C-U Blogfidential

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Other times, the act of preparing the New Art Film Festival runs parallel with an anticipation of “what might be” in our program, especially in terms of area-made projects that have already caught our attention. Will we receive a chance to play them? Are they committed to debut elsewhere? Can they even be ready to submit by deadline? Fortunately, Mike Boedicker of Roselawn Productions Ltd. sent our way his Reconstruction-era tale, THE SHERIFF’S CHILDREN, which we accepted for the show without a second thought. Since the 22-minute film is still being entered in other festivals across the United States, we only have general details and a teaser to pass along to our dearest viewers; Boedicker will more than likely release it online and possibly on disc as with his previous central Illinois output like HOUSE OF THADDEUS and REVOLTING, providing an opportunity for you to check out his latest work.

Based on the 1889 short story of the same title by Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932), a lawyer and prolific author of mixed-race ancestry who dealt with the complexities of African-American life in the South after the Civil War in a portion of his writing, SHERIFF depicts the dynamic between a former slave (William Anthony Sebastian Rose II) and a small-town lawman (William L. Kephart) who guards him from a growing mob led by Slade (Matt Hester). While daughter Polly (Ellen E.K. Magee) holds down the homestead for her Pa, the sheriff finds himself trapped in a county jail with his prisoner as the lynch-starved locals congregate outside. Both men – a middle-aged white with status and an armed rifle, a young black covered in grime and accused of murder – soon reveal in their conversation that not all the crimes in question are of common knowledge or even against the law…

Featuring contributions by Champaign-Urbana regulars including Thomas Nicol as effects artist and cinematographer, Johnny Robinson as sound recordist, Julia Megan Sullivan as script supervisor and dialect coach, Malia Andrus as costume designer, and Eric Watkins as music composer, SHERIFF is a solid example of how comfortable Boedicker is with balancing the dramatic and intellectual needs of his storytelling. The script hits its beats but does not telegraph its reveals, the performances serve the material without upstaging it, and the locations found in Illinois and Indiana sell the period illusion on a meager budget. Indeed, we heard NAFF chatter praising the short as people exited the Art Theater auditorium on October 29 and conclude it will have a healthy festival life.

As to what Roselawn may produce next, it will not spring forth from Danville as usual. Mike and his wife and collaborator, Leslie Boedicker, resigned from their positions at the Danville Public Library at the beginning of fall and relocated to the Parma, New York, region where they both have family and prior history. C-U Blogfidential will miss their friendship and presence as well as contributions to our film culture, so we wish them good fortune and happiness in the move! We also send Mike a long-distance dedication on his birthday today, Saturday, December 30, which he shares with a certain other cinema someone typing these very words. Enjoy the day, both of you!

~ Jason Pankoke

p.s. Mike offers his thoughts on the making of THE SHERIFF’S CHILDREN in this 2017 NAFF article run by Smile Politely and written by Jarrod Finn.

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As we begin inundating the movie universe of Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond with friendly reminders that C-U Blogfidential will reach its 10th anniversary on Thursday, February 25, we can’t help but dream big about the related editorial we’ll be creating and commissioning for our dearest readers! This most certainly will reach back far enough to make mention of MICRO-FILM, for which a silently observed 10th anniversary also passed recently as its last print edition arrived in October 2005. We’re content to not burble prematurely about what’s on our minds regarding MF in the present and future, although we’d like to shine a spotlight on our flagship title’s past and, more specifically, its material legacy. In several waves beginning later this year, we will begin the long process of cleaning up and clearing out the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters in sesquicentennial Champaign – this is not code for “we’re moving” or “we’re closing shop,” by the way – so we can make room, redecorate, and stash a little cash to aid the process. We now focus on our stockpile of beloved MF back issues.

CUBlog wants to make sure our periodical predecessor ends up safe and secure in your library, movie culture fans! MFHQ houses plenty of spare MF copies and we’ll happily make them available for purchase at a discount; since we have yet to release electronic versions of this seminal run from 1999 to 2005, this is the only way to relive how the Paper Opteryx first took flight during the glorious peak of independent film awareness in the United States! Those who are green to our original MICRO-FILM scene can visit the dormant Web site for content crunches of all seven issues, cleanly designed and compassionately written to cover the exciting growth of international cinema produced during the dawn of low-cost digital workflow and do-it-yourself Internet outreach. Features, interviews, commentaries, and reviews take on the era’s hot topics and key personalities, involving the likes of Kevin Smith, Michael Moore, Lars von Trier, Guy Maddin, Jeff Krulik, Sarah Jacobson, Roger Ebert, Lloyd Kaufman, Esther Bell, Jon Moritsugu, Bill Viola, Cory McAbee, John McNaughton, Jill Godmilow, Bruce Campbell, Mark Borchardt, and more!

