C-U Blogfidential

“The Witch School Film Project”
An interview with Thomas Bender and Jacob Bakkila of HOOPESTON

by Jason Pankoke

As an undergraduate at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, I would often hear my peers refer to our school as “the bubble.” This convenient metaphor, implicit throughout our small campus by the iconic arched window that serves as an IWU indicia, had been used time and again to call out the student body (in effect, ourselves) for living an insular academic life while the larger issues of our world resided elsewhere. Sadly, I’ve noted variations on that once-shallow idiom ever since. Even when one is busy taking care of life’s needs and striving to contribute to one’s communities, one is often oblivious to dynamics operating across the county line, barely a mile down the road, or aggravatingly just out of reach.

In my 15 years as a Champaign resident, I’ve given little thought to Hoopeston, Illinois, barely an hour drive from here but seemingly worlds away. Called the “Sweet Corn Capital of the World” in its 20th century prime, this depressed farm-and-factory town may have been indistinguishable in the eyes of New York filmmakers Thomas Bender and Jacob Bakkila if not for the introduction of an eccentric element foreign to Hoopeston’s old-fashioned aura. The resulting documentary, HOOPESTON, is less about its namesake and more the tenacity of its folk while a storyline that seems primed to detail a literal, modern-day witch hunt instead lopes off the expected path to provide a gently haunting exposé on current prairie Americana.

Once again, it takes the keen perception of someone green to Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond to provide us with a colorful look back at ourselves.

Read on, Sweet MacDuff…

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We fibbed a bit at the end of our last post about THE INFORMANT! (Just remember which movie we’re talking about, folks.) With the video editions now available for home viewing, C-U Blogfidential dug up more statistics that might reinforce or implode our opinions about the overall performance of this Steven Soderbergh semi-experiment. Industry data supplier Rentrak, whose box office numbers we cited before, also issues weekly reports that track DVD, Blu-ray, and video-on-demand (VOD) releases. So, how in their estimation did the Mark Whitacre story hold up amidst the current crop?

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Finally! The advertising rate sheets are available for C-U Confidential #4, which we hope to expedite in time for the next astounding C-U Confidential Local Film Show beginning Thursday, April 15, at the Art Theater in downtown Champaign! Having the new CUZine on hand for this Boneyard Arts Festival event would warm the cockles of our hearts to no end. However, we can’t put the cart before the horse in this situation unless we want to look like goats wastefully munching away at happy thoughts – or, to a much larger detriment, your humble editor’s perennially empty wallet.

As usual, the invitation-slash-plea commences at this juncture, for we cannot publish physical media about the movies of Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond without your support. Unless a philanthropic soul or two come through religiously to help fund our modest products to ensure we can issue them for free (as we’ve done with the annual CUZine since the start) or for cheap (which we hope to do with the upcoming C-U Confidential ’99 special edition), then we have to divide and conquer the costs with you, dearest C-U.

Please review the information at this link and then book your space through this e-mail. Drop-dead deadline this year is Saturday, April 3, 2010, 5 p.m. Thanks a bunch, folks!

~ Jason Pankoke

Just like last year at this time, I’m weathering the remainder of a pervasive cold as March makes its debut, although I’m sitting not in the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters as I write but at Caffe Paradiso in Urbana amongst the undergraduates who pretty much ignore my presence. It’s definitely not too quiet, although their din and some early Johnny Cash rising overhead is allowing me to zone out and zero in on this annual public contemplation of C-U Blogfidential, the only Web site dedicated to filmmaking and movie viewing in downstate Illinois. It’s not taking me long to figure out what it is I have to say. In fact, it’s almost as if we’ve heard it all before.

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At long last, the first peek at Dreamscape Cinema’s new series STILETTOS has found its way to the Internet, taking a dialogue-free look at the scheming of Chelsea Simone (played by Nia Gregory, below right), a mob boss’ daughter allegedly doing business in a college town away from the well worn, big city turf. Along for the ride are sharp-tongued Brianne (Christiana Forsberg, below left) and inquisitive Ashley (Sierra Peters, below) who seems to be the one not like the others, but why? We’ll have the answers once Dreamscape serves up the Webisodes and related faux documentation, such as this abbreviated site featuring the preview.

Director and producer Robin Christian, who filmed the entire story during summer 2009 with dozens of volunteers as well as interns from the University of Illinois and Parkland College, tells C-U Blogfidential that STILETTOS will be made available on several hosting sites to be announced soon. We’ve also received covert hints that Christian’s prior project, the feature thriller DISPOSABLE starring Skye Peters as a foster home teen plagued by murderous scam artists, will be completed soon while another Dreamscape effort may go before the cameras later this year.

