C-U Blogfidential

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!

8/30: John Oak Dalton (director, SMART HOUSE, ITN Distribution, Beverly Hills, CA)
9/1: Matt Wiley (designer/cartoonist, Matt Wiley Art, Champaign-Urbana, IL)
9/2: Matt Harsh (videographer/multimedia artist, HarshPro, Champaign-Urbana, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

The days are getting shorter, the Calendars are getting longer, and we want to get outside more while it’s pleasant since we need to neaten up around MFHQ Deux. So, this week, we’re going to stress quick hits and direct you to a set of stories published elsewhere that have caught our eye. A few of them are from a while ago and got a bit lost in the latest crunch of Report-ing, but you can still read and glean from them. Keeping up with the C-Uvians often means neatening up our virtual workspace from time to time.

So, dearest readers and gleaners, have you heard the ones about:

Eastern Illinois University announcing their television service is going to drop its association with PBS due to a major loss in federal funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? This is the sort of shortfall that will hamper the American people’s ability to access art, performance, history, and news that is unencumbered by the compromises of commercial networks and politically-leaning avenues, yet it will also force institutions like EIU to find other materials to air as well as methods to afford the education and training they can offer undergraduates in broadcasting and journalism, such as at the WEIU-TV studio.

Veteran film critic and “Ebertfest” associate Michael Phillips revealing he was agreeing to a buyout of his contract at the Chicago Tribune, effectively terminating his role at the newspaper, and declining to be reassigned to another department in the newsroom? Following a similar agreement between the Chicago Sun-Times and the former Roger Ebert television co-host Richard Roeper that took place earlier this year, it leaves the dailies of a major American city without chief movie reviewers for the first time in several decades. Across our nation, the devaluing across media forms of critical voices in the arts is striking.

The News-Gazette reporting in late June that a pair of Danville High School students, David Moore and Simone Modest, were writing and singing a song for a music video being made with other area youth during a “Say It With Music” summer camp, facilitated by Project Success of Vermilion County and taught by instructors and professional filmmakers and music engineers through Her Records, Inc., of Atlanta? The theme of the song and video, stopping violence in the community, had personal meaning for Modest whose cousin, Aniyah Davis, was killed by gunfire in Danville right before they began the camp, which is designed to foster creativity and confidence as well as incorporate concepts in STEM and the arts.

Area businessman George Papametro purchasing and beginning the fix-up process of the former Home Theatre in downtown Rantoul, as written about by the News-Gazette in April, with no intent to restore the space as a cinema due to its deterioration and the fickle state of exhibition? A property owner with several locations as well as owner of AG Electric of Thomasboro, Papametro believed that other kinds of groups or businesses could make due with renting space in the Home once his upgrade work is done and didn’t rule out the possibility of live theater being staged in the location. No online update can be found.

WJBC radio confirming the Normal Police Department was incorporated in a throwaway gag on a recent episode of the Netflix series WEDNESDAY, in which a mock-up photo of an arrested “Thing” is shown? The Town of Normal had known about the cameo and kept it under wraps until the episode aired. A spokesperson surmises the inclusion most likely had to do with using “Normal” as easy wordplay against the altogether ooky world of the Addams Family. We at CUBlog absolutely approve of this move.

News-Gazette columnist Bob Asmussen musing on the potential for showing college sports movies on the UI Memorial Stadium scoreboard, which will get its first real-time workout of the season tonight at 6:30 p.m. when Illinois plays Western Illinois to kick off the football season? Apparently, REMEMBER THE TITANS was enjoyed a couple of weeks ago on the screen and family-friendly outings have been hosted there in recent times with Disney and Marvel favorites. Sure, it’s a plausible idea, weather permitting, and could become the athletic equivalent of the weekly Illini Union movies shown every semester. Rah rah!

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scenes on the Small Screen

The possibilities are circling us now…

CONFIDENTIAL ALMANAC | Dates in Film Culture History

The probabilities are howling all night…

LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Champaign County Historical Museum, Champaign, IL
“Downtown Champaign Historic Theater Tour” (8/30, 1 p.m.) Tickets

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
CAUGHT STEALING, JAWS 50th anniversary (re-release), LOKAH CHAPTER ONE: CHANDRA* (in Malayam with English sub), PARAM SUNDARI* (in Hindi with English sub), THE ROSES, RUN*, SUNDARAKANDA* (in Telugu with English sub), THE TOXIC AVENGER, THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, FREAKIER FRIDAY, HONEY DON’T, LILO & STITCH, NOBODY 2, RELAY*, SUPERMAN, WEAPONS (8/29 on), SHIN GODZILLA ORTHOCHROMATIC (8/31, 6:15 p.m.) (in Japanese with English sub), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (9/1, 7 p.m.), THE CONJURING: LAST RITES, HAMILTON (filmed stage presentation), LIGHT OF THE WORLD (faith animation) (9/4 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
CAUGHT STEALING, JAWS 50th anniversary (re-release), PARAM SUNDARI* (in Hindi with English sub), THE ROSES, RUN*, THE BAD GUYS 2 (animation), THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, FREAKIER FRIDAY, HONEY DON’T, LILO & STITCH, THE NAKED GUN, NE ZHA II* (animation; English dub), NOBODY 2, RELAY, SUPERMAN, WEAPONS (8/29 on), SUNDARAKANDA* (in Telugu with English sub) (8/29, 6:35 p.m.), THE BLIND (8/31, 4 & 7 p.m.; 9/1-9/4, 7 p.m.), MADHARASI (in Tamil or Telugu) (9/4 on) *single screenings daily

@ Pine Lounge, 1st floor, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents MATERIALISTS (8/29-8/30, 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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Read the rest of this entry »

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!

8/23: Shannon Beranek (copy editor, Bachelor Pad Magazine, Champaign, IL)
8/23: Luke Boyce (series co-creator and co-executive producer, REVIVAL, Blue Ice Pictures, Toronto, Canada/Syfy, New York, NY)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

It’s an indie film week through and through at MFHQ Deux and we’re manifesting it on the quick and cheap. Might want to fasten those proverbial buckles … if our sub-Cormanesque budget allows!

The Normal Theater in Normal has a few things to offer in this arena. First is a downstate Illinois premiere that is set for next Tuesday, August 26, of a lo-fi feature called SPLIT PERSONALITIES ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS, created by the Chicago filmmaker Johnny Lange who hails from the B-N. Taking a premise of asking its protagonists to “tell us about your dreams” and going gonzo with it across four “terrifying twisted tales,” SPAD (a cheeky acronym possibly preferred by Lange as it is used in previous coverage, like this curious interview with Hollywood Chicago’s Patrick McDonald) apparently took five years to make, beginning as a shorter project mounted with the Windy City’s Group 312 Films. Other than lucking upon a VHS-as-retrofit-art-object release of this opus, taped over recordings on older cassettes and dropped in myriad locations that are revealed on Lange’s Instagram account, the primary way that one can submit one’s senses to SPAD is publicly like at the Normal, where the event will begin at 8 p.m. and be free entry for all. Several teasers exist on YouTube and we think this one might be closest to expressing what can be found in SPAD, starting with performers Christina Wollerman, Elyse Dawson, and Terry Holt giving it all they’ve got for art’s sake. It’s not normal fare at the Normal and we’re down with it.

Speaking of not normal Normal, tra la, the programmers at the Art Deco single-screen house located in the “Uptown” district adjacent to Illinois State University will turn right around and welcome another indie filmmaker, Addison Binek, to 209 North Street on Saturday, September 6, for a 7 p.m. screening of his lively trash-horror-comedy duo, PSYCHO APE! and PSYCHO APE!! PART II: THE WRATH OF KONG. Produced largely in Binek’s home town of Detroit with asides recorded in New York City and Los Angeles, the movies star Psycho Ape (himself?) who escapes the zoo and goes on a murderous rampage in PART I while being brought to justice in PART II; acting alongside the big link are Kansas Bowling as “Nancy Banana” and Bill Weeden as “Dr. Zoomis.” Not unlike with SPAD, PA! and PA!! II may test the fortitude of some in the audience but, if you’re willing to be adventurous and forgive the rough spots in favor of enjoying the offbeat nature of what’s up on the silver screen, then this colorful counter-programming will hopefully hit a heretofore unknown sweet spot. According to a slightly older interview with The Metropolitan online magazine, Binek reveals the first PA! cost $7,000 and was shot using VHS gear; today, glorious banana-yellow VHS editions of both can be bought from Lunchmeat VHS. Yum!

Much higher-budgeted compared to SPLIT PERSONALITIES and the PSYCHO APEs, yet still modest in comparison to the top-line Hollywood productions of its era, is the grande dame of audience participation cinema, THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, which turns 50 years old. That will put an extra spin on the Normal’s traditional presentation of the 1975 cult classic during their annual Halloween movie marathon, and they are looking for performers to join the Shadow Cast up on stage in October! Mark the casting call dates on your own calendars right now – Saturday, September 6, and Sunday, September 7, with both sessions lasting from 12 to 3 p.m. Visit this Normal event page for more information!

