Thumbs up, Uncle Roger

Roger Ebert, the dean of American film critics — the only writer ever to win a Pulitzer Prize exclusively for film criticism — is recovering today from emergency surgery, necessitated by complications from a cancer-related operation two weeks ago.



I don't believe I'm overstating the case when I say that Ebert has been my single greatest influence as a writer. Although many Americans know him primarily as the avuncular cohost of the weekly TV show he began with the late Gene Siskel and continues with Richard Roeper, it's as a master of the written word that I appreciate Ebert the most. His reviews form an integral component of my daily online information-foraging. In particular, his essays about cinema's greatest films are classics of analysis — they should be required reading for everyone with even the slightest interest in motion pictures as a communication medium.

Our opinions don't always coincide (although we're in agreement that Alex Proyas's Dark City is one of the truly great films of the past decade) but I always feel that I've learned something valuable — about film, or writing, or both — after reading one of Ebert's reviews.

Get well soon, Uncle Roger.