Calendar: July 19-25, 2024
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!
7/21: Shawnee E. Tefteller (owner, Shawnee Studios: Model & Talent Management/Casting, Mt. Olive, IL)
PASSINGS | You Will Be Missed
7/12: Bill Viola, 73 (media and installation artist, Bill Viola Studio, Long Beach, CA)
FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said
The Report is on hiatus until August or September. Thank you for your readership, CUvians and Agents!
IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen
Our Almanac repeat for the week reminds us the movies of Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond are only as viable as they are available. You can easily imagine that Ye Ed has cobbled together a collection of C-U movie ephemera over the last 30 years that includes a set of videos, including official releases that have already been out of print for some time. In the near future, given how far away MFHQ Deux is from our fair Twin Cities, we’ll figure out how to make it all available for the historians du C-U to access once we’re done with this grand Confidential project. In the meantime, we can offer snippets that will most likely be new to you. We recently retrieved all our old MICRO-FILM files from the MFHQ Caché that is still hidden within Champaign County and, on topic to share for today, we have from the stash a cover design that was created for VHS copies of Mike Trippiedi’s dark comedy, DOGS IN QUICKSAND, which made its public debut a quarter-century ago in 1999 at the former New Art Theater in downtown Champaign as part of the Freaky Film Festival. We had a color printout of the art, most likely given to us by Trippiedi himself, but the tape and the movie themselves are rare commodities. Good luck in finding it, folks.
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CONFIDENTIAL ALMANAC | Dates in Film Culture History
15 Years Ago … Tuesday, June 30, 2009: Los Angeles-based distributor Indie-Pictures releases the Midwest horror drama THE GARBAGE MAN on DVD, rescuing it from the well of lost motion pictures that were produced in the wake of the American “independent boom” of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Originally filmed during the summer of 1993 in various local haunts and the dense student housing area to the west of the University of Illinois campus in Champaign-Urbana, this micro-budget endeavor relies on 16-millimeter grain, nonlinear cuts, tonal soundscapes, and the façade of everyday normality to describe the life of a trash collector by day and serial killer by night as played by James Meredith. Director Hart D. Fisher amassed the tools and skills to shape THE GARBAGE MAN into releasable form while he gravitated from self-publishing under his Boneyard Press imprint in Illinois to learning commercial video production in California, telling the horror culture website Bloody-Disgusting in 2014 that a sneak preview of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT reignited his fire to finish it. Indie-Pictures did not provide many favors to Fisher or THE GARBAGE MAN apart from producing the disc itself; never listing or promoting the product on its website, weblog, or YouTube account, the company apparently went defunct a short while after the street date. Fisher soon began offering it as video-on-demand through American Horrors, a boutique “extreme horror” brand developed with his wife Wakako Kawagoshi-Fisher and others that eventually spawned a free 24/7 streaming channel of movies, music videos, and original programs via Roku and an annual film festival in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. As reported on 11/21/07, 2/12/09 at CUBlog. [R]
LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers
@ Shawnee Studios: Model & Talent Management/Casting, Mt. Olive, IL
Open house (7/21, 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m.)
NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area
@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
BAD NEWZ (in Hindi with English sub), NATIONAL ANTHEM, ODDITY, TWISTERS, BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE, DESPICABLE ME 4 (animation), FLY ME TO THE MOON, INSIDE OUT 2 (animation), THE LION KING (animation) (re-release), LONGLEGS, MAXXXINE, A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE (7/5 on), SOUND OF HOPE: THE STORY OF POSSUM TROT (faith film) (7/19 on), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (7/22, 7 p.m.), DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE, THE FABULOUS FOUR (7/25 on)
@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
DISCIPLES IN THE MOONLIGHT (faith film), ODDITY, TWISTERS, BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE, DESPICABLE ME 4 (animation), FLY ME TO THE MOON, HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER 1, INSIDE OUT 2 (animation), THE LION KING (animation) (re-release), LONGLEGS, MAXXXINE, A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE (7/5 on), SOUND OF HOPE: THE STORY OF POSSUM TROT (faith film) (7/19 on), THE NEVERENDING STORY 40th anniversary (7/21, 4 & 7 p.m.; 7/22, 7 p.m.), HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS – PART 1 (7/21, 3 & 7 p.m.; 7/24, 7 p.m.), THE GOOD HALF feat. virtual discussion w/Nick Jonas and director Robert Schwartzman (7/23, 7/25, 7 p.m.), The Metropolitan Opera “summer encore”: La Bohème (7/24, 1 & 6:30 p.m., recorded), DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (7/25 on)
@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents “Summer Films on the Quad” feat. THE FALL GUY (7/25, 9 p.m., free)
@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
Illini Radio Group presents “Rewind 92.5 Animation Vacation Movie Series” feat. HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (7/22, 1 & 6:30 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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NOW PLAYING | The Cities Beyond
@ The Avon Theater, Decatur, IL
TWISTERS, DESPICABLE ME 4 (animation), THE WIZARD OF OZ (3-D) (7/18-7/21)
@ The Fischer Theatre, Danville, IL
TOY STORY (animation) (7/22, 2 p.m., free), Tee Pak Credit Union presents THE GOONIES (7/25, 7:15 p.m., free)
@ The Harvest Moon Twin Drive-in, Gibson City, IL
TWISTERS, tba (Screen 1), TWISTERS, DESPICABLE ME 4 (animation) (Screen 2) (7/19-7/21), TWISTERS (Screen 1), DESPICABLE ME 4 (animation) (Screen 2) (7/22-7/24), TWISTERS (Screen 1), DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (Screen 2) (7/25)
@ The Normal Theater, Normal, IL
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (7/19-7/21), MOONRAKER (7/20-7/21), THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER (7/22, 7/24), INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (7/25)
@ The Onarga Theatre, Onarga, IL
Closed for the week.
@ The Princess Theatre, Leroy, IL
INSIDE OUT 2 (animation) (7/19-7/21)
@ The Route 66 Drive-in Theater, Springfield, IL
DESPICABLE ME 4 (animation), INSIDE OUT 2 (animation) (Screen 1), TWISTERS, THE BIKERIDERS (Screen 2) (7/19-7/21, 7/24-7/25)
NOW PLAYING | Midwest
For detailed and curated listings of Chicago-area film presentations and related events, please visit the fine folks at Cine-File and subscribe to their definitive “Cine-List” weekly blast.
COMING SOON | Area-wide Events
NEW! 8/17
Pens to Lens* 2024 Gala
@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL, 3-5 p.m.
8/31-9/1
10th anniversary Dark History & Horror Con*
@ Orpheum Champaign (The Orpheum Theater), Champaign, IL
10/16-10/27
60th Chicago International Film Festival, Chicago, IL
11/1-11/2
23rd Route 66 Film Festival*
@ Hoogland Center for the Arts, Springfield, IL
4/23/-4/25/25
25th Roger Ebert’s Film Festival*
@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
COMMUNITY & CAMPUS SERIES | Champaign-Urbana area
Chambana Film Festival* – Summer 2024 screening series
@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL, 4 p.m.
7/28: OUT THERE: A NATIONAL PARKS STORY; 8/25: THE WINGWALKER; 9/29: A TIME APART
Illini Radio Group presents “Rewind 92.5 Movie Series”/“Mix 94.5 Throwback Thursdays”*
@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL, 7 p.m.
8/29: BACK TO THE FUTURE; 9/26: OFFICE SPACE*, 10/17: FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980); 11/20: THE BOY AND THE HERON (animé); 12/5: FRIDAY*
Illini Union Board presents “Summer Films on the Quad”
@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL, 9 p.m. Thursdays, free
8/1: GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE; 8/8: IF
Illinois Public Media presents “The Arthouse Experience Film Series”
@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL, 7 p.m.
8/16: THE FAVOURITE; 9/6: HOOP DREAMS* (documentary); 10/18: TO LESLIE; 11/22: RUSHMORE
The News-Gazette Film Series
@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL, 1 & 7 p.m.
8/24: IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD; 9/21: THE LONG GOODBYE; 10/19: REAR WINDOW; 11/30: THE WIZARD OF OZ; 12/7: IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE
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Compiled by Jason Pankoke.
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“Calendar du C-U”
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