I don’t have many details yet — and frankly all I want to do right now instead of finding them is to go in a quiet corner somewhere and cry for a while — but the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting, both on Twitter and their website, that their film critic for more than forty years, Roger Ebert, has died. He was 70 years old. According to Variety, the cause was “complications from cancer.”
It was just a day ago that Ebert, Pulitzer Prize winner and famous host of “Siskel & Ebert,” took to his blog to announce a “leave of presence” from full-time reviewing duties to focus on a recurrence of that cancer after years of battling the disease in various forms. But that same blog post announced a slew of initiatives — a new website, a Kickstarter for a new version of his classic television show, guest critics — and did not sound like the words of a man who was hours from death. To the very end, Ebert refused to let cancer defeat him or stop him. Even when repeated surgeries took his voice, he refused to be silenced.
Much more soon.
Read more of “Roger Ebert Dies At 70 After Battle With Cancer.”
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