Finally, right after we made rare reference to the Lincoln Square Theatre of Decatur in last week’s Calendar, they hit everyone with a surprise announcement that Heroic Age Studios’ long-in-the-making fantasy-horror flick, TRICK AND TREATS, will finally see the light of day and a cinema projector during a local premiere to he held on Saturday, September 20. We’re not sure how many seats are now in the auditorium of the venue after all the hard restoration work done over the past several years, but it might be smart to plan ahead and purchase those tickets in advance right here; the evening is certainly priced at a premium and is scheduled to incorporate a red carpet walk and mingle starting at 5 p.m., an introduction and premiere of the feature at 7 p.m., and a question-and-answer opportunity at approximately 8:45 p.m. Conceived by the Heroic Age team of Eric Hector (director/writer/co-producer) and Tim Lynn (editor/cinematographer) as the first feature to be made through a fan-funding initiative, Frightful 5000 Films, it was mostly produced on location in Decatur and Macon County as well as on sets at their Heroic Age Art Center complex in neighboring Mt. Zion before the pandemic struck. The premise fleshes out the eighteenth century “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater” ditty and finds a demonic jack-o-lantern, voiced by Malcolm McDowell, wreaking havoc in the present at a biker bar called the Lucky Lady Tavern. You can look up the cast and crew at IMDb, a fair amount of behind-the-scenes material on Facebook, and a revised trailer also on Facebook.

With that, we have the most MICRO-FILM-y thing that we’ve committed to words in a while. Maybe it’s one part dormant reflex, for PSYCHO APE! and SPLIT PERSONALITIES ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS remind us of the kind of out-of-left-field pet projects that we’d receive in our long-gone post office box with little to no warning, mostly in what was the dominant screener format of VHS, as something to be covered or reviewed. Maybe it’s one part flashback, for it’s been 25 years since we visited Heroic Age and discussed with Hector what was going to be the studio’s first stab at an indie feature, JOHNNY VIOLENCE. Maybe it’s beginning to feel a little like Halloween and it hits the spot. Maybe it’s just … MFing wishful thinking. Erg.

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scenes on the Small Screen

Looks as if today’s Images department will be a two-month follow-up to our previous home video cover gallery, which itself is a two-month follow-up to a cover gallery before that, and it all goes to show you the movies of Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond never sit still if the makers behind them have the drive and connections! Without further ado, here is our preview of a few new home videos that can be added to your collections right now. Conversation starters du C-U, they are!

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Last time, our first item was NIGHT OF THE DEAD SORORITY BABES from Acrostar Productions and BayView Entertainment, so we’ll follow suit and kick off our parade with the new one from them, a combo release of ATTACK OF THE CORN ZOMBIES and RETURN OF THE CORN ZOMBIES, which will be available to purchase in the BD-R format as of next Tuesday, August 26! We don’t have it in hand yet so we’re uncertain if the set comes with anything other than the corn flicks themselves, homegrown right here in east central Illinois by the Chicago micro-studio; ATTACK is an outbreak yarn and RETURN a tale of roving survivors in the aftermath. Both ZOMBIES have also been popping up on streaming services like Vudu, Hoopla, Plex, and Fawesome. While there is no word yet about a third entry, the team is busy planning an original fright fest, THE LEGEND OF TINKER HELL starring Acrostar MVP Beth Metcalf and to be the directing debut of actress Lynn Lowry, and gearing up for more PERFECT SOUL filming next month. Oh, did we mention the brand-new CD of Edward Grant’s score for SORORITY from Klaatu Records?

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Also, beginning to ship from OCN Distribution as we speak is Shudder’s late-in-coming Blu-ray release of REVEALER, the neon-soaked end times horror-fantasy filmed throughout Champaign-Urbana on the downlow and during the pandemic by director Luke Boyce (REVIVAL) and the Shatterglass Films/Line Film Co./Paper Street Pictures tandem. Available exclusively on the Vinegar Syndrome website for the moment in both a standard edition, dressed with the familiar Shudder artwork from the 2022 streaming and DVD releases, and a sleeved edition, sporting funky and squirmy artwork by Trevor Henderson, the REVEALER disc finally gives us an HD copy of the battle of wills between a bible-thumper (Shaina Schrooten) and pole dancer (Caito Aase) who must team up to survive a satanic event in Reagan-era Chicago. Extras are legion on this edition, with most of them carried over from the DVD, and they include commentaries, interviews, a documentary, a visual essay, and more.

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As we touched on recently, Peter McDowell’s documentary on the shortened and unusual lifetime of his older brother Jimmy as well as its ripple effect on his family, JIMMY IN SAIGON, has been issued on DVD by Dark Star Pictures as of Tuesday, July 22, and features the “distribution cut” of the film that is to be shown tonight, Friday, August 22, and on Sunday, August 24, at the Chicago Filmmakers headquarters in Chicago. The video includes a handful of insightful bonus materials, such as a director’s commentary by McDowell, deleted and extended scenes from the film, a featurette on the animated passages in the film, and a bonus short subject. JIMMY is partly set in Champaign-Urbana due to the filmmaker’s local ties.

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And finally, we were going to report that a wide-release edition of Chicago filmmaker John Borowski’s comprehensive series, THE JOHN WAYNE GACY MURDERS: LIFE AND DEATH IN CHICAGO, would be issued on Blu-ray and DVD by MVD Visual on Tuesday, September 16, but we just checked and the product page that we first looked at a while ago is gone. (We’ll offer an update after we learn more.) Running eight episodes and about four hours total, GACY MURDERS turns over every rock it can to dissect the crimes, police investigation, and aftermath of the accused murderer and sex offender who masqueraded as a children’s entertainer. Thoughtful histories about individuals like Gacy are valuable and the career of Borowski is a singular experience in unearthing their stories, including his prior works on Albert Fish, H. H. Holmes, and Carl Panzram. You might still be able to purchase his own limited-run BD-Rs of GACY MURDERS or you can seek out the streaming versions at Amazon Prime and YouTube. The Dark History & Horror Con set for November 8-9 at the Orpheum Champaign will be steeped in this milieu.

LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Chicago Filmmakers Firehouse Cinema, Chicago, IL
JIMMY IN SAIGON* screening w/filmmaker Peter McDowell (8/22, 7 p.m.; 8/24, 6 p.m.)

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
HONEY DON’T, NE ZHA II (animation; English dub), RELAY, THE SHADOW’S EDGE* (in Mandarin with English dub), THE BAD GUYS 2* (animation), THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, FREAKIER FRIDAY, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON*, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH*, THE NAKED GUN*, NOBODY 2, SHIN GODZILLA* (in Japanese with English sub), SUPERMAN, WEAPONS (8/22 on), THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN 20th anniversary (8/22, 3 p.m.; 8/25-8/26, 4 p.m.), TRAINWRECK 10th anniversary (8/22-8/23, 6:15 p.m.), Studio Ghibli Fest: PONYO (animé) (8/23, 4 p.m., 8/24, 4 & 7 p.m., 8/27, 7 p.m., English dub; 8/25-8/26, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), CAUGHT STEALING, JAWS 50th anniversary (re-release), THE ROSES, THE TOXIC AVENGER (8/28 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
HONEY DON’T, NE ZHA II (animation; English dub), PARADHA (in Telugu with English sub), PRIMITIVE WAR, RELAY, THE BAD GUYS 2 (animation), COOLIE* (in Tamil with English sub), DEAD TO RIGHTS* (in Mandarin with English and Chinese sub), F1 THE MOVIE, THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, FREAKIER FRIDAY, THE NAKED GUN, NOBODY 2, SKETCH*, SUPERMAN, WAR 2* (in Hindi with English sub), WEAPONS (8/22 on), AMERICANA* (8/22-8/24), KPOP DEMON HUNTERS “sing-a-long” edition (animation) (8/23-8/24), Studio Ghibli Fest: PONYO (animé) (8/23, 2 p.m., 8/24, 4 & 7 p.m., 8/27, 7 p.m., English dub; 8/25-8/26, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (8/23, 2 & 7 p.m.; 8/24, 3 & 7 p.m.), EAST OF WALL* (8/25-8/27), JAWS 50th anniversary (re-release) *single screenings daily

@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents “Welcome Back Film on the Quad” feat. HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (8/24, 9 p.m., free)

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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Read the rest of this entry »

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!

8/15: Chuck Koplinski (movie journalist, The Illinois Times, Springfield, IL)
8/18: Jeff Brandt (owner, Exile on Main Street, Champaign, IL)
8/19: Ken Lee (vice president, Michael Wiese Productions, Studio City, CA)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

What else can we talk about in this week’s Report, fearless readers? Plenty, as it turns out, and we’ll take “Miscellaneous of Interest” for $1,000, Alex … The University of Illinois announced last month the release of a new volume from the University of Illinois Press called The Future of Memory: A History of Lossless Format Standards in the Moving Image Archive by Jimi Jones and Marek Jancovic, in which the authors describe the recent development of several electronic methods for archiving holdings in a high-quality digital form and the struggles in not only settling on a universal standard for library work, but also arriving at viable solutions that are often at odds with accepted practices in the entertainment and broadcast industries. Jones, who recently began working for the University of Illinois Foundation and will teach his final iSchool course this upcoming semester, has a long relationship with UI higher education as a student, instructor, and researcher specializing in asset management and preservation.

