Roger Ebert

Like so many who grew up in the 1980s, I came to know Roger Ebert through film, and film through Roger Ebert. From the childhood moment when I first attained dominion over the remote control and VCR - and plenty of times when I didn't - I would watch, record, and re-watch his on-air reviews with Gene Siskel. Saturday night television to a 10-year-old in those days offered some pretty compelling stuff - “The Facts of Life,” “Hunter” and other untold gems. But to truly know what was worth paying attention to on the screen - and, really, to know how my friends and I should spend our Sunday afternoons that followed - there was “Siskel & Ebert and the Movies” and “At The Movies,” a kind of cultural bat-signal that told us not only what to think about movies but what movies were worth thinking about.

Film critic Roger Ebert will undergo radiation treatment for a cancerous tumor in his salivary gland. The 61-year-old critic underwent surgery in February 2002 for cancer in his thyroid and in February 2003 for cancer in his salivary gland. Ebert said he will "continue to see movies, write reviews and do the 'Ebert & Roeper' television show." He described the treatments as "a follow-up to earlier surgery" and said it is "not considered to be a life-threatening form of cancer."

Film critic Roger Ebert's wife reported he was doing well after an emergency operation in Chicago to repair complications from a previous cancer surgery. Ebert, a film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967 but better known for his "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" critiques on television, was in serious but stable condition Monday. Ebert, 64, had surgery June 16 to remove a cancerous growth on his salivary gland. About 8 p.m.

Roger Ebert, one of America's most preeminent and popular film critics, has announced that he will reduce the amount of writing he takes on as he fights a new battle with cancer. Writing on his site Tuesday night, Ebert said that a hip fracture has turned out to be cancerous and that he was taking a short pause as he received radiation treatment to combat the disease. He would still contribute to his site, but many reviews would be picked up by others. "Typically, I write over 200 reviews a year for the [Chicago]

It was fitting that Roger Ebert's death caused Twitter to explode Thursday with film and TV critics, cultural recappers and entertainment bloggers sending their best wishes across the coded universe to mark, and perhaps aid, the passing of the iconic film critic. If any presence might cling to the those particular digital ethers, a pinging echo with one final message, it would be Ebert. The first citizen critic, making heady discourse available even to those of us who would never visit the Algonquin or walk the halls of the New Yorker, boldly leveraging the technology at hand to broaden his impact without diminishing his integrity, he was, in many ways, father to us all. Some found it alarming that early reports on the Web listed Ebert's more than 800,000 Twitter followers before they mentioned his Pulitzer Prize, but that too captured Ebert's unique dichotomy.

This post has been corrected. See below for details. It seems like only yesterday - in fact, it was only yesterday - that I read that Roger Ebert was taking what he called, with typical verbal skill, "a leave of presence" to fight the cancer that had re-invaded his body. Today he is dead, and that collapsed time frame somehow seems only fitting. For in the more than 10 years since he was diagnosed with cancer, Roger refused to give up as much as an inch to the disease that had ravaged his body but left his mind if anything more nimble and ready to rumble.

Film critic Roger Ebert, who has battled cancer in recent years, was in serious condition after an emergency operation to repair complications from an earlier cancer surgery. Richard Roeper, co-host of the "Ebert and Roeper" movie review show, said the 64-year-old's vital signs appeared good after surgery.

Film critic Roger Ebert died at age 70 after a long battle with cancer of the thyroid and salivary glands. Best known for his witty movie reviews, Ebert was also a food enthusiast who, among the more than a dozen books he wrote, penned "The Pot and How to Use It: The Mystery and Romance of the Rice Cooker. " The book was published in 2010, four years after surgery that damaged his carotid artery left him with a hole in his throat and unable to eat, drink or speak. He was fed liquid paste through a tube in his stomach, but undeterred (the quality for which he was so widely admired)

Roger Ebert, who has undergone a series of cancer surgeries, was recovering Friday after having yet another operation. The 65-year-old film critic had successful surgery Thursday in Houston to address complications from previous operations, his lawyer said in a statement. No details were provided. Ebert, a film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times for more than 40 years, has undergone a series of operations, including the removal of a growth on his salivary gland and a tracheotomy, a procedure that opens an airway through an incision in the windpipe, that left him unable to speak.

Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic whose gladiatorial "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" assessments turned film reviewing into a television sport and whose passion for independent film helped introduce a new generation of filmmakers to moviegoers, has died. He was 70. Ebert, who had battled cancer in recent years, died Thursday in Chicago, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, where he had been film critic for 46 years. He had undergone several surgeries to remove cancerous tumors from his thyroid and salivary glands, ultimately losing his jaw and speaking voice to the disease.