The last email I received from Roger Ebert was a brief note three years ago, after I had written about his remarkable courage and candour in revealing to the world the effects of surgery on his jaw, following a cancer operation. I had also included his 1988 book Two Weeks In The Midday Sun: A Cannes Notebook in my top 10 list of books about the Cannes festival – it’s a tremendously engaging and readable memoir about Cannes and the south Of France; incidentally, it includes Ebert’s own line drawings. “I hope Chaz and I run into you at Cannes in May,” he wrote – Chaz of course being his wife, and the absolute bedrock of his personal and professional life. Sadly I never did get to see him, or rather I saw him only from afar, in the Cannes Palais, surrounded as he always was by a gaggle of friends and admirers.

　　It sounds desperately naïve, but Ebert’s death is a terrible shock. He had seemed so indomitable, and his formidable web presence – as well as reviewing for print and online, he had become a grandmaster of tweeting – had made it look almost as if nothing was amiss. He had, as I put it at the time, digitally refabricated his presence as a critic: Ebert was once a TV star as well as a syndicated critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, and was nettled when the review show he once co-hosted with Gene Siskel was canned. But then he grasped the opportunities of a new medium, and reminded us all that he was a writer and journalist as well as a broadcaster. The internet had given him a new lease of life, and his archived reviews invariably came top of the list in each entry on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), which made him and his memory of the movies pretty well a global resource.

　　He revealed this week that the recurrence of cancer only meant that he was going to take a “leave of presence” – indicating a lighter workload, with some reviews delegated to other writers, but with a whole new raft of ideas about digital platforms for criticism. His online Journal was of course a vivid flow of personal impressions and ideas, including his essay How I Am A Roman Catholic:

　　”I consider myself Catholic, lock, stock and barrel, with this technical loophole: I cannot believe in God. I refuse to call myself a atheist however, because that indicates too great a certainty about the unknowable.”

　　This was the Ebert “presence” we had grown used to: endlessly insightful and stimulating.

　　Roger Ebert sure didn’t fade away. He remained a tough, shrewd, hugely intelligent critic whose authority just grew and grew. Ebert had the sensibilities of a cinephile, but the essential gifts of a popular journalist who knew how to make a connection with his readers.

　　Here is Ebert on zombie films: “I am fascinated by Darwin’s theory of evolution as it applies to zombies. Since Richard Dawkins teaches us that the only concern of a selfish gene is to survive until the next generation of the organism that carries it, what are the prospects of zombie genes, which can presumably be transmitted only by the dead? And how do zombies reproduce, or spread? Why must they eat flesh? Why not a whole foods diet of fruits, vegetables and grains? Maybe a little fish. I know this has nothing to do with film criticism. I am blown along by the winds of my own zeal. If a good vampire or zombie movie comes along, I do my best to play fair with it …”

　　I loved that kind of guitar solo from Ebert. It incidentally came from his collection of thumbs-down reviews, entitled: A Horrible Experience Of Unbearable Length: More Movies That Suck – a great title and a great phrase. As a fellow reviewer, I was jealous of him for having thought of it, and you can’t say fairer than that.

　　Here, on the other hand, is a passage from his laudatory review of Clint Eastwood’s 2009 film Invictus, about Nelson Mandela’s bold and inspirational plan, as president of South Africa, to get behind the white Springbok rugby team and its captain, Francois Pienaar, and to signal to both the whites and the ANC that racial harmony and forgiveness was now the order of the day:

　　”It is a very good film. It has moments evoking great emotion, as when the black and white members of the presidential security detail (hard-line ANC activists and Afrikaner cops) agree with excruciating difficulty to serve together. And when Damon’s character – Francois Pienaar, as the team captain – is shown the cell where Mandela was held for those long years on Robben Island. My wife, Chaz, and I were taken to the island early one morning by Ahmed Kathrada, one of Mandela’s fellow prisoners, and yes, the movie shows his very cell, with the thin blankets on the floor.”

　　Now maybe there’s a film reviewers’ rule book somewhere saying that personal stuff like that is subjective, irrelevant, inadmissible. And for what it’s worth I couldn’t share Roger Ebert’s liking for this particular film. But I loved Ebert for his openness, his forthright personal approach, and for the unadorned simplicity of his writing.

　　What remains is a brilliant archive of movie journalism and movie appreciation, as well as his personal Ebert film festival – which we must all hope will continue under Chaz’s direction. And there is also the documentary about Ebert’s life and work which is being developed by Steve James, Steve Zaillian and Martin Scorsese. I’m afraid it will have a very sad ending.

