[tptacek]

It's an unfortunate oversimplification to reduce Ebert to his Sun-Times reviews. They were well-written and erudite, but they weren't meant to be extended meditations on the art of cinema. His review-writing had customers, and he gave the customers what they needed and wanted. Ebert had other venues for deeper kinds of writing, and was prolific in them. Ebertfest, for instance, was well-known for frame-by-frame analyses of important movies. Or read how he arrived at and massaged his top 10 films of all time, or what he wrote about Ozu or Herzog.

But I'd pause before stipulating even that his review writing was broad. Even within the medium of mass-market reviews, Ebert was impactful. Think about how his star system worked, so that Donner's Superman shared a rating with Herzog's Aguirre, The Wrath of God, and that somehow still made sense. Or the way he managed his brand, or syndicated his show with Siskel.

[georgeorwell]

Yeah, I basically agree. His mainstream work is what he's known for, and it's probably why self-avowed intellectuals (academics in film studies or film theory) don't consider him an intellectual. For me it's that even with his online work, he's much more of an everyman than an ivory tower guy, which is why the label of "intellectual" doesn't quite fit. This isn't bad or good, this is just how I see it, and it says nothing about his own intelligence. Finally, I think it's quite possible for depth within a review format. I like the ones in Variety: they're deeper, yet they don't give it away. Then again, they don't have as much mass-market appeal.