C-U Blogfidential

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Although we have at least two days in the next week that are guaranteed to creep us out in Champaign-Urbana and nationwide, let’s concentrate on the first one first and worry about the midterm elections when we get to them. (However, if the thought of braving the presumably testy crowds at the polls on Tuesday, November 6, makes your skin crawl, you can vote early between now and then at select locations.) Since today is Wednesday, October 31, we’re obviously late in providing you with a primer on the shape of screams to come, but that does not mean we’ve run out of time to haunt your souls with The Shape and other ghastly goodies! Embedded below are a handful of relevant videos to amuse you whether or not you hit the Twin Cities tonight for the big Halloween season finale. First is a modern trailer for the theatrical re-release of HALLOWEEN, which will play the Art Theater this evening at 10 p.m. and give fans a convenient point of comparison between John Carpenter’s slasher classic and what former Roger Ebert’s Film Festival guest David Gordon Green and his collaborators achieved with their “alternate timeline” sequel. Despite the recurring (if fictional) setting of Haddonfield, Illinois, we believe a Michael Myers rampage has yet to be filmed in the Land of Lincoln; location photography for the 1978 original took place in southern California. Speaking of our 16th president, the next teaser is for Chris and Anne Lukeman’s endearingly silly THE TRANSIENT, a locally-made horror/buddy movie that introduced the world to one Vampire Abraham Lincoln. Starring Dave Ruthenberg, Blake Stubbs, Michael Krebs, and Vanessa Prokuski, the convention circuit favorite began its undead life 10 years ago this past August when it premiered on the University of Illinois campus. Then, we have a vintage preview for an opus that supposedly takes place across the farm country that surrounds UIUC and the C-U despite its unmistakable Californian mountain ranges, BEGINNING OF THE END, in which Peter Graves and Peggie Castle join the United States Army in warding off a horde of locusts enlarged by radiated crops. (Yay to super-science and Midwest agriculture!) This sci-fi B-film from 1957 is surprisingly hard to find on home video or video-on-demand. Finally, we have the new short subject IRREPARABLE, directed by frequent partners Thomas Nicol and Andrew Gleason and featuring Cara Maurizi and Eric Beckley as parents grieving the loss of their infant child who inadvertently discover a way to reclaim fragments of their joy with unspeakable consequence. This C-U production has played several festivals and is eliciting a good amount of response from viewers about its gut-wrenching effectiveness. Happy Halloween!

~ Jason Pankoke

p.s. Fellow former “Ebertfest” guest John Sayles lends his thoughts on BEGINNING OF THE END to an episode of “Trailers from Hell,” a fan-favorite series co-founded by his New World Pictures cohort, Joe Dante.

p.s.2 Ebertfest 21 passes go on sale tomorrow, Thursday, November 1, at the Virginia Theatre. This has been a public service announcement du C-U.

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Halloween from CineLife Video Showcase on Vimeo.

Irreparable from Thomas Nicol on Vimeo.

Pimpbots breaking in their boogie shoes, because Friday! You’re welcome:

Since that pretty much spoke for itself, we probably should deliver a witticism or two to justify the inclusion of Bruce and Stumpy in today’s “Images of the Week” entry besides their sheer lo-fi awesomeness…

As of yesterday, Thursday, March 20, the kooky creatives behind Kill Vampire Lincoln Productions of Champaign have finally completed the on-line release of their “transistorpunk” opus, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE 1970s, as a seven-part Web series plus bonus larks such as the above. Anne and Chris Lukeman of Kill Vampire Lincoln have expressed interest in continuing the adventures of Spring Heeled Jack (Jonathan Harden), Susan (Maggie Gottlieb), Sam (Thomas Nicol), and Janet (Stephanie Swearingen) but no word yet on who else would return, including the Man on Roof (Peter Davis) hiding atop The Disco Pit or ill-fated Bud (Matt Fear) who transformed from restaurant manager to robo-lobotomized henchman. We’d gather anything cybernetic and Seventies-appropriate would be fair game to reemerge and pester our heroes unless the next timeline traverses the Eighties and all that concept implies. Be sure to visit their YouTube channel to watch the full episodes or this Web site for further details.

We’d like to point out the major music cuts featured in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE 1970s are original pieces composed by local musicians. Those of you who’ve already played the robot video probably realized after about the first two seconds their “King Kong” song is not your parents’ “King Kong Song” as performed by ABBA in the real-life Seventies. Michael “Guido” Esteves and Andy Moreillon wrote the tune, with the latter providing vocals and backed by Estevez, James Jones, Joe Funderburk, and Rory Grennan. On the other hand, we also share the series trailer featuring an exciting instrumental theme by composer Eric Watkins of Decatur.

