Showing posts with label In Memoriam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label In Memoriam. Show all posts
11 January 2016
16 August 2014
O Captain, My Captain!
Robin Williams: In Memoriam
by Kevin Powers
by Kevin Powers
Monday evening started out as any other Monday evening for a
teacher newly back to school.
My
wife, Amanda, and I decided we would get Mexican for dinner and found ourselves
at Clinton, Tennessee's own, Los Caballeros (always good).
Toward
the end of the meal, Amanda got an alert on her phone.
“Oh no,” she said.
“What is it?” I replied.
“Robin Williams died."
14 July 2014
More than Life Itself
I was born inside the movie of my life. The visuals were before me, the audio surrounded me, the plot unfolded inevitably but not necessarily. I don't remember how I got into the movie, but it continues to entertain me.” - Roger Ebert (Chapter 1, Life Itself: A Memoir)
So begins Roger Ebert's memoir and Steve James' documentary that followed, both known from the astonishingly simple, yet brimming-with-meaning title, Life Itself.
First, I must say that Roger Ebert, the writer, has inspired me more than any one writer I have ever read. And I majored in English. I have read Beowulf, Milton, Pope. I have read Wordsworth, Byron, Keats. I have read Shakespeare. I have read McCarthy, Irving, Chabon. Ebert touches me most. Not to say he's better than any of those. He doesn't even (for the most part) write in those genres. But his writing has shaped me, has made me the writer I am and that I hope to be.
Steve James directed probably the most powerful documentary I've ever seen...Hoop Dreams. Roger Ebert (and longtime rival and TV partner, Gene Siskel) championed this film. They made Steve James' career. That is just one of many of the fascinating chapters of James' film of Ebert's life and death. Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel became the first movie critics in the history of film criticism to truly impact the careers of some of the finest filmmakers of their (and my) generation.
In fact, another iconic documentary filmmaker (and one of my favorites...period), Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War, Standard Operating Procedure) admits in an interview for Life Itself that Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel made his career by continuously discussing his first feature on their show, a brilliant documentary about pet cemeteries called Gates of Heaven. They did it by brazenly presenting and highlighting movies that most people wouldn't ever see. They chose to review films that simply were not the big blockbuster or rom-com that week. Oh, they saw those too. And debated about them. No movie was left unseen.
Roger Ebert easily reviewed 200 movies every year. I'm sure he watched way more than that. He was a movie-writing whiz kid, who wrote for one paper, The Chicago Sun-Times, for 46 years. This is even after he became the first movie critic to win the Pulitzer Prize and the target of bigger, better papers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.
As James' new documentary makes us aware, Roger was happy there. He was happy working at a working-class paper. He told the New York and Washington boys, "I don't want to learn new streets."
Life Itself skims through the pages of Ebert's life both fully and effortlessly cutting footage of his most recent hospital rehab visit in the winter of 2012/2013 with a chronological account of his life. After a long remission, his cancer had returned causing a fracture in his hip. This is after a series of life-saving surgeries (to treat his thyroid and salivary gland cancers) starting in 2006 that ultimately removed his ability to speak, eat, and drink.
The scenes of Ebert in the rehab facility are true and sometimes harsh. In a recent "Fresh Air" interview with Terry Gross, the late Ebert's wife, Chaz, and filmmaker Steve James discuss Roger's insistence that the camera capture a suction procedure that must be done constantly. A tube is inserted into his throat essentially swallowing for him as he has lost that ability with most of his jaw and lower mouth. Chaz would have refused to let that be filmed. Roger had Steve had to do it when she was away. Such is the power and bravery of Roger Ebert. He had nothing to hide. He wanted people to see his life, even at the end, for what it was. The truth of his life, he believed, must be seen.
Life Itself begins with people snapping pictures in front of the Chicago Theatre just after Ebert's death in April of 2013, a day that changed my life. We meet Roger and his wife and Steve James himself in the rehab facility.
Then we get Roger's life...
He was a born writer, the movie shows us. Through personal photos and video footage, we see boy Roger, the son of a blue-collar Illinois man and a housewife, a kid who started his own newspaper and delivered to the people of his neighborhood. We understand, through email exchanges with James, how Roger came to be who he is, a democratic, pro-labor man, whose self-described political beliefs are summed up by one word..."kindness."
In relationships with certain filmmakers, we understand, as one puts it, that Ebert was a "populist" sort of movie critic. He believed that anyone could "get" a movie, that all movies are for everybody to critique and judge. "The movies," he says, "are a machine that creates empathy."
