“Shine” (1996) — This is a farewell column. And it’s fitting that it’s also a Back-Shelf Pick. Of all the things I’ve done at the G, reviewing movies and sharing my favorites was easily the most fun.

I’m choosing this film about a broken genius pianist who finds himself and his talent again because it was the first movie I reviewed for the paper.

I remember sitting in a theater in Denver with about a dozen other critics, tears running down my face. Geoffrey Rush’s performance was brilliant, but it was the idea that somebody was paying me to sit there and watch the movie that moved me in such a profound way.

Twenty-three years at The Gazette have, at the best moments, felt like an extension of that morning in the dark theater.

Among the highlights:

• Defying our stodgy newsroom administrator Ray Sullivan by raising champagne glasses in the newsroom when our cop reporter Dave Curtin won the Pulitzer Prize. It was such a moment of hope. There were probably three or four reporters in the room just as good as Dave, and I wanted to someday be among them.

• Feeling like I’ve been sitting in the front seat of the local arts scene. Hanging out with the late Tony Babin as he hatched the idea for a gay theater festival. Watching the late Bob Pinney raging through the role of a lifetime as King Lear, while outside the tent a thunderstorm threatened to rip the world in two.

• Working for inspiring predecessors, including Susan Edmondson and Gil Asakawa.

• Conducting an Oscar contest in which I was pitted against a monkey. (I usually won.)

• Closing downTejon Street for a tremendously elaborate photo shoot for Best of the Springs and then screaming as a massive spring snowstorm pounded us. Partnering with Anita Renee Langemach, Mark Reis and the rest of our amazing designers and photographers on Best of the Springs always made me feel like miracles were possible.

• Lunching with Susan Saksa at Leadership Pikes Peak about this crazy idea I had called DreamCity, and then partnering with the library and other local groups to make it happen.

But the thing that will stay with me more than the memories is the feeling. The love I feel for Tracy Mobley-Martinez and Connie Steele and Bill Vogrin and Dave Philipps and Bill Reed and Steve Rabey and so many of the wonderful people I’ve worked with over the last 23 years, as well as the folks in the community who shared their funny, tragic and astonishing stories.

As Albert Brooks said in “Broadcast News” — “How do you like that? I buried the lede.”

(P.S.: Lede is spelled correctly, as the opening portion of a news story. And speaking of that, I’d like to recognize Linda Doty and the rest of the unsung hero gang, the copy editors, who’ve tried like hell to keep me from looking like an idiot all these years. Some days they almost succeeded.)