Start by clicking this link to open a PDF mail order form in your browser, or right-click to download the same to your computer, for viewing and printing. Our standard special between now and June 30 is $20 for any four MF issues, post-paid in the continental United States and Canada; you may order in the old-fashioned manner through the mail or send a PayPal payment to cuconfidential@gmail.com with clear-as-day notes telling us what you’d like and where you’d like us to ship it. Just for the CUBlog faithful, we’ll offer extra specials as well! Send us a cool $30, and we’ll send back the complete MF seven-issue run post-paid; send us instead a big-ass $40, and we’ll load you up with MICRO-FILM 1-7, the rare MICRO-FILM ‘zine The Warning Shot, and the equally rare MICRO-FILM newsletters released exclusively in the C-U … amazingly, post-paid! You can only purchase these bundles directly from MFHQ, so be sure to plunder that Christmas money and submit those orders before we begin weeding out our wares! This clearance sale does not include C-U Confidential digests, either past or upcoming.

The graphic below, which you can click to enlarge for easy reading, is a bonus peek behind the ironic curtains when MICRO-FILM still reigned supreme in our lives and utmost attention was paid to delivering the best annual film journal we could. Created in mid-2005 for one of our former “middle men,” Ubiquity Distributors in Brooklyn, NY, this “sales sheet” helped them to convince vendors to carry MF 7, painting the magazine as an invaluable source and picturing the covers of issues 5, 6, and the yet-to-be-released 7 for emphasis. It also features a clean-shaven William Kephart modeling a little choice reading material! (That would be MF 2.) Here’s to filmmakers continuing to “entertain and engage today’s sophisticated media audience without kowtowing to Hollywood’s sensibilities,” according to our MICRO-FILM self-promotional copy from a decade ago, and that pretty much goes for CUBlog as well!

~ Jason Pankoke

p.s. Not that many copies of MICRO-FILM issues 3 and 4 remain. Pro tip for collectors!

p.s.2 CUZine will reach its own 10th anniversary next year, so it might be nice to finally publish it again…

p.s.3 Please don’t pester us about when “more stuff” will be up for sale. In good time, gang, in good time.

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E.B. and Naughty Kitty take a trip
from Sleepy Creek Studios on Vimeo.

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Yeek! What better time than on a cold and dark October evening for your fiends at C-U Blogfidential to manifest one final “Image of the Week” prior to Halloween! Since the humble editor will be going out-of-state for a family visit this weekend, we’re posting early to remind you that Sleepy Creek Vineyards in Fairmount is hosting their annual Freeky Creek Short Film Festival at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow, Thursday, October 29, and at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, October 30, and Saturday, October 31. Word is the first two shows are sold out and very few tickets remain for the finale, so write info [at] sleepycreekvineyards [dot] com or call (217) 733-0330 to inquire about availability or a wait list as soon as possible. We simply can’t recommend enough the loony mesh of live stand-up comedy and freak-out world cinema developed by Sleepy Creek co-owner Joe Taylor and talented collaborator Bill Kephart; since Taylor does not reveal the schedule in advance, one needs to take a seat in their wine tasting room so one can enjoy every little Freeky Creek surprise to the fullest! Haunt the event’s Facebook page for awards announcements and other fun if you can’t be there in person or simply scroll this post to enjoy a complementary dose of Freeky on us! Below we have locally-made entries from 2014 that also played the New Art Film Festival earlier this month – IF ONLY…, a tuneful lark starring Mike Trippiedi, and CLOWNS ARE NOT SCARY, directed by Trippiedi and featuring Kephart in a squirm-inducing turn – while above is a decidedly spacey oddity shown in 2013 as part of the event’s custom-made tour de farce. Each year, a cigar-chomping Easter Bunny played by Kephart emcees the show, typically involving a story line in which E.B. must get his bunny-tailed butt out of trouble by show’s end. The stage antics trade off with prerecorded gags such as the “trip sequence” shared here featuring E.B. and a recent addition to his stable of questionable pals, Naughty Kitty. We can’t be any blunter about the nature of E.B.’s misadventures except that, when paired with creepy and darkly funny films, Sleepy Creek wine, artisan confections, a game audience, and gut-busting laughs, it’s absolutely worth the weirdness!