The film also delves into his start at the Sun-Times and becoming film critic almost by accident. He landed there out of The University of Illinois (Harvard was too expensive, his father said), where Ebert spent most of his time as the Editor-In-Chief of The Daily Illini. It recalls one of his first reviews, the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. A scene that also marks the first time James uses a lovely technique of showing film clips with Ebert's words running in short bursts across the screen.
A good bit of detail is given to Ebert's hard-partying newsman lifestyle and battle with alcoholism, his relationship with various Chicago writers and swinging 60s filmmakers like Russ Meyer with whom Ebert wrote the film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, a classic sixties farce/exploitation picture. Martin Scorsese scores one of the films biggest laughs (and there are plenty) in his discussion of the Ebert-penned movie.
The best of Life Itself focuses on Roger's long relationship with bitter rival, Gene Siskel of The Chicago Tribune. You remember the show. It ran for over twenty years until Siskel's death in 1999. It was always one of my favorites to watch on Saturday afternoons growing up.
It appears at times Siskel and Ebert hated each other. They were total opposites, yet they transformed together what film criticism would become. What awaits at the end of that story is of the most touching things I've seen in any film. I don't want to spoil anything here. It is the best part of the movie.
The list of accomplishments that Ebert attained as a movie lover, a sports writer, a news reporter, a film critic, a philanthropist, a film conservationist, a panelist at the Conference on World Affairs, a regular fixture at the Cannes Film Festival, a friend of Martin Scorsese and Werner Herzog is the stuff of legend. The man himself is legendary, and his story is not a secret. It is right there for you to read, yes, read.
Rogerebert.com is one of the great movie websites on the Internet. It still operates under the editorship of a great film and TV critic named Matt Zoller Seitz. Ebert, among other things, grabbed ahold of the online world ahead of any other major film critic. After losing his speech, he just made it a reason to write more. He started a blog that not only discussed the movies but politics and current events and humor and everything in between.
Roger Ebert's life touched mine. And the film of his life called Life Itself simply became the send-off I needed.
It is one of the best movies of the year.
I'll leave you with one more thing:
In one scene late in Life Itself, the James calls in a friend of Ebert's who could recite the final passages of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Images of Ebert's life (early and late), his favorite walking path in a Chicago park, an old movie critic, his face demolished by surgeries, waits for whatever comes next in the movie of a life well-lived.
from The Great Gatsby:
Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
The past, I believe, simply reminds us to look ahead to the future.
**Note: To read my "In Memoriam" piece on Ebert, written the day he died, click here.
 |
| Roger Ebert and that iconic upward thumb. |
So begins Roger Ebert's memoir and Steve James' documentary that followed, both known from the astonishingly simple, yet brimming-with-meaning title, Life Itself.
First, I must say that Roger Ebert, the writer, has inspired me more than any one writer I have ever read. And I majored in English. I have read Beowulf, Milton, Pope. I have read Wordsworth, Byron, Keats. I have read Shakespeare. I have read McCarthy, Irving, Chabon. Ebert touches me most. Not to say he's better than any of those. He doesn't even (for the most part) write in those genres. But his writing has shaped me, has made me the writer I am and that I hope to be.
Steve James directed probably the most powerful documentary I've ever seen...Hoop Dreams. Roger Ebert (and longtime rival and TV partner, Gene Siskel) championed this film. They made Steve James' career. That is just one of many of the fascinating chapters of James' film of Ebert's life and death. Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel became the first movie critics in the history of film criticism to truly impact the careers of some of the finest filmmakers of their (and my) generation.
In fact, another iconic documentary filmmaker (and one of my favorites...period), Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War, Standard Operating Procedure) admits in an interview for Life Itself that Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel made his career by continuously discussing his first feature on their show, a brilliant documentary about pet cemeteries called Gates of Heaven. They did it by brazenly presenting and highlighting movies that most people wouldn't ever see. They chose to review films that simply were not the big blockbuster or rom-com that week. Oh, they saw those too. And debated about them. No movie was left unseen.
 |
| Roger and Gene: The Early Years |
Roger Ebert easily reviewed 200 movies every year. I'm sure he watched way more than that. He was a movie-writing whiz kid, who wrote for one paper, The Chicago Sun-Times, for 46 years. This is even after he became the first movie critic to win the Pulitzer Prize and the target of bigger, better papers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.
 |
| Ebert wins the Pulitzer. |
As James' new documentary makes us aware, Roger was happy there. He was happy working at a working-class paper. He told the New York and Washington boys, "I don't want to learn new streets."
