C-U Blogfidential

Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

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MILESTONES | Happy Birthday to You!

1/16: Zoe Southlynn-Savage (special events manager, Champaign Park District, Champaign, IL)
1/18: Michelle Kaffko Ebner (owner, Organic Headshots, Chicago, IL)
1/19: Mark Roberts (creator, Bad Mule Rag & The Lonely Banjo, Bad Mule Inc., Red Hook, NY)

PASSINGS | You Will Be Missed

3/2023: Robert Carringer, 81 (English and cinema studies professor, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL, retired)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Well, that erupted quickly! We’re apparently not done with dumping links on our dearest readers via the Report for we’ll now explore the film events coming our way shortly in Champaign-Urbana and beyond!

There’s a fair amount to see on local screens but it helps to know where to look for the smaller-scale and more interesting fare. Essentially a biannual event at this point, timed as it is by the Department of Dance at the University of Illinois as a “welcome back” gesture to the campus ecosystem at the beginning of each semester, the Flatlands Dance Film Festival returns with a short film program for some artistic wintertime viewing; the show will be held in Knight Auditorium at the Spurlock Museum of World Cultures next Friday, January 24, starting at 7 p.m. If you return to the same venue in three weeks, you can also attend the third CU International Film Festival on Saturday, February 15, to enjoy a selection of quality shorts from all over the world; you need to commit and go prepared, however, as you have a window between February 1 and February 12 to reserve your free ticket online and claim it on site once the doors open at 6:30 p.m. that evening. After a red-carpet walk, master of ceremonies Max Libman will host the screening at 7:30 p.m. and expound on how their films aim to “entertain, educate, and elevate.”

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We also have upcoming events that require some confirmation as well as collaboration. Andrew Stengele of Champaign Movie Makers shared on Facebook a call for entries, launched by the Rantoul Theatre Group for a brand-new event called the Rantoul Film Festival, which will close after February 28 and has a nominal $5 entry fee; a date for the showing at the Rantoul Business Center has yet to be announced and the money raised, including donations, will be split to help fund the theater as well as local domestic violence agencies. Also approaching quickly is CMM’s own 48-hour filmmaking contest, for which teams can gather the weekend of January 31-February 2 and make their short subjects from start to finish within the time frame, reflecting prompts that will be handed out at the Lincoln Square mall of downtown Urbana on the 31st; get some friends on board and register very soon to have some fun! Creators du C-U should also plan ahead to participate in this year’s Pens to Lens productions; the area’s youth who are enrolled in grades K-12 or are in the comparable age bracket can submit their original screenplays by Friday, February 28, and the participation guidelines for their parents and teachers are available at this website. The gala premiere of the films is set for August at the Virginia Theatre in downtown Champaign.

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Oh, what else to we have to see? The Chambana Film Festival will emerge from the holiday break with a string of screenings at the Phoenix Savoy 16 in Savoy beginning in a week on Sunday, January 26, 4 p.m. with the self-descriptive documentary, AFTER THE FALL: TWO GENERATIONS OF THE VIETNAM CONFLICT; the schedule continues a week later on February 2 with THE THINKING GAME, a documentary about the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI), and three consecutive Sunday presentations of the 2024 Oscar-nominated short films starting on February 16 and finishing the afternoon before the Academy Awards presentation on March 2. Following in the footsteps of Thomas Nicol’s THE VENUS GAMBIT, which we mentioned in last week’s Report, is the premiere and meet-casual at Urbana’s Analog Wine Bar on Saturday, January 25, 6 p.m., for a new short subject called PERMANENT RESIDENCE; made in town with assistance from Nicol, Chambana’s Nat Dykeman, GAMBIT actor Matthew Green, and artist Matt K, the piece by writer-director Bi An is an immigration story that is apparently told not in the typical manner. Get on your feet and get thee involved in our film culture!

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And to close, primarily as a follow-up to other points in last week’s Report, who else do we have to hear from and read? C-U resident and avid movie fan Chike Coleman, a co-host of the REEL REVIEWS show on Urbana Public Television with Sanford Hess, has apparently taken a breather from the cable access airwaves as well as writing for his website, The Wheelchair Watcher, over the last year; we hope he is doing well and that more is in store. The pause button has also been hit for the last year on Family Home Theater, the forum overseen by James Plath of the English department at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington; he’d like to transfer ownership to someone interested in keeping the site going and will field queries about it, as is stated on the sister Facebook page. Not slowing down one iota is Brad Jones, known to his fan base as The Cinema Snob, who moved from Springfield to Chicagoland with his wife Laura and the Stoned Gremlin Productions hustle in order to have access to all the theatrical flicks and novelty snacks he can handle; now the proud dad of an infant son, the Snob can still muster a few informative and snarky videos per week on YouTube in an effort that is undoubtedly “Lloyd Approved.”

These activity suggestions should keep everyone busy in our immediate future while we bow out of Report-ing for a couple of months after next week’s post. The Calendar itself will be compiled as usual, so be sure to send over any relevant dates for us to add by writing cuconfidential [at] gmail [dot] com!

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

…to a Calendar about you!

LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Esquire Lounge, Champaign, IL
Champaign Movie Makers* meeting (1/20, 7 p.m.)

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
AUTUMN AND THE BLACK JAGUAR, ONE OF THEM DAYS, THE ROOM NEXT DOOR, WOLF MAN, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, CONCLAVE*, DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA, FROM GROUND ZERO: STORIES FROM GAZA* (documentary; in Arabic with English sub), THE LAST SHOWGIRL*, MOANA 2 (animation), MUFASA: THE LION KING, NOSFERATU, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3, WICKED, THE WILD ROBOT* (animation) (1/17 on), BRAVE THE DARK, THE BRUTALIST, FLIGHT RISK, PRESENCE (1/23 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
INTERSTELLAR* (re-release; IMAX), ONE OF THEM DAYS, THE ROOM NEXT DOOR, SING SING, WOLF MAN, BABYGIRL, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA, THE LAST SHOWGIRL, MOANA 2 (animation), MUFASA: THE LION KING, NOSFERATU, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3, WICKED, THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (1/17 on), BETTER MAN* (1/17-1/18, 1/20-1/23), INTERSTELLAR (standard) (1/19, 3 & 7 p.m.; 1/20, 1/22, 7 p.m.), THE GOONIES 40th anniversary (1/19, 4 & 7 p.m.; 1/20, 7 p.m.), MARKED MEN: RULE & SHAW (1/22-1/23, 7 p.m.), *single screenings daily

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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Read the rest of this entry »

Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

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MILESTONES | Happy Birthday to You!

1/12: Damian Duffy (co-adapter, Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Talents, Abrams ComicArts, New York, NY)

PASSINGS | You Will Be Missed

12/24: Barbara Evans, 72 (actor, BUCKY McSNEAD, Shut Up and Do It Productions, Champaign, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

The New Year is as good as time as any for a link dump in our Report to share what our online media friends and neighbors are thinking and doing, so, by all means wander a little closer and click away!

Some folks want to foster the funny via their videos. Camp Nostalgic Studios posted a big conclusion to their production season last month, first with the last episode of SATURDAY MORNING for 2024 wherein hosts Alex Duquette and Dave Rediger attempt to make it to the end credits with the heat turned off in order to save money; they remember the reason for a different season and share an on-the-street update from Vadim Nuebeck (looks familiar…) as he searches for an elusive toy doll with a certain je ne sais quoi that is flying off the shelves. Across the creek at Rubber Chicken Films, versatile impressionist Andy Due (looks familiar…) finished the year with Episode 27 of THE ANY DUE SHOW and his patented take on Golden Age and retro Brit humour, this time involving an Irish pastor’s service, a pair of strangers at a park bench, and a surf rock band eulogizing their jalopy. A-hem. (Let’s not forget The Andy Due Book, a print expansion of the programme that is now available on Amazon.) And floating back down to Camp Nostalgic, we have the finale of LATE NIGHT URGE in which host Ariel Julie (looks loverly…) ruminates about Jewish holidays and the seeming lack of sexy in the belief’s public-facing patina.

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Other folks have opinions on the movies. Our man Colin Gabriel Price goes over his primary picks for the best releases of 2024 in the most recent episode of Priceless B Movies and, to no one’s surprise, it’s ladled liberally with horror. Over at Mashley at the Movies, Matt and Ashley dropped a couple of episodes for Xmas-time where they discuss the Bob Dylan picture A COMPLETE UNKNOWN with fellow C-U podcaster Elizabeth Hess and NOSFERATU with local writer Aaron Polk. A few steps in the other direction, Chase Todd of Chase & Shep fame has a new talker through their Earth-217 shingle that is called Phil & Chase Watch Everything with co-host Phillip Hazen and, in their newest recording, Shep and Bel join them to discuss more than twenty cinematic “slays” for the holidays. And, although their time at WCIA-TV is complete, professional critics Chuck Koplinski and Pam Powell continue their work as Reel Talk with Chuck and Pam through their own podcast, where they took on THE FIRE INSIDE, BABYGIRL, and more just before 2025 chimed in, and still appear together or solo in various outlets like CBS Channel 58 in Milwaukee, The Daily Journal of Kankakee, and The Illinois Times of Springfield.

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Even more folks are making the movies. Thomas Nicol went behind the camera for his first short in a few years, THE VENUS GAMBIT, in which a date goes charmingly between a duo played by Mindy Smith and Matthew Green as they enjoy a chess game; filmed and premiered at the Analog Wine Library in downtown Urbana, the piece has appeared in a handful of regional festivals. Also returning to filmic business are The Andrews (Andrew Stengele and Andrew Nygard), who made a quickie short named SANTA DOESN’T EXIST on behalf of Champaign Movie Makers and for the newest iteration of the annual cable-access tradition du C-U, THE TRAVIS WAYNE HURT CHRISTMAS SPECIAL. Their ditty is pure wryness, a Nygard specialty, and depicts the tragedy encountered by a young girl (Logan Tarr) who can’t sleep on Christmas Eve; the witty that surrounds it is merely AWOL at the moment, for Hurt elected to premiere the sketch comedy at the Channing-Murray Foundation last month instead of on Urbana Public Television where all the prior specials reside. Behind the scenes, local filmmaker John Isberg (FINAL SUMMER) concluded the first season of his talk-shop podcast, Shudder to Think, with Episode 13 where he was joined by a fellow horror storyteller from Britain, Jonathan Straiton (JOHNNY Z).

Finally, certain individuals want to discuss the movies of Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond for the record and on the regular like … oof. That doesn’t exist in C-U recorded media, does it? No radio show, no podcast, no livestream, no vlogcast, no cable access show to cover the cinema creation and culture of our own making? Oh, don’t do that. Stop looking in your humble editor’s direction from a long distance. He can only do so much from here in the Illinois Valley, other than offering up good ideas.

That said, freely return the favor if we forgot to include any similar and relevant outlets for arts and entertainment discourse in the C-U area by writing cuconfidential [at] gmail [dot] com with a tip. Thanks!

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

We needed an easy one this week, folks, and a lo-fi photo gallery from THE TRAVIS WAYNE HURT CHRISTMAS SPECIAL is it. All the shows to date that were aired by UPTV 6 are available on YouTube, with the latest one (apart from the brand-new one we talked about above) being THE TRAVIS WAYNE HURT CHRISTMAS SPECIAL VS. THE NOG MONSTER from 2023. You can find out who’s in which ones at a glance on the Internet Movie Database and learn about the making of most episodes with this podcast series hosted by Erin Gillis and TWH. As our dearest readers should know by now, movies are not just for careers, resumes, or artistic statements. These folks want to get weird and that’s just ducky with us.

If a few pictures of friendly and game townies (and animated friends) paint a thousand words…

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Happy National Peculiar People Day, C-U! Stay reliably offbeat!

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA, FROM GROUND ZERO: STORIES FROM GAZA (documentary; in Arabic with English sub), GAME CHANGER (in Telugu with English sub), THE LAST SHOWGIRL, OCTOPUS WITH BROKEN ARMS (in Mandarin with English sub), A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, THE DAMNED, THE FIRE INSIDE*, HOMESTEAD (faith film), KRAVEN THE HUNTER*, MOANA 2 (animation), MUFASA: THE LION KING, NOSFERATU, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3, WICKED (1/10 on), AX Cinema Nights: PAPRIKA 15th anniversary (animé) (1/12, 4:30 p.m., in Japanese with English sub; 1/8, 7:30 p.m., English dub), PETER PAN’S NEVERLAND NIGHTMARE (1/14-1/15, 7:30 p.m.), ONE OF THEM DAYS THE ROOM NEXT DOOR, WOLF MAN (1/16 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
BETTER MAN, DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA, THE LAST SHOWGIRL, BABYGIRL, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, THE FIRE INSIDE, HOMESTEAD (faith film), MOANA 2 (animation), MUFASA: THE LION KING, NOSFERATU, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3, WICKED (1/10 on), INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1/12, 3 & 7 p.m.; 1/15, 7 p.m.), WOLF MAN (1/16 on)

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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Read the rest of this entry »

Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

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MILESTONES | Happy Birthday to You!

1/7: Steve Christopher (actor, WOLVES IN THE WOODS, Redvolver Studios, Chicago, IL)
1/8: Michael Stone (co-founder, Illini Film & Video RSO, UIUC, Urbana, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Has anybody gone to the movies this holiday season? Of course you have; the trades won’t stop talking about how much money was raked in during 2024, another so-called rebound year for the industry. You pretty much know what the dozen-ish releases are that occupy the multiplexes right now – hint: they’re listed below – and if one or more of them fit the bill for you and yours, enjoy. We at CUBlog like to take the offbeat or local path and, well, it’s a mixed bag of customer service right now to start off the year.

