Results tagged “cinema”

Try to make it over to the Landmark if you have some free time today; today is your last chance to catch the Hennegan brothers’ new documentary about the Kentucky Derby. The First Saturday in May follows five horses on the path to the 2006 Kentucky Derby, the year _______ won.* Much like Spellbound did in 2002, the documentary serves to show the training and utter devotion that goes into preparing for the culminating moment of the film.

Filmmaker Taylor Greeson was twelve years old in 1993. That summer, three things occurred: he was ordained with the priesthood in the Mormon church, he lost his virginity to an older man and his older brother Charlie was murdered. Using montages of family photographs and pastoral footage of Montana, where he lived at the time, Greerson revisits that summer in Meadowlark. He uses a cool, seemingly-detached perspective that drains any traces of sensationalism from the events. His unflappability extends even to sequences where he interviews his brother's killer in prison. It's a horse of a different color compared to daytime TV.

Ah, the Academy Award "Shorts." Largely ignored in favor of the races focusing on acting accomplishments and what movie had the saddest/more politically controversial/historically momentous ending, the Short Subject categories often offer a hodgepodge of achievements actually more worthy of your time than most of the feature length tripe that hits theaters these days. They're also full of fun trivia: did you know Billy Zabka, a.k.a the fantastic villain Johnny Lawrence from one of our favorite films of all time, was actually nominated for an Academy Award in the Live Action Short category in 2004? And have you ever seen Don Hertzfeldt's excellent 2001 nominated animated short, "Rejected"? Wacky stuff.

Several decades before the eye-popping wizardry of Koyaanisqatsi, the "City Symphony" genre, whose golden age lasted until perhaps the early 40's, was equal parts travelogue and razzle dazzle. The movies of this genre aimed to capture not only the atmosphere of the city in question but also showcase the latest in filmmaking technology. Canted camera angles, flash-cut editing and film that was sped up, slowed down, frozen, superimposed or otherwise manipulated were tools skillfully (and playfully) used to create a sense of wonderment about the modern world.

The Museum of Science and Industry is raising its prices. Adult Chicago residents will now pay $12 (up from $10), adult non-Chicagoans $13 (from $11), Chicago children $8.50 ($6.25), non-Chicago children $9 ($7), Chicago seniors $11 ($8.75), and non-Chicago seniors $12 ($9.50).

Courtesy of the TOC blog, we've learned that on February 27 (his 65th birthday) Jonathan Rosenbaum will retire as senior film reviewer at the Reader. Blogger Hank Sartin swears that it's not "one more sign of new Reader owners Creative Loafing trimming the budget. In fact, Rosenbaum tells us that his new bosses at Creative Loafing will be setting him up with a website of his own so that even in 'retirement' his writings on film will continue to be part of their franchise."

Interview: The Movie Queens

Even before we moved to Chicago we were aware of Poi Dog Pondering, thanks to a splashy ad in Rolling Stone for their album Wishing Like a Mountain and Thinking Like the Sea. Their song "Thanksgiving," from the aforementioned album, always pops into our playlist this time of year; and it was really cool to see them open for David Byrne a few years back at Navy Pier. However, their newest foray comes as something...

Skidoo sounds like something we made up at 3 AM while at some party: Groucho Marx (in his last movie) plays a gangster named God, Jackie Gleason trips on acid while in jail, Carol Channing plays the most sane character in the whole thing, there's a musical number known as the Garbage Can Ballet, and every credit to the movie is sung. It's an actual movie from 1968 and it was directed by Otto...

Luis Buñuel once wrote, "A film is like an involuntary imitation of a dream; as in dreams, images appear and disappear through dissolves and shadows, time and space become flexible, shrinking and expanding at will." A film is like a dream ... or a nightmare. Why do we, as viewers, sitting in the dark, voluntarily subject ourselves to disturbing images and sounds? Do the horrors of the real world help to explain the popularity...

As the CIFF winds down, the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival kicks off. Over the next ten days, kid-friendly films from around the world will be shown at seven different area theaters, from Bronzeville to Lincoln Square and even Wilmette. Some showings feature a full-length film, but most are a thematically assembled collection of shorts.There will be actors on site to read the subtitles for movies directed towards those nine and under. How thoughtful is...

The Chicago International Film Festival is one of the highlights of the Chicago movie calendar. Every October for the past several years, we've purchased a festival pass and taken a gamble; in addition to catching films every year that we've already heard about, we always force ourselves to see at least a few films we know nothing about. In the past that's meant such pleasant surprises as Syndromes and a Century and 10th District Court....

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...