Per the usual, we’ll tell you what we know when we know it … unless Chelsea’s people pay a visit to the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters and strongly suggest otherwise, if you know what we mean.

~ Jason Pankoke

One thing C-U Blogfidential has not been stellar about lately is providing plenty of advance warning about interesting local screenings. At some point, we’d love to invite into our ranks a Calendar Editor who could dedicate their time to dependably posting the details. With our focus slowly shifting evermore towards our specialty – the film culture generated within Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond – your humble editor can apparently sew only so many seeds at once. We’ll pledge at the least to report on the most tantalizing glimmers of relevant film exhibition and work them in when possible.

Certainly qualifying is a reprise of Kimberly D. Conner’s dramatic short about an AIDS victim, THIS LIFE AIN’T PRETTY, which will screen for free later tonight, Friday, February 26, 7 p.m., in Room 100 (the auditorium) of Gregory Hall, 810 S. Wright St., Urbana, IL, on the University of Illinois Main Quad. Champaign native Conner shot the 35-minute short in Springfield, where she currently lives as well as works for the Illinois Department of Health Care and Family Services, as a cautionary tale speaking to the African-American community about the indiscriminate reach of the disease – even affecting heterosexual females who are otherwise in good health. Watch CUBlog for our discussion with Conner about PRETTY and her other upcoming projects.

Just across the walkway at Foellinger Auditorium, 709 S. Mathews Ave., Urbana, IL, the Insect Fear Film Festival will return on Saturday, February 27, with a “prehistoric insect” theme as illustrated by THE BLACK SCORPION (1957), an atomic monster jaunt featuring some of the last filmed work by KING KONG animator Willis O’Brien, and ICE CRAWLERS (2003), a direct-to-video “killer trilobite” feature directed by Belleville, IL, native and Southern Illinois University-Carbondale alum John Carl Buechler. Cartoons, trailers, and other clips will fill out the program, which begins at 7 p.m., while starting at 6 p.m. the Foellinger foyer will be turned into a creepy crawly emporium as graduate students of the UIUC Entomology program display live insects, mounted insects, fossil insects, student insect art, and the Bugscope. Special guests this year will be horseshoe crabs, described as “living fossils” by the festival’s guiding light, Entomology department chair May Berenbaum, PhD. Admission is free.

Those of you who might not have realized the Art Theater, 126 W. Church St., Champaign, IL, began booking Bollywood cinema again can thrill to KARTHIK CALLING KARTHIK, a brand-new feature showing at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 27. (Don’t forget about the marquee film, THE LAST STATION, and the weekend late show, THE LAST WALTZ; scheduling is listed right here.) Finally, those of you who missed the Oscar-nominated short films at the Art can catch the program over at the Normal Theater, 209 North St., Normal, IL, from Thursday, February 25, through Sunday, February 28, starting at 7 p.m. each night.

~ Jason Pankoke

Here at the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters, we’re imagining that Spring is already in the air because we’re sick and tired of this chilling dribble that persists in soaking Champaign-Urbana. How else can we take our minds off of the drab? Why, with a little foreshadowing, of course, as we look two months ahead when the real Spring will be in full swing and the Boneyard Arts Festival will once again flood Champaign County with tons of creative expression. We’ll be too busy to enjoy much of the cornucopia, though…

You may recall that we infiltrated this four-day extravaganza last year with the first-ever C-U Confidential Local Movie Show, during which we presented two dozen trailers and shorts at Urbana’s Caffe Paradiso as proof positive that creative filmmaking occurs in the places where we live. Even though several friends of C-U Blogfidential ribbed your humble editor because they couldn’t attend due to simultaneous Boneyard activities, the event still attracted a good crowd of supportive acquaintances and perfect strangers.

So, shall we do it again? Resistance is probably futile in this case.

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Champaign Movie Makers meets at least once a month to afford area filmmakers and talent an opportunity to discuss and join forces on the making of independent cinema in the area. If you are interested in being more “in the loop” if not directly involved with CMM-related productions, please visit and join their Yahoo! Group.

The next meeting will take place  Tuesday, February 23, 7 p.m., in the 4th floor conference room of the M2 Building, 301 N. Neil St., Champaign, IL. This month’s presentation will be by CMM founder Johnny Robinson about stop-motion animation techniques; additional topics TBD.

Contact Johnny Robinson at johnny [at] johnnyrobinson [dot] com or Bill Kephart at billkephart [at] juno [dot] com for further information about Champaign Movie Makers.