After the conclusion of the annual “Mannheim Steamroller Christmas with Chip Davis” concert at the Virginia Theatre in downtown Champaign on December 29, the venue closed for business with the general public (save for advance ticket sales) in order to embark on another round of improvements at the facility; talking with the News-Gazette before the break, executive director Steven Bentz promised the new security features and fly system control upgrades would be in place for when the Virginia launches its 2025 schedule with Roger Ebert’s Film Festival on April 23. Elsewhere, the newspaper reported that incoming ownership of the Village Mall in Danville was in talks to lease space to a few sorely-needed tenants that might include a theatrical exhibitor, taking the place of the AMC location that ceased operations two years ago with no fanfare or explanation. We’ve also noticed plenty of updates on the final preparations at the restored Lorraine Theatre in Hoopeston, including the installation of a brand-new Dolby Atmos sound system and projection equipment, via Facebook; commenters from the Save the Lorraine Foundation are hinting that movies will return to the venue in “early 2025” for the first time in more than a decade.

And finally, after a week off that follows month-long Halloween and Christmas movie marathons, the Normal Theater in Normal resumes their programming today, Friday, January 3, with the new Paul Schrader film OH, CANADA, a meditation on aging and art-making with Richard Gere and Uma Thurman; it will begin a stretch of traditional, welcome, and first-run “art house” fare that neither the Virginia’s “experience” nor the five-years-closed Art Theater can honestly provide to the C-U. However, you know what to do to ensure that movies continue to play everywhere from the Normal to the Avon Theatre in Decatur, the Onarga Theater in Onarga, and all cinema-going points in between. Attend. It’s that simple.

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IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

Many moons ago in that fateful month of January 2017, when the health of our beloved Ma JaPan started to falter and our lives changed forever, I wrote a handful of posts about personal concerns as well as thoughts on different kinds of writings I might try to liven up CUBlog. None of it went past the “let’s pose an idea and see if it sticks” phase but, given the last few weeks’ worth of Calendar featurettes in which we’ve talked about various ways that our cinema culture has manifested, I’d like to finally try out one of them. The intent was to share relevant artifacts or merchandise that we hadn’t used for editorial before.

To pair with the theatrical theme of today’s Report, I have just the thing to share with you. Although I don’t do it nearly as much as I used to, one of my “kill a little time before bed” activities has been to search on eBay with various terms, many of them directly tied to the film culture du C-U, and see what I could possibly turn up. A smattering of items has been welcomed into the MFHQ holdings over the years because of this – some things for the novelty, some things for their potential use as graphics or information to support Confidential reporting, and some things that I did not know existed before finding their listings. The following piece belongs in the middle category. I’d searched for Art Theater ephemera before and had almost always found nothing. One day, I decided to try “Park Theatre” and I discovered…

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Simple and nice, this handout from October 1939 advertises a week’s worth of movie showings at 126 W. Church Street during the Alger Brothers’ ownership of the Park. Since the main features were released by multiple studios – UNION PACIFIC and THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES from Paramount Pictures, CHARLIE CHAN IN RENO from 20th Century Fox, and BLACKWELL’S ISLAND and HELL’S KITCHEN from First National/Warner Bros. – the paper was probably made up by the Algers and not pre-printed by a studio for local management to stamp their venue name on. It reminds me of the four-page movie guides that were being issued by Tom Angelica for the New Art Theatre when I first moved to Champaign in 1993 (again, that year…) often with reprints of Roger Ebert’s reviews from the Chicago Sun-Times.

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The young actress on the back of the herald, who was being promoted by Warner Bros. at the time, is Priscilla Lane. She appeared in approximately 30 pictures between 1937 and 1948 and was a member of a popular singing group with her three older sisters. Some of them starred together in a series of movies, the first of which was FOUR DAUGHTERS in 1938, and her other notable Hollywood credits included ARSENIC AND OLD LACE, THE ROARING TWENTIES, and Hitchcock’s SABOTEUR. She rests at Arlington National Cemetery with her husband, Joseph A. Howard, who served in the Army Air Corps.

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Just because a piece is old and possibly rare doesn’t mean it will be treated kindly by all hands. After I read an e-mail prompt that told me the package had been delivered, I went out to my mailbox and found the envelope shoved inside as you see it in my photograph. This surely is not the seller’s fault – fairly rigid cardboard had been secured with tape around the Park paper and “Do Not Bend” was clearly marked on the outside – or necessarily the Post Office’s mistake, apart from the decision of the delivery person to not get out of their vehicle and leave it at the back door of MFHQ Deux on that brisk April afternoon. Hrm. The damage was minimal; it’s invisible to the camera lens, but there is a light vertical crease on the left side of poor Priscilla that is consistent with the temporary bend. I stifled a complaint, despite the archivist inside of me having a fit, but that doesn’t mean you should do so when acquiring those collectibles or antiques that mean something to you. As we also can see, the herald still “works” fine and is serving its purpose.

After the next two Calendars, we plan on taking a recess from the Reports for a couple of months. During the “down time,” I will be livening up the “Imagery” department with a series of new photos and old tales to share, based on some of the other items I have picked up recently. Please stick with us if that may interest you, especially as a primer on what to look for in the wild that is related to the movies du C-U.

I’ll leave you with a bonus eBay find that I passed on. It would have been so cool to own if I’d had an appropriate way to display it and if it hadn’t been priced at more than one hundred dollars. Listed by a seller in 2017 and dating from the national rollout by RKO Radio Pictures in 1933, the following is a promotional herald for the original KING KONG when it played the Virginia Theatre. Yes, it sold, and no, I have nary a clue as to who picked up the prize. My consolation was to be heads-up and download the high-resolution images posted to eBay so that future me could use them when the occasion would present itself like, oh, right now. Enjoy.

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LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Springfield Art Association campus, Springfield, IL
SAA presents the 31st annual Molly Schlich Independent | International Film Series “Film Preview Party” feat. film trailers, documentary SOIL & SOUL: FARMING IN THE SANAGMON RIVER VALLEY* (1/8, 7 p.m.)

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
THE DAMNED, HONEY MONEY PHONY (in Mandarin with English sub), BABYGIRL, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, THE FIRE INSIDE, GLADIATOR II, HOMESTEAD (faith film), KRAVEN THE HUNTER, MOANA 2 (animation), MUFASA: THE LION KING, NOSFERATU, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3, WICKED (1/3 on), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (1/6, 7 p.m.), THE LAST SHOWGIRL preview with livestream (1/7, 7 p.m.), AX Cinema Nights: PAPRIKA 15th anniversary (animé) (1/7, 7:30 p.m., in Japanese with English sub; 1/8, 7:30 p.m., English dub), BETTER MAN, DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA, THE LAST SHOWGIRL (1/9 on)

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
BABYGIRL, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, THE FIRE INSIDE, GLADIATOR II, HOMESTEAD (faith film), KRAVEN THE HUNTER*, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM* (animation), MOANA 2 (animation), MUFASA: THE LION KING, NOSFERATU, RED ONE, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3, WICKED (1/3 on), CLUE (1/5, 3 & 7 p.m.; 1/8, 7 p.m.) *single screenings daily

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
Closed until April 2025.

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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Read the rest of this entry »

Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

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MILESTONES | Happy Birthday to You!

12/27: Matthew Gladney (co-host, Mashley at the Movies podcast, Champaign-Urbana, IL)
12/30: Paul Benson (gaffer, F’D: TALES FROM THE END TIMES, Horror-Fix Films, Springfield, IL)
12/30: Jason Pankoke (editor/publisher, C-U Blogfidential + The MICRO-FILM Review, Mendota, IL)

PASSINGS | You Will Be Missed

12/22: Jim Hambrick, 70 (founder/curator, Super Museum, Metropolis, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Seems the conference room consensus at MFHQ Deux is we’re allowed to file a short Report because we deserve a break this week. To that end, in remembrance of the holiday road that was traveled annually for many years by Ye Ed to visit his much-missed Ma and Pa JaPan, we present a few items related to Bloomington-Normal, his rest stop of choice in between Champaign-Urbana and Mendota.

The news room at WGLT radio, the NPR affiliate station housed on the Illinois State University campus, reported earlier this month that a new program, MCLEAN COUNTY: THE EARLY YEARS, would premiere on Thursday, December 5, by the producing PBS station, WTVP-TV of Peoria; written and hosted by H. Wayne Wilson, the show covers a centuries-spanning history of the fertile land that would become prime farming country and the largest county by square mile in Illinois, including all the pains of maturation that it entailed. The next air date on WTVP is scheduled for Saturday, January 18, at 11 p.m.

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Elsewhere, Entertainment Weekly elected to zero in on comments made by the actor-writer-director Jesse Eisenberg to GQ about his performance opposite Jason Segel in THE END OF THE TOUR, which he calls “one of the most creatively inspiring experiences” of his career; the 2015 movie fictionalizes an encounter between Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky and the Infinite Jest novelist David Foster Wallace, who was an instructor in English at ISU when the real-life meeting took place between the two in 1996.

Last week, the writer, film producer, and B-N native Jason Huls revealed that his recent cosmic horror short subject, THAT DAMNED YELLOW RAINCOAT, had been picked up for inclusion in the anthology series BLOODY BITES on Screambox TV and the episode will premiere tonight, Friday, December 27, at 7 p.m. CST and repeat at 10:30 p.m. on the linear stream that is available in various cable packages and on this website. The story is about a suburban couple (Meg Elliott, Christopher Meister) whose marriage is clearly on the outs, but what isn’t clear is why a young woman (Marina Schenk) in a canary slicker is flitting about their home. Huls also talks on his Substack account about two more shorts, THE FAWN and a follow-up to BEYOND THE BASEMENT DOOR, among his creative endeavors of 2024 and 2025.

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And, adding to our list of upcoming cinema-and-a-celebrity-or-two screenings that we first told you about a few Report filings back, we have learned the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts has something called “Insidious: The Further You Fear” on tap for Friday, February 7. We use the term loosely here in that the “star” is the INSIDIOUS horror franchise itself and its various characters will play a part in a “paranormal demonstration” that unleashes havoc on the theater and its audience. We think. Maybe…?

To close on a seasonally weird-o note, the endlessly awesome “Windy City Ballyhoo” page on Facebook shared an advertisement that ran sixty years ago in Chicago newspapers to herald the opening of K. Gordon Murray’s all-ages matinee of LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD AND HER FRIENDS, a fantasy import in disguise, and SANTA’S MAGIC KINGDOM, an extremely odd time capsule filmed by Murray at the Santa’s Village attraction in suburban Dundee that was one-part promotion for those parks and one-part an unofficial sequel to Murray’s Mexico-produced stable like RIDING HOOD, PUSS ‘N BOOTS, and SANTA CLAUS. It’s still mind-boggling to us, even after sorting out the sordid for this previous Report and in the Almanac entry below, which recalls when the Florida B-movie ballyhoo king moved his campaign down to the Castle Theatre in Bloomington, where he lived in his adolescent years, later the same month.

Oh, right. We were going to keep it short. We actually meant “relatively short compared to recent weeks” and we can’t move on to the Calendar listings until we drop yet another local cinema bombshell on you folks. This time, the catch is it gets totally personal for your friendly neighborhood Mr. JaPan. Read on.

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

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I have a confession to make. I’ve kept a “Eureka! I’ve found it!” moment up my sleeve until now. It’s surprising, it’s fleeting, it’s seminal, and it has revived a memory in my life.

What happens when you’re browsing the socials and, in the most unlikely of places, you happen upon archival evidence of … yourself?

I recently built a Report around headlines that I found while scrolling on my phone. For better or worse, I do it a little bit every day despite having the personal laptop and work iMac sitting here within easy reach at MFHQ Deux. However, on September 7, I came across a video that looked pretty neat because of older interests and then found something long lost to me.

In my pre-teens, I loved the monsters of the movies and it centered on Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine from Warren Publishing, although I was late to the “Monster Kid” party by a generation. The first issue my parents bought for me was #168, dating from 1980 and sporting the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND aliens on its cover. The number that hooked me was issue 175 from 1981, which featured the summer fantasy hits-to-be like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, CLASH OF THE TITANS, SUPERMAN II, and … RODAN? If you know me, you know my lifelong soft spot for kaiju.

There was an old-fashioned newsstand in Plano, Illinois, where I lived when I was little. The owners saved a copy of every new FM issue for me behind the counter and I would walk there after school to buy it, weather allowing. When it was time for the hotly anticipated 25th anniversary issue to ship in early 1983, it never showed up. I had to read about the cancellation of issue 192 and closing down of Warren in the pages of Starlog magazine a few months later at a Waldenbooks store. A cultural gut punch to a kid is not fun when it happens in public.

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A decade later and less than two weeks after I crossed the stage in my cap and gown at Illinois Wesleyan University of Bloomington to accept a BFA degree in graphic arts, I boarded an airplane with my father William so we could travel to my graduation present, which was to attend the Famous Monsters World Convention in Arlington, Virginia. May of 1993 was more or less the 35th anniversary of the debut of FM, so the promoters were playing it up with the promise that attendees would receive copies of the first new FM issue since, well, the issue before the issue that never arrived. Attractions included a giant dealers’ room, panel discussions, and appearances by FM editor and figurehead Forrest J Ackerman along with several of the old-guard talents who were fixtures in the pages of the original magazine.

This included the legendary science-fiction author Ray Bradbury. I knew it and went prepared.

So, I was lazy-scrolling on my phone and came across a video posted by the “Horror Ads” page on Facebook. A convoluted headline – “35 Years of Famous Monsters of Filmland on Wild Chicago/ET, 1993” – made it sound like the Chicago-centric magazine program WILD CHICAGO had covered the convention for some reason. “Okay, I’ll watch,” I thought.

