That crazy Ebert -- you never know what he's going to pull next. Last night I flipped by his site, and for a moment I thought I had time-traveled back to last October, since there's a glowing, four-star review of The Departed splashed on the page. There's a disclaimer over it that notes: "I was ill when The Departed was released last year, and given its Oscar-winning stature, I wanted to double back and review it." Hmm ... okay, fair enough, but shouldn't you also have to go back and review Blood and Chocolate, and movies like that? Guess not. Ebert was also around to review Transformers this week, and had the following to say about that: "'Now I have fans who say, 'We are so sorry, Michael Bay, you still suck but we love you.' That's what the director of Transformers told Simon Ang during an interview in Seoul. He could have been speaking for me." Ouch -- looks like he's starting to get his mojo back.

What other signs of a revitalized Ebert are to be found on the site? Let's see -- there's a new Answer Man that I assume was written by him and not his minions, a tribute to his colleague Joel Siegel who died recently from the same disease that he is still struggling with, and even a reemergence of his propensity for extraneous liberal commentary, with some kind of cartoonish parody of an Ann Coulter-Chris Matthew Hardball interview. I have no idea if we can expect this level of output going forward, or if most of this was saved-up and published at once, but it seems safe to say that Ebert is moving closer to getting back into the regular swing of things. Let's hope.

• Claude Brosset (1943-2007) - French actor who appears opposite Jean Paul Belmondo in L'Alpagueur, Les Corps de mon Ennemi, Flic ou Voyou and Le Marginal. He also appears in George Roy Hill's A Little Romance, Costa-Gavras' Un Homme de Trop and Tavernier's Capitaine Conan and L.627. He died June 25 in Pontoise, Val d'Oise, France. (IMDb.com)
• Leo Burmester (1944-2007) - Actor who who played 'Catfish' in The Abyss (pictured). He also appears in Lone Star, The Legend of Zorro, The Last Temptation of Christ, A Perfect World and The Devil's Advocate. He died of leukemia June 28. (Playbill)
• Brian Finch (1936-2007) - British screenwriter, mostly for television (Coronation Street), who wrote 2005's Heidi, which featured Max Von Sydow. He died June 27. (The Independent)
• Anita Guha (?-2007) - Indian actress who portrayed Hindu goddesses in Sampoorna Ramayana, Tulsi Vivah and Krishna-Krishna. She also starred as the title character in the hit film Jai Santoshi Maa. She died of heart failure June 20, in Mumbai. (Variety)
• William Hutt (1920-2007) - Canadian actor who appears in Norman Jewison's The Statement and John Frankenheimer's The Fixer. He also provided his voice for the sci-fi pic The Shape of Things to Come and multiple documentaries. He died of leukemia June 27, in Stratford, Ontario. (Variety)