~ Jason Pankoke

Yet another topic that we let slip here at C-U Blogfidential is the ownership change from Greg Boardman to Sanford Hess at downtown Champaign’s venerable Art Theater. When last discussed, Boardman had just finished his run at 126 W. Church St. with international chestnut THE BICYCLE THIEF, making way for Hess to start his tenure with Richard Linklater’s underrated ME AND ORSON WELLES on New Year’s Day. We still plan to editorialize on the before vs. the after in a future post, along with conducting a fresh interview with Hess a few months on, but we’d like to hold up the current programming frame as a glimmer of hope that the new guard will finally broaden the content projected onto the Art’s silver screen in ways that the old guard stubbornly avoided.

After two weeks of ORSON WELLES, Hess brought in the lauded war drama THE MESSENGER, directed by Oren Moverman and starring Ben Foster, Jena Malone, and Woody Harrelson, for two additional weeks, accented by a private screening early on Sunday, January 10, of the locally-shot LEADING LADIES and a late-night reprisal of Harrelson’s fall hit ZOMBIELAND during MESSENGER’s weekends. The Art followed this with one week each of Tom Ford’s A SINGLE MAN and Pedro Almodóvar’s BROKEN EMBRACES paired with late shows of FERRIS BUELER’S DAY OFF and DONNIE DARKO, respectively, along with a Bollywood matinee of MAYABAZAAR (1957) on Saturday, February 13. So far, so good; the marquee choices ran the gamut one would expect from a movie house called “the Art” while the revivals catered expectantly towards World Cinema fans as well as college audiences up for revisiting youth culture favorites and cult classics-via-home video exposure.

Now we have the stretch starting yesterday, Friday, February 19, for which Hess has packed away the kid gloves in lieu of throwing curve balls. To start, the Art inadvertently referenced its own past by playing a program called “The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2010,” distributed by Magnolia Pictures. As of this writing, only two chances remain to see each half of the alternating bill – tonight, Saturday, February 20, 7:30 p.m., and tomorrow, Sunday, February 21, 5 p.m., for the animated set (featuring perennial Academy Award favorites Wallace & Gromit in A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH) and tomorrow at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. for the live-action set. It’s uncommon to see omnibus features of this nature play theatrically in Champaign-Urbana; gone are the days when compilations such as Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation and the classier International Tournée of Animation regularly made the art-house rounds, including the Art. A welcome return of the format, this is.

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Punxsutawney Phil was not the only early riser to forecast a bit of gloom last week Tuesday, February 2, when actress Anne Hathaway announced the nominees for this year’s Academy Awards with nary a mention of THE INFORMANT! This followed an 0-for-2 showing at last month’s Golden Globe Awards when Matt Damon and Marvin Hamlisch lost out to, respectively, Robert Downey, Jr. for SHERLOCK HOLMES and Michael Giacchino for UP. As a matter of fact, this IMDb.com page illustrates the film’s hard-knock life during awards season – few men on base, nobody scores. The filmmakers, production houses, and Warner Bros. still have enough to be thankful for given the overall positive press awarded INFORMANT! in the fall, while its unusual cautionary tale will probably have a long video shelf life.

And then, we must consider the theatrical box office take. Hm.

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Leaving downstate Illinois behind to weather Chicago, Alaric Rocha possibly never imagined migrating back south after making his first suburban short, THE RECIPE, a year ago. Yet, the former Champaign filmmaker has done just that to shoot a follow-up called WINTER IN LOUISIANA starting tomorrow, February 5, in and near the backwoods property of his parents, Gil and Sherry Rocha of Oreana. Production will continue through Sunday on the project, which involves a prisoner’s escape from a chain gang and pursuit by guards and guard dogs. We won’t spill who exactly comes to the man’s aid in the climax, but luckily a skinny chimney fails to appear as an obstacle on the escape route.

Not surprisingly, Rocha turned an ear towards music to find inspiration for the current Blue Bassoon Pictures film, in this case a late Eighties recording combining the seasonal standard “Jingle Bells” with an African American spiritual, “Children Go Where I Send Thee,” played in an acoustic “New England” style. “My family and I always think [the song] sounds like a prisoner from the old South running from hound dogs and then getting scooped up [unexpectedly],” he explains to C-U Blogfidential, although we’ll skim certain details to preserve the surprise. “I took the story and made it a bit more serious, kind of a BRAZIL idea where imagination saves a person from the pressure and darkness of reality.”

