Roger Ebert Dies at 70 ⇥ nytimes.com

Yesterday, Roger Ebert wrote that he would be reducing his review workload while treating a new cancer.

Today, he passed away from that same cancer.

He was my favourite critic — not movie critic, but favourite critic, full stop. He seemed to write things in such a particular way that his opinion was counted for more than just that, almost rising to the level of fact. He penned skillful yet readable rhetoric. He wrote great reviews of great movies, but equally great reviews of absolutely dreadful films.

If you want to know what an impact his life had, note that you may need to try a few times to access the above links. The Chicago Sun-Times server is struggling to cope with the traffic.

Update: BuzzFeed has a collection of “13 things Roger Ebert said better than anybody else”.