BEYOND THE VALLEY

RIP to one of the very few superstar movie critics, Roger Ebert, passed on at 70 after a bravely public decade-plus struggle with cancer.

Because Ebert was so familiar as a personality, it could be overlooked that he was a truly fine writer—the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism—with an un-showy but elegant style. He had a wonderfully sensible, unpretentious fondness for a good movie, and recognized that good movies came from all genres and levels of ambition. And, of course, he wrote the screenplay for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

All that said, I think that his finest hour may have been playing himself, opposite his old pal Gene Siskel, on this episode of the animated comedy The Critic from the mid-90s. If you’ve never seen it, I promise you it’s worth the half-hour of your life…