Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

> This is totally wrong.

That's your opinion, just as he had his. I find it interesting that you question his fortitude mere hours after his death, simply because he doesn't have the same opinion that you do on a topic that resonates with you and that you are passionate about. He probably didn't give two shits until the video game community ate him alive for saying it, then he had to pretend to give one shit.

You're also assuming he would have wanted to review video games, even if he saw them as art. He chose to review film and rarely wandered, with the rest of his writing being mostly commentary on things not related to film or the arts; who are you to question his courage based on his choices and preferences? That's like me demanding that you write software for Windows Phone, with the caveat that I'll question your technical chops if you don't.

I work with a lot of people that don't like video games. I don't like Brussels sprouts, and some people do. Who cares? Move on.

What can you say about a film reviewer that gives Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 3.5 out of 4 stars?

Useless.

I don't get all this praise I'm reading here. Despite being witty, a national treasure, and whatever, he had one core job to do, and he was terrible at it.

There's nothing wrong with film criticism. Ebert's 4-star ratings are even a good heuristic for picking something to watch. All of his "great movies" are generally recognized as such. And he certainly knew a lot more details about film than probably anyone else.

The problem with Ebert's reviews is that they offer very little in the way of insight, analysis, or depth. Instead, they are generally straightforward expositions of the film crew, setting, characters, and plot. This means that you cannot read them before watching a film, unless you want to be spoiled, and afterwards, if you were paying any kind of attention, you've already grasped everything that he points out. He doesn't usually explain what he thought the central message of a film is, so it can be unclear if he got it or not. He isn't big on interpretation.

He wasn't an idiot, but he didn't do the hard intellectual work of coming up with something new to say about films. Even the most hyper-intelligent person would have a hard time coming up with "intellectual" things to say at the rate he churned through movies. I think he was writing something like one review per day by the end.

Ebert's reviews are to film criticism what Ebert's one-pot cooking is to a full kitchen. He could make something reasonable, and it would appeal to lots of people, but the structural and time constraints meant it would never have the sophistication of an in-depth treatment. Ask someone in film studies, ask someone in culinary school.

The positive side of a lack of depth is breadth, which means we have a massive number of star ratings from a single source, and as such his work is a reasonable encyclopedia of film. Much of what he details in his reviews isn't available in Wikipedia, or appropriate for it.

Who cares? He didn't even play them. He's right, he has every right to believe what he wants, but he shouldn't have said anything about it because he's not qualified to comment.

Ian Bogost. Example review: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/01/hun...