Life Itself skims through the pages of Ebert's life both fully and effortlessly cutting footage of his most recent hospital rehab visit in the winter of 2012/2013 with a chronological account of his life. After a long remission, his cancer had returned causing a fracture in his hip. This is after a series of life-saving surgeries (to treat his thyroid and salivary gland cancers) starting in 2006 that ultimately removed his ability to speak, eat, and drink.
 |
| Ebert in the end. |
The scenes of Ebert in the rehab facility are true and sometimes harsh. In a recent "Fresh Air" interview with Terry Gross, the late Ebert's wife, Chaz, and filmmaker Steve James discuss Roger's insistence that the camera capture a suction procedure that must be done constantly. A tube is inserted into his throat essentially swallowing for him as he has lost that ability with most of his jaw and lower mouth. Chaz would have refused to let that be filmed. Roger had Steve had to do it when she was away. Such is the power and bravery of Roger Ebert. He had nothing to hide. He wanted people to see his life, even at the end, for what it was. The truth of his life, he believed, must be seen.
Life Itself begins with people snapping pictures in front of the Chicago Theatre just after Ebert's death in April of 2013, a day that changed my life. We meet Roger and his wife and Steve James himself in the rehab facility.
Then we get Roger's life...
He was a born writer, the movie shows us. Through personal photos and video footage, we see boy Roger, the son of a blue-collar Illinois man and a housewife, a kid who started his own newspaper and delivered to the people of his neighborhood. We understand, through email exchanges with James, how Roger came to be who he is, a democratic, pro-labor man, whose self-described political beliefs are summed up by one word..."kindness."
 |
| The new guy on the movie beat. |
In relationships with certain filmmakers, we understand, as one puts it, that Ebert was a "populist" sort of movie critic. He believed that anyone could "get" a movie, that all movies are for everybody to critique and judge. "The movies," he says, "are a machine that creates empathy."
The film also delves into his start at the Sun-Times and becoming film critic almost by accident. He landed there out of The University of Illinois (Harvard was too expensive, his father said), where Ebert spent most of his time as the Editor-In-Chief of The Daily Illini. It recalls one of his first reviews, the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. A scene that also marks the first time James uses a lovely technique of showing film clips with Ebert's words running in short bursts across the screen.
 |
| Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert in the late 1960s. |
The best of Life Itself focuses on Roger's long relationship with bitter rival, Gene Siskel of The Chicago Tribune. You remember the show. It ran for over twenty years until Siskel's death in 1999. It was always one of my favorites to watch on Saturday afternoons growing up.
 |
| Ebert and Siskel or Siskel and Ebert? |
It appears at times Siskel and Ebert hated each other. They were total opposites, yet they transformed together what film criticism would become. What awaits at the end of that story is of the most touching things I've seen in any film. I don't want to spoil anything here. It is the best part of the movie.
The list of accomplishments that Ebert attained as a movie lover, a sports writer, a news reporter, a film critic, a philanthropist, a film conservationist, a panelist at the Conference on World Affairs, a regular fixture at the Cannes Film Festival, a friend of Martin Scorsese and Werner Herzog is the stuff of legend. The man himself is legendary, and his story is not a secret. It is right there for you to read, yes, read.
Rogerebert.com is one of the great movie websites on the Internet. It still operates under the editorship of a great film and TV critic named Matt Zoller Seitz. Ebert, among other things, grabbed ahold of the online world ahead of any other major film critic. After losing his speech, he just made it a reason to write more. He started a blog that not only discussed the movies but politics and current events and humor and everything in between.
Roger Ebert's life touched mine. And the film of his life called Life Itself simply became the send-off I needed.
It is one of the best movies of the year.
 |
| With his newly published memoir in 2012. |
I'll leave you with one more thing:
In one scene late in Life Itself, the James calls in a friend of Ebert's who could recite the final passages of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Images of Ebert's life (early and late), his favorite walking path in a Chicago park, an old movie critic, his face demolished by surgeries, waits for whatever comes next in the movie of a life well-lived.
from The Great Gatsby:
Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
The past, I believe, simply reminds us to look ahead to the future.
**Note: To read my "In Memoriam" piece on Ebert, written the day he died, click here.
02 February 2014
Many Faces: Philip Seymour Hoffman - In Memoriam
by Kevin Powers
At about 1:20 P.M. today, I was browsing my Twitter feed when I saw a re-tweet from Paul Pabst citing a breaking news article from The Wall Street Journal. Headline: "Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman found dead in Manhattan apartment". My heart sank.
