Two Thumbs up, Roger Ebert

"I was born inside the movie of my life."
                                                     Roger Ebert
                                         Life Itself, his memoir (2011)

Oh my say no...so sorry Roger to see you go.  You were the thumbs up and thumbs down guy I turned to because I could not trust The New Yorker movie reviews. You were the "go to guy" for the screen.  I like what Dan Zak wrote in the Washington Post: 

I love movies because of you, Roger.  Or, rather, I understand the movies and myself well enough to call it love because of you.

It is one thing to just rely on another person's opinion like I did.  Quite another to learn a way of seeing the world and how it is cast on the screen so it can be understood, its passion passed on.  Again, Zak writes:  

A critic’s noblest and most generous act is to inspire passion in others. 

Roger Ebert taught me to love the movies.

Let's respect Ebert even more for the battle he waged against cancer.  When you are being eat alive from the inside out, how do we keep our perspective, our vision of the world and our place in it?  Where do we find hope to live the next day?  For Ebert, I saw a man who life was bigger than himself and the place to look for it was on the screen.  

Two thumbs up, Roger!