Wednesday's news that Roger Ebert was stepping back from his usual constant pace of writing to take a "Leave of Presence" due to a recurrence of his cancer already had me annoyed, so his death yesterday was a real kick in the teeth. Ebert dropping his TV work a few years ago had put him back on a heady pace as a writer, which was great for those of us who've enjoyed reading his movie reviews, not to mention his blog posts and his tweets.

I've only ever been an occasional movie reviewer, and never a serious one, but as a constant writer I've always seen him as a great example of pithy and powerful prose. A lot of yesterday's coverage referred to his plain "midwestern" language, but really, it was simply that he was a clear writer who never used fancy words when ordinary ones would do.

Last night I decided I needed to watch a movie instead of the usual TV lineup, and I picked "The Godfather" from Ebert's list of 100 greatest movies of all time. I had the Blu-Ray set of all three movies (the third can be largely ignored) but hadn't opened it, so this was a good occasion.

Thanks to keeyoo for sharing this collection of 40 Hilariously Mean Roger Ebert Reviews.