Like any other iPhone user, I instantly googled for confirmation. It was early in the development. Only the one source reporting. I kept checking until finally it was confirmed. Devastation.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of the greatest actors of the last twenty years. He seemed to still be going strong. In the past year, it had been reported that he had begun using drugs again after 23 years clean and sober. It is becoming apparent that his untimely death came as a result of a drug overdose. I am just totally saddened by this news.
Here is a retrospective of some of my favorite pieces of work from an astoundingly talented man:
Twister (1996) - Dir. Jan de Bont
In which he played the goofy one in a crew of Midwestern storm chasers. Any kid of my generation knows this one well. I remember seeing this movie at Downtown West with Jessica Valentine in the 6th grade. It was my first introduction to Philip Seymour Hoffman. And it's a good, entertaining movie. I might have to watch it again soon.
The Films of Paul Thomas Anderson
Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), The Master (2012)
Philip Seymour Hoffman became well-known as a character actor with the help of auteur Paul Thomas Anderson. Through these films, Hoffman put himself on the map, especially in Boogie Nights as the odd, sort-of gay porn film boom operator, Scotty J. He went on to strong supporting work once again in Anderson's mosaic L.A. masterpiece Magnolia. His turn as a dirtbag mattress salesman in Punch-Drunk Love showed an angry side we hadn't seen before. And, finally, a starring role in 2012's The Master showcased Hoffman's ability to outright own the screen.
Hoffman offered some show-stealing moments early in Cameron Crowe's beautiful Almost Famous. He plays real-life Creem magazine rock critic Lester Bangs. He delivers some of the most memorable lines of my movie-watching life in this one, including "You'll meet them all again on their long journey to the middle," which passed through my brain just yesterday.
The Big Lebowski (1998) - Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen
A very small but surprisingly effective role as Brandt, The Big Lebowski's gopher, will always be in the hearts of both Hoffman and Coen fans. He is incredibly proper and uptight and incredibly satisfying in such a small role. "This is our concern, dude."
Happiness (1998) - Dir. Todd Solondz
If you think you can stomach a Todd Solondz freak show, then this is the one to see. In Happiness, Hoffman plays Allen, a nervous, overweight prank-call addict with a taste for making disturbing phone calls to his neighbor, Helen (Laura Flynn Boyle). This is character-acting at its finest. The movie itself was cause for controversy in its stark black comedy.
Love Liza (2002) - Dir. Todd Louiso/Owing Mahowny (2003) - Dir. Richard Kwietniowski
The early 2000s took Hoffman on a journey from odd supporting character actor to leading man. In the two indies Love Liza and Owning Mahowny, Hoffman plays downtrodden men with powerful addictions. In Love Liza, he plays a man stricken with the grief of loss and finding solace in motorized model airplanes and the fuel that runs them. In Owning Mahowny, he is a Canadian bank manager, who defrauds his own clients to fuel an incredibly reckless gambling addiction. Both of these small films have stuck with me over the years and showcase Hoffman's incredible range.
25th Hour (2002) - Dir. Spike Lee
Spike Lee's beautiful and devastating love letter to New York City post-9/11 features Hoffman in a supporting role opposite Edward Norton and Barry Pepper. He plays the best friend of a man (Norton) sentenced to five years in prison for drug dealing. Hoffman excels here as a private school English teacher pining for one of his students (Anna Paquin). This is one of my favorite movies of all-time and Spike Lee's best after Do the Right Thing.
Moneyball (2011) - Dir. Bennett Miller
In a master-stroke of casting, Bennett Miller (who also directed Capote) chose Hoffman to play real-life Oakland A's manager Art Howe. Howe is a frustrated man feeling constantly undermined (and rightly-so) by A's GM Billy Beane (Brad Pitt). Their scenes together are quietly funny and well-acted. Moneyball is also a great movie with a large appeal to anyone, not just baseball fans like myself.
Synechdoche, New York (2008) - Dir. Charlie Kaufman
Hoffman ages about forty years in this inside-the-male-psyche movie from brilliant screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). He plays a theater director who struggles to stage his cathartic masterpiece as the years roll on and on and on. He, eventually, builds a replica of New York inside a warehouse as life plays out on his stage with no audience to even see it.
Capote (2005) - Dir. Bennett Miller
Truman Capote is a dream role for many actors. Nobody could have done as good a job as Philip Seymour Hoffman. It is his most daring and transformative role (hence, The Best Actor Oscar), and he nails it. The voice, the mannerisms, and the longing for truth as he writes his masterpiece In Cold Blood.
