Our movie and media Calendar appears every Friday/Saturday on C-U Blogfidential and caters to the downstate region anchored by Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA.
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MILESTONES | Happy Birthday to You!
4/2: Will “the Thrill” Viharo (author, One-Way Ticket to Thrillville, Thrillville Press, Seatle, WA)
4/4: Kamelya Alexan (filmmaker, I’M ONLY BLIND, Alexan Productions, Chicago, IL)
PASSINGS | You Will Be Missed
3/12: Caroline “Lady Red “ Princehouse, 78 (host, “Blues House Party,” WEFT 90.1 FM, Champaign, IL, retired)
FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said
The Report is on hiatus until May. Thank you for your readership, CUvians and Agents! You should pay attention to Smile Politely, The Daily Illini, Champaign Movie Makers, and Chambana Film Festival for breaking news and updates in our scene. CUBlog will also keep in step with our friends and share to Facebook when we come across things you would like. Keep reading!
IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing My New Scene on Your Screen
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Psych! Debbie Harry done up by H. R. Giger is not what you were expecting, maybe? Oh, please, let me explain… One month ago, I received a package at the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters and opened it post-haste, thinking it was something that I had ordered. Inside were a few packs of neon circle stickers that folks like to use to add prices on garage sale items. Even though I’ve been considering how to start unloading a lot of the excess that is still housed here at Momkoke Manor, they definitely weren’t mine. The delivery label listed a Spanish name and local address so I searched for them online and, lo and behold, the sticker stash was intended for a business located across town. I vaguely knew about it but never had the incentive to seek it out in person. Until now. “No time like the present,” I thought.
During my lunch break the next day, I drove to an unadorned building nestled between a few residential side streets and the freight train tracks that descend here from Chicago. After double checking on my phone to make sure they were open for customers, I found the proper entrance and walked inside. An older couple and a younger woman were sitting and talking in a side room, which I took to be the office, and I introduced myself before handing over the wayward package. (I had emailed them in advance so they at least knew their order made it to town.) After some chit-chat, the grateful gentleman and owner, Ron Sinkuler, led me back to the heart of the space and flicked on the overhead lights. Five thousand square feet of concrete, tables, and shelving, bearing more than one million music and video products, opened up before our eyes. I was stunned. And now, panning from left to right, you can be stunned, too:
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According to Sinkuler, Horizons Music has been in business for fifty years, starting up in suburban Brookfield and then moving to its current location about half way through its existence. Per my estimation, they would have set up shop in Mendota three or four years after Ma and Pa JaPan settled here at the house on the edge of an American small town. I only knew about them previously because I found mention of them while idling on my laptop late one night and scrolling slowly through a localized Google map to see what businesses and resources were located here. Given the parent and stepparent care that I was tasked with at the time, hitting up Horizons for a casual look-see wasn’t much of a priority.
Back then, I had considered writing a series about the relatively few signs of movie life to be found in a place like the Starved Rock region, compared to what I’ve borne witness to in Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond over the long haul, and I’m not sure this little corner of the Illinois Valley would have justified an entry. At present, I know plenty of friends who’ll probably be willing to spend an afternoon browsing at a merchant like Horizons, especially if skimming their website will simply not suffice. While talking with Sinkuler about his business, music commerce, and la Vida Mendota, it was clear he has retirement on the mind and asked me at one point if I ever had considered moving to Nashville; his son was set to pick him up the next day to make a Music City pilgrimage for the weekend and look around for living possibilities.
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So, who knows how much longer Horizons Music will continue if the family moves on. Moreso, what happens to all that material? You might want to plot among yourselves to visit them in the coming months and see it with your own eyes. Hopefully, you’d find a few goodies to take back home. A word of caution on their stock – indie rock, rap, electronic, and so on from after the year 2000 will be in very short supply. (“How can I carry music I don’t know?” said the owner to me in blunt honesty.) Big band, doo-wop, gospel, lounge, jazz, blues, soul, R&B, salsa, Latin, reggae, old-school hip-hop, classic rock, Top 40 and AM radio, country, bluegrass, show tunes, soundtracks, and so forth are present, accounted for, and on sale … cash preferred. In a show of trust, he left me alone to browse in the back for probably an hour and a half. I sure as heck didn’t blow the opportunity by taking pictures the entire time. I also sure as heck barely scratched the surface.
