Love Movies? Sites to Bookmark.

By Rob Christopher in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 6, 2007 7:15PM

Recently we’ve told you a little bit about the Chicago Cinema Forum, a new group that’s trying to bring rare and underseen movies to Chicago. To honor Ingmar Bergman after his passing, they quickly put together a mini-retrospective that touched all the bases; and last weekend they presented Roberto Rossellini’s all-but-unseen masterpiece India, Motherland. What was to have been the final screening of the latter, in fact, was sold out (!) so a third show was added; not only that, at the second show there were some rather inebriated audience members who loudly expressed their displeasure when the movie didn’t start on time. Drunken, enthusiastic audience members at an obscure art film from 1959? That’s some kind of step in the right direction.

One of the principal members of the CCF is Darnell Witt, who maintains his own website, CINE-FILE. Witt moved to Chicago a few years ago and started up the website because he says he saw a need for a Chicago cinephile resource. Rather than attempting a comprehensive weekly listing it instead summarizes the cream-of-the-crop of Chicago film events, always with some well-written commentary that sketches in some context or juicy trivia. You can sign up for notification by email whenever there’s an update.

Speaking of essential film sites our all-time fave remains GreenCine Daily, which provides an endlessly thoughtful and comprehensive compilation of interesting movie news and links. It’s updated several times a day, so it’s one of those sites we can get lost in for hours at a time. Our only real complaint is that in past years anyway the Chicago International Film Festival coverage has been pretty spotty. But the sad fact is that despite being North America's oldest competitive film festival, CIFF is still viewed as being second-tier.

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