~ Jason Pankoke

p.s. We don’t run advertising on CUBlog for others unless it is poster art or vintage graphics, but we feel obliged to trot the Freeky Creek skeleton mascot out of the closet today since it should have appeared in print by now in C-U Confidential #8. We apologize to all Freeky creatures great and small!

p.s.2 So, dearest reefers, it dawned on us while writing this piece that we have run consecutive stories with fluffy flying beasts awash in a rainbow of colors. Maybe we should lie down for a spell…

p.s.3 Oh, who are we kidding?!? This is an event anchored by a giant talking White Rabbit that is always in a deep hole and desperate to stay away from reality. Duh.

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It’s only prudent we inform our dearest readers that the entire Pens to Lens 2014 short film roster has been uploaded for Internet viewing to the official Web site complete with the thrills, chills, and random lumps in the throat you might remember from their unveiling August 9 at the Virginia Theatre. Each of the two shows attracted several hundred children and adults who enjoyed the second P2L batch, developed from student-written scripts by a small army of volunteer filmmakers and friends entrenched in Champaign-Urbana; they hopefully left with a collective sense of community accomplishment as well as personal inspiration to tell stories the cinematic way!

If you melt at the sight of smiling kids dressed to the nines and having a grand old time, visit this Flickr account filled with P2L gala photography by Anna Zorn. Up top is her red carpet portrait of returning P2L team William Kephart (left) and Joe Taylor (right) who brought to life the adventure tale DOUBLE-O KEVIN submitted by Champaign sixth grader David Cerezo (center). We’ve embedded KEVIN below as today’s P2L representative along with three of the many movie posters provided by graphic designers from the Champaign-Urbana Design Organization (CUDO) including THE RUNNER by Michael Thomas, WATCH OUT FOR BUTTERFLIES by Matt Wiley, and MY IMAGINATION BECAME A NINJA AND IT’S FOLLOWING ME by Briana Elsik.

Think the all-ages imagination train ends here for the year? No, sir or ma’am! As with the post-P2L months of 2013, we can probably expect the program and its participants to receive play in the C-U and beyond. One instance will take place Tuesday, October 14, when P2L and organizer Thomas Nicol will receive the 2014 “Advocate ACE” award during the 10th annual ACE Awards presentation at the Canopy Club in Urbana. Presented by 40 North 88 West, the Champaign County arts council, these citations honor individuals or groups breathing invaluable life into the artistic culture of our cities and towns; others who will be awarded that night include painter Jason Patterson (“Artist ACE”), philanthropist and event organizer Eric Robeson (“Volunteer ACE”), the supply store Art Coop (“Business ACE”), educator Nathaniel Banks (“Teacher ACE”), UIUC masters candidate Megan Diddie (“Student ACE”), and blues musician Gerald “Candy” Foster (“Lifetime ACE”). Congratulations to all! More details about the event and the candidate voting process can be found at this page.

All graphics and videos on this post are courtesy Pens to Lens/Champaign-Urbana Film Society.

~ Jason Pankoke

No, Thomas Nicol is not cradling his Advocate ACE in advance of the ceremony, silly people. He is displaying another inhuman co-star fashioned for the aforementioned WATCH OUT FOR BUTTERFLIES, “Bob” the koalaoctopus. Since both koalas and octopi figure into your humble editor’s past, we were morally obligated to include him. Gerf.

Once again, dearest readers, we break out an “Image of the Week” for your collective enlightenment in the ways of the movies of Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond! For today’s post, we head back to the same county of origin as the Web comedy UP THE CREEK showcased last week. Danville, Illinois-based producer Mike Boedicker of Roselawn Productions has arranged for his 106-minute dramatic feature HOUSE OF THADDEUS to stream for free on Vimeo through Sunday, February 9, in an effort to draw attention to the DVD edition he released last month and the Blu-ray release he expects to make available later next month. Curiosity seekers and dependable fans alike should take advantage of this promotion to see it for themselves; sales from the silver discs as well as the Vimeo “tip jar” on the same page as the video will go towards the budgets of future Roselawn endeavors. To whet your appetite, we’ll share this early THADDEUS teaser:

House of Thaddeus (Trailer) from Roselawn Productions Ltd. on Vimeo.

