By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Awake in the Dark: How's Roger doing?
At Roger Ebert‘s site, his wife Chaz offers an update: “We have been getting many requests asking for an update on Roger’s health… Roger was making good progress and was ready to go to his next phase of treatment, which would have been physical therapy to regain his strength…. [Sunday] night Roger had minor surgery… The doctors remain optimistic about his recovery, however, and say that the physical therapy will be delayed for only a few days… [I]f you had seen him last week, even yesterday, when he was doing so well. We were secretly back to using his computer. He wanted to surprise everyone with messages… I know it sounds corny to some, but please keep visualizing him enveloped by warm, bright, healing light! That, along with Roger’s medical dream team, should ensure his full recovery.” More at the link; his new book, “Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert” is due in November from U of Chicago Press, which blurbs thusly: “Roger Ebert has been writing film reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times for nearly forty years… [H]is wide knowledge, keen judgment, prodigious energy, and sharp sense of humor have made him America’s most celebrated film critic…. No critic alive has reviewed more movies than Roger Ebert, and yet his essential writings have never been collected in a single volume—until now. With ‘Awake in the Dark,’ both fans and film buffs can finally bask in the best of Ebert’s work. The reviews, interviews, and essays collected here… span some of the most exceptional periods in film history… If Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris were godmother and godfather to the movie generation, then Ebert is its voice from within—a writer whose exceptional intelligence and daily bursts of insight and enthusiasm have shaped the way we think about the movies.”