　　There are actually only 5 Windows RT tablets or hybrids on store cabinets and they are not selling perfectly, as 1 analyst has pointed out this week.

　　There is several factors products like the Asus VivoTab RT TF600T and Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 have not challenged the iPad’s dominance - higher prices, very poor availability, failure to speculate in advertising, dislike of Windows RT, extremely foolish names - but I can insert just one even further excuse to your checklist: confusion between retailers

　　This specific machine, regardless of the title on that webpage, does not run Home windows 8. It operates Home windows RT. There’s no clarification during the specs listing. The sole mention of working devices around the page is within the Concern and Remedy instrument, where by shoppers have had to inquire if it runs Home windows RT or Windows 8; an Argos “Helper” promised to alter the web site, but which was back again in mid-February as well as error continues to be.

　　Several with the basic retailers I’ve visited present any explanation of your distinctions among Home windows 8 and Windows RT to people. John Lewis is the exception that proves the rule, giving at the least two lines of rationalization: “Windows RT is often a new version of Microsoft Home windows which is created to operate on ARM-based tablets and PCs. It really works solely with applications offered within the Home windows Shop.”

　　More generally than not, on the web suppliers simply just use duplicate equipped through the producers - if you have ever compensated close notice whilst purchasing a particular merchandise throughout many vendors, you will have noticed there seems to be plenty of chopping and pasting heading on. Consider Asus. Here’s the duplicate it plainly supplied to Debenhams (which evidently sells tablets today - who knew?):

　　“Asus VivoTab RT, Asus’ very first Windows RT tablet which offers people the brand new Home windows expertise in a very portable, however effective system. Featuring the award winning Transformer Pad structure, the VivoTab delivers the favored Windows platform to your pill globe that transforms to entire notebook productiveness when attached for the Cell Dock.” There is no point out of Home windows eight, however it rarely points out what RT is and is not, both.

　　Laptop Globe is minor superior. Its Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 web site states: “The new technique will allow you to definitely customise the beginning monitor, construct your significant apps for your liking. You may swipe, pinch and touch your way however the new functions and stunning interface. Created close to programs the Windows RT functioning system helps make perform and enjoy much easier, effective, social and fully trustworthy.” You’d have imagined Pc Globe might at least point out that the current Home windows software package won’t get the job done with it.

　　However, Samsung and various companies might have assisted their own personal cause by clearly describing what Home windows RT is and is not to merchants and would-be shoppers. Absolutely, anyone who purchased the “Samsung Ativ Home windows 8″ from Argos is in for a little bit of a surprise.

Another week, another guy goes home on American Idol. It’s getting to be a trend.

Devin Velez had one of his best performances Wednesday night, singing Tracks of My Tears in a way that made Smokey Robinson proud.

But he never managed to find his audience — he’d been in danger every week of the finals. And the guys’ disastrous performance of I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) couldn’t possibly have helped, even though Velez did actually seem, as he insisted, to know his part.

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That leaves just two guys in the Top Seven — Burnell Taylor and Lazaro Arbos, the singer who appeared to have missed his cue in I Can’t Help Myself and the one that record executive Jimmy Iovine said should have gone home this week.

And you just knew it wouldn’t be a girl this week — especially Kree Harrison, whose rendition of Don’t Play That Song for Me got the stamp of approval from Aretha Franklin herself.

　　In the wee hours of the morning on Friday, Twilight star Ashley Greene, her boyfriend and her brother were sleeping soundly when a fire broke out. The three humans raced out of the apartment, but Greene’s two dogs were trapped inside and one pup didn’t make it out safely. As it turns out, a candle was the culprit of the big blaze that wrecked the star’s condo and took the life of her dog.

　　Celebrity fires have taken down some beautiful homes and put some beautiful families in danger. Country singer Trace Adkins lost his home to a fire in 2011, and is now fighting for the Red Cross on Celebrity Apprentice to help pay it forward since the charity took his family in during their emergency. Earlier this year, The Talk’s Sharon Osbourne spoke out to talk about the dangers candles can cause after her house caught on fire thanks to leaving one of those little suckers lit. Greene is by no means the first person to make a candle mistake, but the devastation the fire caused to her home and her pets is one of the saddest I’ve encountered.

　　TMZ actually managed to get their hands on some pictures from the fire, so if you’re feeling like having an emotional moment you can check them out. Greene’s condo is located in a large building with other residents, and at the time of this report, three other people in Greene’s building were found to be injured due to the fire. Incidents like these should really serve to be a reminder that candles should not be left burning under any circumstance. Luckily, no human lives were taken because of the fire and our condolences go out to the actress who lost one of her beloved dogs and anyone else whose life was touched by the fire.