Out in the C-U community, the bridge between a growing professional filmmaking scene and other arts disciplines has been strengthening on several fronts from Pens to Lens to Flyover Film Studios and on; a current example is illustrated by this Indiegogo campaign to raise funds and augment the budget for “Golden Meadow,” an upcoming music video that will use scenes set in our region’s rural landscape (including underwater footage!) to augment the song by local artist Jill Greenlee that “encapsulates life’s trials and beauty.” Her vision will be in good hands with the production team of director Sarah Cayce, producer Sarah Sharp, and cinematographer Robert Patrick Stearn, all of them critical players in the Flyover startup and usually present on the sets of nearly all the recent major narrative filming to be done in and adjacent to Champaign County; the drive ends after Labor Day and the video will be created this fall after many months of planning. Greenlee often appears at local gigs and is also a portrait and still life painter.

And on a frustrating note, we’ve seen the regional articles about AMC locations being shut down with practically no notice to their own employees or the communities where they operate and it feels like Danville in 2022 all over again. The Journal Gazette & Times-Courier wrote the AMC Classic Mattoon 10 theater would close its doors after the last shows on Thursday, August 7, and one week later on Thursday, August 14, the same would come to pass at the AMC Classic Pekin 14 per the Peoria Journal-Star, which also noted a third location in Marion had also gone out of business. So much for the first-run industry rebound that apparently had been gathering steam since the waning of the pandemic. Maybe the corporate talking heads and industry analysts spinning every last box-office victory are full of it as the sum total weekly numbers are actually pretty stagnant. Superheroes aren’t quite working like they had been. Sequels to modest hits really aren’t working at all. Original smashes like SINNERS and sleeper hits like WEAPONS are very spread out right now. Disney is, well, Disney. Where does exhibition go from here, really? Novelty popcorn buckets can only carry you so far…

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scenes on the Small Screen

Mr. JaPan actually made progress with picking up the mess in aisle MFHQ and that makes Godzilla jolly…

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Today’s share is pretty self-explanatory and a good instance of an oddball find that is completely related to our delayed show-and-tell of C-U movie ephemera, but also completely outside of that sequence since it’s not something Ye Ed is planning to pick up. Conveniently, this also serves as the first of a few brief notes on the doings at the revived and rockin’ Lincoln Square Theatre in downtown Decatur; organizers have gone all-in on a winning formula for the 109-year-old venue – touring music acts, seemingly half originals and half tributes, but who’s counting? – while rarely dipping a toe in what had been the primary attraction in the mid-20th century, the movies. We’ll discuss that a bit in future Calendars, but for today we’d like to share the following that our rummaging editor found in the dense jungle of eBay way back in April and, lo and behold, is still available today from the reseller “kruhe”:

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Dated February 1960 and described as an Ektachrome slide, despite the fact much of the hue has faded to pink, the image above is one of a few for sale from the merchant that depicts firemen working on this block of Main Street, as certain angles also show a firetruck ladder stretched to the rooftop. Given that it was wintertime when this happened, either Decatur was in a deep freeze and the buildings covered in ice or the fire department had doused the block to put out the fire with so much water or foam that it resulted in a cascading ice effect. Whatever actually happened, the effect is visually striking and, according to local historian and paranormal expert Troy Taylor, the damage suffered by the structures also altered the makeup of the Lincoln Square. It’s unfortunate the name of the photographer is not on the slides, at least what is pictured in the eBay listings, but it leads us to believe they were taken by a bystander and not a member of the press. Maybe the current LST trust can pool together and add this history to their archives.

CONFIDENTIAL ALMANAC | Dates in Film Culture History

10 Years Ago … Sunday, August 16, 2015: That’s Rentertainment in Champaign closes for good at the end of the business day after serving the University of Illinois campus and Champaign-Urbana community for just a little more than thirty years. Remaining stock would be relocated to the Parasol Label Group building on Griggs Street in downtown Urbana and, for a time, made available to walk-in customers in the “Rec Room” wing along with collectibles from Geoff Merritt’s other retired Campustown storefront, Toon Town. As of 2025, Rentertaiment’s DNA is sparse at Parasol, although some items can be found on the floor and others, mostly of the print variety, can be purchased from their eBay account. A little bit of video is also available among a lot of great audio recordings at the Parasol seller account on Discogs.

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LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Esquire Lounge, Champaign, IL
Champaign Movie Makers* meeting + Pens to Lens recap (8/18, 7 p.m.)

@ The Fischer Theatre, Danville, IL
“FischerFest: The Cinematic Legacy of Gene Hackman” featuring: BONNIE & CLYDE (8/16, 11 a.m.), THE FRENCH CONNECTION (8/16, 3 p.m.), UNFORGIVEN (8/16, 7 p.m.), CRIMSON TIDE (8/17, 11 a.m.), “Dessert & Discussion” hosted by Chuck Koplinski and Pamela Powell (8/17, 2 p.m.), and THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (8/17, 4 p.m.) Further details

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
AMERICANA*, COOLIE* (in Tamil with English sub), DEAD TO RIGHTS* (in Mandarin with English and Chinese sub), EAST OF WALL*, JIMMY AND STIGGS*, THE KNIFE*, NOBODY 2, SHIN GODZILLA (in Japanese with English sub), WAR 2* (in Hindi with English sub), WITCHBOARD*, THE BAD GUYS 2 (animation), THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, FREAKIER FRIDAY, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, THE NAKED GUN, SKETCH*, SUPERMAN, WEAPONS (8/15 on), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (8/18, 7 p.m.), NE ZHA II sneak preview (animation) (8/18, 7 p.m.), HONEY DON’T, NE ZHA II (animation; English dub), RELAY (8/21 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
AMERICANA, COOLIE (in Tamil with English sub), DEAD TO RIGHTS (in Mandarin with English and Chinese sub), EAST OF WALL, NOBODY 2, WAR 2 (in Hindi with English sub), THE BAD GUYS 2 (animation), F1 THE MOVIE, THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, FREAKIER FRIDAY, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, THE NAKED GUN, SKETCH, SUPERMAN, WEAPONS (8/15 on), TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 35th anniversary (8/16-8/19, 1 & 7 p.m.; 8/20, 7 p.m.), THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS (8/16, 2 & 7 p.m.; 8/17, 3 & 7 p.m.; 8/20, 7 p.m.), UFC 319: Dricus du Plessis vs. Khamzat Chimaev, more (mixed martial arts) (8/16, 9 p.m., simulcast), NE ZHA II sneak preview (animation) (8/18, 7 p.m., IMAX), “Texas Chain Saw Day” feat. THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974), documentary preview (8/18, 7 p.m.), “RiffTrax Live!” presents TIMECOP (8/19, 7 p.m., simulcast), PRIMITIVE WAR (8/21 on)

@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents “Welcome Back Film on the Quad” feat. HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (8/24, 9 p.m., free)

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
40 North, Champaign Movie Makers, Champaign-Urbana Design Organization, and Champaign Park District present the 2025 Pens to Lens Gala and Award Ceremony* (8/16, 2 p.m. doors and red carpet, 3 p.m. presentation) Information

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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Read the rest of this entry »

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!

8/12: Ann Myrna (producer, RETURN OF THE CORN ZOMBIES, Acrostar Productions, Chicago, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

The hits keep trickling in to the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters, so we’re strategically placing the buckets to capture everything that’s fit to print! This week, we’ll take “Coming soon from the C-U” for $500, Mayim … Keenan Dailey of Visage Entertainment has announced a series of showcases for his completed debut feature, BRIM, which was filmed in Champaign County and debuted here as part of the inaugural Savoy Lumierè in May; the next dates to see the stylistic drama about Black inequality and resilience in 20th century America will be Sunday, August 17, during the Black August Film Festival in Pasadena, CA, and again on Sunday, August 31, during the Urban Film Festival in Miami, FL, and Friday, September 15, at the Lake County Film Festival in Grayslake, IL. More information can be found on the Visage website and an in-depth conversation between BRIM co-creators Trude Namara and Dailey with the hosts of The Filmographers Podcast, Keir Graff and Michael Moreci, can be listened to on YouTube.

Also revealing initial bookings for their newest work is filmmaker Kimberly Conner, who has finished the twisty procedural thriller LIPSTICK and is doing-it-herself in introducing it to audiences; regional dates include its debut on Wednesday, October 1, 7 p.m., at the Classic Cinemas Lake Theatre XQ in Oak Park and a showing on Saturday, October 25, 7 p.m., at Brookens Auditorium on the University of Illinois campus in Springfield, along with events in Los Angeles (October 10), Dallas (October 18), and Brooklyn, New York (October 31). Recently on Facebook, Conner shared that July 31 marked the twentieth anniversary of her production company, Predestined Arts & Entertainment of Springfield, a remarkable feat for the fiercely driven creator who has consistently driven home the worth of women in the industry with her self-promotion and featured Black talent front and center as well as behind the camera in all her work. LIPSTICK, which stars Camille Winbush, was shot in southern California by the Champaign native.

In another screening announcement, this one from fellow Champaign native and LA-friendly producer Peter McDowell, the acclaimed documentary about the mysteries coloring the life and death of his 24-year-old brother, JIMMY IN SAIGON, will receive its first official Chicago screenings at the Chicago Filmmakers Firehouse Cinema on Friday, August 22, 7 p.m., and Sunday, August 24, 6 p.m., with McDowell in attendance to discuss the project and its backstory, involving themes such as generational conflict and LGBTQ+ acceptance. Dark Star Pictures has released JIMMY on multiple streaming platforms and home media in 2025 after it enjoyed a lengthy and awards-heavy festival run.

