By CARYN ROUSSEAU
Associated Press
CHICAGO – Roger Ebert’s final blog posting last April ended with his hopeful sign-off, “I’ll see you at the movies.” The award-winning film critic died two days later.
Visitors to the central Illinois theater that hosts the annual “Ebertfest” film festival he started now may feel like they saw him at the movies. A life-sized bronze statue of the longtime Chicago Sun-Times critic will be formally unveiled Thursday outside of the Virginia Theatre in Champaign, which is next to Urbana, where Ebert grew up.
His wife, Chaz Ebert, described the statue as “interactive art,” because it shows her late husband giving his famous “thumbs up” sign and sitting between two empty theater seats where visitors can sit.