What the Internet Owes to Roger Ebert ⇥ cnn.com

Gene Seymour, for CNN (via Coudal):

As the lights went down one last time, Ebert would have loved it if all those people sitting in the dark and hoping for the best understood that his approach to movies was big enough, openhearted enough to embrace far more than the movies he’d loved all his life.

There are very few deaths of public figures and celebrities that have ever affected me the way the death of Roger Ebert has. He will forever be one of my most favourite writers, for such precise reviews as this:

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.