These, for me, are the defining roles for a great American actor. A man who most (so I've read today) seem to say was a warm, friendly man. I imagine him as such. I will miss him. We all will, even if we don't know it.
Actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman don't come along often. I look forward to cherishing his work for years to come and sharing with my own children one day.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Hoffman.
At about 1:20 P.M. today, I was browsing my Twitter feed when I saw a re-tweet from Paul Pabst citing a breaking news article from The Wall Street Journal. Headline: "Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman found dead in Manhattan apartment". My heart sank.
Like any other iPhone user, I instantly googled for confirmation. It was early in the development. Only the one source reporting. I kept checking until finally it was confirmed. Devastation.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of the greatest actors of the last twenty years. He seemed to still be going strong. In the past year, it had been reported that he had begun using drugs again after 23 years clean and sober. It is becoming apparent that his untimely death came as a result of a drug overdose. I am just totally saddened by this news.
Here is a retrospective of some of my favorite pieces of work from an astoundingly talented man:
Twister (1996) - Dir. Jan de Bont
 |
| as Dustin Davis in Twister |
In which he played the goofy one in a crew of Midwestern storm chasers. Any kid of my generation knows this one well. I remember seeing this movie at Downtown West with Jessica Valentine in the 6th grade. It was my first introduction to Philip Seymour Hoffman. And it's a good, entertaining movie. I might have to watch it again soon.
The Films of Paul Thomas Anderson
Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), The Master (2012)
 |
| as Dean Trumbell in Punch-Drunk Love |
Almost Famous (1999) - Dir. Cameron Crowe
 |
| as Lester Bangs in Almost Famous |
The Big Lebowski (1998) - Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen
 |
| as Brandt in The Big Lebowski |
A very small but surprisingly effective role as Brandt, The Big Lebowski's gopher, will always be in the hearts of both Hoffman and Coen fans. He is incredibly proper and uptight and incredibly satisfying in such a small role. "This is our concern, dude."
Happiness (1998) - Dir. Todd Solondz
 |
| as Allen in Happiness |
Love Liza (2002) - Dir. Todd Louiso/Owing Mahowny (2003) - Dir. Richard Kwietniowski
 |
| as Wilson Joel in Love Liza |
25th Hour (2002) - Dir. Spike Lee
 |
| as Jacob Elinsky in 25th Hour |
Moneyball (2011) - Dir. Bennett Miller
 |
| as Art Howe in Moneyball |
Synechdoche, New York (2008) - Dir. Charlie Kaufman
 |
| as Caden Cotard in Synechdoche, New York |
Capote (2005) - Dir. Bennett Miller
 |
| as Truman Capote in Capote |
These, for me, are the defining roles for a great American actor. A man who most (so I've read today) seem to say was a warm, friendly man. I imagine him as such. I will miss him. We all will, even if we don't know it.
Actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman don't come along often. I look forward to cherishing his work for years to come and sharing with my own children one day.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Hoffman.
04 April 2013
A Smile, A Hug, and A Thumps Up - Roger Ebert: In Memoriam
A Smile, a Hug, and a Thumbs Up - Roger Ebert: In Memoriam
April 4, 2013
When I was 14, I got the Internet at my house for the first time. At that very moment, I began studying under the tutelage of the best film critic ever (no argument), Roger Ebert. For 46 years, Roger wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times, devouring and critiquing over 200 movies every year. None of his words escaped me. His good reviews and his bad and even those I disagreed with all had one thing in common: they brought a smile to my face.
One of our greatest agreements came with a movie, released in 2000 and which I just recently re-watched for the umpteenth time, called Almost Famous. In it, a young man with the writing bug gets a chance to be a rock critic for Rolling Stone Magazine. His review opens with an admission that he was "almost hugging himself" as he watched it. Yes. Those words from that very review stuck with me, and I often feel that when I watch the movies that I love most. That feeling and those like it are what make movies great. Mr. Ebert knew it, and I know it. In that we have something to share. I offer Mr. Ebert and his family a hug, a big one from East Tennessee over Kentucky across Indiana and into Chicago.
Roger Ebert loved to write, he loved to read, and he loved to watch movies. In him, I found an extra grandfather figure. A mentor. While I am saddened by the harsh fact that I will receive no new words of his to cherish, I am, at the same time, warmed by the beautiful truth that his words live in my mind, right here on my bookshelves, and out in the world for many more to look back on, respect, argue with, and love. In honor of one of my fallen heroes, I salute Mr. Roger Ebert with a trademarked "thumbs up."
RIP Mr. Ebert.
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