Finally, Champaign-Urbana transplant Vijay M Rajan, the writer/director behind the unorthodox serial killer chamber drama DARK SOUL RIVER, has unveiled a teaser trailer for the film today, Friday, August 8; the co-production between Kartography Films and Siren Cinema is one of the first independent narrative features to take advantage of Champaign County and the facilities at Flyover Film Studios in Rantoul for almost all its primary filming needs. Rajan hopes to have RIVER “in front of audiences by 2026,” as pledged on his Facebook account, and seems absolutely pleased with how the project has been progressing; in it, Saarathi (Kharti Bargav), a practicing Muslim from India and the brother of a woman victimized by a prolific murderer named Nathaniel Ambrose (Jonathan Thompson), agrees to sit down with the accused at an American prison in the hopes of securing a confession and the hidden location of the bodies before the latter’s execution the following day. Michelle Girolami and Leigha Sinnott also star.

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
FREAKIER FRIDAY, SKETCH, WEAPONS, THE BAD GUYS 2 (animation), F1 THE MOVIE*, THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER*, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, THE NAKED GUN, SMURFS* (animation), SUPERMAN, TOGETHER (8/8 on), Studio Ghibli Fest: GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (animé) (8/10, 4 & 7 p.m., 8/11-8/12, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (8/11, 7 p.m.), SHIN GODZILLA (in Japanese with English sub) (8/13 on), WAR 2 (in Hindi with English sub) (8/13 on), NOBODY 2 (8/14 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
FREAKIER FRIDAY, MAHAVATAR NARSIMHA* (animation) (in Hindi with English sub), SKETCH, STRANGE HARVEST, WEAPONS, THE BAD GUYS 2 (animation), F1 THE MOVIE, THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, SUPERMAN THE NAKED GUN, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, SUPERMAN, TOGETHER (8/8 on), THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RINGS (8/9, 2 & 7 p.m.; 8/10, 3 & 7 p.m.; 8/13, 7 p.m.), Studio Ghibli Fest: GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (animé) (8/10, 4 & 7 p.m., 8/11-8/12, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), The Metropolitan Opera Encore: Rigoletto (8/3, 1 & 6:30 p.m., recorded), “RiffTrax Live!” presents TIMECOP (8/14, 7 p.m., simulcast), NOBODY 2 (8/14 on) *single screenings daily

@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents “Summer Films on the Quad” feat. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING (8/14, 9 p.m., free)

@ Prairie Farm/Centennial Park, Champaign, IL
Champaign Park District presents “Moo-vie Nights at Prairie Farm” feat. CHARLOTTE’S WEB (2006)
(8/8, 8 p.m., free)

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
The News-Gazette Film Series and Central Illinois Young Farmers Coalition present THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM special event (8/9, 2 p.m. screening, 3-5 p.m. Park Avenue farmer’s market)

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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Read the rest of this entry »

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!

8/1: Cara Maurizi (actress, SWEET DREAMING, Consumer Grade Film Co., Chicago, IL + actress, ESSENCE, Refractive Error Media, Champaign, IL)
8/1: Jed Brian (writer, 4TH OF JULY, ACM Official Studios, Los Angeles, CA)
8/2: Jeff Kacmarynski (writer/director, ESSENCE, Refractive Error Media, Champaign, IL)
8/3: Laura Richter (producer, FINAL DAYS: TALES FROM THE END TIMES, Horror-Fix Feature Films, Springfield, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Hells bells, we did not forecast all that movie news trickling in to MFHQ Deux with little to no warning! Guess we’re needing to dam up the flow for the short term and partition out the scoops in order to cover our ground! We’ll take “Production and Producers” for $300 and the win, Ken … According to the Jacksonville Journal-Courier this week, Subterranean Sound and Vision has raised enough funding through a Kickstarter campaign to soon begin production on a self-described “zombie Western” called HOLLER. The directing team of Devin Smock and Samuel David plan to shoot the feature in the Peoria and Jacksonville areas and take advantage of “big sky” qualities in the Illinois prairie as they depict the survival struggles of Ray Holley (Rick Jensen) and Sydney (Mia Katz), who are navigating a post-apocalyptic world; Joe Rosing, Luis Angel Ventura, Pamela Devon Lovell, and Mercedes DeSilva will also appear in the adventure with camerawork by Kal Kociss and sound work by Lee Hurt.

Also this week, the news bureau of Illinois State University ran a joint interview with business partners David Midell and Enrico Natale, who attended the Wonsook Kim School of Fine Arts in the early 2000s; they eventually founded Redbird Entertainment of Los Angeles, through which they have made a handful of feature films so far including the Al Pacino-Dan Stevens thriller THE RITUAL, which played in theaters nationwide a few weeks ago through XYZ Films, and University of Illinois alumnus Christpher Folkens’ latest, CATALYST, released earlier this year on multiple digital platforms by 4Digital Media.

And, looking mere minutes into the immediate future, writer/director Paul A. Brooks and Into the Night Motion Pictures of Normal have teased that filming on BRING BACK MY BABY, a love story of loss and spectral encounters, would begin tomorrow, Saturday, August 2, in the Los Angeles area. Their second feature, following HUNTING FOR THE HAG from last year, will star Fawn Winters, Emma Broz, Joey Greer, Lesley Powers, and low-budget veteran Joe Estevez; breaking news on both projects and even more will be forthcoming from Into the Night on Instagram and Facebook as well as here at CUBlog. Oh, baby!

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
THE BAD GUYS 2 (animation), THE NAKED GUN, SHE RIDES SHOTGUN, THALAVIAN THALAIVII (in Tamil with English sub), TOGETHER, F1 THE MOVIE*, THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, OH HI!, SMURFS (animation), SUPERMAN (8/1 on), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (8/4, 7 p.m.), SKETCH (8/4 on), FREAKIER FRIDAY, WEAPONS (8/7 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
THE BAD GUYS 2 (animation), THE NAKED GUN, TOGETHER, EDDINGTON, ELIO (animation), F1 THE MOVIE, THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, THE HOME, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, LILO & STITCH, SMURFS (animation), SUPERMAN (8/1 on), THE BLUES BROTHERS (8/3, 3 & 7 p.m.; 8/6, 7 p.m.), “‘Critical Role’ Live” (role-playing game competition) (8/5, 7 p.m., simulcast from Indianapolis, Indiana), WHAT IF… 15th anniversary (faith film) (8/5, 8/7, 7 p.m.), SKETCH (8/5 on), The Metropolitan Opera Encore: Lucia di Lammermoor (8/6, 1 & 6:30 p.m., recorded), FREAKIER FRIDAY, WEAPONS (8/7 on)

@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents “Summer Films on the Quad” feat. LILO & STITCH (8/7, 9 p.m., free)

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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Read the rest of this entry »

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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FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

This week, we need to retroactively cross eyes, dot tees, and finish with a few bits of business so we can run with a lean Calendar for two or three weeks before the fall school semesters start up in Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond. That said, today’s Report will counterbalance all our recent fawning over physical media by updating you on a few local/ish films that have made the jump to streaming recently. First, to revise a couple of details in regards to our friends at Acrostar Productions, the upcoming sequel RETURN OF THE CORN ZOMBIES will be available very soon on services such as Vudo, Xumo, Plex, and Fawesome according to the film’s director and writer, Steve Herman, and indeed a drive to raise finishing funds for their new production, PERFECT SOUL, has been launched per producer Ann Myrna. Then, Ash Hamilton of Horror-Fix Feature Films announced on July 7 that his anthology, FINAL DAYS: TALES FROM THE END TIMES, had appeared on Tubi in addition to its other online homes like Fawesome, Amazon Prime, and several YouTube channels including Kings of Horror and FilmIsNow Horror Movies. Also, actor and Confidential pal Steve Christopher shared an update last week about the Aaron Warr-directed period piece, AMERICAN CRIMINALS, via an article published by WCBU radio; the retelling of the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case will be given a red-carpet premiere in Peoria, where much of it was filmed, on Saturday, August 2, and also debut on Apple TV, UMAXX, and Prime the same day. Finally, filmmaker Peter McDowell revealed in the spring that his documentary, JIMMY IN SAIGON, would be available on Amazon Video, Prime, and Apple TV as of Tuesday, May 13. All of the above were created in part or whole in downstate Illinois and none to our knowledge, apart from CORN ZOMBIES 2 if it follows the path of Acrostar’s NIGHT OF THE DEAD SORORITY BABES, are guaranteed a home video release. Take advantage of them being at your fingertips, then, dearest viewers!

