Roger Ebert

Film critic Roger Ebert died of cancer today.  He was 70.

Nowadays if you want to learn more about a movie, all you have to do is Google it and see what Rotten Tomatoes and Wikipedia and IMDb have to say.  But for decades, Siskel and Ebert (Gene Siskel died in 1999) were the go-to guys for movie reviews.

They were always entertaining, whether you agreed with them or not, or even if you didn’t care about the movie they were discussing.  “Two Thumbs Up” will probably be part of the general vocabulary for decades to come.

Plus, they often disagreed with each other.

I always assumed that the comedy feature Men on Film — from In Living Color, starring Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier — was at least partially a spoof on Siskel and Ebert.  “Two snaps up for the title alone,” “Haaaaaaate it!”…

In 1975 Roger Ebert won a Pulitzer for distinguished criticism.  He was one of only three film critics to receive a Pulitzer.

R.I.P.