Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute, was awarded the Palme d'Or for his new film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. The Thai filmmaker is known by his friends as Joe, and it's hard to think of a more deserving auteur to take home such a prestigious honor. We've seen two of his previous films and they both amused and challenged us in delightful ways. After seeing Syndromes and a Century at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2006, we wrote, "It’s a languid, sensual wonder as refreshing as a long drink of ice-cold spring water." more ›

We recently talked with Chicago-born author Barry Gifford about the omnibus release of The Sailor & Lula Novels, a cycle of seven books which begins with Wild at Heart. We'll be posting the main portion of that interview soon, but an out-of-left-field reminiscence about Gene Siskel deserves its own entry. more ›

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A: Damn well worth seeing! more ›

Movies in the summertime. Comic book heroes? Check. Cuddly computer animation? Check. Bloated running times? Check. MOTS? SOS? Double-check. With scads of movie franchises so stale yet so expensive they give McDonald's a bad name, it's no wonder that we'd rather catch up on our reading than check out what Hollywood has deigned to fob off on us this season. (We do confess to being excited about Ocean's Thirteen however; director Steven Soderbergh always keeps... more ›

The Goodman Theater and IFC--The Independent Film Channel--will be hosting a free screening on Monday February 7th of Nobody Knows, the Japanese entry for the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2004, at the Landmark Century Cinema on Clark. Though not chosen as one of the nominees in this category, the film was nominated for the Palm D’Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and was the winner of the Golden Spur at the Flanders International Film Festival for Best Foreign Film-diddly-do! Director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s previous works include the award-winning film After-Life. more ›

Has the funniest director-film critic feud in history (er... the funny director-film critic feud in history) been resolved? New City's Ray Pride reports that after the recent Chicago critics' screening of The Brown Bunny, one of the most critically maligned films in history after its Cannes Film Festival premiere, director/asshole extraordinaire Vincent Gallo and Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert, perhaps the film's most vocal opponent, emerged from a closed-door meeting "with quiet smiles, seeming to have buried the scalpel." more ›

As we reported yesterday, the 5th annual Chicago Outdoor Film Festival begins tonight with Howard Hawks' great screwball comedy and Chicagoist favorite His Girl Friday. As any of the 30,000 attendees of the legendary Radiohead show at Hutchinson Field in 2001 will tell, the beautiful Chicago skyline is an ideal backdrop to any summertime cultural event. But if you don't want to deal with the mosquitoes, the people, or trying to discern the tipping protocol for free bike valet parking (?), head down to Facets to see a movie the old-fashioned way: inside. And, ironically, the movie to see there is about the great outdoors. more ›

Lately, Ebert's been telling people to see films like Spirited Away, All or Nothing, 13 Conversations About One Thing, Innocence, You Can Count on Me, The Son, and Owning Mahoney as well as well-made studio films (Minority Report, Master & Commander, and A Beautiful Mind). It's not about agreeing with him, or being angry with him after we see a movie he said was good but that we hated - it's about reading and understanding the things he likes and looks for in a film that can help us be better viewers. more ›