~ Jason Pankoke

p.s. Don’t let the early IOW fool you. We have two more stories regarding Saturday film culture in Champaign-Urbana before we’re wrapped for the week!

We just received word from our friends at Kill Vampire Lincoln Productions that they are in search of all-around help this weekend when they shoot a big discotheque scene for the final installment of their “sci-fi Seventies” trilogy, ONCE UPON A TIME IN 1977. Returning leads Jonathan Harden, Maggie Gottlieb, Thomas Nicol, and Stephanie Swearingen will square off against “pimpbots” and other assorted malcontents under the watchful eye of creators Chris and Anne Lukeman.

Here is the pitch courtesy of Anne:

“Local independent film ONCE UPON A TIME IN 1977 is looking for additional extras and crew for a disco scene this weekend. The film is a science fiction period piece and the scenes will take place near [the University of Illinois] campus in the old White Horse [Inn] building.

“Great experience and a fun set. Meals and film credit will be provided. We also have crew openings for production assistants, a 2nd assistant director, assistant camera operators, set photographer, grips, and puppeteers.

“Extras needed 10 a.m.-6 p.m. both Saturday [October 6] and Sunday [October 7]. Even if you can only come for part of the shoot, preferably in four-hour chunks, let us know! Please bring some vaguely 1970s disco clothes if you have them; we will have some costuming on set but more is always better.

“For more information about the project, please e-mail chrislukeman [at] gmail [dot] com.”

At this point, we’ll presume some of the roles behind the camera have been filled, but indie projects can never have too many extras to fill their sets. Feel free to hit them up and offer your services! More information about the first short, ONCE UPON A TIME IN 1972, can be found on Facebook and you can watch its trailer below; the middle episode, ONCE UPON A TIME IN 1973, has yet to appear on-line.

~ Jason Pankoke

Oh, dearest readers, how hard it is sometimes to restore the steady flow of C-U Blogfidential content after being off task for a week or more! We thereby adorn this lovely Monday morning not with the overdue C-U Biz-en-scène we owe you, nor the New Art Film Festival submission details we know you crave, but a shout-out we intended to post last Friday as our “Image of the Week.” Since IOW will come ‘round in a few days to illustrate another topic, we’ll let this item stand on its own.

CUBlog friends Chris and Anne Lukeman, founders of commercial video firm Railsplitter Media and B-movie outlet Kill Vampire Lincoln Productions, have made the cover of a local publication! We’re a bit sad that it’s not our own but we can hardly fault Central Illinois Business for picturing our preppy Illini Film & Video alums on their February issue. A subsidiary title of the News-Gazette, CIB comes out monthly and caters to business professionals in the Champaign-Urbana area. One can find copies at select N-G news racks or access CIB online; go here to read editor Jodi Heckel’s profile of the duo behind THE TRANSIENT and ONCE UPON A TIME IN 1972 and 1973.

We hope to score autographed copies in the near future for our library in the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters, by the way. Just sayin’, wink wink nudge nudge.

~ Jason Pankoke

p.s. Stop by CUBlog this afternoon for NAFFtacular news!

“C-U Biz-en-scène” appears every Thursday/Friday on C-U Blogfidential to give our readers a succinct snapshot of the cinema activity in and near Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA. Please support the artists and their work, attend screenings and events, and otherwise become active in our esoteric little world!

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MFHQ & YOU:
A Non-PC Vista Enhances Our Wide, Widescreen World

It seems the longer we cover our cinematic heritage, the more we value taking breaks from the 16×9 confines of said heritage and paying closer attention to the real world surrounding them. To wit, your humble editor stocked up on his non C-U viewing this past week while visiting with the Family JaPan – GNOMEO & JULIET (cute!), KICK-ASS (entertaining, if violent!), DEAD SNOW (bloody cheeky and loving it!), THE MATRIX (yes, long long overdue!) – although it was the massive formations along the Illinois River within Starved Rock State Park of Utica which left the grandest impressions upon him by far. No high-definition composition can beat the humbling experience of scaling stairs by the hundreds to witness a green-brown valley accented by withering clouds and skittering birds opening up before him. It is this kind of tangible experience, blocking out our “fast paced society” and allowing one to appreciate the majestic details of planet Earth, which can fuel the sensibilities of artists who will instill what they see and feel within their work. After all, honest experience is what ultimately forms our electronic expression. Speaking of such activity:

• Brett Hays of Shatterglass Studios in Champaign tells CUBlog he has accepted a production manager role on a low-budget political comedy titled THE DRUNK that is set to shoot in Terre Haute, IN, from mid-July to mid-August. Depicting the misadventures encountered by the fictional grandson of real-life labor leader and presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926), THE DRUNK will be produced and directed by Terre Haute natives Paul Fleschner and William Tanoos. Chicago cinematographer Peter Biagi and Baton Rouge, LA-based assistant director Anthony Cabral, who both worked on locally filmed indie LEADING LADIES in 2009, have signed on; casting is underway in Chicago and Los Angeles to fill primary roles, although Tanoos and Fleschner will play the grandson and his best friend/attorney, respectively. Hays will be hiring production assistants (PAs) shortly, so contact brett [at] shatterglassstudios [dot] com if interested;
• Ryan Mitchelle of Walkaway Entertainment in Rochester will premiere his new full-length production PARANOIA in Theatre III of Springfield‘s Hoogland Center for the Arts this Saturday, June 18, starting at 8 p.m. Although Walkaway just released the movie on DVD – it features separate cast and filmmaker commentaries, a behind-the-scenes segment, a blooper reel, and a trailer – the Hoogland presentation will be the public debut for the psychological thriller. Springfield B-movie blogger Brad Jones wrote the script and plays the lead alongside Jillian Zurawski, Brian Irving, Brian Lewis, and Jake Norvell. Mitchelle, who earned a degree at Columbia College-Chicago and worked in Hollywood before returning to his native Illinois, also collaborated with Jones on the feature CHEAP and Webisode series, THE HOOKER WITH A HEART OF GOLD;
• Chris Lukeman of Railsplitter Media in Champaign needs “neat men’s ‘70s clothing” of the summer short, Polo shirt, and suit coat varieties, as well as a prop gun reflecting World War II or Vietnam era weaponry, for a short film shoot beginning next week. (We already caught a Lukeman associate’s reference to something called “’73,” so we’ll let your imaginations run wild as to which recent lark this new project might be related.) Hit up Lukeman at chrislukeman [at] gmail [dot] com or (217) 637-0191 if you can abide with some threads or faux arms;
• Thomas Nicol of Tangeant Films in Urbana has three nightly performances left with his brother Galen of the play Stones in His Pockets this Friday, June 17, through Sunday, June 19, at Sleepy Creek Vineyards in Fairmount. While a bit off the path of our (un)usual coverage, the book by Marie Jones involves an American movie crew invading a small Irish village and stoking the fires of unrealistic dreams. We include Stones this week as an example of how the many C-U talents stretch their reach when the mood strikes them;
• Brian Dolinar of the Independent Media Center in Urbana confirmed this week for CUBlog the IMC Film Festival, which first took place in February 2009 and 2010, will return in mid-September after being awarded a cash grant by the City of Urbana Arts Program. IMCFF fans can discuss with Dolinar via briandolinar [at] gmail [dot] com about volunteer opportunities;
• Finally, our friend Laura Zinger returns to the neighborhood once again to accompany her inspirational documentary PROCEED AND BE BOLD!, which will show once on Saturday, June 18, 5:15 p.m., during the Art Theater’s newest Documentary Film Festival, for which you can find the entire schedule listed below! Highlights include the new Morgan Spurlock film, THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD, the prolific Werner Herzog’s maiden 3-D excursion (albeit in 2-D at the Art) CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, the return of Brazil street art exposé WASTE LAND, and the long-awaited C-U big-screen debut of ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL, a heartfelt rock doc featuring a near-forgotten Eighties hair metal band and the founders’ stubborn fight to earn it long overdue recognition.

Believe it or not, we have at least one more upcoming feature film to tell you about that will be photographed in our immediate region. Look for the artful reveal in an upcoming CUBiz column, along with a steady trickle of additional news that you simply can’t afford to miss!

Read the rest of this entry »

We hope everyone is doing well as we head into The Annual Week When All Movie Heck Breaks Loose in Champaign-Urbana™! To augment your enjoyment of cinematic stimulation in the C-U, we have two groupings left to share of five key posts from the first five years of C-U Blogfidential’s existence. We’ll even tell you a little bit about why we chose the ones we did! Feel free to thumb through and read what has gone before; leave Comments below about those stories or your own favorite CUBlog entries.

~ Jason Pankoke

Select C-U Blogfidential Stories, 2006-2011
Part 5 of 6

“Flix houses nixed in Normal,” 12/13/09 – Another instance where out-of-reach circumstance causes the hairs on our necks to bristle a bit, we can’t help but feel for employees every time a movie theater goes down for the count, no matter how iconic or ignominious a space. We shout out to the owners of operational silver screens nationwide who are battling market forces to keep their front doors open.