HOUSE OF THADDEUS was filmed in Danville and features an ensemble cast of top-flight area actors including Joi Hoffsommer, Bill Kephart, Barbara Evans, Julia Megan Sullivan, Mike Morgan, Carolyn Kodes-Atkinson, Mike Trippiedi, and the late Gary Gardner. Learn more about the mysteries of the Thaddeus house on the Web or at Facebook.

~ Jason Pankoke

Unlike our previous “Image of the Week,” which all but required exposition to set up what our dearest readers would be watching in the videos shared, the viral entertainment today is so self-explanatory we’re simply going to kick up our feet at the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters and casually implore every one of you to press “play.” (Don’t worry. We’ll wait.) And, if you do not find yourself humming or toe-tapping along with it – let alone popping open a bottle of either beverage in question by the time its joyful noise concludes – you simply owe yourself a long, hard look in the mirror:

“What We Drink,” the ninth episode of the UP THE CREEK Webisode comedy from Joe Taylor and Sleepy Creek Vineyards in Fairmount, IL, stars the usual gang of crazies at their ir(resist)able best: Mike Boedicker, Kayla Johnson, Julia Megan Sullivan, Tim Meyers, Matt Hester, Thomas Nicol, Bill Kephart, and Mike Trippiedi. You can catch up with their adventures on Blip.TV, and may they return soon with refreshed spirits … so to speak!

~ Jason Pankoke

“Five for Filmmaking,” Part 1
A short interview with Joe Taylor of the Freeky Creek Short Film Festival

by Jason Pankoke

When you pick up the next issue of C-U Confidential digest, you will find amongst its spoils a compact overview of four downstate Illinois film festivals that so happen to be taking place within the same two-week period. Due to production delays on our end, CUZine #7 will emerge in the midst of this movie madness, not prior as was our intent. Please make sure to look for a pamphlet edition of this preview article with the CUZine logo emblazoned across its front, both at these events and all around the Champaign-Urbana home front.

That said, we still want to give each camp their due so as to encourage our dearest readers to sample the many flavors of independent cinema offered between them. We’ll partly achieve this goal by presenting here on C-U Blogfidential the full conversations conducted with festival representatives for our print piece, including a bonus chat with Art Theater Co-op general manager Austin McCann about his venue’s 100th anniversary celebration. CUBlog will highlight the events in the order they kick off, sensibly enough!

First out of the film gate is the fourth Freeky Creek Short Film Festival, a creation of Sleepy Creek Vineyards co-founder Joe Taylor who is aided by local movie acting machine Bill Kephart of HOUSE OF THADDEUS and HEARTSHOT fame. It begins tonight, Thursday, October 31, at 7 p.m., with the program repeating Friday, November 1, and Saturday, November 2, both starting at 8 p.m. Ticket prices are $10 on Friday and Saturday, marked up to $12 on opening night due to special attractions, including an impressive “Freeky Cake” designed by Eric Woller of MeMe’s Treat Boutique in St. Joseph. The evening will consist of two or three film blocks, hosted by Kephart in horrifically outré get-ups, after which the audience will vote for their favorite entries in various “Best” categories.

Let’s find out what Taylor had to say about this year’s Freeky Creek Short Film Festival out at the vineyard in Fairmount, a cozy rural community just south of Oakwood and a few scant miles from Danville. Seating is limited and the festival may be sold out as of this writing; call (217) 733-0330 to confirm!

Read on, Duderino MacDuff…

Read the rest of this entry »

This past Sunday, August 18, a full house greeted the Danville-based feature film production HOUSE OF THADDEUS with keen attention and overall acclaim in its Champaign premiere. Later tonight, Tuesday, August 20, 7 p.m., at Shatterglass Studios, 309 S. Neil St., Champaign, the Champaign Movie Makers crew will sit down with core contributors to the psychological drama – including director/cowriter Mike Boedicker, cowriter/lead actor Bill Kephart, and lead actress Joi Hoffsommer, we presume – and discuss the two-year-long process which resulted in the piece screened at the Art Theater Co-op over the weekend. Join the CMM audience to share your THADDEUS thoughts and questions while they’re fresh in your mind! As always, announcements will precede and mingling follow the talkback, and you never know where the hardiest attendees will wind up afterwards for continued social time.