The video is actually two segments ripped from someone’s old VHS tapes. In the first, CHICAGO reporter Will Clinger ventures into the north suburbs to visit with lo-fi monster movie maker David “The Rock” Nelson, a former boxer and street preacher who found a new calling with his camcorder on hand. In the second, ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT takes in the Famous Monsters convention and talks with several of the guests including the Hollywood directors Joe Dante (GREMLINS) and John Landis (THE BLUES BROTHERS), original horror host John Zacherley, scream queen Brinke Stevens, and Ackerman. A smattering of vintage movie props and a few booths bursting with merchandise are also shown.

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But, wait. There at the 5:31 mark, just after a trademark quip with a grin from Landis, is a two-shot of me visiting with Bradbury as he autographs my copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Then it cuts to a few comments from Bradbury and continues. I didn’t remember that a professional cameraman had been crouching next to me when our encounter took place. In fact, I’ve never seen this ET segment before now. Dad and I were still on the East Coast when the episode aired more than thirty-one years ago.

As the moment re-materializes in my head, I now remember that my mother Patricia told me “The Grandmas,” my grandmother and great-grandmother on Mom’s side of the family who lived together in suburban Stickney, had seen me on television. ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT was one of several shows they routinely watched after dinner. They wouldn’t have had the presence to tape that episode, though. I don’t recall if they even had a VCR at that point. A heads-up horror fan must have recorded it for posterity and I will project a big and loud “thank you” to the universe on behalf of them.

Of course, I still have the paperback. I read it again a few years ago. It is meaningful in large part due to its themes about the passage of time and fears over aging and losing family and regaining memories and having the possible wonders of our world sucked away by dark forces in a moment’s breath. And also, the emotional through-line of a relationship between an older father and a fresh-faced son with a lifetime still ahead for at least one of them.

As it turns out, that book and all the swirling recollections about it aren’t going anywhere. I may not “live forever” like Bradbury’s sideshow muse, Mr. Electrico, but I can sure try for as long as I breathe and type.

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CONFIDENTIAL ALMANAC | Dates in Film Culture History

60 Years Ago … Saturday, December 19, 1964: The Castle Theater in downtown Bloomington, Illinois, delights the children of the community with a special premiere of LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD AND HER FRIENDS attended by one of the stars, Stinky the Skunk, and its distributor, K. Gordon Murray. An English-language version of CAPERUCITA Y SUS TRES AMIGOS, the second of three similar movies from Mexico about Red’s adventures in faraway lands with various fantasy companions, this “kiddie matinee” is typical of the product imported and released by Murray’s eponymous K. Gordon Murray Productions, Inc., of Miami, Florida. Between the colorful marketing materials, easily catching the eyes of young theater goers, and the cheery ballyhoo at locations like the Castle, creating excitement for low-budget fairy tales wild with imagination, it is clear that Bloomington native Murray has successfully applied the entrepreneurial lessons he learned while growing up adjacent to a world of carnivals, fairs, and circuses. For today’s event, Robert Powers wears the replica skunk outfit in a more benign twist on the shambling horror costumes and gnarly props foisted on unsuspecting audiences by the likes of William Castle. Rafael Aldrete, known as “El Enano Santanón,” played the diminutive Stinky in the film series as well as Puss n’ Boots in a standalone Murray offering, all directed and produced by Roberto Rodríguez between 1960 and 1962 at the famous Churubusco-Azteca Studios in Mexico City. [R]

LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
Chambana Film Festival* screening series feat. “Short Docs” incl. THE QUILTERS, CYCLING WITHOUT AGE, FACING THE FALLS (12/29, 4 p.m.)

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
BABYGIRL, BABY JOHN (in Hindi with English sub), A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, THE FIRE INSIDE, GLADIATOR II, HER STORY (in Mandarin with English sub), HOMESTEAD (faith film), KRAVEN THE HUNTER, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM* (animation), MOANA 2 (animation), MUFASA: THE LION KING, NOSFERATU, RED ONE*, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3, WICKED (12/27 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
BABYGIRL, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, THE FIRE INSIDE, GLADIATOR II, HOMESTEAD (faith film), KRAVEN THE HUNTER, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM* (animation), MOANA 2 (animation), MUFASA: THE LION KING, NOSFERATU, RED ONE, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3, WICKED (12/27 on) *single screenings daily

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
No movies until Roger Ebert’s Film Festival in April 2025.

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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Read the rest of this entry »

Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

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MILESTONES | Happy Birthday to You!

12/21: Max Libman (founder/host, CU International Film Festival, Urbana, IL)
12/21: Linda McElroy (volunteer, Route 66 Film Festival, Springfield, IL)
12/25: Shea Kelly (producer/host, FILMWAR! YouTube channel, A Thousand Yard Stare Productions, Decatur, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

As you may have realized by now, dearest detectives, we’re on a run of consecutive Reports in which cultural preservation and the cinema doings of the C-U are the paramount topic. Last week, we talked about how Chicago Filmmakers will honor the legacy of the former Champaign short subject distributor, Picture Start, and by direct proxy its founder, University of Illinois alumnus Ron Epple. Two weeks ago, we revealed that Saturn’s Core Audio & Video is releasing on a well-stocked Blu-ray edition the twenty-five-year-old local indie DOGS IN QUICKSAND, unavailable to see for many years. Shortly, we’ll talk for the first time about yet another surprise revival that is indirectly tied to our area’s picture show history, but we’d like to first take a look at goings-on in the entertainment world that will be helpful for context.

It’s fitting that we broach the subject of “preservation” in today’s Calendar, given the impending wide release on Christmas Day of Robert Eggers’ stylish horror show, NOSFERATU, and the silent-era milestone that inspired it. After premiering in Berlin in March 1922, F. W. Murnau’s NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR and its producer, Prana-Film, were pursued by Bram Stoker’s widow Florence, who wanted to have all prints of the movie destroyed and profits turned over due to it being an unauthorized adaptation of her husband’s signature novel, Dracula. Although she won her case in the German courts, Prana declared bankruptcy and random prints made it out to the world anyway, depriving Stoker of a decisive victory. Today, Kino Lorber offers an official restoration from the Murnau Foundation and “Ebertfest” treated us to its creepy glory as part of an Alloy Orchestra performance in 2001.

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Believe it or not, that turn of events – NOSFERATU was released in the United States in 1929 or possibly earlier, according to one of numerous posts on the topic at Silent-ology, which probably contributed to its survival long before the advent of budget VHS tapes – might not be the most dramatic one we discuss! Yet, can you imagine in this singular instance if a film, no matter how slight or significant its effect on the movie-goers of its time, had disappeared for good and not been viewed or appraised in Germany or across the globe by successive generations? What would the horror film, or vampire cinema, or “goth” culture look like in 2024 without its influence? The “butterfly effect” of its absence might be staggering.

As for the current crop of amazing film-rescue stories, let’s start with the program ENDURANCE from the award-winning team of Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, and Natalie Hewit. It premiered on the National Geographic channel on Friday, November 1, and follows a team of modern treasure hunters who brave the Antarctic in the hopes of finding the sunken remains of the Endurance, inadvertently piloted to its polar death by Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men in 1914. The piece gives us an astoundingly clear look at how those early 20th century explorers weathered such harsh conditions after their craft got mired in the ice and capsized before their eyes, thanks in large part to the plates and footage shot on site by the Endurance’s photographer, Frank Hurley, who dove into icy waters to save his reels from the wreckage. ENDURANCE includes compelling snippets of material that are excerpted from Hurley’s own documentary, SOUTH, which was recently restored by the British Film Institute and re-released intact by Kino Lorber and Milestone Film & Video in 2022, the year Endurance was finally found.

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The avid fan base of Turner Classic Movies seemed to be intrigued and shocked on the socials when the network announced it was broadcasting the documentary by Michael Lurie and Eric Friedler, FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT, in prime time this past Tuesday, December 17. It is a long-gestating account of what Jerry Lewis and his crew went through to make THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED, a tale of a man played by Lewis who is forced to perform as a clown for children held in a concentration camp during World War Two, which apparently uses little- or never-seen stills and behind-the-scenes footage from the production. Theories have compounded over the last half-century as to why CLOWN was ultimately shelved by Lewis; the Library of Congress has possession of the only known print and will allegedly make it available to view later in 2025 per the late entertainer’s instructions. We won’t expect an official release of it, well, ever, but we’re sure many others had the same gut feeling about Orson Welles’ THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, the Aretha Franklin performance film AMAZING GRACE, and various key titles that were formerly in limbo.

Independent cinema is not exempt from the elements shuffle. Last month, Kevin Smith posted a short compilation of outtakes from CLERKS on YouTube and revealed he had almost an hour’s worth of footage that no one had actually viewed since the View Askew crew filmed their seminal 1994 slacker comedy in New Jersey. On October 27, the Chicago International Film Festival premiered a restoration of the little-seen and innovative 1999 love story COMPENSATION, an evocation of African-American relationships and disability that was set and shot in Chicago by the filmmaker Zeinabu irene Davis, which is now represented by Janus Films, on tap for the Criterion Collection treatment in mid-2025, and selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress earlier this week. And in September, Matthew Harrison’s RHYTHM THIEF received a premiere of its 4K DCP at Los Angeles’ 2220 Arts + Archives, the start of a new lease for the 1995 New York City drama as it also arrives on Blu-ray this month courtesy of Kino Lorber and after a one-year delay; the Sundance award-winner had been stuck on dated DVD and only been given limited availability online for half its lifetime before now.

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These black-and-white, low-cost gems are just three of the many thousands of movies and their related ephemera that need to be treated with care and respect if they’re going to survive in a viewable condition for our future generations. By someone. At some point. With a reasonable budget and resources. And a potential for an audience, when all is said and done, to justify the effort. It’s not simple, quick, or cheap. At a certain point, it might not even be up to just the big studios or prominent producers or boutique labels or knowledgeable archives or cinema societies or non-profit specialty groups to take care of the flicks. They can’t do it all and have every right to pick and choose what comes first, second, or one hundredth in line. It should be to no one’s surprise at this point if fandom or the grassroots step up to help preserve our culture. And they have.

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

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“Eureka! We’ve found it!” is not an exclamation we normally blurt out in our doings at the service of the Champaign-Urbana film culture. Most of the subjects and activity we share with you on CUBlog date from modern times and are common knowledge in the circles du C-U that we run with. As long-time readers know, our coverage will occasionally reflect the discovery by Ye Ed of knowledge and artifacts related to the movies, movie-going, and movie-making in our communities. To him, they are as good as gold. Such was the case when he learned a few years ago, while skimming the Daily Illini archives at the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections, about the vaudeville novelty “Making Movies” that took place on the stage of the Orpheum Theatre and the campus of the University of Illinois in 1919. It had a very clever hook – patrons and citizens took part in the making of a one-reel dramedy, LOVE’S YOUNG DREAM.

We have yet to learn that our DREAM is still alive. The print is most likely long gone.

A much rarer development is when someone outside of Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond reaches out with a find that relates directly or peripherally to our movie history. This happened over the summer when Chris Clawson, historian and media producer at the Historical Society of Greenfield, Massachusetts, wrote to us about “Making Movies” due to his own research in regards to their own movie history. He zeroed in on the names of its promoters, Joseph Maddern and Tom Ward, in our CUBlog articles because the former had brought the same act to Greenfield a few years later.

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As with the Orpheum production of LOVE’S YOUNG DREAM, the creation of the Greenfield edition followed a three-part template: one, the producers filmed scenes from a stock script in the booking venue and the surrounding city with local people, places, and businesses; two, they also filmed the audiences who are invited to fill the venue and watch the scenes being staged for camera on the stage as a demonstration of how films were made; and three, they had the film processed and edited together as quickly as possible and premiered the completed reel at the venue to draw back the locals, who would be amazed to see themselves, friends, and neighbors act out the silent vignette on the big screen. In Greenfield, the former Victoria Theatre wowed the crowd with their own DREAM in June of 1924.

It turned out that Mr. Clawson and Carol Aleman, president of the Greenfield historical society, were putting the finishing touches on a video presentation that would re-introduce their community to DREAM a la Victoria and mark the 100th anniversary of its occurrence. In the effort to shore up the narration and factoids to be used in the video, Clawson found us and your humble editor went through the talking points with him to help out as best he could. However, there was an even bigger surprise for us that can finally be shared. This is a case of living vicariously through the fruits of others’ labors…

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Aleman and Clawson hosted their video premiere on Friday, October 11, at the Garden Cinema of Greenfield to a showing of more than 100 spectators. Special to their presentation was that it included the digitized, restored, and intact LOVE’S YOUNG DREAM from 1924! How’s that for a very clever hook?

Generously, the Historical Society has uploaded the complete presentation to Vimeo for easy viewing. A well-made and informative segment tells how Clawson and Aleman located the reel, researched the story behind it, identified some of the individuals who participated in it, and subsequently prepared the film to be appreciated today, which included the use of computer applications to add a music score made up of vintage cues that were first used in the silent film era. Bracketing the segment is DREAM, complete with new color tints and its original (and awkward) dialog cards, and a vintage news reel that was produced by Pathé News and depicts the fun and games of the first Greenfield Winter Carnival in 1923.

Kudos to Clawson, Aleman, and others who helped bring the project to life. We can learn a few lessons from the ways in which they embraced local heritage, however offbeat it might have looked at first glance, and created something enticing with it. We also are fortunate to be able to enjoy from afar the closest approximation to LOVE’S YOUNG DREAM that we might get as it would have been viewed by our relatives and predecessors at the Orpheum in 1919. Let’s take the big cosmic hint and look closely at our archives, collections, attics, trunks, and basements for the treasures. We are the grassroots who can ensure that Champaign-Urbana’s history and artistry on film will be preserved as film history. Eureka!

