Our own Kevin Robinson makes his reading debut at CHIRP Radio's "First Time" series at Beat Kitchen tomorrow night. more ›

Cameron Crowe's Pearl Jam Twenty is an engaging, personable look at the long-running Seattle rock group, filled with archival footage, live performances, and insightful band interviews. more ›

The Cameron Crowe documentary about Pearl Jam's twenty years as rock icons will be showing at the Gene Siskel Film Center, starting Oct. 1. But if you want to get tickets, you're too late. more ›

Tickets for the highest grossing film in the history of the Gene Siskel Film Center's two-week October run are now on sale via Ticketmaster or the Film Center box office. more ›

The Steve James-directed, Alex Kotlowitz-produced film has become the highest grossing film in the history of the Gene Siskel Film Center. more ›

Today in "Pencil This In:" a screening of Deliverance, $6 spaghetti, and more. more ›

We still watch movies. We may not go see them in the theater as much as we used to (today's audience of 23 million per week seems laughable compared to the 90 million the movie palaces were pulling in in the late 1940s), but there are movies everywhere. Proliferating cable channels offering something to fit your mood. Blu-Rays and affordable DVDs for sale at everywhere from grocery stores to Best Buy, for rent at amazing stores we are lucky enough to have, sent to you through through the mail by NetFlix or Greencine, or streamed online via Netflix, Hulu, Apple and Mubi. And we haven't even mentioned YouTube, Vimeo or the many other online sources for video entertainment. more ›

For film buffs, March does indeed come in like a lion, as a month of European films gets underway tonight at the Gene Siskel Film Center with the 14th annual EU Film Festival. 64 films from 24 European Union nations will offer quite a menu of cinematic delicacies. Things get underway tonight as the Academy Award contender Bibliothèque Pascal. We're looking forward to Álex de la Iglesia's festival favorite The Last Circus, Michael Winterbottom's Steve Coogan vehicle The Trip, films from Manuel de Oliveira, Catherine Breillat and plenty of others. For an appetizer, we took a peek at a Belgian giallo-homage, Amer. more ›

Mere hyperbole? No. Shoah does not include any black & white newsreels. It does not feature dramatizations, vintage photographs, or even documents from the period. It does something much more brilliant to convey the enormity of the Holocaust: using only interviews with survivors and contemporary footage of the locations in question, it creates a portrait of these unfathomable events entirely in the audience's mind, a place where it can remain permanently. It's a colossal achievement entirely without equal in the world of documentary filmmaking. more ›

All the crazies might have finished their holiday shopping on Black Friday, but we’re just getting warmed up. Funny that our 2009 Gift Guide mentioned economic “recovery” and scraping the bottom of our piggy banks; it’s much of the same story this year. But let’s still get in the holiday spirit and blow what’s left of our paychecks on our friends and family. Here are some ideas that can help you do that. more ›

Some people work in cubicles from nine to five, others spend 14 hours riding in a pickup truck scouring Chicago for scrap metal. Scrappers is a documentary making its world premiere today at the 17th annual Chicago Underground Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Film Center. The film follows Oscar and Otis on their job through Chicago's labyrinth of alleys. Oscar is an immigrant from Honduras picking scrap to provide for his family. Otis is a 73 year old South Side native working to provide for his 12 kids. The film takes an intimate look into the families, the subculture and how the business is impacted by external forces. The directors Brian Ashby, Ben Kolak and Courtney Prokopas will be present for an audience discussion after today's screening at 4:45 p.m. It will also be shown again on July 1 at 8:00 p.m. more ›

The weekend got off to a rough start with Friday's weather, but Robert Downey Jr. was in Chicago yesterday and brought some sunshine with him (cheesy, we know). The Ironman actor was in Chicago yesterday to receive the Renaissance Award, given by the Gene Siskel Film Center. Downey was accompanied by his wife (who was the valedictorian at Schaumburg High School in 1991) and The Hangover director, Todd Phillips. The sold out event Saturday night was at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and featured cocktails, dinner, a silent auction, and a discussion with Downey. During the event, Downey discussed which movies of his own he liked the best (Tropic Thunder, Sherlock Holmes, and Ironman) and touched upon his past drug abuse. more ›

If we say Lost In The Fog is a film about horse racing, surely Seabiscuit comes to mind. But Tobey Maguire isn't nearly as adorable as the horse's cantankerous octogenarian owner Harry Aleo. And unlike most documentaries made after a story ends, filmmaker John Corey just happened to fall into the development of the story of a three-year-old horse named, Lost in the Fog. He followed him from the small-time races in San Francisco, through a 10-race winning streak, until the horse's capture of the coveted Eclipse Award, as the nation's top sprinter. more ›