If you missed the premiere and are hesitant to attend CMM this month because you lack THADDEUS street cred, you do have on-line opportunities to brush up on knowledge beforehand. Apart from Roselawn Productions’ official Web site for the film, you can glean plenty from the News-Gazette and the Commercial-News and WCIA Channel 3 and Smile Politely and Smile Politely Radio as local media continues its collective progress in affording area movie productions prompt attention and press. This is heartening to see. Conversely, what is disappointing is we at C-U Blogfidential did not file a timely THADDEUS preview even though your humble editor viewed a rough cut nearly one full year ago courtesy the filmmakers. (Yes, we’re technically still on break, but this is a milestone … right?) We’ll see what we can conjure for you when Roselawn books additional C-U and Danville shows in the fall.

CUBlog will now rebound by pointing you to the one-off program called “Sci-Fi Disco and Dead Unicorns” playing the Art tomorrow, Wednesday, August 21, 10 p.m., featuring the completed New Art Film Festival ’13 selection HEARTSHOT from Thomas Nicol and Joe Taylor as well as a retooled ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE 1970s series from Chris and Anne Lukeman and Kill Vampire Lincoln Productions. While “1972,” “1973,” and “1977” have already played festivals and conventions as individual shorts, this configuration – bowing at last weekend’s Gen Con gaming extravaganza in Indianapolis – presents the complete story arc as five Webisodes. We’re unclear if the segments simply start and end in different places than before with the new 1970s banner appearing up front or if more extensive post-production has taken place, but we can tell you new scenes involving working schlub-come-robot henchhuman Bud (Matt Fear) have been added. Hustle on down to the Art for all the transistorpunk you can handle!

~ Jason Pankoke

p.s. Go ahead and read about “Sci-Fi Disco and Dead Unicorns” at Smile Politely too…

It’s all about recording the best sound bites for local filmmaking when Champaign Movie Makers congregates tonight, Tuesday, March 19, 7 p.m., at SoDo Theatre, 113 N. Neil St., Champaign! This month’s topic is “BYOG Sound;” CMM invites attendees to bring along their own studio and field equipment to show what they use and tell how they use it. As the event description states, “Sound is an underappreciated yet absolutely critical aspect of modern filmmaking.” Like always, audience members will open the meeting with brief comments about their interests and projects, and then enjoy networking time at the conclusion with a possible trip to a downtown Champaign nightspot in the cards!

While corralling that gear, you might watch or listen to Episode 31 of the Urbana Public Television (UPTV) program, ART NOW!, which first aired in January and covers the state of Champaign Movie Makers! Host Greg Chew talks film shop with CMM director Thomas Nicol, founder Johnny Robinson, and member Bill Kephart in the “green room” of Champaign’s Shatterglass Studios. Since it is the episode prior to the current one focusing on the New Art Film Festival, it is not airing on UPTV although you can stream the entire program through YouTube or this directory on the City of Urbana Web site.

Contact Nicol at ChampaignMovieMakers [at] gmail [dot] com for further details, frequent their Facebook and Ning pages for announcements, and be sure to visit their just-launched YouTube channel loaded with film work created by CMM members!

~ Jason Pankoke

The headline says it all. As does this video:

Posted yesterday for Halloween by the fine purple-fingered folks at Sleepy Creek Films, semi-maybe-official subsidiary of Sleepy Creek Vineyards in Fairmount and brainchild of Joe Taylor, UP THE CREEK Episode 7 combines allusions to a certain hit television show with humorous misdirection courtesy the series’ playfully dysfunctional co-workers. In “The Drinking Dead,” conspiracy-obsessed groundskeeper Major Tom (Mike Trippiedi) and the highly impressionable layabout Rusty (Bill Kephart) believe a zombie invasion is a-comin’ based on radio reports, so they head back to the winery for shelter. Unfortunately, they’re on a collision course with several others including general manager Grant (Mike Boedicker), publicist Veroniqua (Julia Megan Sullivan), and vinter Antonio (Matt Hester)!

