Pulitzer Prize winner dies at 70, but movie reviews collected online represent a 'global resource'
ROGER EBERT, the first film reviewer to win a Pulitzer Prize and the man once named as "America's most powerful critic", has died from cancer at the age of 70. Here are five things you might not know about the writer described as "a critic with the soul of a poet". He spent his entire career at the same newspaper: Born in Urbana, Illinois, Ebert began writing about sport when he was 15. He joined the Chicago Sun-Times after university and became its film critic in 1967. During a 46 year career at the paper he reviewed more than 300 films a year and won a Pulitzer Prize for his work in 1975. "If there were a Mount Rushmore of movie critics, we'd start with Roger Ebert," his Sun-Times colleague Richard Roeper wrote in a tribute to his friend. He actually wrote a movie: Unlike the vast majority of film critics, Ebert knew first-hand what it was like to write a movie. He was the author of the 1970 "cult classic" Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, a "fast-and-loose Hollywood fantasia" based on A Midsummer Night's Dream. Slate describes it as: "A film of unbridled sensual pleasure, a cinematic shag carpet woven with delightful details and an intoxicating frenetic energy." He was savvy about technology (but hated computer games): Ebert fully understood the potential of technology and was an early investor in Google. When the syndicated TV show he co-hosted with fellow critic Gene Siskel was axed, he built a "formidable presence" on the internet. "His archived reviews invariably came top of the list in each entry on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), which made him and his memory of the movies pretty well a global resource," says The Guardian's critic Peter Bradshaw. He wasn't cruel, but didn't pull punches: Ebert gave the impression of always wanting to like a film, but if movie offended him he didn't hold back. Reviewing Rob Reiner's North (1994), he wrote: "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie." Hollywood revered him (except, quite possibly, Rob Reiner): Director Martin Scorsese said Ebert's death was "an incalculable loss"; Steven Spielberg said it was "the end of an era". Director and actor Mel Gibson called Ebert "a gentle soul" who was more a "film historian and lover of the art" than a critic. Source: The Week UK