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scenes on the Small Screen

Looks like we’re also starting an unofficial “Get Your Desktop Cleaned Up, Mr. JaPan” series of quick pix as Images of the Week. Our humble editor is prone to copying this, that, and the other from the internet and keeping them for future use or reference. The problem is, it often takes a while for the files to make their way into directories for safety. (The cue to get on the stick is usually when Godzilla is almost completely covered, see below.) However, instead of tucking everything away and waiting for the right editorial at the right time to trot these digital goodies back out for our dearest readers, Ye Ed would like to share a few of his newest finds with the class before they go into hibernation on his laptop. Besides, if you’ve not yet discovered that he can put two-and-two together like no one else when it comes to the film history of the C-U, the proof will be in this pudding. So, what is he serving up for the week, anyway…

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We apparently forgot a detail in last week’s Images department, where we talked a bit more about the products of Saturn’s Core Audio & Video. In between the releases of DOGS IN QUICKSAND last Christmas and TWISTED ISSUES this month, the specialty label put out a nice package for YOU ARE ALONE, a drama made by the fringe culture documentary maker Gorman Bechard and first shown in 2005 at various festivals. (As CUBlog regulars learned a few years ago, Bechard is one-half of the core team with Fred Uhter who did WHERE ARE YOU NOW, JAY BENNETT?, the movie about the late local musician.) A copy of YOU ARE ALONE resides in the filmy confines of the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters and, although Ye Ed has yet to dive into its story of a pair of forlorn individuals, played by Jessica Bohl and Richard Brundage, who have a fateful encounter in forlorn lodging, played (at least in exteriors) by the former Duncan Hotel in New Haven, Connecticut, he did look up a vintage trailer for the film on YouTube as well as an IMDb entry where he could not help but notice this visual:

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The façade pictured is, of course, not of the Exile on Main Street record store that many of us are more than familiar with. The Exile on Main Street record store appearing in YOU ARE ALONE is located in Branford, just down I-95 from New Haven, and has been serving their community and music fans since 1993. You can visit them remotely through Facebook. You can also visit Jeff Brandt’s mainstay in Champaign seven days a week, in person or online. Learn more about YOU ARE ALONE and other Saturn’s Core titles up on the Vinegar Syndrome website; recent offerings have included a second volume of SOV madness from Chicagoland’s own “Ed Wood of the 21st Century,” David “the Rock” Nelson, a two-film collection presenting the live performance prowess of Lydia Lunch, and a pair of underground horror riots, BONE SICKNESS from director Brian Paulin (AT DAWN THEY SLEEP) and ROT from director and make-up effects guru Marcus Koch (100 TEARS). Support all the arts, folks!

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NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, THE HOME*, HOUSE ON EDEN, OH HI!, EDDINGTON*, F1 THE MOVIE, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, SMURFS (animation), SUPERMAN (7/25 on), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (7/28, 7 p.m.), TOGETHER (7/29 on), THE BAD GUYS 2 (animation), THE NAKED GUN (7/31 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, THE HOME, OH HI!, 28 YEARS LATER, EDDINGTON, ELIO (animation), F1 THE MOVIE, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, LILO & STITCH, SMURFS (animation), SUPERMAN (7/25 on), ICK (7/27, 4 p.m.; 7/28-7/29, 7 p.m.), MAMMA MIA! (7/27, 3 & 7 p.m.; 7/30, 7 p.m.), TOGETHER (7/29 on), The Metropolitan Opera Encore: Roméo et Juliette (7/30, 1 & 6:30 p.m., recorded), NOTHING BUT A WINNER (sports documentary) (7/31, 7 p.m.), THE BAD GUYS 2 (animation), THE NAKED GUN (7/31 on)

@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents “Summer Films on the Quad” feat. THUNDERBOLTS* (7/31, 9 p.m., free)

@ Prairie Farm/Centennial Park, Champaign, IL
Champaign Park District presents “Moo-vie Nights at Prairie Farm” feat. HOME ON THE RANGE (animation) (7/25, 8 p.m., free)

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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Read the rest of this entry »

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!

7/17: Don “Hotdog” Waller (proprietor, Don’s Underwater Drive-in & Bed-in Breakfast, Redacted, IL)
7/17: Derek Huey (cinematographer, GRINNERS, Refinery Films LLC, Mount Carroll, IL)
7/19: Don May, Jr. (founder/restoration, Synapse Films, Southfield, MI)
7/21: Shawnee E. Tefteller (owner, Shawnee Studios Model & Talent Management/Casting, Mount Olive, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

This week, we’re going to let the (motion) pictures do the talking as the Report, Images, and Almanac departments take their turns in dropping a thought or two about the role of physical media in the current swing of things. Under this header, we’ll remind you that Chicago Filmmakers continues to host their monthly screenings of vintage materials from the catalog of the specialty distributor, Picture Start, which went defunct in the Windy City in the mid-Nineties but was launched and operated for some time before that in Champaign by the late Ron Epple. A recent email blast from CF promotes the upcoming schedule and displays the most overt visual to date, which makes the connection absolutely clear. We hope the non-profit organization and “Picture ReStart” curator Ben Creech have entertained a healthy turnout during the first half of 2025 and continue to do so through the end of the year. Below, we share their crib notes about the short subjects on deck, all of them to be projected from the same 16-millimeter prints that Picture Start used to store in Champaign and license for theatrical, academic, broadcast, and home video presentations, to be shown the next three months. You can continue to their website for more details about the initiative and also rewind a bit here on CUBlog for our earlier commentary on this effort to contextualize a near-forgotten era of short-form indie cinema. The next “ReStart” is tomorrow, Saturday, July 19, starting at 6 p.m. in the Chicago Filmmakers Firehouse, 1326 W. Hollywood Ave., Chicago.

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From June 25, 2025, via email:

Upcoming Shows
PICTURE RESTART 16MM SERIES

We are excited to announce the next three programs for Picture ReStart – our monthly screening series on 16mm.

In July, we’ll be spotlighting an under-celebrated local experimental filmmaker, showing five of his best films, each playing mischievous games with meaning and language in “Prepared Texts.” In August, we’ll be showing ten films that inspire our inner kiddos by experimenting with cinematic form with an open sense of creativity and minimal tools in “Forever Young.” In September, as a special program for the REELING Film Festival, we’ll be screening four films that linger over the male body in search of a spiritual physicality in “His Sacred Flesh.” Each program will be entirely projected on 16mm film and will feature works that have not screened in Chicago in decades.

Prepared Texts | 7.19.25 | 6 p.m.
A PREPARED TEXT, Dana Hodgdon
PHONEME FROLICS, Dana Hodgdon
DEAR FRIENDS, Dana Hodgdon
DIALECTIC DEFINITIONS, Dana Hodgdon
REFLEXFILM/FAMILYFILM, Dana Hodgdon

“Forever Young” | 8.16.25 | 6 p.m.
DOT-TO-DOT CARTOON CARTOON, JP Somersaulter & Lillian Somersaulter-Moats
GENIUS OF LOVE, Cucumber Studios & The Tom Tom Club
BABY UP-CHUCK, Wendy Hershey
HAND, Deanna Morse
RIVER LETHE, Amy Kravitz
EUPHORIA, Vince Collins
JUMPING, Osamu Tezuka
ROCKERS, Ed Counts
PHASES, Henry Selick
BAMBI MEETS GODZILLA, Marv Newland

“His Sacred Flesh” | 9.20.25 | 6 p.m.
AUTOMONOSEXUAL, Edgar Barens
SONG OF THE GODBODY, James Broughton
CANTICO, James Herbert
CATHEDRAL, Ronald Chase

We encourage you to buy tickets quickly as these screenings SELL OUT fast!

~ Chicago Filmmakers

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scenes on the Small Screen

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And under this header, we’ll talk about Ye Ed’s emergence in the world of boutique video labels. We previously disclosed that he debuted at the end of 2024 with the New Jersey-based company, Saturn’s Core Audio & Video, as the designer and de facto guest editor for a booklet accompanying the Blu-ray release of DOGS IN QUICKSAND, a late Nineties indie comedy of quirks produced in the C-U by Mike Trippiedi and Bill Yauch. Made available for pre-order on July 1 is the second Saturn’s Core release to feature his booklet composition talents, TWISTED ISSUES, a Florida-lensed punk scene sci-fi horror mélange from the visual artist and camcorder maverick Charles Pinion (RED SPIRIT LAKE), whose early travels took him from Gainesville to New York to San Francisco and involved flirtations with bands, zines, the NYC and Los Angeles porn worlds, the Cinema of Transgression, and lots more Eighties and Nineties DIY lore.

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While Pinion’s creative endeavors have never intersected with Champaign-Urbana to our knowledge, we wanted to hold up the TWISTED and QUICKSAND discs as two worthwhile examples of the many titles put out in recent times by Saturn’s Core and other smaller labels that are devoted to presenting and preserving the curios, weirdos, and died-in-the-wool black sheep of independent cinema along with their respective histories. Saturn’s Core’s owners, Ross Snyder and William Hellfire, stack each release with interviews, related media, and ephemera to give their adventurous customers a sense of time, place, and mise-en-scène from which the main attractions emerged. These kinds of home videos are fueled by passion and a sense of necessity, so more power to anyone who dares to take the niche release plunge. Above and below are product pictures from Saturn’s Core’s distribution partner, OCN Distribution, while we’ve added our own shots of the booklets in hand so you can better see the printed product out of the cases.

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We’ll do our best to hold down the fort at MFHQ Deux while Mr. JaPan flirts with flexing his media muscle a bit more along these lines. Already, he’s delivered a third booklet to Saturn’s Core for an unannounced project and started discussions with them about a fourth. He previously contributed a personal recording with notes of a public appearance by Bruce Campbell and Josh Becker to our friends at Synapse Films in Michigan for inclusion in the 2021 Blu-ray/DVD release of the “one-shot” crime film RUNNING TIME, taped at Noyes Laboratory on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana a long time ago. We’ll make the rare pitch for serious inquiries from folks who’d like to talk with him about future (and paying) endeavors; please write to microfilm.magazine [at] gmail [dot] com on that front. Danke schön!