Launched in 2011, this homegrown Web series also stars Tim Meyers, Thomas Nicol, and Kayla Johnson and has guest-starred Gary Ambler, Malia Andrus, Leslie Boedicker, Peter Davis, Charlyn Hester, and country singer Steve Poltz. You can find UP THE CREEK videos on Blip.tv for the viewing; we hear they go well with a glass of wine but not dirty bungholes.

Look it up. We’re not joking.

~ Jason Pankoke

Has everyone recovered from last month’s cultural onslaught? We’re still cleaning up the rubble here at the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters, generated as we prepared for the New Art Film Festival, a Time Traveling Cinema, and the still-in-progress C-U Confidential issue 6, on top of which we desperately need to catch our cinematic breath and take care of some overdue life maintenance. This requires us to limit our C-U Blogfidential efforts during the summer.

Still, look for our event Calendar to appear every Friday, around which we’ll introduce random editions of “C-U Biz-en-scène” to summarize developments, run new “Double Life of a Cineaste” columns by Tyler Tharpe, continue our interview series with Mike Trippiedi, post an essay by Bill Kephart about movie acting in the C-U, announce distribution and fun-time plans for CUZine #6, remind you of upcoming TTC madness, and … that’s about it. Maybe we’ll throw in a surprise or two. Maybe guest writers will throw a surprise or two at us. Imagine!

Thanks for sticking by CUBlog, dearest readers, and never forget that we’re the ones who want to be with you. And, you and you and you!

~ Jason Pankoke

After further rummaging through our computer directories and CD-Rs, we’ve finally pulled together our last collection (for now) of local movie visuals that have never before appeared on C-U Blogfidential or in C-U Confidential! Most fall squarely under the “how they did it” category, beginning with a raw close-up of charismatic Jonathan Harden who plays adventurer “Spring Heel Jack” in ONCE UPON A TIME IN 1972 from Kill Vampire Lincoln Productions of Champaign. The green screen behind Harden has since been subbed out for a background plate in the final film.

Nine years ago from right about now, we ran the above photograph in MICRO-FILM 5 to illustrate the low-budget ingenuity used to stage extensive water tower scenes from the tense drama CHARMING BILLY, filmed by Havana, IL, native Wm. R. Pace in and near his hometown in 1999. While actor Michael Hayden is shown approaching a real-life structure in the movie, most scenes involving his character’s shooting spree were accomplished using this partial recreation of the tank and catwalk.

Read the rest of this entry »

Apparently we’re not quite willing to leave well enough alone even though it’s to your benefit, dearest readers! While developing the special full-color insert that will appear in the next issue of C-U Confidential digest, celebrating the 5th anniversary of this very forum, we hit upon the idea of presenting favorite links to our past. We’ve chosen five to fete in the insert, which will debut as a stand-alone freebie exclusively at the Art Theater in downtown Champaign on Friday, April 8, during the next New Art Film Festival. We’ve also selected other items that we’d love to share with you on C-U Blogfidential, starting right now!

For the next six weeks, we will post weekly groupings of five key posts from our first five years and tell you a little bit about why we chose the ones we did. Feel free to click away and read what has gone before; leave Comments below about those stories or your own favorite CUBlog entries. Enjoy!

~ Jason Pankoke

Select C-U Blogfidential Stories, 2006-2011
Part 1 of 6

“Snickers spot pockets $5,000,” 1/22/10 – We’re always happy to see the C-U movie brethren succeed and tickled pink when they do so outside of comfort zones. A small group produced and entered mock Snickers candy bar commercials for a challenge offered by crowd source Web site PopTent.net; they obviously scored big. We shout out to Joe Taylor, Bill Kephart, and crew for digging in!

“Sked for IMC Film Fest available,” 2/6/09 – With the second NAFF on the horizon, we remember how this indie/anarchist film event hosted by the Independent Media Center in Urbana stoked our fire, especially since we had a hand in putting on the show. We shout out to IMCFF originators Nicole Pion and Katy Vizdal, whose passion, instincts, and warmth made collaboration a joy.