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Nicole Pion of the Independent Media Center has announced the following selections and artists that will engage, inform, and entertain during the second annual IMC Film Festival later this week. You can find detailed information posted on their Web site separately for Friday, February 5, Saturday, February 6, and Sunday, February 7, while the basic schedule can be found after the jump below. Both Friday and Sunday begin at 6 p.m. while Saturday commences at 7 p.m. Admission is free.

Approximately 30 examples of features, shorts, music videos, and raw/found footage will be presented across the three days along with an installation performance designed by Matt HarsH and featuring DJ Belly, live accompaniment to the German Expressionist classic THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI by composer and filmmaker Vin Calianno, and an MC battle simulcast by the popular WRFU 104.5 FM program, “The Show.” Sponsors this outing include That’s Rentertainment, Sleepy Creek Vineyards, and the City of Urbana’s Public Arts Program, along with support from the Illinois Arts Council.

As a participating programmer of this year’s event with Nicole, Katy Vizdal, Brian Dolinar, and Laura Fuhrman, I personally thank everyone from Champaign, Urbana, the cities beyond, and other places in this great big world for submitting work. Now, make sure to come out to the IMC Film Festival and see what your friendly neighborhood filmmakers can do!

~ Jason Pankoke

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Another subject we inadvertently dropped a little while back is THE INFORMANT! After its quick slide down the domestic box-office charts and relative non-performance in the international market, Warner Bros. announced after the New Year that the otherwise well-received Matt Damon drama would debut on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on Tuesday, February 23. It’s no secret the studio has been hoping Damon will nab a Best Actor nod or win from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which announces all the Oscar nominees at 7:30 a.m. CST tomorrow, Tuesday, February 2, so they’re surely banking on prestige begetting extra INFORMANT! revenue between now and the Academy Awards ceremony on March 7.

According to the key box artwork floating in cyberspace – we’ve been unable to locate a formal press release, for whatever reason – the DVD will feature THE INFORMANT! in all its widescreen glory but the only extras will be a trailer and a selection of deleted scenes. The Blu-ray will also offer a commentary track featuring director Steven Soderbergh and scriptwriter Scott Z. Burns, along with the trailer, deletions, and a 16×9 enhanced 1080p transfer. Apparently, that’s all, folks. Our cynical side smells a double-dip in the near future, but if it comes in the form of a Criterion Collection edition to stick on the shelf alongside Soderbergh’s CHE, TRAFFIC, and SCHIZOPOLIS, we’ll politely wait it out.

For now, once you’re done marveling at C-U Blogfidential’s favorite orange sherbet artwork design of 2009, surf over to this “For Your Consideration” Web site set up by the WB to pitch its Oscar contenders. After your snickering at the inclusion of THE BLIND SIDE subsides, take a look at the primary INFORMANT! item unique to this page – a PDF download of the script, although this version is a transcription of the final release version of the movie and not what Soderbergh used on set. It might still be valuable for students of film to see how this particular story looks on paper in the proper format.

We plan to inform you a few more times about THE INFORMANT! before moving on to less corn-fed pastures, so all you budding CUBlog agents should keep your spying eyes right here!

~ Jason Pankoke

In our typically finite wisdom, we’ve decided to wrap up some unfinished business on C-U Blogfidential before it becomes lost in the dusty trail left by 2009 A.D. “Finite,” as in this effort will run concurrent with our continuing work on the C-U Confidential twofer as well as our advisory role in next week’s IMC Film Festival in Urbana. As long-time readers know, once past the Ides of March we tend to slow down with on-line activity as we heap last-minute love on the print opus right before press time, so please bear with our backtracking quest if it seems to fall off the proverbial cliff.

That said, we keep finding good reason to mention the following music video to help illustrate how busy Matt HarsH and Sam Ambler have been with cranking out local-pop promos. However, we also keep forgetting to give dedicated props – such as, embedding it here for your viewing pleasure. A prior attempt to file a report fizzled due to bad timing, so we apologize to Megan Johns & the Greytones and present the train-bound accompaniment to their sinewy track, “The Beat was Burnt,” right now:

Taped early last summer at the Monticello Railway Museum in Monticello, IL, THE BEAT WAS BURNT finds a pouty Johns following the lady friend of a lovesick beau (Remy Tipei) on board the next train out of town. Considering the deliciously sharp key of the song and the dominance of shadows, it’s a foregone conclusion that friendly small talk will not take place once Johns makes her way back to the sleeping car where her target has retired. Look quickly for familiar faces behind the Forties fatigues, including Morgan Orion as a passenger and Mark Rubel as a clerk in the train station.

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