Even if you think you don't know who Nicholas Ray is, you know who Nicholas Ray is. Does Rebel Without a Cause ring a bell? James Dean wearing a fire engine red jacket and a look as smoldering as the cigarette he's holding is one of the true iconic images of movie history. Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo are alienated teens struggling to make sense of life, and a very young Dennis Hopper plays a jack-booted thug. If you've never seen this movie on the big screen in all of it CinemaScope glory, you owe it to yourself to head over to the Siskel. more ›

Parkside Pub,11721 E. Main St., Huntley, IL, 11/26, 11 a.m. – early Thanksgiving morning, $10, call (847) 669-8496 for more info. more ›

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The above study in irresponsible parenting, "CARMICHAEL & shane" by Alex Weinress and Rob Carlton, is just one of the finalists to make it into the Chicago Short Film Brigade's Best of 2007 lineup that will be screening tonight at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Thirteen films have been selected from the 52 shorts that were screened in the Short Film Brigade's four 2007 episodes, and one lucky winner will walk away at the end of the night with the $350 Audience Award. more ›

Thanks in part to huge voter turnout partially driven by bonafide grassroots excitement, Barack Obama cruised to victory in Iowa, and is expected to do well again today in New Hampshire. Yet the Siskel Film Center has quietly cancelled screenings of the new documentary Senator Obama Goes To Africa, which were scheduled for later this month. Why? We just told you why. more ›

We’re big fans of the Helvetica Typeface here at Chicagoist. It’s everywhere here on our site. But we’re not sure about an 80-minute documentary, Helvetica, celebrating the typeface and it’s proliferation in society. The film is currently being screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center, now through the 20th. more ›

Well, we've been hearing about Looptopia for awhile. A big overnight festival held in the Loop, blah blah. We didn't think too much about it. We pretty much dismiss the Loop after 5 p.m. and give it up for lost on the weekends. Looptopia is obviously working hard to change all that. It's going on this Friday through early Saturday morning and since we're going to be down there, we decided to check out the... more ›

What a change? We woke up this morning and remembered that occasionally the sky is clear enough that you can see the sun. We have put together some events that are going on around town today so that you can't get out before the wind kicks your ass. As always, feel free to add events in the comments. more ›

It’s been a sad state of affairs at movie theaters over the past couple of weekends. When the top 5 is filled with Scary Movie 4, Benchwarmers and Take The Lead, you know something is horribly wrong. But this weekend, things are looking up. Chicagoist is excited about American Dreamz and The Sentinel (co-starring our man-crush Kiefer Sutherland) as well as this weekend’s 22nd Annual Chicago Latino Film Festival. more ›

Beth Kiely, Om on the Range more ›

Chicagoist knows there are some adventurous types who expect they’ll get their $10 worth of entertainment by just showing up at the local multiplex, placing their faith in the Hollywood studio system and picking a movie at random. Not us. We like to research our picks ahead of time, often by looking at plot synopses online. Yet it’s still a case of caveat emptor with similarly titled films. more ›

The Gene Siskel Film Center picked a helluva time roll out some excellent retrospectives. With the temps so low, all we want to do is roll ourselves up in blankets and watch our Tivo’ed episodes of Law and Order. But The Gene is tempting us to bundle up and head downtown for some great revivals and overlooked films of 2005. First up is "Merry Marilyn," a look at the films of Marilyn Monroe. Now: you... more ›

As has been pointed out elsewhere, Thanksgiving is often a time for families to get together and share some quality time. You just threw up in your mouth a little, didn’t you? Somewhere around Hour Four of your Familial Celebration of Overeating and Passive-Agressive Conversation, you’ll be looking for an out. If two hours of sitting in the dark while no one sharing your DNA says a thing sounds like heaven, then it’s off to... more ›

After an unfortunate incident a couple years ago involving “pumpkin spice” punch and a too-easily-removed Superman costume, Chicagoist tends to avoid big Halloween parties. Instead, we hole up with a list of video horrorflicks the night before (All Hallow’s Eve Eve?). But there are a few cinematic options this week for those looking for a communal, fright night experience. Doc Films at the University of Chicago is eschewing scary for sci-fi this week. Invaders from... more ›

The Chicagoist Arts and Entertainment department has been suffering from a month long movie news drought that officially ends this week. more ›

Been enjoying the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit at the Art Institute? Wishing you could see those can-can girls come to life in vivid Technicolor but have an intense dislike of musicals based on pop songs? Then head over to The Gene Siskel Film Center for a screening of John Huston’s 1952 version of Moulin Rouge starring Jose Ferrer as Toulouse-Lautrec. Unlike the version by Baz Luhrmann that focused on the love story between Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, Huston’s version has Lautrec as its lead. more ›