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NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
HOMESTEAD (faith film), MUFASA: THE LION KING, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3, GLADIATOR II, HER STORY (in Mandarin with English sub), KRAVEN THE HUNTER, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM (animation), MOANA 2 (animation), RED ONE, WICKED (12/20 on), A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, THE FIRE INSIDE (12/24 on), BABYGIRL, BABY JOHN (in Hindi with English sub), NOSFERATU (12/25 on)

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
HOMESTEAD (faith film), MUFASA: THE LION KING, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3, THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER* (faith film), GLADIATOR II, KRAVEN THE HUNTER, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM (animation), MOANA 2 (animation), THE ORDER*, RED ONE, WICKED (12/20 on), The Royal Ballet: The Nutcracker (12/22, 3 p.m., 12/23, 7 p.m.; recorded), IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (12/22, 3 & 7 p.m.; 12/24, 12, 3 & 7 p.m.), A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, THE FIRE INSIDE (12/24 on), BABYGIRL, NOSFERATU (12/25 on) *single screenings daily

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
No movies this week!

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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Read the rest of this entry »

Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

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MILESTONES | Happy Birthday to You!

12/16: Lauren Laws (vlogger, Nyx Namor YouTube channel, Champaign-Urbana, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

This week, the Report would like to give credit to the C-U online magazine Smile Politely for their unwavering coverage of the arts and culture of our communities, especially when they put front and center the local folks and their creations, vocations, and activism that might be readily glossed over or ignored in the mainstream press outlets of the immediate region. We also love the enthusiasm that is expressed by their Arts Editor, Amy Penne, and her willingness to incorporate film doings in that overall space embraced by the magazine’s mission. Among the virtues of their editorial breadth, SP more readily picks up on and address C-U Blogfidential topics in a timely fashion than we’re able to right now.

That’s a good thing in our removed-from-the-milieu situation. Film culture usually receives the coverage elsewhere when something is actively filming, about to premiere publicly, wins an award, appeals to families, or is “Ebertfest” branded. Ye Ed knows because he still looks through the websites and socials of central Illinois sources for story ideas. From afar. Daily. Whether it’s good or bad, for C-U’s sake.

Several recent pieces on SP that we’ve read are solid examples. Your humble editor was invited to attend a work-in-progress screening of BRIM, the period-shifting drama about systemic racism in American health care that has been in the works from Keenan Dailey, Trude Namara, Kevin Lau, and their collaborators at Visage Entertainment and partner companies, but could not go; plenty of others apparently did including Penne, who digs into the film’s heady aims and themes. SP also shared another press release from the Champaign County Film Office and Flyover Film Studios that highlights regional production, in this instance a few selections with elements of the Christmas holidays in their storytelling and design; we will Scrooge a bit again as we did at Halloween and clarify that half the movies mentioned are Chicago productions made with a helping hand from professionals with east central Illinois ties, in particular the Flyover folks. Still, feel free to check them out regardless of their overall C-U DNA.

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Last month, Penne wrote eloquently about the “patchwork quilt” qualities of the revived magazine show PRAIRIE FIRE, once a WILL-TV staple in the Nineties and now an upgraded and award-winning program that basks in the glow of down-home localism, often with portraits of folks who flourish with their creative passions and better their communities in the process; the recent article touches on several high points of the current second season of episodes. One can also find relevant nods in SP’s omnibus pieces; the brand-new and annual “BEST of 2024” concludes with a big hat tip to Flyover and its commercial potential for the county coffers and those who want to work in entertainment media for a living, while the also-new and annual “WORST of 2024” ends with “heartbreak” as it reiterates Café Kopi will close its downtown Champaign location after 31-plus years in business on Sunday, December 22. The homey coffee house is a seminal location for Ye Ed due to the indirect role it has played in our Confidential doings.

And, inherent in the ways that SP likes to dissect the arguable deficiencies of the C-U in order to arrive at constructive solutions for us all to consider, their “empty spaces” round-up piece from September includes the umpteenth reminder that we don’t have the Art Theater anymore to enjoy. I visited town on Monday for personal reasons and drove past the dimmed marquee with the current $870,000 asking price hung on it – still sad looking, still a bit irritating to think about, and fated to be a recurring topic now that the city is digging up its central downtown parking lot a mere block away to make room for a beautified public plaza in order to attract all the foot traffic they’re hoping for. The blight has to be documented, whether it’s the Smile Politely way or otherwise, because it isn’t just about a vacant movie house, folks.

It’s our lives and we’re definitely the lesser for it. We don’t want to hear or read it sometimes, but thanks to the mettle of publisher Seth Fein and his editorial staff, we can keep thinking and learning about the C-U. As a former contributor and employee of what was the most comparable precedent, the alternative print weekly The Octopus founded by Paul Young, it’s heartening to see SP stay the course. Well done.

You know the drill, then. Read SP, send in your story ideas and words and feedback to SP, contribute with your wallet to SP to help float the modest operating capital they need each year. Two full decades of fostering low-budget public service and journalism for Champaign-Urbana and its citizens is certainly nothing to take lightly. May they continue to highlight our worthwhile and needs-improvement sides for twenty years more, and make sure Amy Penne is always caught up on our weird little film culture world.

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IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

To that end, however, we wouldn’t be CUBlog-ging if we felt there was nothing more for us to contribute about the cinematic arts of Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond. After nearly twenty years of keeping a sharp eye on our topics of choice, we’re versed in putting together the two-and-twos that might just go over the collective heads at our area’s television and radio stations, newspapers, websites, podcasts, and other blogs. The following is a case in point and, honestly, even we didn’t see it coming.

CUBlog watches over the intriguing fare that is presented in Chicago and the suburbs along with what goes down in the C-U and we’re subscribed to a few relevant email sources on that front. It includes Chicago Filmmakers, a long-running non-profit center that teaches filmmaking skills and also screens non-mainstream fare. So, when we receive an announcement about a CF program called “Picture ReStart,” we have to take notice. Why? It’s because 31-plus years ago – that fateful time again, 1993 – we lost a fellow named Ron Epple who once was the one-man film force of Champaign-Urbana, and in particular on the University of Illinois campus, before he relocated to the Windy City. Among his achievements, Epple operated a short film distributor called Picture Start out of his home in Champaign.

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The company’s library of 16-millimeter prints was acquired by Chicago Filmmakers in the Nineties, initially to make them available as viewing and research copies, but now the group acts as a caretaker for the collection. They and curator Ben Creech will share some of the spoils in their new and monthly “Picture ReStart” series beginning on Saturday, January 18, 6 p.m., at the Historic Firehouse Cinema on 1326 W. Hollywood Avenue in Chicago. The first grouping is called “Her Expansive Self,” the show on February 15 is “Surface Tensions,” and the follow-up on March 25 is “Animated Breakdowns,” all teasing at what lies therein. CF should announce the individual films of each program on Facebook prior to the events, and you can read more about Creech, Epple, Picture Start/“ReStart,” and future dates on this web page.

It is a neat offering for those who appreciate the experimental and art films of yore, while it is certainly relevant to us as a body of work assembled by a C-U original in the C-U. We don’t often get windows into our cinema past from an era previous to, say, when Mike Trippiedi and his creative clan made DOGS IN QUICKSAND in 1997, so this is an effort we should support however we can. Maybe a C-U screening of a “Picture ReStart” compilation could be arranged for later in 2025 or early 2026? Let’s dream into action, ambassadors and promoters du C-U! In the meantime, let your minds wander with the following “teaser films” of sorts photographed by Chicago Filmmakers, which includes the wonderful Maya Deren in her classic dreamlike meditation, MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON, from 1943. Otherwise … what are they?

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LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Esquire Lounge, Champaign, IL
Champaign Movie Makers* meeting (12/16, 7 p.m.)

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
HER STORY (in Mandarin with English sub), KRAVEN THE HUNTER, THE LAST DANCE (in Cantonese with English sub), THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM (animation), THE MAN IN THE WHITE VAN, FLOW (animation), GLADIATOR II, MOANA 2 (animation), RED ONE, WICKED, Y2K* (12/13 on), I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (religious documentary) (12/14, 4 p.m.; 12/17, 7 p.m.), RM: RIGHT PEOPLE, WRONG PLACE (music documentary; in Korean with English sub) (12/14, 2 p.m.), BLACK CHRISTMAS 50th anniversary (12/15, 4 p.m.), AX Cinema Nights: BABYMETAL: LEGEND – 43 THE MOVIE (concert film) (12/15, 4:30 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), HOMESTEAD advance screening (12/16, 7 p.m.), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (12/16, 7 p.m.), HOMESTEAD (12/18 on), MUFASA: THE LION KING, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 (12/19 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
KRAVEN THE HUNTER, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM (animation), THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER (faith film), GLADIATOR II, MOANA 2 (animation), THE ORDER, RED ONE, WEREWOLVES, WICKED, Y2K (12/13 on), “For King + Country: A Drummer Boy Christmas Live” (faith concert recording) (12/13-12/18, 1:30 p.m.), “Seventeen: ‘Right Here’ World Tour in Japan” (concert performance) (12/14, 7 p.m., simulcast), I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (religious documentary) (12/14, 12/17, 4 & 7 p.m.), “André Rieu Christmas Concert” (faith concert recording) (12/14, 3 p.m.), WHITE CHRISTMAS 70th anniversary (12/15, 1 & 7 p.m.; 12/16, 7 p.m.), HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (2000) (12/15, 3 & 7 p.m.; 12/18, 7 p.m.), MUFASA: THE LION KING, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 (12/19 on)

@ The Canopy Club, Urbana, IL
Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin “Ultimate Anthology” tour (film music of Argento, Romero, etc.) (12/14, 7 p.m. doors, 8 p.m. show)

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
Illinois Public Media presents “The Arthouse Experience Film Series” feat. ROBOT DREAMS (animation) (12/14, 7 p.m.)

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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Read the rest of this entry »

Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

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MILESTONES | Happy Birthday to You!

12/6: Andy Due (producer/performer, Rubber Chicken Films/RL3 Productions, Charleston, IL)
12/8: Britten Traughber (photographer, Britten Traughber Photography, Tucson, AZ)
12/10: Sidney Taiko (editor/publisher, Storm Cellar, San Diego, CA)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

We at CUBlog plan to petition for this Friday to be designated as “Pankoke Comes Clean Day” and the only payment required is you lend us an ear! The Report is therefore turned over to him, for once, and if you listen very closely as you read, you might just hear our humble editor orating about a few recent activities he’s participated in apart from the Confidential. All MFHQ Deux and no play makes … well, you know.

At first, let’s flash back. The online Cultured Focus Magazine talked with our good friend Andrew J. Rausch in November about all things Quentin Tarantino and being a professional author on the occasion of his new book, Generation Tarantino: The Last Wave of Young Turks in Hollywood, being listed for release in mid-2025 by Rowman & Littlefield. As it seems to happen lately when Rausch is interviewed, the article inevitably leans into the topic of the famous filmmaker’s “lost first film” and the subject of a prior book, My Best Friend’s Birthday: The Making of a Quentin Tarantino Film, for which Mr. JaPan wrote an essay.

Last month, Ye Ed put on his festival cap outside of the late New Art Film Festival and the C-U for the first time in nearly 20 years at the service of the Lake County Film Festival in upstate Grayslake. He volunteered on a jury with veteran comedy writer Steve Young and documentary director Leslie McCleave to view and deliberate over the “Narrative Shorts” selections of the 2024 program; “Best Narrative Short Film” was awarded to AS EASY AS CLOSING YOUR EYES, an affecting drama with science fiction overtones about a grieving mother who turns to group therapy and more after losing her son. Nat Dykeman of the Chambana Film Festival organized the LCFF, which took place between October 31 and November 11.

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And just yesterday, Thursday, December 5, indie publisher Jason “Java” Croft of Champaign released the digital edition of the 70th issue of Bachelor Pad Magazine, a compact celebration of the Fifties and Sixties swingin’ lifestyle. It seems like only yesterday – well, 17 years ago, if we’re real about it – that Jason “Needs More Java” Pankoke designed the debut issue of the long-running quarterly and he moonlights today as a proofreader on all the regular and special issues. Breaking news: he might earn his first-ever byline in “The Digest of Atomic Age Culture” if a story prospect or two pan out. Sorry, but they’re top secret for now!

On Tuesday, December 3, boutique juggernaut Vinegar Syndrome launched their annual “Partners Only Month” during which they promote the wares of all the participating video labels who work with their OCR Distribution arm. This usually includes a raft of brand-new December releases for customers to feast upon and, in the POM Class of 2024, we have from Saturn’s Core Audio & Video of New Jersey the Blu-ray debut of Mike Trippiedi’s made-in-C-U-and-Sidney opus, DOGS IN QUICKSAND! We’ll comb through the details of this disc for you soon, but we can now reveal that Ye Ed had a slight hand in helping the eclectic video oeuvre of Trippiedi, Bill Yauch, and friends finally make it to the hi-def age.

In closing, we made mention a few weeks ago about Pankoke’s rare weekday trip to Champaign. It happened on a Tuesday and his main destination was the television studio lab for students at Parkland College. It seems that our Confidential associate Drea Aarons is taking a media production class or two per semester and she needed guests for a talk show concept, so myself and the effervescent Kaity Bequette joined her for some seasonal spooky discussion! It’s not intended to air on PCTV or online as it is for her class, but we can share the following sneak peek courtesy of Aarons.

In other words, what a timeline this has been! It almost feels like, dare we say it, old times.

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p.s. Although AS EASY AS CLOSING YOUR EYES had played in dozens of film festivals worldwide prior to appearing at LCFF, yours truly learned after the fact why this might have been a little more personal for some of the film’s key participants. It turns out that actress/co-producer Laura Coover, who plays the role of the mother “Lila,” and co-writer/co-producer/sound mixer Aaron Golden are both from Chicagoland and attended the University of Illinois in Urbana at roughly the same time. On the side during their UI studies, Coover played a minor role in the Mark Roberts movie of his play, WELCOME TO TOLONO, and Golden the lead part in the second dramatic short made by fellow underclassmen Chris Folkens, TOXIN. Assistant camera Chris Blim and executive producer Jon Michael Hill are also alumni of UI.