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CONFIDENTIAL ALMANAC | Dates in Film Culture History

What could we possibly offer under this header? One last Almanac entry on the history of our dearly beloved, That’s Rentertainment, and evidence of a modern analog, so to speak. We don’t normally comment or illustrate under this section, but, when we saw the accompanying photo on Facebook a couple of days ago, we said to ourselves, “Sold!” It is promo for our also beloved, Exile on Main Street, which has been serving their customers well in downtown Champaign for the last twenty years. Visit them in the old train terminal to browse their massive selection of LPs, CDs, cassettes, limited editions, threads, collectibles, and, as we now know, VHS gold! You can click on the image to enlarge in your browser and better take in the slabs, which include an “edited version” (!) of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, Patrick Stewart with a price tag on his head in SAFE HOUSE, and THIS IS SPINAL TAP, the only tape you’ll ever be able to kindly rewind to eleven. Hey, hands off our DOUBLE WHAMMY!

20 Years Ago … Friday, July 22, 2005: On “Collector’s Day,” owner Geoff Merrit and his staff at That’s Rentertainment launch the arduous task of purging approximately 16,000 VHS cassettes from their library to make way for DVD replacements and fresh stock at their location on the corner of Sixth and John streets in the Campustown area by the University of Illinois in Champaign. After dropping prices daily throughout the weekend, the sale racks would be migrated to the back of the store and linger for another two years until much of the analog catalog was removed. Approximately 100 tapes remained in a token VHS section for the next decade until Rentertainment went out of business in 2015, and approximately 100 more tapes resided in safe keeping with MICRO-FILM editor Jason Pankoke in part to serve as the basis for a new publication, The Video Throne, which never came to fruition. [R] [Rev. 7/18/25]

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NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
EDDINGTON, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, SAIYAARA* (in Hindi with English sub), SMURFS (animation), TANVI THE GREAT* (in Hindi with English sub), ELIO* (animation), F1 THE MOVIE, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, ME3AN 2.0*, SUPERMAN (7/18 on), Studio Ghibli Fest: MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (animé) (7/19, 4 p.m., 7/20, 4 & 7 p.m., 7/23, 7 p.m.; English dub; 7/21-7/22, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), AMC “Scream Unseen” (mystery movie) (7/21, 7 p.m.), THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, OH HI! (7/24 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
EDDINGTON, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, SMURFS (animation), 28 YEARS LATER, ELIO (animation), F1 THE MOVIE, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, LILO & STITCH, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING, SOVEREIGN*, SUPERMAN (7/18 on), Studio Ghibli Fest: MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (animé) (7/19, 2 p.m., 7/20, 4 & 7 p.m., 7/23, 7 p.m.; English dub; 7/21-7/22, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), UFC 318: Max Holloway vs. Dustin Poirier, more (mixed martial arts) (7/19, 9 p.m., simulcast), BATMAN FOREVER (7/20, 3 & 7 p.m.; 7/23, 7 p.m.), THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS (7/24 on) *single screenings daily

@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents “Summer Films on the Quad” feat. DROP (7/24, 9 p.m., free)

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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Read the rest of this entry »

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!

7/9: Ben Harroun (co-owner, Harvest Moon Twin Drive-in, Gibson City, IL)
7/15: Jill Van Voorst (owner, LIX, Savoy, IL)

PASSINGS | You Will Be Missed

7/3: Nora Garcia Harroun, 35 (staff, Harvest Moon Twin Drive-in, Gibson City, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Theater-relevant news is what we have for this week’s Report and, given how the Calendar begins, we’ll address first what matters most. The operators of the Harvest Moon Twin Drive-in in Gibson City may be working on autopilot for the short term as they mourn the loss of Nora Harroun, wife of co-owner Ben Harroun, who passed away on July 3 due to complications from open heart surgery at the very young age of 35. A constant presence on the theater grounds, Nora will surely be missed by many; devoted husband Ben is organizing a Celebration of Life in her memory at the Harvest Moon on Sunday, July 27, which will be free to attend and involve slideshow memories and a showing of her all-time favorite movie, the 2005 rendition of PRIDE & PREJUDICE with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. One day earlier on Saturday, July 26, starting at 12 p.m., a separate celebration will take place at the VFW Post #10302 in Springfield for the late Joyce I. Williams, who died on June 20 at age 82; she was retired from working for the Illinois State Police and married to Dean Williams, the veteran stills photographer and founder of the Central Illinois Film Commission. Joyce’s services were conducted last week. We offer our condolences to both families and their respective communities in this time. Please take good care of each other.

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Now, we’re going to course-correct our presumptions a bit about how programmers at both the Virginia Theatre in Champaign and Fischer Theatre in Danville may be catering to the movie-going public in the future. We did not know until listing the Virginia’s revival of THE SANDLOT last week that it would be staged as more of a community event and not just a straight-up screening; the indoor sports training facility D-BAT Champaign cosponsored the 1993 kid flick and set up a “batting practice” activity on Park Avenue to go along with onsite diversions involving baseball cards, a hot dog stand, and the like. A similar indoor-outdoor conceit is arranged for August 9 when a farmers market sponsored by the Central Illinois Young Farmers Coalition will complement a showing of THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM, a documentary presented by Illinois Public Media. And just two days ago, the News-Gazette broke news of “FischerFest,” a first-year film showcase that will debut on August 16-17 with five classic film showings to honor the late Hollywood actor Gene Hackman, who grew up in part in Danville, and a closing discussion session to be hosted by the critics Chuck Koplinski and Pamela Powell. Together with Pens to Lens, which returns to the Virginia on August 16 and is regaining its strength as a family friendly, red-carpet spectacle, the renewed focus on both fronts is certainly favoring a “go big with a broad appeal” approach.

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If you want to see a movie just to see a movie (and maybe be crafty in minimizing how much advertising and on-screen flotsam you have to sit through before the movie actually begins), the regular array of venues as seen weekly on the Calendar is there to serve you. An announcement along these lines did break in the spring and it involves a dormant location that was purchased with plans to reopen it. Luckily, WGLT radio covered the transaction back in May. A multiplex formerly known as the Ovation Cinema Grill by New Vision Theatres, tucked away on Detroit Drive in the southwestern corner of Bloomington and adjacent to the Central Illinois Regional Airport, will soon become the Golden Ticket Cinemas Ale House Bloomington. A Facebook account dedicated to this location was created in May as well and promises it is ”coming soon” with special perks like bottomless popcorn and a “self-pour beer wall” along with a total remodel of the space, but there have been no updates posted ever since. Hopefully, their status changes soon. Once the Golden Ticket is up and running, we’ll have four exhibition brands to choose from between B-N, C-U, and Decatur including Phoenix Theatres, Marcus Theatres, and the three AMC branches. Still, keep an eye on the Fischer and Virginia schedules to see if film frequency improves at either venue, venture out to the Harvest Moon for first-run flicks, fresh air, and friends while the weather allows, and pay visits to the Normal Theater and other single-screen, small-town delights.

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

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In this space, we were going to start a series on local cinematic ephemera and the items first up on the photography block, originally to be timed with the start of the drive-in season, were to be copies of April Wright’s three theater documentaries. Today, we instead bring up GOING ATTRACTIONS and BACK TO THE DRIVE-IN due to their connections with the Harvest Moon Twin Drive-in and in honor of the late Nora Harroun. Ye Ed decided this was a proper week to revisit GOING ATTRACTIONS, which made reference to the Harvest Moon in passing and had its first proper theatrical engagement at the Gibson City ozoner back in 2013, and finally take in BACK TO THE DRIVE-IN, which instead has a “night in the life” approach in showing the operations and talking about the concerns of the Harvest Moon and ten other venues across America. We’re pointing out the latter for the obvious reason in that Nora appears both alongside family and coworkers as well as solo in conversation with Wright; although Ye Ed had the DVDs on hand, available directly from the filmmaker, you can also visit with Nora via the film on Tubi. Each drive-in is featured in four or five segments throughout and the first two appearances of Nora and the Harvest Moon begin at the 21:45 and 46-minute marks. (We encourage you to watch the entire thing, of course.) For the sake of the Harvest Moon faithful, BACK TO THE DRIVE-IN now serves as both a timely look at their community fixture and a time capsule that preserves a sliver of Nora’s life. We do hope everyone will take a night to offer your respects and enjoy the Harvest Moon in person at some point between now and the end of the current season, especially if you miss the July 27 memorial. Peace.

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NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
ABRAHAM’S BOYS: A DRACULA STORY, SKILLHOUSE, SUPERMAN, 28 YEARS LATER, ELIO (animation), F1 THE MOVIE, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, ME3AN 2.0 (7/11 on), EDDINGTON, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (7/17 on)

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
SKILLHOUSE, SOVERIGN, SUPERMAN, 28 YEARS LATER, ELIO (animation), F1 THE MOVIE, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, LILO & STITCH, ME3AN 2.0, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING, THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME (7/11 on), THE MUPPET MOVIE (7/12, 2:15 & 7 p.m.; 7/13, 3 & 7 p.m.; 7/16, 7 p.m.)

