Roger Ebert, renowned film critic, dies at age 70

If you are a movie fan of any kind, you certainly know the name Roger Ebert. The iconic film critic of this generation, Ebert was a filmmaker's film critic, who took his job as seriously as most filmmakers take their films. It might therefore be a surprise that he is quoted as giving Mad magazine credit for starting him on his career as a critic:


"I learned to be a movie critic by reading Mad magazine... Mad's parodies made me aware of the machine inside the skin—of the way a movie might look original on the outside, while inside it was just recycling the same old dumb formulas."



To some, he was famous for being half of the Siskel & Ebert team for various incarnations of At The Movies with Siskel & Ebert (then later, Ebert & Roeper), and is also notable for having written the script for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.



Of course, he is best known for being a no holds barred, Pulitzer Prize winning film critic for The Chicago Sun-Times. He was the first film critic to be awarded a Pulitzer.



The Chicago Sun-Times summed up his legacy this way:



"Roger Ebert loved movies.

Except for those he hated."

That seems about right to us, too.