Considering the pro pedigree of the work on display in CLOSING YOUR EYES, the recurring lesson remains – we all start out somewhere, including the friendly corn-fed confines of Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond, where we learn, experience, grow, move on, and repeat. Kudos to director Parker Croft and his team for crafting a completely realized and compelling portrait with this film. Try to see it when you can, dearest readers, for its success is well earned. You can learn more about the making of the film through the official website of Paper Horse Pictures.

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

My primary contribution to the Blu-ray of DOGS IN QUICKSAND was to design the souvenir booklet included in the package. Although I did create a handful of jacket designs for DVD products in the mid-Aughts, this endeavor was on a different level and I relied on my professional training in publication layout to piece it all together. While you will need to purchase DOGS in order to enjoy the full spread in print, which includes a complementary essay on DOGS by Heather Drain and then-and-now interviews between myself and our long-time confidant in film, Mike Trippiedi, we’ve been given the thumb’s up from Ross Snyder at Saturn’s Core to exclusively tease the booklet right here on C-U Blogfidential! You can click on the graphics below to pull up larger versions for easier viewing, and the impressionistic collage of the DOGS cast that appears on the booklet front and the slipcase was created by the artist Nate Higley.

We hope you dig on DOGS once a copy is securely in your paws!

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CONFIDENTIAL ALMANAC | Dates in Film Culture History

15 Years Ago … Tuesday, December 1, 2009: On the occasion of World AIDS Day, a locally-made dramatic featurette called THIS LIFE AIN’T PRETTY has its world premiere at Brookens Auditorium on the University of Illinois campus in Springfield. It features Danielle Ward as the main character, Brittney, a heterosexual and seemingly healthy young woman and mother who is diagnosed with the virus that ultimately kills her, hitting her family and community hard with anguish and a test of their faith. A cautionary tale about the health concerns and stigma faced by African-American individuals who contract HIV, THIS LIFE AIN’T PRETTY is the first film release from Predestined Arts & Entertainment, an independent company that was established by sisters and Champaign natives Candice and Kimberly D. Conner to develop creative media by and for women and people of color. Kimberly, now a resident of the capital city, wore several hats as director, writer, editor, and a producer on the half-hour-long project, which also stars Kevin Craig West, Dingani Beza, Cheyenne Smith-Youngblood, Shirley Crawford, Irma Norris, and James Johnson in the supporting roles. THIS LIFE AIN’T PRETTY would soon play numerous festivals and educational events around the world, winning awards and leading to larger feature-length stories for Conner such as JUMP IN and BEFORE ‘I DO’. As reported on 12/1/09 at CUBlog. [R]

LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

DOGS IN QUICKSAND* U.S. Blu-ray Release: Tuesday, 12/3, Limited via Vinegar Syndrome, Bridgeport, CT/Saturn’s Core Audio & Video, Bloomingdale, NJ

@ Lincoln Hall, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Film & Video* meeting (12/9, 7 p.m., Room 1002)

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
FLOW (animation), GET AWAY, RAY* (re-release), SOLO LEVELING: REAWAKENING (animé) (in Japanese with English sub or English dub), WEREWOLVES, Y2K, BONHOEFFER* (faith film), GLADIATOR II, MOANA 2 (animation), RED ONE, WICKED (12/6 on), RM: RIGHT PEOPLE, WRONG PLACE (music documentary; in Korean with English sub) (12/6-12/8), “For King + Country: A Drummer Boy Christmas Live” (faith concert recording) (12/6-12/9), Studio Ghibli Fest: MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (animé) (12/8, 3 p.m., English dub; 12/9, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (12/9, 7 p.m.), AX Cinema Nights: BABYMETAL: LEGEND – 43 THE MOVIE (concert film) (12/11, 7:30 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (religious documentary) (12/12, 7 p.m.), BLACK CHRISTMAS 50th anniversary (12/12, 7:30 p.m.), INTERSTELLA 5555: THE 5TORY OF THE 5ECRET 5TAR 5YSTEM (animé) (12/12, 7:30 p.m.), KRAVEN THE HUNTER, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM (animation) (12/12 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
THE ORDER, WEREWOLVES, Y2K, THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER (faith film), MOANA 2 (animation), GLADIATOR II, RED ONE, WICKED (12/12 on), “For King + Country: A Drummer Boy Christmas Live” (faith concert recording) (12/6-12/10), Studio Ghibli Fest: MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (animé) (12/7, 3 p.m., 12/9, 12/11, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub; 12/8, 3 & 7 p.m., 12/10, 7 p.m., English dub), The Metropolitan Opera: Die Zauberflöte (12/7, 1 p.m., recorded), UFC 310: Alexandre Pantoja vs. Kai Asakura, more (mixed martial arts) (12/7, 9 p.m., simulcast), BONHOEFFER (faith film) (12/8-12/10, 12/12), LOVE ACTUALLY 20th anniversary (12/8, 3 & 7 p.m., 12/11, 7 p.m.), “André Rieu Christmas Concert” (faith concert recording) (12/11, 7 p.m.), I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (religious documentary) (12/12, 4 & 7 p.m.), KRAVEN THE HUNTER, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM (animation) (12/12 on)

@ Pine Lounge, 1st floor, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (2000) (12/6-12/7, 7 p.m., free w/i-card)

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
The News-Gazette Film Series presents IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (12/7, 1 & 7 p.m.), “Holiday in Whoville 2024” feat. HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (1966) (12/8, 12 p.m. doors, 1-4 p.m. cartoon (shown hourly))

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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Read the rest of this entry »

Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

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MILESTONES | Happy Birthday to You!

11/22: Chase Todd (cohost, Phil & Chase Watch Everything podcast, Earth-217 Studios, Villa Grove/Savoy, IL)
12/3: Greg Woods (publisher, The Eclectic Screening Room, Toronto, Canada)
12/3: Bryan Wendorf (programmer/artistic director, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Chicago, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Mere hours after filing last week’s Report, Ye Ed was taking a late-night break at MFHQ Deux and scrolling through Google headlines on his phone. Algorithm powers of persuasion aside, it surprised him to find several stories within a sixty- or seventy-count assortment that were relevant to the Confidential methodology, considering all the publishing that is done online every day. These are those stories…

In one, Bloody Disgusting reported that Nicolas Elert and John Pata, the respective music score composer and director-writer of the filmed-in-Rantoul horror tale BLACK MOLD, were collaborating on releasing a limited-run vinyl soundtrack as well as the expected digital downloads through Elert’s Bandcamp profile. In another, Variety broke that WWE wrestling star CM Punk had been cast in the upcoming Syfy original series REVIVAL that is currently being filmed in Canada under the watch of Aaron B. Koonz and Luke Boyce, the latter of Shatterglass Studios and Flyover Film Studios in Champaign/Rantoul. In yet another, the Collider entertainment site elected to cite the late Roger Ebert and his love for CHOP SHOP, the low-budget “realist” drama from filmmaker Ramin Bahrani set on the streets of the Queens neighborhood in New York City; it was barely released to theaters in 2008 by Koch Lorber Films but found a large and receptive audience at Champaign’s Virginia Theatre the next year during the eleventh Roger Ebert’s Film Festival.

And in one more, Bloody Disgusting paid tribute to another creative and native son from Illinois, Ray Bradbury, with a glowing review of a new “Treehouse of Horror” episode on THE SIMPSONS entitled “Simpsons Wicked This Way Comes;” the Fox Network aired it last Sunday, November 24. Apparently, the final segment of the anthology special takes its cues from Fahrenheit 451, which was previously adapted for HBO a few years ago with Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon in the leads and Bahrani in the director’s chair. For our finishing move this bout, we have a colorful piece from Cageside Seats about the kinds of television that inspired a young Champaign-Urbana boy named Tony Khan, well before he took the reins at several professional sports operations and founded the popular All Elite Wrestling; G. I. JOE, THE A-TEAM, and World Wrestling Federation broadcasts were all favorites. Go figure, brother.

We will probably play a little fast, loose, and brief with Reports over the next few weeks since it’s the end of the year. There are further local film developments that we’re asked to not write about yet – “ugh” to la vida C-U and movie business confidentiality, grumbles Mr. JaPan – but those breaking announcements and a nostalgic flashback track will be shared before 2025 chimes in. Stay tuned!

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

In the meantime, we’ll happily plug once again the world premiere of THE L.A.F. KIDS from NorthEnd Empire LLC and their label, NorthEnd Empire Films, which is set for 6 p.m. tomorrow, Saturday, November 30, at the restored Fischer Theater in downtown Danville. Below is their show poster, which you can enlarge with a click so the QR codes can be scanned; they will direct you to last year’s IRRESPONSIBULL feature and the more recent SCAREBUSTERS. Also be sure to skim the NorthEnd Facebook account for more details, images, trailers, and appearances in central Illinois media. The Peoria-based group is clearly going to town at the grassroots level and loving it. More power to them!

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THE L.A.F. KIDS is a NorthEnd Empire LLC (Peoria/Champaign-Urbana/Chicago, IL) production that is written and directed by Nate L. Morris and edited by Sylvio Fleurimond. The film stars Brian Yabrough, Chuck Gibson, Marissa Curry, Holden Hightower, Na’Vaiya Lewis, Adila Taylor, Naijier Morris, Williams “Big Bill” Dixon, Reesha Morris, and Amanda Allhands.

LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ The Fischer Theatre, Danville, IL
NorthEnd Empire LLC presents THE L.A.F. KIDS* red carpet world premiere (11/30, 6 p.m.)

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
MOANA 2 (animation), THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER (faith film), BONHOEFFER (faith film), GLADIATOR II, HERETIC, RED ONE, VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, WICKED, THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (11/29 on), FLOW (animation), “For King + Country: A Drummer Boy Christmas Live” (faith concert recording), RM: RIGHT PEOPLE, WRONG PLACE (music documentary; in Korean with English sub), SOLO LEVELING: REAWAKENING (animé) (in Japanese with English sub or English dub), WEREWOLVES, Y2K (12/5 on)

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
MOANA 2 (animation), THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER (faith film), BONHOEFFER (faith film), CONCLAVE, GLADIATOR II, A REAL PAIN*, RED ONE, VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, WICKED, THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (11/29 on), NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION (12/1, 3 & 7 p.m.; 12/4, 7 p.m.), The Metropolitan Opera: Tosca (12/4, 1 & 6:30 p.m., recorded), “For King + Country: A Drummer Boy Christmas Live” (faith concert recording) (12/5 on) *single screenings daily

@ Pine Lounge, 1st floor, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (11/22-11/23, 7 p.m., free w/i-card)

@ Spurlock Center for World Cultures, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies* presents GREMLINS (12/5, 7 p.m., Knight Auditorium, free)

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
The News-Gazette Film Series presents THE WIZARD OF OZ (11/30, 1 & 7 p.m.), Illini Radio Group presents “Mix 94.5 Throwback Thursdays” feat. FRIDAY (12/5, 7 p.m.)

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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Read the rest of this entry »

Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

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MILESTONES | Happy Birthday to You!

11/28: Ryan Mitchelle (editor, A ROYAL CHRISTMAS BALLET, Hybrid LLC, Woodland Hills, CA)
11/28: Robert Patrick Stern (cinematographer, CURSE OF THE SIN EATER, Samuel Goldwyn Films, Los Angeles, CA)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Just in time for the gift-giving season, Facebook adverts-in-disguise have been appearing over the last week or so for a few “personality-and-a-movie” special events that are coming to the area next year, so we might as well Report on them in case you or your loved ones would have the itch to attend. On the afternoon of March 16, the McAninch Art Center at the College of DuPage in west suburban Glen Ellyn will play host to “John Waters: A Live Director’s Screening & Commentary of Hairspray,” at which the Baltimore legend will kvetch lovingly about his sweet 1988 musical comedy. A week later on March 22 at the Peoria Civic Center in Peoria, fans can drop plenty of peanuts to enjoy “The Princess Bride: An Inconceivable Evening with Cary Elwes” and join the veteran actor, who played “Westley” in Rob Reiner’s arch and funny 1987 skewering of fantasy and swashbuckling tropes, in the moment. And a year from now on October 10, the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Bloomington will ask their patrons to vote for “Napoleon Dynamite Live,” a screening that will feature cast members Jon Heder (“Napoleon”), Jon Gries (“Uncle Rico”), and Efren Ramirez (“Pedro”) riffing on their 2004 surprise hit. We guess this is a thing, now? Waters has made special event appearances over the years, and we’re sure they’ve been totally worth it, while the “Napoleon” gang recently brought their three-man jam to the Egyptian Theatre up north in DeKalb over the summer, so it isn’t new for them. We weren’t kidding about the peanuts, either. It will cost the following to attend: $62-$72 for HAIRSPRAY and Waters, $24-$49 for NAPOLEON DYNAMITE and Team Pedro, and $29-$89 on up to a $159 VIP option for THE PRINCESS BRIDE and Elwes. If the cost added to dinner, travel, and possible lodging are worth it to you, have at it.

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

We turn from the nostalgia for cult classics that still received a boost from Hollywood and made $80 million combined at the US box office to the here-and-now of two local indies stretching their legs as best they can and a surprise live performance the gorehounds will lap up. First, John Isberg’s FINAL SUMMER will be screened again at Day of the Dead Chicago, taking place this weekend at the Crown Plaza O’Hare in Rosemont, during the film festival portion on November 23 at 4 p.m. with costar Bishop Stevens in attendance. Then, Ash Hamilton and company’s F’D: TALES FROM THE END TIMES will be given its actual, for-real, red-carpet premiere at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday at the Illinois Theater of Jacksonville, a town where some of the filming took place for the sci-fi/horror anthology. And finally, nothing says Xmas quite like Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin, a modern iteration of the Italian prog-goth outfit that famously composed the soundtracks for numerous horror and giallo films by the likes of Dario Argento, Michele Soavi, Luigi Cozzi, and George A. Romero; they will play their last North American “Ultimate Anthology” gig of the year on Saturday, December 14, at the Canopy Club in Urbana, of all places. The tour name is due to the show being a pastiche of Goblin’s screen work and other compositions recorded over their career. C-U doesn’t get esoteric live performance connected to the cinema very often, so, don’t miss it!