@ The Canopy Club, Urbana, IL
The Dispensary presents ‘Reefer Madness the Musical’ (7/11, 7 p.m.; 7/12, 2 & 7 p.m.; 7/13, 2 p.m.) Information + Tickets

@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents “Summer Films on the Quad” feat. THE LEGEND OF OCHI (7/17, 9 p.m., free)

@ Prairie Farm/Centennial Park, Champaign, IL
Champaign Park District presents “Moo-vie Nights at Prairie Farm” feat. BABE (7/11, 8 p.m., free)

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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Read the rest of this entry »

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!

7/7: Keenan Dailey (director/producer, BRIM, Visage Entertainment, Champaign-Urbana, IL/Atlanta, GA)
7/9: Jessie Seitz (special effects make-up, SURVIVOR GIRLS, Half Fool Motion Pictures, Birmingham, AL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Many moons ago, I was having a drink in downtown Normal at The Coffeehouse & Deli with a graduate of Illinois State University named Peter James Zielinski. He had formed a troupe called Dependent Films with his friend Christopher Denham, who attended the University of Illinois at the same time he was at ISU, to make their own digital video projects apart from class. When I asked him about the name, given the separate-from-Hollywood mystique that had been built up around the concept of “independent film” through the Nineties, Zielinski told me, and I’m paraphrasing his point a quarter of a century later, that almost no film is independently created because it takes a team to make it happen. The logic stands to reason, even if we consider a handful of friends with a camera and a pocket change budget getting together on a random weekend; they all have a part to play in the common effort to tell their story. When working on a larger scale with more at stake, production groups from the amateur to the A-list rely on their own devices as well as assistance from outside their ranks, and that often includes financial help.

The only Dependent Film that I remember seeing is the one I included in the first independent film show I organized in Champaign-Urbana, hosted at the spot formerly known as The Highdive (now The Venue CU) and featured during the springtime event formerly known as The Octopus Gallery Walk (now the Boneyard Arts Festival), a spoof of the SURVIVOR reality television show called S.U.R.V.I.V.O.R. I’m hard pressed to recall what the acronym stood for, but I think a dance-off on the beach figured into the silliness and its “contestants” were all, tra la, dependent on one other in the outcome. Despite the current status of MFHQ Deux as an outlier in our film culture du C-U, I still take to heart the truism posed by Zielinski, who went on to become a photographer and retouch artist for Getty Images and Paramount Television, and on behalf of Denham, who became a playwright in New York City as well as an actor in features like OPPENHEIMER and BEING THE RICARDOS. Every profession that we’ve mentioned just now is dependent on collaboration and skill between peers to make the creativity click and artistry soar.

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On this Independence Day, we’ll suggest to our dearest philanthropists a handful of options where their money might go to good use in the service of local creators and groups who depend on peripheral support. This can include a pledge, with or without perks, towards the post-production campaign of Horror Dadz Productions’ THE FAIRFIELD COUNTY FOUR, directed by Josh Bruckner of Watseka. or Acrostar Productions’ PERFECT SOUL, directed by the Chicagoan S. J. Hermann and staged incognito in the Princeton area with more filming to go. (Apparently, their “late innings” crowdfunding push is not yet live; watch this space for an announcement.) This can also be a donation towards the initial production budget of Swede Films’ BIG MUDDY, for which an Indiegogo campaign will be launched shortly. This can even involve a gift to one or more nonprofit entities that bring quality culture and unique experience to our communities such as the Virginia Theatre, an outlet of the Champaign Park District, and the Pens to Lens screenwriting competition, a program of the 40 North 88 West arts council in Champaign County. Look closely and listen carefully to what is happening around us for opportunities to chip in, friends and neighbors, and remember the value you add does not necessarily have to add up to a dollar amount.

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

In recent weeks, we’ve shared updates about Acrostar Productions’ current run of fantasy/horror pictures – PERFECT SOUL, RETURN OF THE CORN ZOMBIES, NIGHT OF THE DEAD SORORITY BABES – including in the last three Images of the Week entries, so, what else can we share about the Chicagoland micro-studio? Filming has been taking place for new episodes of their web series, SPLINTERED LOVE, in which the company’s actress and make-up effects artist Beth Metcalf stars as “Cupidity,” a spinner of dark relationship stories with TALES FROM THE CRYPT-style endings of moral comeuppance. The second season finale, “Leap of Faith,” is about to go into production and will feature Leonard Peterson III, Joanne Ferbrache, and Steve Morris in a story of lost loves and prices paid; the previous outings of SPLINTERED LOVE, many with familiar Acro-stars in their casts, can be viewed up on YouTube.

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Acrostar producers S. J. Hermann and Ann Myrna, when the former is not writing fiction and screenplays and the latter auditioning for and acting in indie productions from other creative teams, are busy cutting together footage for PERFECT SOUL and fulfilling their distribution commitments with BayView Entertainment. SORORITY BABES is now streaming online and available in print thanks to this arrangement, which we discussed in last week’s Calendar, and CORN ZOMBIES 2 is expected to follow in the coming months. Previously introduced to online platforms by BayView were ATTACK OF THE CORN ZOMBIES, the Sixties-set origin story of the groovy and starchy undead, and THEY CAME BACK FROM SOMEWHERE, a charming retro sci-fi sequel to the studio’s first full-length venture, IT CAME FROM SOMEWHERE. This movie has inspired today’s key visual, given the holiday at hand and its permanent association with the UFO invasion epic INDEPENDENCE DAY, a smash hit back in 1996.

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When watching CAME BACK for the first time earlier this year, Ye Ed couldn’t help but notice a funny anomaly in an early scene where thrift shop owner Miss Withers (Michele Hefner) encounters the lovelorn alien warrior Luma (Jake Yanko), returned to Earth and seeking his human soul mate Patty (Magdalena Conway). Behind Withers on the wall, one can clearly see the structure closest in nature to a UFO in all of downstate Illinois – the State Farm Center on the University of Illinois campus – and the movie never takes advantage of it for a clever aside or joke! “Aaaaaauuuugh,” blurted Charlie Brown. In time, he realized it would have been a distraction in the storytelling and possibly called undue attention to an anachronism; SOMEWHERE 1 and 2 ostensibly take place in the 1950s while the sports and concert arena, originally called Assembly Hall, did not open until the spring of 1963. We decided to muzzle our inner Art Bell and refrain from manufacturing a conspiracy out of it, since we’re simply happy to see it … hovering there.

LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Champaign Public Library, Champaign, IL
Champaign Movie Makers* presents “Crash Course: Lenses” (7/7, 7 p.m., Robeson Pavilion Room C)

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, MALICE (in Mandarin with English sub), 28 YEARS LATER, BALLERINA, ELIO (animation), F1 THE MOVIE, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, LILO & STITCH, ME3AN 2.0, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING (7/4 on), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (7/7, 7 p.m.), ABRAHAM’S BOYS: A DRACULA STORY, SKILLHOUSE, SUPERMAN (7/10 on)

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, 28 YEARS LATER, ELIO (animation), F1 THE MOVIE, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, LILO & STITCH, MATERIALISTS, ME3AN 2.0, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING, THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, SINNERS (7/4 on), THIS IS SPINAL TAP 41st anniversary (7/5, 4 p.m.; 7/6, 4 & 7 p.m.; 7/7, 7 p.m.), DIRTY DANCING (7/6, 3 & 7 p.m.; 7/9, 7 p.m.), SUPERMAN sneak preview (7/8, 7 p.m., IMAX), SKILLHOUSE, SUPERMAN (7/10 on)

@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents “Summer Films on the Quad” feat. THE WOMAN IN THE YARD (7/10, 9 p.m., free)

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
The News-Gazette Film Series and D-BAT Champaign present THE SANDLOT special event (7/5, 12 p.m. Park Avenue outdoor activities, 2 p.m. screening)

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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Read the rest of this entry »

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!

6/27: Eric Spudic (owner, Spudic’s Movie Empire, Los Angeles, CA)
6/27: Joe Sherlock (writer/director, THE HAUNTING OF HEATHER BLACK, Skullface Astronaut, Corvallis, OR)
6/30: Drea Aarons (fine artist, Drea Aarons Art, Champaign, IL)
7/1: Michael Juvinall (editor, Horror Patch website, Channahon, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Let’s talk movie viewing in this Report, dearest readers. The Pens to Lens program, devoted to guiding the youth in our community to explore and learn the craft of screen storytelling, has announced that tickets to their upcoming gala screening on Saturday, August 16, are now available for purchase at the Virginia Theatre website and box office. Believe it or not, this brings the sum total film bookings on Park Street in 2025 to … five: “Ebertfest” and DROP in April, JAWS in May, THE SANDLOT a week from now on Saturday, July 5, and P2L, with no other presentations in the ballpark listed as of this writing. Yes, we remember the venue was closed from January to mid-April for upkeep and, whew, at least they haven’t completely cut out the screen entertainment like the Fischer Theatre of Danville so, hrm, we know you know how to politely inquire and demonstrate renewed interest. Sadly, this also implies the “Arthouse Experience” promotion is likely over after a three-year run. We’ll have to wait and see how the Virginia handles its screen offerings to come as they’re clearly stressing live performances and events for now.