“‘Knife’ #2: ALL WE HAD and more,” 9/23/09 – Bylines not bearing your editor’s name are a rarity on CUBlog, yet we’re humble enough to realize contributors’ words can add great variety to our coverage when it’s available. Therefore, we shout out to Michelle Elizabeth Kaffko for being the first to give it a serialized shot with her “A Knife in a Gun Fight” Chicago column. Encore, encore!

“View a Quantum of Awesomeness,” 12/8/2008 – The general public inherently understands how touching and personable the moving image can be; no subset understands this better than the media makers themselves. We shout out to hopelessly creative romantics like Chris Lukeman (at the link below) and Don Ferguson (right here) for daring to show hearts upon sleeves for all to see!

“APE screams WEREWOLF Oct. 13,” 10/13/08 – Brainsmart Productions has this strange aura that triggers an otherwise dormant sliver of your humble editor’s personality, transforming his whole being into something inexplicably weird. Or, maybe this shift can be blamed on the PBR and Old Style he tends to drink when Jason Butler is in town. We shout out “to all our friends!”

“Q&A du C-U: Eleanore Stasheff,” 1/17/07 – We’ll reiterate from Part 3 that we hold dear all our full-length interviews, although this one with C-U native “Miss Yibble” takes the cake for highest concentration of sugar, spice, slugs, snails, and sheer irreverence. We shout out to all champions of genre and the low-brow who make it worth their viewers’ while to tag along simply to have fun.

:: Part 4 | Part 6 ::

“C-U Biz-en-scène” appears every Thursday/Friday on C-U Blogfidential to give our readers a succinct snapshot of the cinema activity in and near Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA. Please support the artists and their work, attend screenings and events, and otherwise become active in our esoteric little world!

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MFHQ & YOU:
Think Outside Our Box, Please!

We’ve decided there’s no time better than the present to announce a pair of consolidations that we’ll enact here at the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters. First, we plan on letting go of our long-time post office box 45; please jot down and use the following as the primary mailing address to reach our lil’ ol’ pseudo-empire: Jason Pankoke, Editor, MICRO-FILM, 401 N. Prairie, Suite 3D, Champaign, IL, 61820. Second, we will merge the MICRO-FILM and C-U Confidential Mailing Lists within the next year; MF fans should make a mental note that the singular e-newsletter will most likely be C-U branded but certainly incorporate MF news when pertinent. Until then? Carry on, MacDuff.

EXHIBITION

Possibly the most Halloween ready local-ish movie of current vintage (that doesn’t involve lycanthropy, of course) is the 72-minute isolation thriller, FARM, which made its debut in Chicago last month and will play again tomorrow, Friday, October 29, Midnight, at the Hi-Pointe Theatre in St. Louis. Fortunes will hopefully turn soon and allow for FARM to freak the C-U but until then, the curious can check out a previous short called DISPOSABLE by the film’s editor and University of Illinois alumnus/employee, Andrew Gleason, during this weekend’s Freeky Creek Short Film Festival in Oakwood. [It has no relation to the feature-length DISPOSABLE produced in Champaign County by Dreamscape Cinema except that both involve muuuuhr-der. – ed.] C-U Blogfidential received some information and set photos from Gleason about FARM, of which we’ll share a bit of the former right now and a touch of the latter tomorrow as our Images of the Week.

FARM co-directors and producers Andrew M. Jackson and Hank Bausch took off for southern California not long after graduating from film school at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale in 2008, hoping to wedge that proverbial foot in the Hollywood front door. A handful of gigs and two months later, real life dictated that the duo escape from L.A. to regroup in the Midwest and formulate a better plan. Their ultimate solution involved producing an independent feature on their own to prove their mettle out West. After eight months’ worth of pre-production and two near-disastrous hurdles involving the loss of both their original farm location and rental equipment package, the FARM hands finally shot for three weeks in May 2009 in little Ava, Illinois, not far from Carbondale.

Read the rest of this entry »

“C-U Biz-en-scène” appears every Thursday/Friday on C-U Blogfidential to give our readers a succinct snapshot of the cinema activity in and near Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA. Please support the artists and their work, attend screenings and events, and otherwise become active in our esoteric little world!