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LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
Chambana Film Festival* screening series feat. THE HOBBY (11/24, 4 p.m.)

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
BONHOEFFER (faith film), GLADIATOR II, WICKED, THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER (faith film), HERETIC, RED ONE, SMILE 2*, VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, WE LIVE IN TIME, THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (11/22 on), Studio Ghibli Fest: POM POKO (animé) (11/24, 3 & 7 p.m., English dub; 11/26, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub) and THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAYUGA (animé) (11/25, 7 p.m., English dub; 11/27, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), MOANA 2 (animation) (11/26 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
BONHOEFFER (faith film), GLADIATOR II, WICKED, THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER (faith film), CONCLAVE, HERETIC, A REAL PAIN, RED ONE, VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (11/22 on), The Metropolitan Opera: Tosca (11/23, 12 p.m., simulcast), ELF (11/24, 3 & 7 p.m.; 11/27, 7 p.m.), Studio Ghibli Fest: POM POKO (animé) (11/24, 3 & 7 p.m., English dub; 11/26, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub) and THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAYUGA (animé) (11/25, 7 p.m., English dub; 11/27, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), MOANA 2 (animation) (11/26 on)

@ Pine Lounge, 1st floor, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (11/22-11/23, 7 p.m., free w/i-card)

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
Illinois Public Media presents “The Arthouse Experience Film Series” feat. RUSHMORE (11/22, 7 p.m.)

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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Read the rest of this entry »

Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

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MILESTONES | Happy Birthday to You!

11/16: Kymberly Harris (founder/producer, Firsthand Films, Los Angeles, CA)
11/17: Eric Stanze (director/co-writer/executive producer, ANXIETY, Wicked Pixel Cinema, St. Louis, MO)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Not a ton to Report this week, although there’s plenty to talk about in the long run. The Route 66 International Film Festival of Springfield and the Lake County Film Festival of Grayslake, organized by Nat Dykeman of the Chambana Film Festival series, recently wrapped and the former has announced their award winners. At home, Chambana returns this Sunday, November 17, 4 p.m., at the Savoy 16 with THE PROBLEM OF THE HERO, a topical dramatization of when the playwright Paul Green and writer Richard Wright collaborated to adapt for stage the latter’s novel, Native Son, and passes have gone on sale at the Virginia Theatre for the next Roger Ebert’s Film Festival, which will open on Wednesday, April 23, with a brand-new 70mm print of John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS according to the News-Gazette. On YouTube, John Isberg of Swede Films (FINAL SUMMER) has uploaded a new cut of his short film RED HORSE, which we had not seen before, and it can be described as “an American tolerance story;” it stars Aaron Munoz, Jace Jamison, and Kyle A. Thomas as solders on opposite sides of the Civil War who make a brief truce. And, most empowering for the potential future of film production in our immediate area, the drama ALBANY ROAD opens today on more than 100 screens across the United States for a minimum one-week run, including at the AMC Champaign 13 on North Prospect Avenue. Filmed in large part in Champaign County and brought to the area by the proactive folks at Shatterglass Films and Flyover Film Studios with a helpful assist from the Champaign County Film Office at Experience Champaign-Urbana, be sure to remind everyone you know about that very fact. Time to show up, C-U.

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

During the post-credits ALBANY ROAD interview session at “Ebertfest” back in April, director and writer Christine Swanson praised their overall filming experience in the area and said she was happy for her film to be a “poster child” for what could be accomplished in Champaign-Urbana. It was one of several graceful complements offered by Swanson, her husband and the film’s producer, Michael Swanson, and their lead actress, the great Lynn Whitfield. Therefore, if you happen to be attending an AMC multiplex and notice the one-sheet poster below, framed outside by the entryway or inside the lobby, consider seeing their movie and returning the favor. They could have taken their art and business to a hundred other places than where we call home. Support goes both ways and, even though ALBANY ROAD will inevitably resurface on any combination of streaming services in the coming months, tell your theaters with your dollars and presence that you want to enjoy movies like this one in a communal setting. Additionally, we hear it’s a good film and that’s always a bonus when you want to go to bat for a non-mainstream, low-budget, high-quality picture. This is a special occurrence, the likes of which has rarely happened to date with the movies of Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond. (For better or worse, we should know.) All the best fortune to the Faith Filmworks team on their theatrical play!

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ALBANY ROAD is a Faith Filmworks LLC (Los Angeles, CA/Champaign-Urbana-Sidney-Monticello-Rantoul, IL) production that is written and directed by Christine Swanson and produced by Michael Swanson with cinematography by Spencer Combs, production design by Stefanie Mitchell, costume design by Fontella Boone, casting by Marissa Ross, and editing by Grisha Alasadi. Music composer is Leon Lacey, co-producer is Abe Thompson, producers are Brett Hays, Sarah Sharp, and Kevin McGrail, and the film stars Renée Elise Goldsberry, Lynn Whitfield, J. Alphonse Nicolson, Lisa Arrindell, Gary Dourdan, Joe Holt, Rachel Nicks, Ben Rappaport, and Lily Cowles. It is a 2024 theatrical release through AMC Theaters and Malco Theaters, runs 135 minutes, and is rated PG-13.

LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
Chambana Film Festival* screening series feat. THE PROBLEM OF THE HERO (11/17, 4 p.m.)

@ Lincoln Hall, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Film & Video* meeting (11/18, 7 p.m., Room 1002)

@ Esquire Lounge, Champaign, IL
Champaign Movie Makers* meeting (11/18, 7 p.m.)

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
ALBANY ROAD, KANGUVA (in Tamil with English sub), THE OUTRUN, RED ONE, ANORA, THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER (faith film), CONCLAVE, HERE*, HERETIC, MEMOIR OF A SNAIL* (animation), SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE*, SMILE 2, VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, WE LIVE IN TIME, THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (11/15 on), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (11/18, 7 p.m.), BONHOEFFER (faith film) (11/18 on), GLADIATOR II, WICKED (11/21 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
A REAL PAIN, RED ONE, ANORA, THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER (faith film), CONCLAVE, ELEVATION, HERE, HERETIC, SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE, SMILE 2, VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, WEEKEND IN TAIPEI, WE LIVE IN TIME, THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (11/15 on), UFC 309: Jon Jones vs. Stipe Miocic, more (mixed martial arts) (11/16, 9 p.m., simulcast), THE POLAR EXPRESS (animation) (11/16, 11:30 a.m. & 2 p.m.; 11/17, 12:30, 3 & 7 p.m.), THE FIFTH ELEMENT (11/17, 4 & 7 p.m.; 11/20, 7 p.m.), GLADIATOR II, WICKED (11/21 on)

@ Pine Lounge, 1st floor, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents SCREAM (1996) (11/15-11/16, 7 p.m., free w/i-card)

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
Illini Radio Group presents “Rewind 92.5 Movie Series” feat. THE BOY AND THE HERON (animé) (11/20, 7 p.m.)

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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Read the rest of this entry »

Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

~~~~~

MILESTONES | Happy Birthday to You!

11/10: Andrew Nygard (filmmaker, PIG OF JUSTICE AND THE UNBELIEVABLE ROBOTS, Pens to Lens 2024, Champaign-Urbana, IL)
11/10: Andrew Stengele (filmmaker, THE WRONG THAT MADE THINGS MORE RIGHT, Pens to Lens 2024, Champaign-Urbana, IL)
11/14: Ross Snyder (co-owner, Saturn’s Core Audio & Video, Bloomingdale, NJ)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

It’s a folksy refrain that I’ve heard direct from the source a good number of times now. “Just another day,” says the cashier to Ye Ed at one of the gas stations out by the highway. If ever there was a small-town-livin’ mantra, that’s it. No matter our station in life at the present – where we reside, what we do, who we love and commiserate with, how we feel, why we keep hanging on – we’ll always have another day to look forward to. It can be a gift, even in the seemingly shittiest of times, based on what you, me, or we end up doing with it. Take care of yourselves and don’t give up. Always easier said than done. Always.

To that end … just another day, just another Report for you, dearest readers, revelers, and recoilers.

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Two of the local indie horror groups that we keep coming back to because they keep on screaming down the finish line fast with their respective projects are now campaigning for funds to help afford upcoming filmed frights. Acrostar Productions is deep in post on RETURN OF THE CORN ZOMBIES, putting the final touches on NIGHT OF THE DEAD SORORITY BABES for their distributor, BayView Entertainment, and in full swing on Indiegogo with 23 days left to raise preproduction seed money for PERFECT SOUL; the supernatural thriller about one woman’s shaken faith, based on the book by Acro-head S. J. Hermann, is scheduled to be filmed in early 2025. Also howling for help are the creators of THE FAIRFIELD COUNTY FOUR, a found-footage drama pitting a team of cryptid vloggers against a werewolf in the Connecticut woods, which has its own Indiegogo in effect for the next 22 days to raise starting funds; set to be shot on location in April, FAIRFIELD will be directed by Joshua Brucker for his own labels, Gray Sky Pictures and Horror Dadz Productions, as well as Eye4Eye Productions of Georgia. His previous outings in the first-person vein are MOTHMAN, SPLIT SCREEN, and THE WOODMEN.

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Two other locally-filmed indies are making their whereabouts known this month. A year after staging a red-carpet premiere for the comedy IRRESPONSIBULL at the Virginia Theatre, the folks at NorthEnd Empire LLC are back with another “home talent” romp in THE L.A.F. KIDS, which will world premiere in style at the Fischer Theatre in downtown Danville on Saturday, November 30, 6 p.m. There is a link for ticket sales and a trailer available at the NorthEnd Facebook account; directed by IRRESPONSIBULL’s Nate L. Morris, the self-described family film stars Brian Yarbrough, Chuck Gibson, Marissa Curry, Holden Hightower, Na’Vaiya Lewis, Adila Taylor, and Naijier Morris in a tale involving nefarious-looking men in black and kidnapping – hence, the “lost and found kids” of the title. Also, at long last, Champaign-Urbana will finally get a first look at the realist drama DEATH ON THE STREETS, filmed partly in the county and partly along the New Jersey coast a few years ago, when director Johan Carlsen and producer Micah Magee present it at 2 p.m. on this Sunday, November 10, at the Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX in Savoy. Described as “a nature film from the agrarian democracy of America,” the piece stars Zach Mulligan and Katie Folger and has been all but AWOL since its brief international festival play in 2020 and 2021.

In closing, we congratulate a long-time contributor to our film scene, Andrew Stengele, on accepting the reigns to Champaign Movie Makers from Thomas Nicol, becoming only the third person to run the social and networking group in its 16-year history starting with CMM founder Johnny Robinson. Their next meeting is on the calendar for Monday, November 18, 7 p.m., at the Esquire Lounge in downtown Champaign, so be sure to cry a tear in your beer for ol’ Mr. JaPan since he won’t be there, remind DEATH ON THE STREETS background extra Michael Fuerst that he’s sitting in my seat again, and ask bartender Shelley about WEREWOLF CEMETERY. Awoo!

CONFIDENTIAL ALMANAC | Dates in Film Culture History

25 Years Ago … Sunday, November 8, 1999: PBS affiliates premiere the hour-long television special TRANSISTORIZED!, which dramatizes the creation of the solid-state electrical component that would replace the vacuum tube and make possible much of the consumer technology we use to this day. Archive materials, reenactments, and narration by host and cowriter Ira Flatow (NEWTON’S APPLE) recall the many months of trial and error that physicists Walter Brattain, John Bardeen, and William Shockley went through that led up to December 23, 1947, the day Brattain invented a “triangle” of plastic, germanium, and gold foil based on Bardeen’s ideas that successfully amplified currents. Shockley, a supervisor for the project at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey who was not present during the discovery, improved on their design independently from the entire team in an effort to control how this potential breakthrough would be credited in the future. Bardeen left Bell Labs in 1951 thanks to Shockley’s micromanagement streak and joined the faculty of the physics and electrical engineering departments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he taught until 1975 and continued to research and publish until his death in 1991. Despite a falling out between the three primary researchers as coworkers, they celebrated together in 1956 as laureates after accepting the Nobel Prize for physics in Stockholm, Sweden, in honor of their achievements with superconductivity. Colleagues from Illinois who appear in interview segments include the physicists Frederick Seitz and Nick Holonyak, Jr., and historians Charles C. Stewart and Lillian Hoddeson. Richard O’Rourke plays Bardeen in the flashback scenes of TRANSISTORIZED!, which was directed by Gary Glassman for KTCA-TV and ScienCentral, Inc., in association with Boston Science Communications. [R]

LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
Makrorama presents DEATH ON THE STREETS* local preview (11/10, 2 p.m., free)

@ Lincoln Hall, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Film & Video* meeting (11/11, 7 p.m., Room 1002)

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
ANORA, THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER (faith film), CESIUM FALLOUT (in Cantonese with English sub), ELEVATION, HERETIC, MEANWHILE ON EARTH, MEMOIR OF A SNAIL (animation), SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE*, BHOOL BHULAIYAA 3* (in Hindi with English sub), CONCLAVE, HERE, SINGHAM AGAIN (in Hindi with English sub), SMILE 2, VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, WE LIVE IN TIME, THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (11/8 on), RED ONE sneak preview (11/10, 4 p.m.), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (11/11, 7 p.m.), KANGUVA* (in Tamil with English sub) (11/13 on), RED ONE (11/14 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
“Andrea Bocelli 30: The Celebration” (concert special), ANORA, THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER (faith film), ELEVATION, HERETIC, SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE, WEEKEND IN TAIPEI, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, CONCLAVE, HERE, HITPIG! (animation), SMILE 2, TERRIFIER 3, VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, WE LIVE IN TIME, THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (11/8 on), ABSOLUTION* (11/8, 11/11-11/14), The Royal Ballet: Swan Lake (11/8, 5 p.m.; 11/9, 2:30 p.m.; 11/10, 1:30 & 7 p.m.; IMAX), THE SUBSTANCE (11/9-11/14), PULP FICTION (11/10, 3 & 7 p.m.; 11/13, 7 p.m.), RED ONE sneak preview (11/10, 4 p.m.), DRAGON BALL DAIMA (animé) (11/10, 11/12, 7 p.m., English dub; 11/11, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English dub), RADIATING JOY: THE MICHELLE DUPPONG STORY (religious documentary) (11/12, 4 & 7 p.m.), RED ONE (11/14 on) *single screenings daily

@ Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Center for World Cultures, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies* presents ALIEN: ROMULUS (11/14, 7 p.m., free)

@ Pine Lounge, 1st floor, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents IT ENDS WITH US (11/8-11/9, 7 p.m., free w/i-card)

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
No movies this week!

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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Read the rest of this entry »

Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

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MILESTONES | Happy Birthday to You!

10/29: Julie Staley (producer/director, FIELDS OF GOLD, Spencer Films, Springfield, IL)
11/1: Amy Lynn Best (co-owner, Happy Cloud Media, LLC, Pittsburgh, PA)
11/3: Wes Melton (actor, RETURN OF THE CORN ZOMBIES, Acrostar Productions, Chicago, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Let’s keep the Report on the brief side this week, shall we? Spencer Films of Springfield, led by the multi-hyphenate media producer and personality Julie Staley, announced last week that FIELDS OF GOLD, their acclaimed and well-traveled documentary on the life of Decatur business legend A. E. Staley, is now available to watch on Amazon Prime; the Spencer team, including Tim Lynn and Laura Richter, also just received a Mid-America Emmy Award for their affecting short subject, MUSIC OF HOPE, about the outreach done by University of Illinois-Springfield instructor and violinist Dr. Yona Stamatis to keep alive the memory of those affected by the Holocaust. Happening as well in the Capital City is the 23rd annual Route 66 International Film Festival, which is showing a program of approximately thirty shorts and features between today, Friday, November 1, and tomorrow, Saturday, November 2, at the Hoogland Center for the Arts in the downtown district; the array includes a half-dozen “Made in Illinois” selections, such as Ben Harl’s documentary AFTERLIFE and Thomas Nicol’s drama THE VENUS GAMBIT, and a set of shorts made by youth involved in the local 4-H chapter. And, helping young people find their talents and voices was surely on the mind of professional media veterans Leslie and Richard Frank who, according to a Daily Illini article from September 23, have bestowed a $2.5 million donation upon the College of Media at the University of Illinois in Urbana for major upgrades to Gregory Hall; the work, expected to start next summer, would modernize the basement classrooms and hallways as well as install a multi-purpose media production area that will provide space for “a press conference room, a cinema production studio, and a hybrid teaching classroom” to be utilized by students enrolled in Media’s various majors.

25 YEARS DU C-U | Publishing and Our Screen Scene

We won’t be shy about the significance that today’s Almanac entry holds for us here at the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters – behold the “anniversary collage” made by Ye Ed over on a site we haven’t had a legitimate occasion to highlight for some time – and we might as well point out the less-obvious dual meaning of it. Even though C-U Blogfidential was launched in 2006 and its companion print digest arrived the following year, it was within MICRO-FILM issue 1 where the concept of characterizing the movies of Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond under the “C-U Confidential” umbrella was born. Therefore, the overall project of chronicling and lifting up the film culture local to us has technically reached the quarter-century mark of existence along with our original Paper Opteryx endeavor. Since we don’t have the master files handy from the past life of MICRO-FILM – who knew we’d reach a point where CD-ROMs and compatible drives were not needed in the weekly workflow? – we’ll share a snap of the very first page of content to ever brandish that Confidential flair. We need to celebrate this close-to-impossible DIY milestone, we know, and should have figured it out by now. Oh, what will it be, C-U?

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CONFIDENTIAL ALMANAC | Dates in Film Culture History

25 Years Ago … Friday, October 29, 1999: After more than a year of development, networking, and production, the first print issue of MICRO-FILM magazine is introduced on opening night of the third annual Freaky Film Festival at the New Art Theater in downtown Champaign, Illinois. [R]

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LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Hoogland Center for the Arts, Springfield, IL
23rd Route 66 International Film Festival* (11/1-11/2)

@ Lincoln Hall, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Film & Video* meeting (11/1, 7 p.m., Room 1002)

@ Golden Corral, Springfield, IL
Central Illinois Film Commission* meeting (11/7, 7 p.m.)

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
ABSOLUTION, BHOOL BHULAIYAA 3 (in Hindi with English sub), CHASING CHASING AMY (documentary), GODZILLA MINUS ONE* and …MINUS COLOR* (re-release) (in Japanese with English sub), HERE, HITPIG!* (animation), LOST ON A MOUNTAIN IN MAINE*, SINGHAM AGAIN (in Hindi with English sub), BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, CONCLAVE, SMILE 2, TERRIFIER 3, VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, WE LIVE IN TIME, THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (11/1 on), THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER advance screening (11/2, 4 & 7 p.m.), AX Cinema Nights presents METROPOLIS (animé) (11/3, 11/6, 4:30 p.m., in Japanese with English sub; 11/4, 7:30 p.m., English dub), ANORA, THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER (faith film), ELEVATION, HERETIC, MEANWHILE ON EARTH, MEMOIR OF A SNAIL (animation), SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE (11/7 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
GODZILLA MINUS ONE (re-release) (in Japanese with English sub), HERE, HITPIG! (animation), BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, CONCLAVE, GOODRICH*, JOKER: FOILE À DEUX*, SMILE 2, THE SUBSTANCE, TERRIFIER 3, VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, WE LIVE IN TIME, THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (11/1 on), CORALINE (animation) (re-release) (11/1, 12:45 & 6:15 p.m. standard, 3:30 & 9 p.m. 3-D), THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER advance screening (11/2, 4 & 7 p.m.), Brandon Lake and Phil Wickham present “For the One” (worship concert film) (11/2, 3 p.m.), JOHN WICK 10th anniversary (11/3, 4 & 7 p.m.; 11/6, 7 p.m.), TWISTER (11/3, 3 & 7 p.m.; 11/6, 7 p.m.), THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER (faith film), HERETIC (11/7 on) *single screenings daily

@ Pine Lounge, 1st floor, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents FLY ME TO THE MOON (11/1-11/2, 7 p.m., free w/i-card)

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
No movies this week!

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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Read the rest of this entry »

Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

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FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Given this week is suddenly over and your humble editor is swamped after a brief and impromptu tip to Champaign to participate in one of several recent not-the-usual activities that will be revealed at a later time, we’re going to pass on a full-blooded Report. Our dearest creatures know well enough to research their Halloween delights – well, the public-facing delights, anyway – in the Calendar below, and we’ll get back to it on the flip side. A big “boo!” to all of you as the creepy season winds down!

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

So, we’ve learned about a couple of indie frights recently that are tangential to the C-U. One is HAUNT SEASON, a slasher set in a haunted house that apparently is an atypical take on the scenario that emphasizes characterization and drama over the visceral. Directed by Jake Jarvi and filmed in the real-life Realm of Terrors attraction in the north Chicago suburb of Round Lake Beach, HAUNT SEASON was released to VOD by Dread/Epic Pictures on October 8 and will be given a rare theatrical screening this Sunday, October 27, 4 p.m., at the Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX by the Chambana Film Festival, who plan to have participants from the film in attendance. This will be the last CFF show before their annual Lake County Film Festival takes over the College of Lake County campus in Grayslake, their opening night set for this coming Thursday, October 31, and runs for two consecutive weekends. You can peruse their impressively loaded program right here and should consider a trip to check it out in person.

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The other is CURSE OF THE SIN EATER, which to our C-U trained eyes was a surprise inclusion in a “suggested Halloween viewing” bit carried by WCIA-TV and other media outlets in the region. All the other films in the piece, offered up by the Champaign County Film Office and Flyover Film Studios with the intention of promoting local production, have been talked about to some degree on CUBlog: BLACK MOLD, FINAL SUMMER, REVEALER, BROOKLYN 45, and SLICE. The distinction to be made here is the latter two, along with SIN EATER, are really Chicago/land productions in which industry talents from central Illinois took part. We looked into it and SIN EATER is a recent VOD release from Samuel Goldwyn Films filmed in Chicago and Barrington Hills with an assist from Hoke Construction of Paxton; it involves a young construction worker (Carter Shrimp) who unwittingly inherits the manifestations of sins from a wealthy businessman (Larry Yando) after the latter passes; Elizabeth Laidlaw, Marcelo Wright, and REVEALER’s Shaina Schrooten also star in the tense-looking film, which was directed by Justin Denton.

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Finally, to fall back with reason on our long-standing “set but not filmed in Illinois” hang-up, we suggest to you one of the original and ultimate “gateway horror” classics, however flawed it seems in retrospect. In the next few weeks, we’ll tell you how this movie and its source material contributed to the foundation of the study of the movies of Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond. It may surprise you, or even shock you. Feel that chilly air? Not a coincidence at all. For, by the pricking of Ye Ed’s thumbs…

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A bonus for everyone who kept reading: WCIA also aired a short interview early Friday, October 25, with veteran film director Dwight H. Little (HALLOWEEN 4, MARKED FOR DEATH), and we can only presume that it was intended to promote his memoir, Still Rolling (McFarland & Co.), even though the book was published more than a year ago. Still, seems like a friendly chap with a wealth of knowledge to impart; a more in-depth discussion with Bee Delores of Bloody Disgusting from the beginning of the year will give you a better idea about Little’s late-career outlook and ideals. He is still active in the industry; a new action film is in pre-production and a horror tale, NATTY KNOCKS, arrived last year via Vertical Entertainment.

CONFIDENTIAL ALMANAC | Dates in Film Culture History

