Film critic Roger Ebert dies at 70

The balcony really is closed with the passing of Roger Ebert.

The 70 year-old film critic lost an 11 year battle with cancer today that cost him his voice six years ago, although a luminous article that appeared in Esquire in 2010 depicted a man who refused to be slowed down by mutilating surgery.

Besides writing his column at the Chicago Sun-Times for 45 years, Ebert began hosting the syndicated TV show At the Movies with his original partner Gene Siskel in 1982 (Richard Roeper took over from Siskel when he passed from a  brain tumour in 1999.)

Health issues forced Ebert to retire from the show in 2006. By then he was established as perhaps the most well-known film critic on the planet, and he maintained a wide readership thanks to his skill at mingling populism with a true cineaste's feel for the medium—not to mention a way with words.

Ebert was also renowned to a smaller community of admirers for his own film work. He scripted three films for breast-centric cult filmmaker Russ Meyer in the '70s. His name appears in the credits of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), while he penned Up! (1976) as Reinhold Timme, and Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens as R. Hyde (1979).