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MFHQ & YOU:
Pump Fists for the Little Guy

One of our original DIY media friends and MICRO-FILM supporters is Sean Carswell, a California-by-way-of-Florida educator, essayist, novelist, founder of indie imprint Gorsky Press, and major factor in the success of well-written punk culture mag Razorcake, co-founded with Todd Taylor of the late great Flipside. As part of his generosity towards your humble editor, complementary Razorcake has found its way into our hands without fail since the first issue; as part of his support towards all the projects your humble editor stumbles through, MF has always been given a place in Razorcake despite its lack of outward punk rock-ness. Much to our surprise, the just-arrived Razorcake #58 with a Halloween-colored Mark Sultan cover features a short-but-sweet review of C-U Confidential no.4 by Hawai’i musician/activist Steve Hart. In it he says, “I spent a year and a half in Illinois in the early ‘80s and would have loved to have something like this to read – along with the possibility of an indie-film scene in Champaign. I didn’t even know of such an entity.” Glad you enjoyed it, Mr. Hart, and now you know our dirty little secret! As to why this is a surprise, we actually sent along CUZine as a let’s-catch-up gesture addressed to Carswell so, somehow, the little rascal must have found its way onto a review pile. Hmmmm. In fact, since we really haven’t been stumping for reviews in that time-honored ‘zine tradition, this marks the first public CUZine critique (that we know of) in its three-and-a-half year existence. We’re quite elated to see this take place in the pages of Razorcake. Thanks, gang!

EXHIBITION

After the anecdotal mother lode we issued last week, we’re going to mostly stick with the facts this week so we can get this CUBiz posted on time. To begin, our friends at the Illinois International Film Festival announced their film selections on Monday, September 27, which include the feature REVOLTING from Danville and the two-minute stop motion animation IT’S A PENGUINFUL LIFE by University of Illinois graduate student Thomas Nicol. Congratulations to the filmmakers! IIFF relocates from the west suburbs this year and will take place November 5-7 at the Viaduct Theater in Chicago; we’ll list specific dates and times for REVOLTING and PENGUNFUL in our calendar when we have them!

We’ve mentioned how LEADING LADIES has engineered a healthy showing on the festival circuit during the past few months, finally coming home to flaunt the goods in Champaign-Urbana last weekend, and we’re happy to confirm that Team Beahm has plenty more exposure lined up for their low-budget, high-spirited feature in the coming weeks! Of note are three play dates within easy driving distance, the first of which will be Friday, October 8, 7 p.m., at the Normal Theater, 209 North St., Normal, as part of a week featuring gay-themed cinema including STONEWALL UPRISING, HOWL, PATRIK: AGE 1.5, and WERE THE WORLD MINE. Then, LADIES will storm one Midwest metropolis after another when they play the Reeling Film Festival on Thursday, November 11, 9:30 p.m., at the Landmark Century Center Cinema, 2828 N. Clark St., Chicago, and the St. Louis International Film Festival on Saturday, November 20, time and location TBA. You can investigate the additional trajectory of LADIES at this Web page, which will include Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Rochester, NY, and Bologna, Italy.

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Among several interesting tidbits tossed on the table during Tuesday night’s Champaign Movie Makers meeting, C-U Blogfidential learned from THE TRANSIENT director Chris Lukeman that Amazon.com now offers for sale his prior full-length effort, THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS VS. A MUMMY. “Groovy,” said your humble editor, and upon further Internet inspection he discovered that Lukeman landed the retail opportunity with help from a CD/DVD distributor called Sonic Wave International that has roots in Bloomington, Arlington Heights, or Oak Park, IL, depending on where one looks.

A graphics-heavy Web site for Sonic Wave features a product line dominated by rock, metal, rap, and rhythm-and-blues albums, with a tiny DVD selection consisting mostly of hip-hop and Indian (!) music videos and concerts, so the addition of MUMMY to their catalog is curious. Also worth a raise of the eyebrow is the inference that some or all of these releases are “manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media” as is stated on the Amazon page for MUMMY. We’re crossing our fingers that Lukeman could justify signing with Sonic Wave, exposure being the most likely benefit for both the movie and the Illini Film & Video student club.

Of course, convincing consumers to spring for this MUMMY is a different story, so I question Sonic Wave’s decision to jack the price so high – $17.99 on Amazon for a DVD-R? Seriously? – while saddling it with even more questionable cover design. Calling it “design” is actually being too kind. Are you ready to witness the horror?

Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, folks, I’m here to tell you that there are some things in life that are simply more important than the movies. Such as, proposing to the lady that you’ve fallen head over heels for. Or rather, proposing to the lady that you’ve fallen head over heels for at the movies. Um, what I meant was, proposing to the lady that you’ve fallen head over heels for at the movies while in the movie. Sort of. Let’s roll tape on the following “bootleg” which explains it all, shall we?

Thanks to C-U Blogfidential agent “Papa” Paris for pointing this out via his Weblog. And, congratulations to Chris Lukeman and Anne Shivers, two of the nicest UIUC kids I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. May they share a great future together regardless of how transient their creative output happens to be.

~ Jason Pankoke