10 Years Ago … Friday, October 31, 2014: Thanks to a resolution sponsored by representative Kay Hatcher, the Illinois General Assembly has decreed today “Svengoolie/Rich Koz Day” in the state of Illinois. The veteran entertainer will make several media and personal appearances in celebration, while his (presumably prerecorded) alter ego appears all day long on national cable network MeTV. Also, props and ephemera from his long-running B-movie program (1979-1986 on WFLD-TV 32, 1995-present on WCIU-TV 26/MeTV) recently went on display in Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications. [R]

LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL, 4 p.m.
Chambana Film Festival* screening series feat. HAUNT SEASON* w/filmmakers (10/27, 4 p.m.)

@ Lincoln Hall, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Film & Video* meeting (10/28, 7 p.m., Room 1002)

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
CONCLAVE, LONGLEGS w/THE MONKEY sneak preview, VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, WE LIVE IN TIME, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, JOKER: FOILE À DEUX, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS* (animation) (re-release), PIECE BY PIECE (documentary/animation), SATURDAY NIGHT, SMILE 2, TERRIFIER 3, TRANSFORMERS ONE (animation), THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (10/25 on), Studio Ghibli Fest: KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE 35th anniversary (animé) (10/26, 3 p.m.; 10/27, 3 & 7 p.m.; 10/29-10/30, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub or English dub), Brandon Lake and Phil Wickham present “For the One” (worship concert film) (10/27, 4 p.m.), MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM III: ENCOUNTERS IN SPACE (animé) (10/27, 4:30 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), HERE (10/31 on)

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
CONCLAVE, VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, WE LIVE IN TIME, THE APPRENTICE, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, EXHIBITING FORGIVENESS*, GOODRICH, GRACIE & PEDRO: PETS TO THE RESCUE!* (animation), HOCUS POCUS* (re-release), JOKER: FOILE À DEUX, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS* (animation) (re-release), PIECE BY PIECE (documentary/animation), RUMORS*, SATURDAY NIGHT, SMILE 2, THE SUBSTANCE, TERRIFIER 3, THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (10/25 on), Studio Ghibli Fest: KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE 35th anniversary (animé) (10/26, 3 p.m.; 10/27, 3 & 7 p.m.; 10/28-10/30, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub or English dub), THE EXORCIST (10/27, 3 & 7 p.m.; 10/30-10/31, 7 p.m.), Brandon Lake and Phil Wickham present “For the One” (worship concert film) (10/27, 4 p.m.; 10/28-10/29, 7 p.m.), CORALINE (animation) (re-release) (10/31, 12:45 & 6:15 p.m. standard, 3:30 & 9 p.m. 3-D), HERE (10/31 on) *single screenings daily

@ Pine Lounge, 1st floor, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents HOCUS POCUS (10/25-10/26, 7 p.m., free w/i-card)

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
No movies this week!

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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Read the rest of this entry »

Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

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MILESTONES | Happy Birthday to You!

10/16: Chaz Ebert (producer/host, Roger Ebert’s Film Festival, College of Media, UIUC, Champaign, IL)
10/18: Mike Everleth (publisher, Underground Film Journal, Los Angeles, CA)
10/20: Lana Wildman (volunteer, Route 66 Film Festival, Springfield, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Monsters from lore, aliens not of this earth, and beings that are arguably human exist all around us if you believe the films being made by a new collective, Horror Dadz Productions, and in this Report we reveal how to find their found footage exploits. Follow our leads (but beware!) if you want to explore more…

We’ve mentioned before a Horror Dad named Joshua Brucker who hails from Watseka, a small Illinois town within easy driving distance of Hoopeston and Onarga, and his group specializes in the “reality” horror subgenre launched a quarter of a century ago with THE LAST BROADCAST and THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT that has seemingly never let up since. In various producing combinations over the last few years, the Horror Dadz have pumped out around ten shockers so far that are told, at least in part, from the camera’s vantage point. The Report won’t even try to unravel all the nitty gritty of their combined oeuvre within this space, so we’ll focus on Brucker’s own work as director/writer to send us down a few of their “Cryptidverse” rabbit holes. There are four major projects realized under his creative watch so far.

The Clifton native came to our attention about a year ago when he arranged for a premiere screening of his then-new tale, THE WOODMEN, at the former Little Lorraine black box theater in Hoopeston. It is a co-production between Horror Dadz, Brucker’s Gray Sky Pictures, and partner 105ive Films, with the latter releasing the film on Blu-ray commercially back in June and securing it spots at VOD sites like Amazon Prime and AVOD such as Tubi. Filmed in eastern Tennessee in 2023, the film pits a trio of explorers played by Anna Clary, Dan Grogan, and Hunter Nino against a band of the titular creeps who haunt the Smoky Mountains with feral savagery. This is Brucker’s second feature.

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Before that came MOTHMAN, a previous joint between Gray Sky and Horror Dadz, in which a couple played by Liz Fletcher and Christopher Kuriata go searching in the central Ohio wilds for the truth behind the disappearance of the wife’s brother (Randall Cole) seemingly connected with the well-known cryptid. This title was issued in both standard and collector Blu-ray editions at the beginning of 2024 by a label called Not Quite Reality Distribution, which counts several of the Dadz’ pictures in its catalog. On a separate site run by Horror Nerd Productions (sounds … familiar?) is the Blu-ray for SPLIT SCREEN, a duology feature with segments shepherded by Dillon Brown – “Greys: The Nevada Alien Incident” – and Brucker – “The Illinois Valley Murder Tapes” – the latter of which stars Samantha Hupp, Tayler Holler, and Nino and has the distinction of being the first Cryptidverse story to be shot in our region.

The second, UNTITLED FOOTAGE, is an extension of the “Murder Tapes” serial killer segment and involves the sister of Hupp’s character, played by Tori Zanoni, heading out with a camera-equipped friend (Rodney B. Snyder) to uncover the truth behind Nino’s “Claw Hammer Killer.” It is one of the first features to debut exclusively on the just-launched service, Found TV, which is populated with exactly the types of indies you think such a site would love and curate. Found joins the established POV Horror site as go-to destinations for found footage fare, and you’re guaranteed to find the Horror Dadz lurking within.

Brucker himself is responsible for a segment in Horror Fix Films’ upcoming anthology, F’D: TALES FROM THE END TIMES, and has more Horror Dadz duties in store. As for what we make of it all, right now we’re awaiting copies of his material evidence that allegedly captures the unexplainable in America from our unnamed sources – why spoil the first-time viewing with commercials? – and will report back on our findings. That’s assuming we make it through to the final minutes without being abducted or something…

Don’t try it, Dadz. We have eyes in the backs of our heads. Oh … wait … we redact that comment. Carry on, then.

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

Since we spent a lot of effort digging into the on-screen mythology and conspiracy being set up here, we’re keeping it simple with this week’s Images and presenting to you a map of Horror Dadz hot spots (it can be enlarged with a click) and some artwork from Brucker’s contributions.

There is certainly more to unearth (read: Facebook), and here are a few prompts for your Google-y fingertips. The current Dadz line-up includes Michael Rock, Matt Van Bodegraven, Dustin Tamplen, Nino, Brown, and Brucker, who are located throughout the Midwest and Southwest. [Not twenty-four hours after this Calendar went live, CUBlog received a mysterious message that pinpointed the artists’ whereabouts as being in Indiana, Michigan, and Nevada as well as Illinois … the same locations as the sightings noted on the map. Coincidence? – ed.] Other films in the Cryptidverse and beyond include GHOST (demonic forces!), LIGHTS OVER MONTGOMERY COUNTY (aliens!), TAHOE JOE (Bigfoot!), TAHOE JOE 2 (Bigfoot back for more!), and MIDNIGHT FEATURE, a five-part, half-hour anthology series with a possibly undead host, “The Curator,” played by the busy indie horror actor John Potash.

We mere mortals will be swarmed with phenomena films from the Horror Dadz stable in the near future such as a second season of MIDNIGHT FEATURE, Brown’s slasher with a stylistic switch-up, THE SUMMER WE DIED, and Brucker’s newly announced werewolf romp, THE FAIRFIELD COUNTY FOUR. We’re also going to need to set up a custom idea board in the spare office space of MFHQ Deux in order to keep track of all this. Sigh. Our work is never done…

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CONFIDENTIAL ALMANAC | Dates in Film Culture History

30 Years Ago … Friday, October 21, 1994: Following early-bird reviews by The New York Times‘ Caryn James and The Los Angeles Times‘ Kenneth Turan, The Chicago Sun-Times would print Roger Ebert’s ecstatic vote of confidence in the documentary HOOP DREAMS, a Chicago-based production about two inner-city high school students banking on college basketball careers as a step towards the proverbial “way out.” His persistent support of this film famously hit a crescendo when the movie critic cried foul over the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences overlooking it in both the “best picture” and “best documentary” Oscar categories. HOOP DREAMS director Steve James would ultimately return the favor with his work on the Ebert documentary LIFE ITSELF. [R]

LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Esquire Lounge, Champaign, IL
Champaign Movie Makers* meeting (10/21, 7 p.m.)

@ Lincoln Hall, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Film & Video* meeting (10/21, 7 p.m., Room 1002)

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
EXHIBITING FORGIVENESS, GRACIE & PEDRO: PETS TO THE RESCUE!* (animation), KENSUKE’S KINGDOM* (animation), RUMORS, SMILE 2, STAND BY ME* (in Mandarin with English sub), THE APPRENTICE*, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, IT ENDS WITH US, JOKER: FOILE À DEUX, MY HERO ACADEMIA: YOU’RE NEXT* (animé) (in Japanese with English sub or English dub), THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS* (animation) (re-release), PIECE BY PIECE (documentary/animation), SATURDAY NIGHT, SPEAK NO EVIL*, TERRIFIER 3, TRANSFORMERS ONE (animation), THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (10/18 on), DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE* (10/18-10/22), AX Cinema Nights presents “Gundam Fest” feat. MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM II: SOLDIERS OF SORROW (animé) (10/20, 4:30 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (10/21, 7 p.m.), LONGLEGS w/THE MONKEY sneak preview (10/23, 7:15 p.m.; 10/24, 7:45 p.m.), AX Cinema Nights presents “Gundam Fest” feat. MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM III: ENCOUNTERS IN SPACE (animé) (10/23, 7:30 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), CONCLAVE, VENOM: THE LAST DANCE (10/24 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
EXHIBITING FORGIVENESS, GOODRICH, GRACIE & PEDRO: PETS TO THE RESCUE!* (animation), HOCUS POCUS (re-release), RUMORS, SMILE 2, THE APPRENTICE, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE*, JOKER: FOILE À DEUX, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (animation) (re-release), PIECE BY PIECE (documentary/animation), SATURDAY NIGHT, THE SUBSTANCE, TERRIFIER 3, THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (10/18 on), MY HERO ACADEMIA: YOU’RE NEXT* (animé) (in Japanese with English sub or English dub) (10/18-10/19, 10/21-10/22), The Metropolitan Opera: Grounded (10/19, 12 p.m., simulcast; 10/23, 1 & 6:30 p.m., recorded), BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II 35th anniversary (10/19, 10/21, 7 p.m.), SAW 20th anniversary (10/20, 4 & 7 p.m., 10/23, 7 p.m.; unrated), THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN – PART 2 (10/20, 3 & 7 p.m.; 10/23, 7 p.m.), VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, WE LIVE IN TIME (10/24 on) *single screenings daily

@ Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Center for World Cultures, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies* presents “Documentaries on the Frontline of Democracy: How Kartemquin’s Storytelling Works for Stronger Publics” lecture (10/18, 2 p.m.)

@ Pine Lounge, 1st floor, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents DESPICABLE ME 4 (animation) (10/18-10/19, 7 p.m., free w/i-card)

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
The News-Gazette Film Series presents REAR WINDOW (10/19, 1 & 7 p.m.)

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.

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FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

No surprise at all, there has been even more movement on locally-photographed and produced movies that we wish to Report, dearest readers! To start with the seasonally creepy one, Into the Night Motion Pictures of Normal shared a week ago that HUNTING FOR THE HAG, their outdoors thriller mentioned in our previous Report, is now available to watch on the ad-supported sites Tubi and Plex as well as through Fandango at Home and Amazon Prime. Since completing HAG and securing their distribution deal, the studio has embarked on investigations anew for their GHOST GIRLS paranormal reality series and filmed a pair of new episodes in the fall of 2023 that should finally be arriving in the coming months; the pilot has been haunting Tubi since 2021 at this very spot, cold with alleged activity and hot with hot tub action.

Joining GIRLS and HAG in the catalog of the popular service as of last week is HOLIDAY HOLD-UP, the comedic heist romp we told you about earlier in the summer. We know nothing else about the distribution plans for the project, which is the latest collaboration between The Line Film Co. of Chicago and Shatterglass Films of Champaign to see commercial release, but their hands are otherwise full. Shatterglass’ Luke Boyce is overseeing production with Aaron B. Koontz in the New Brunswick province of Canada on the first season of the Syfy program REVIVAL, which was ordered to series a few months back and has been in the works for some time, while the rest of their team shores up the Flyover Film Studios location in Rantoul as they seek outside investments to the tune of $3.5 million total on top of the $1.1 million “soundstage grant” awarded to them by the state of Illinois back in February.

Finally, we learned the other indie production apart from HOLIDAY that made its presence known in and around Champaign County in the late winter and spring of 2023 with an assist from Shatterglass/Line Co., ALBANY ROAD, is set to receive a limited theatrical release through the AMC Theaters and Malco Theatres chains beginning on Friday, November 15. According to this article by The Hollywood Reporter, an agreement was made directly with filmmaker Christine Swanson and her company, Faith Filmworks. It is unclear if ALBANY will appear at all AMC locations including the ones near us, although the C-U populace had their opportunity to watch the movie at Roger Ebert’s Film Festival in April, and home video prospects for practically everything we’ve title-dropped today is anybody’s guess. No surprise, there.

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

The Ghost Girls and the Hag-Hunting Ladies wanted to say “hi” and remind you to savor the spooky season! (Note: MFHQ Deux is a spoopy-free zone, kthanxbai.) The paranormal investigators are, from left, Sarah Nicklin, Sierra Renfro, Ashley Troub, and Karaleigh Antoinette; the urban legend debunkers are, from left, Alexa Maris, Jasmine Williams, and Renfro pulling double duty. We still don’t know who or what the Hag actually is. (One might ask Nathan Brandon Gaik if one feels brave enough to discover the truth.) All will be revealed to a degree when you watch their respective adventures and, as hinted during Brooks and Renfro’s appearance on the Horror Pop After Midnight podcast in May, more strangeness is afoot once the new GHOST GIRLS episodes drop. What could it possibly be? Stay tuned, as they say!

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CONFIDENTIAL ALMANAC | Dates in Film Culture History

110 Years Ago … Monday, October 19, 1914: Owners of the brand-new New Orpheum Theatre in downtown Champaign open for business according to the Urbana Courier-Herald; entertainment scheduled for 7:30 and 9 p.m. shows includes “five high-class vaudeville acts,” an “enlarged orchestra,” and “special exclusive photo plays” per a news item and advertisement in that day’s edition. Designed by the Chicago architectural firm of Rapp & Rapp after the Royal Opera theater within the Palace of Versailles in Versailles, France, the building now houses the “destination venue” Orpheum Champaign. [R] [Rev. 10/11/24]

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
THE APPRENTICE, MY HERO ACADEMIA: YOU’RE NEXT (animé) (in Japanese with English sub or English dub), THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (animation) (re-release), PIECE BY PIECE, SATURDAY NIGHT, SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY (documentary), TERRIFIER 3, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, JOKER: FOILE À DEUX, MY OLD ASS*, SPEAK NO EVIL, TRANSFORMERS ONE (animation), THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (10/4 on), COCO* (animation) (10/11-10/15), JUNG KOOK: I AM STILL (concert documentary “party edition”) (10/11-10/13, 1 p.m.; in Korean with English sub), AVERAGE JOE (faith film) (10/13-10/14), AX Cinema Nights presents “Gundam Fest” feat. MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM II: SOLDIERS OF SORROW (animé) (10/16, 7:30 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), SMILE 2 (10/17 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
THE APPRENTICE, AVERAGE JOE* (faith film), MY HERO ACADEMIA: YOU’RE NEXT (animé) (in Japanese with English sub or English dub), THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (animation) (re-release), PIECE BY PIECE, SATURDAY NIGHT, SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY (documentary), TERRIFIER 3, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, JOKER: FOILE À DEUX, THE SUBSTANCE, TRANSFORMERS ONE (animation), WHITE BIRD, THE WILD ROBOT (animation) (10/4 on), MONSTER SUMMER* (10/11-10/12, 10/14-10/17), THE LOST BOYS (10/13, 3 & 7 p.m.; 10/16, 7 p.m.), SMILE 2 (10/17 on) *single screenings daily

@ Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Center for World Cultures, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies* presents “Kartemquin’s Labor Films: Stories of Working in America” screening (10/17, 7 p.m.) and “Documentaries on the Frontline of Democracy: How Kartemquin’s Storytelling Works for Stronger Publics” lecture (10/18, 2 p.m.)

@ Pine Lounge, 1st floor, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents LONGLEGS (10/11-10/12, 7 p.m., free w/i-card)

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
Illini Radio Group presents “Rewind 92.5 Movie Series” feat. FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) (10/17, 7 p.m.)

Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!

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