“Hef gives money to USC, not UIUC,” 11/20/07 – During a roughly two-year period, many developments simply got our goat for some reason or another; this insubstantial complaint at least gave us a good excuse to rail against our friendly neighborhood U. for not making a substantial attempt to offer film production studies. We shout out to Hugh Hefner for putting his money where his mouth is for art’s sake.

“‘Scary’ reprint is Sven-tastic!” 5/27/07 – More than most, this entry provides a little perspective as to your humble editor’s genre specific sensibilities prior to launching MICRO-FILM and then CUBlog, through which he broadened his tastes a hundredfold. We shout out to inspiration Dennis Druktenis who has been self-publishing Scary Monsters magazine for nearly 20 years in northern Illinois!

“Where art thou, NORMAL LIFE?” 8/11/06 – At times, we still wonder if our name encourages filmmakers and potential readers who reside in nearby cities to gloss over CUBlog, errantly believing it’s not also for their enjoyment and use. We shout out to all the creative media artists beyond Champaign-Urbana giving us continuous reasons to prove otherwise editorially, such as with this early attempt at inclusiveness.

:: Part 2 ::

Trust us, folks. We’ve now seen the future and it won’t look particularly pretty unless, according to the new spots created by Joe Taylor, Bill Kephart, and company, one trusts the Alleyoop.com service to strengthen one’s skills and emerge quite employable from one’s schooling years. As we’ve reported before, Kephart and Taylor have successfully entered videos in corporation sponsored “challenges” on PopTent.net, which awards the top winners with cash purchases of the work and acts as a sort of “clearing house” for marketing concepts the sponsors can use down the line. In this instance, the dynamic duo were invited by PopTent along with several other regulars to submit spots promoting the value of Alleyoop, a product of education giant NCS Pearson geared towards high school students. To wit:

Both videos hinge on a “back from the future” conceit set cannily in that long-standing cornerstone of learning, the library, and we presume these shot in the Danville Public Library since fellow filmmaker Mike Boedicker helped out and appears briefly in the one below. The “boy” version, “Future Shock,” features Brian Coutant as the student and Kehpart as his “gingerfied” older self who materializes to warn him against using Alleyoop lest he want to become legitimately successful versus a happy-go-lucky L.O.S.E.R. The “girl” version, appropriately titled “Future Girl,” stars Sammy Smalley as the student and Cara Maurizi as her, um, highly decorated adult self who appears to encourage Alleyoop tutelage:

As of this writing, “Future Girl” has been chosen as one of five finalists; PopTent and NCS Pearson will presumably announce the two winners shortly. Good luck to everybody!

~ Jason Pankoke

p.s. We trust that Kephart will refrain from bra-burning in protest even if his hysterical L.O.S.E.R. turn didn’t make the cut. That crazy thing probably has a future in C-U filmmaking somewhere…

We’re back with more Images of the Week, indeed! This time our main attraction is REVOLTING, the Danville-made black comedy directed by Mike Boedicker, produced by Mike and Leslie Boedicker, and written by Mike and Brian Wilson. Yesterday’s C-U Biz-en-scène provided current screening and purchase information, although we’ll remind you that the most immediate chance to see the film is later tonight, Friday, August 20, and tomorrow, Saturday, August 21, in the lobby of Danville’s ready-for-a-renaissance Fischer Theatre. To whet your appetite for the 8 p.m. shows, we offer you this electrifying teaser:

Your humble editor has seen prior cuts of the film and can attest to its low budget, high concept goodness. Community theater writer-in-residence Jeffrey, played by Bill Kephart, is talked into drafting a sequel to his most successful play, The Madcap Murderesses, which he loathes to no end. As things progress, the farce’s characters – stubborn murderess Penelope (Julia Megan Sullivan), trusting sister murderess Janice (Leslie Boedicker), and loquacious inspector-turned-lover Frederick (Eric Sizemore) – seemingly materialize in the real world, bent on jeopardizing the completion of the new play as well as the survival of Jeffrey’s sanity. Below you can see the effects of this illogical conundrum in a Johnny Robinson publicity photo:

On occasion, I’ve been known to do a double-take in the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters late at night while digging deep into my own written words. I always find that no one is sitting next to me despite the echoing remnants of voices in the air. I imagine my facial reactions are not too far off from how poor Jeffrey looks above, although you’ll see that he has it far worse than me. I think.

~ Jason Pankoke

[Updated 8/21/10, 5:15 p.m. CST]