Popular and Pulitzer-Prize winning film reviewer Roger Ebert died Thursday after a long battle with cancer at the age of 70. Film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, Ebert was well known for his trademark thumbs-up/thumbs-down PBS television show he co-hosted first with the late Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune and then with his Sun-Times colleague Richard Roeper. He won a Pulitzer in 1975 for distinguished criticism (“the first, and one of only three, given to a film reviewer since the category was created in 1970.”) And in 2005, he became the first critic to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Despite cancer surgeries which resulted in losing his ability to speak, eat, and drink he resumed his writing and television work. Author of more than 20 books, Ebert also noted in his 2011 memoir Life Itself that he considered himself “beneath everything else a fan.” Tributes have been pouring in from filmmakers such as Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, and colleagues as well as Chicago’s Mayor Emanuel and President Obama. Director Steven Spielberg summed it up best: “Roger’s passing is virtually the end of an era and now the balcony is closed forever.” Read the complete article here which includes special memories, quotes, and some of his best-known reviews. And check the EPL catalog for books by him.
Laura
James Agee’s 1936 Fortune magazine article was the basis for his 1941 book on poverty in the South Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. That 30,000-word article, previously unpublished because Agee felt it was obscene to “pry intimately into the lives of an undefended and appallingly damaged group of human beings,” will now be published as the book “Cotton Tenants: Three Families”. The release of this book will include the real names of Agee’s sharecropper families, which Agee had wanted to keep private. You can read the entire fascinating NYT article here. Check the library catalog for books by James Agee.
