Bergman.

Roger's TOP 10 ALL-TIME MOVIES are listed alphabetically:

AGUIRRE
APOCALYPSE NOW
CITIZEN KANE
DEKALOG
LA DOLCE VITA
THE GENERAL
RAGING BULL
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
TOKYO STORY
VERTIGO

I sent Roger an e-mail telling him that I thought it was interesting that neither of his favorite actors are in his favorite movies.