What did I pick up? Just a few things. I partly went outside my normal wheelhouse for variety, given how little music I purchase these days. I left with compilation CDs of Cab Calloway, Mel Tormé, and Squeeze, all of them issued by overseas labels, a late Nineties revival album from Canned Heat, Blues Band, that still had a Borders price tag on it, and the late Eighties album Revolution Now from Captain Sensible (“Wot”) that was issued in the US by Griffin Music of – huh! – Carol Stream. The lone LP in the batch, I’ll tell you about in next week’s Calendar where I’ll also share a few more snaps of a cinematic persuasion based on items I managed to find at Horizons. It’s been refreshing to encounter something neat in the consumer media milieu that is an improbable hop, skip, and jump away from MFHQ Deux here in good ol’ Mendota.
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CONFIDENTIAL ALMANAC | Dates in Film Culture History
25 Years Ago … Friday, March 31, 2000: The independent feature LOVE 101 opens at the Goodrich Quality Theaters multiplex in Savoy, Illinois. Filmed on location at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb during the fall semester of 1997 by the Los Angeles-based company Poya Pictures, LOVE 101 is playing 12 consecutive one-week runs in 12 cities in the hopes of attracting an avid younger audience that will be receptive to its non-Hollywood depiction of college life and relationships. Chicago stage talents Michael Muhney, Mary Kay Cook, and Jon Collins lead the cast as students who find themselves in an awkward love triangle amidst the bustle of academia, a scenario loosely based on the personal experiences of writer and director Adrian Fulle. In support of the Savoy booking, he and LOVE 101 actor Will Carpenter visited nearby Champaign-Urbana earlier this week in a rented Chevrolet RV so they could promote the movie to media outlets and the public, handing out greetings and posters as they went. The “Love Tour” wraps once the duo finishes their trek across several hundred miles and five states. Fulle and his Poya partner David J. Miller, who met while enrolled in the film program at Columbia College in Chicago, will then attempt to find distributors in the theatrical and home video markets for their labor of love. RETURN TO ME, the MGM romantic drama that is directed by Chicago comedienne Bonnie Hunt and stars David Duchovny and Minnie Driver, opens at Savoy the day after the final showing of LOVE 101 on Thursday, April 6, a rare case of Illinois-made productions appearing back-to-back in a local cinema. [R]
LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers
@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
Chambana Film Festival* presents ROOM SIX + three short subjects w/filmmakers (3/30, 4 p.m.)
NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area
@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
AUDREY’S CHILDREN, THE CHOSEN: LAST SUPPER Part 1 (faith film), DEATH OF A UNICORN, L2: EMPURAAN (in Telugu or Malayalam with English sub), THE PENGUIN LESSONS, SIKANDAR* (in Hindi with English sub), THE WOMAN IN THE YARD, A WORKING MAN, THE ALTO KNIGHTS, BLACK BAG*, CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD, THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE (animation), MICKEY 17*, THE MONKEY, NOVOCAINE, ONE OF THEM DAYS “Laugh-Along” edition, SNOW WHITE (3/28 on), THE CHOSEN: LAST SUPPER Part 2 (faith film), HELL OF A SUMMER, A MINECRAFT MOVIE (4/3 on) *single screenings daily
@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
THE CHOSEN: LAST SUPPER Part 1 (faith film), DEATH OF A UNICORN, PRINCESS MONONOKE (animé) (re-release, IMAX), SIKANDAR* (in Hindi with English sub), THE WOMAN IN THE YARD, A WORKING MAN, THE ALTO KNIGHTS, BLACK BAG, CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD, THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE (animation), DOG MAN (animation), LOCKED, MAGAZINE DREAMS*, MICKEY 17, THE MONKEY, NOVOCAINE, PADDINGTON IN PERU, SNOW WHITE (3/28 on), THE MUMMY 25th anniversary (3/29, 7 p.m.; 3/30, 3 & 7 p.m.; 4/2, 7 p.m.), THE CHOSEN: LAST SUPPER Part 2 (faith film), A MINECRAFT MOVIE (4/3 on) *single screenings daily
@ Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Center for World Cultures, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies* presents “Japanese Paper Print Project: Film and Live Music Event” (3/28, 7 p.m.), “Videographic Criticism Talk: Tracing Media Histories Through Videographic Criticism” (3/31, 5:30 p.m.)
@ Pine Lounge, 1st floor, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents PITCH PERFECT (3/28-3/29, 7 p.m., free w/i-card)
Events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Additional “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” listings appear after the jump!
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Calendar: May 16-22, 2025
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