- In case you've missed the previous screenings of local film Crime Fiction, produced by former U of C students, you've got another chance to see it this evening at this month's edition of the Midwest Independent Film Festival. That's at the Landmark Century. There'll be an afterparty just around the corner at Cousin's. - Starting this Wednesday night at 6, Jonathan Rosenbaum presents a weekly series of film screenings and lectures at the Siskel...

A: Damn well worth seeing!

Who was Ingmar Bergman? You probably heard the news that he died last week, at age 89, and somewhere you mostly likely read Woody Allen’s pronouncement that he was, “probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion-picture camera.” But you shouldn’t feel ashamed if you don’t really know who he is. For example, he was not the father of Ingrid Bergman (although they did make one film together, Autumn...

A: A free movie every week. To us summer is about more than music festivals, street fairs and outdoor dining. It's also about enjoying wonderful cinema, either indoors in a wonderfully air-conditioned theater, or outside on a big freakin' lawn. And we'll be getting plenty of chances for both over the next several months thanks to Cinema/Chicago and the Chicago Outdoor Film Festival. Better known as the organization behind the annual Chicago International Film Festival,...

In his autobiography My Last Sigh, filmmaker Luis Bunuel describes going to the movies as a child during the silent era: "In addition to the traditional piano player, each theatre in Saragossa was equipped with its explicador, or narrator, who stood next to the screen and ‘explained’ the action to the audience." The movie experience wasn't just what was on the screen, there was also a live component. As we posted last week, in his...

As if the gorgeous weather wasn't enough reason to call out sick for the week, Columbia College give you another with its 11th annual Story Week: Cities of Words. Sunday kicked off the week of words with an alumni reading, and Monday's reading by Anchee Min about Maoist China was tender, raw and funny. With fifteen events over five days, you can't go to everything, but here's where Chicagoist will be: Tuesday: the Graduate Student...

You know what Chicago needs? More news programs. We just can’t get enough of morning news, along with news at 4, 4:30, 5, 5:30, 6, 9 and 10 p.m. And that’s just the networks. You cable and satellite-lovers must be in headline heaven!

Because of the weather it's a little hard for it sink in: spring is coming. And with spring (for us, anyway) comes an overwhelming wanderlust, not just the desire to get out of our coats and gloves but also to see somewhere new. While you could be a bachelor in Paris or take a romantic snorkel for two someplace, you could just as easily stay in town and still see 24 countries that span Europe....

Chicagoist enjoys getting inverted so when the opportunity came about to check out an advance screening of the award-winning IMAX Film, Fighter Pilot Operation Red Flag, that debuts in Chicago this Friday, we jumped on it. The movie follows Captain John "Otter Stratton", pilot of a U.S. Air Force F-15, through his experience at the Red Flag Training program at Nellis Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas. Red Flag is a two-week, realistic combat...

We know that we're not the only ones in the past few weeks to see Vince dashing around town in a Santa suit. Apparently there have been sightings in Wicker Park and on Michigan Avenue among other places. Yes, wearing a Santa suit in January: that's exactly why the man is so well-paid. He's starring in Fred Claus, which has been shooting here off and on since November and is due to wrap next month....

It's easy to get the impression that all the great places to see a movie in Chicago are either in the Loop or north of the river and a few blocks away from the lake. Multiplex? River East 21. Retrospectives or film series? The Siskel. Arthouse? The Century or the Music Box, of course. It can be frustrating if you live closer to the edge of things in Chicago, but it doesn't have to be....

Organizers of the annual Christkindlmarket have dropped New Line Cinema as a sponsor after a talking-to from the city, which expressed concerns of religious favoritism over plans to run an ad for the upcoming film The Nativity Story during the event at Daley Plaza. Wow … where to begin? We’re all for religious tolerance, especially this time of year. In fact, now’s the best time to get to know a religion other than your own...

We love our hometown film organizations. Places like the Siskel, Facets and Chicago Filmmakers help insure that the local film scene stays vibrant and relevant. We have always been very proud of Reeling, the Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival, which just wrapped its 25th incarnation on Sunday. That’s why the news that the offices of Reeling were burglarized Sunday evening particularly pisses us off. According to Brenda Webb at Reeling, “the thief also...

Reeling, the Chicago International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, continues through November 12. Tomorrow at 9 p.m. the French film Looking for Cheyenne screens at Columbia College's Film Row Cinema. Cheyenne, an unemployed journalist, decides that she's fed up with capitalist society and decides to live off the grid by moving to the country. Her beautiful girlfriend Sophie, a high school chemistry teacher, must decide whether she loves her enough to join her. It's a...

Last month, the Midwest Independent Film Festival premiered the feature-length drama, . It was a very good -- but heavy -- drama done here in the city.