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In serious need of patronage and funding is the Chicago Underground Film Festival, one of the many arts organizations nationwide to have its National Endowment for the Arts funding cancelled in supremely knee-jerk fashion earlier this year; passes for the longest-running showcase of its kind in the United States, scheduled to hold court September 17-21 at the ACX Harper Theater-Hyde Park, can be bought through their website for a reasonable $50 while donations can also be made to help their ongoing mission. We’re voting hard for the Windy City and beyond to support the continued efforts of CUFF director Bryan Wendorf and his crew in the face of an administration that is hell-bent on making life as uncomfortable as possible for American artists and creatives – and, well, all of us – who choose not to embrace their blinding white brand of “patriotism.” Keep making, saying, doing, and being you, friends.

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Recently opening a call for entries is the Screaming Mad Film Festival, a welcome sideshow of the annual Dark History and Horror Con that will haunt the Orpheum Champaign on November 8-9, and the submission window is live through October 10; be aware there is an early bird deadline of Thursday, July 31, so you might want to visit their FilmFreeway account and find out what the perks are for turning in your work sooner rather than later. And finally, we didn’t preview or get to attend the Kevin Smith-Jason Mewes show at the Virginia this past Wednesday like a fair amount of our former neighbors did as evidenced on the socials, but it was nice to see these Indiewood favorites stop in the C-U for their tour; we also really appreciated Smith’s post-show nod to the late Roger Ebert while he sat out front with the popular bronze likeness, sculpted by the artist Rick Harney and installed in 2014. Good feels, man.

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

Ye Ed has apparently decreed that Acrostar Productions, LLC, will figure into a month’s worth of “Images” entries, and that is A-OK with us. Today’s gallery also serves as a belated follow-up to a Report we filed in late April where we went over several movies about to be released on physical media and elsewhere that happened to sport a Confidential pedigree. Since then, the whole bunch has been made available and what we didn’t manage to spit out fast enough was that, while skimming the online sites at the time to confirm details about those titles, we found several more videos to tell you about. Gotta catch ‘em all!

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Let’s begin with the witchy horror-comedy, NIGHT OF THE DEAD SORORITY BABES, which the Acrostar team produced on the shores of Lake Decatur down in Macon County prior to launching both PERFECT SOUL and RETURN OF THE CORN ZOMBIES. Stacked with a gaggle of scream queens and a frisky sense of humor, BABES was released as a BD-R on March 25 by BayView Entertainment after the label had already found streaming homes for the ladies and their deadly pledging. Included on the disc is a few minutes’ worth of behind-the-scenes smart phone footage and that’s it for special features.

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UNTITLED FOOTAGE, the full-length sequel to the “Illinois Valley Murder Tapes” portion of Horror Dadz Productions’ duology, SPLIT SCREEN, has also been assigned to haunt BD-R as of April 29. Joshua Brucker’s follow-up was filmed in the Watseka area like the original and involves the sister of one of the original characters who attempts to learn what really happened with the Claw Hammer Killer and unwittingly walks right into danger. 105ive Films handled the release of FOOTAGE as they did another Horror Dadz adventure, THE WOODMEN, and the intense flick can also be watched on a brand-new service devoted to first-person genre films and shows, Found TV. Brucker announced on social media that his group’s latest found-footage horror, THE FAIRFIELD COUNTY FOUR, has wrapped on the East Coast as of this week; a werewolf tangles with mere mortals as well as Joe Bob Briggs in the Connecticut woods!

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We have reason to bring up LGBTQ+ themed indies as well. Specialist label Wolfe Video, which used to count the C-U produced “dance family” comedy LEADING LADIES among its roster, seems to be winding down its in-house wares in favor of streaming if one looks carefully at their website. However, they have been re-releasing through merchants some of their titles in the DVD-R format such as the 2010 lesbian drama BLOOMINGTON; originally filmed on location in Bloomington, Indiana, the trade headlines about its production at the time kept throwing off Ye Ed since it wasn’t in reference to Bloomington, Illinois. The feature, directed by the veteran television editor Fernanda Cardoso, is a story of student-professor romance in a sleepy Midwest college town with Sarah Stouffer and Alison McAtee in the leads.

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And, made available as a DVD-R just two weeks ago by Freestyle Digital Media is the feature SPARK, directed by Nicholas Giuricich and starring the talented Theo Germaine as Aaron, who must navigate a recurring time loop and transforming relationships with an intimately close friend, Dani (Vico Ortiz), and a desirable fling who becomes something more, Trevor (Danell Leyva). Germane talked about their performance in this film and in another challenging work, DESIRE LINES, along with efforts by the separate productions to portray nonbinary and transmasculine characters with a compelling focus, in early 2024 via the online magazine Xtra. Formerly a resident of the C-U and a welcome participant in our arts scene, Germaine has received a good amount of critical notice since making the segue from stage to screen in projects like the Peacock thriller THEY/THEM and television series like THE POLITICIAN on Netflix and WORK IN PROGRESS on Apple TV. We certainly wish them continued success and a full recovery in their health.

CONFIDENTIAL ALMANAC | Dates in Film Culture History

40 Years Ago … Saturday, June 1, 1985: Geoff Merritt opens the Campustown media rental store, That’s Rentertainment, in Johnstown Center, at first stressing a large library of music LPs and CDs before changing course to concentrate on home video. The comprehensive offerings on their shelves, inviting and helpful “Rentarians” behind the front counter, customer-friendly memberships and “Renter Blocks,” a willingness to quickly incorporate the progression of products from VHS to DVD to LaserDisc to Blu-ray, and a personal touch scattered throughout in the form of decorative ephemera, hand-drawn section markers, and more would endear the shop to movie lovers far and wide. After bouncing around the building for their first decade, Rentertainment ultimately settled on the location at 512 E. John Street in Champaign. A second location would open in 1998 next to Caffe Paradiso in Urbana and only last a few years. Facebook [R] [Rev. 6/29/25]

10 Years Ago … Monday, June 1, 2015: Owner and local small business advocate Geoff Merritt announces that his Campustown staple, That’s Rentertainment, will immediately start selling off its inventory in anticipation of closing down. Thousands of home videos and miscellany would be adopted by loyal customers and community members, hundreds more titles would be integrated into the holdings of the University of Illinois Library system, and the remaining thousands would migrate over to the “rec room” of Merritt’s other location, hidden on Griggs Street in downtown Urbana, which houses the Parasol Label Group and the Itty Bitty Bike Shop. Their flagship location at the corner of John and Sixth streets in Champaign eventually had its front door locked for good at the end of Sunday, August 16.

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
F1 THE MOVIE, HOT MILK*, ME3AN 2.0, 28 YEARS LATER, BRIDE HARD*, ELIO (animation), BALLERINA, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, LILO & STITCH, MATERIALISTS, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING (6/27 on), JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH (7/2 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
F1 THE MOVIE, ME3AN 2.0, 28 YEARS LATER, BRIDE HARD*, ELIO (animation), BALLERINA, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, LILO & STITCH, MATERIALISTS, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING, THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, SINNERS (6/27 on), UFC 317: Ilia Topuria vs. Charles Oliviera, more (mixed martial arts) (6/28, 9 p.m., simulcast), GHOSTBUSTERS (1984) (6/28, 2 & 7:30 p.m.; 6/29, 3 & 7 p.m.; 7/2, 7 p.m.), JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH (7/2 on) *single screenings daily

@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents “Summer Films on the Quad” feat. THE PATRIOT (7/3, 9 p.m., free)

@ Prairie Farm/Centennial Park, Champaign, IL
Champaign Park District presents “Moo-vie Nights at Prairie Farm” feat. OPEN SEASON; (6/27, 8 p.m., free)

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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Read the rest of this entry »

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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FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Filing early on this week’s Report since Ye Ed is attending a wedding, so wethinks another textbook edition will fit the bill just fine. To start, Amy Penne of Smile Politely has once again delivered in the quest to document the current state of our film culture du C-U; her recent article discusses a significant aspect of the groundwork that Shatterglass Films, Flyover Film Studios, and their partners, such as Parkland College in this instance, have been laying for a sustainable production hub here in Champaign County, and that is a program to train a workforce of local residents to competently handle the necessary below-the-line jobs on a set or at the soundstage being developed up in Rantoul. Next, we caught a social media pitch by Ben Harl of Silver Compass Studios in Decatur for casting a proof-of-concept reel his team will be filming this summer for THE DARK ONES, a horror-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods story that can’t help but suggest Lovecraftian overtones; follow this dedicated Facebook account to get future announcements about casting and more. And, yes, we noticed, but the concept art is temporary in both cases according to the respective filmmakers on their own socials and will be replaced with appropriate visuals in due time…

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Then, we also caught fleeting glimpses on social media related to the surprise indie DARK SOUL RIVER, filmed in the late spring at Flyover and elsewhere, and decided to investigate; this Instagram account is promoting Vijay M. Rajan’s serial killer chamber piece, introducing us to the primary cast members and several behind-the-camera talents, while this Internet Movie Database entry has a selection of behind-the-scenes photographs that may be our dearest readers’ first look at movie sets constructed in the Flyover facilities, formerly one of the Octave Chanute Air Force Base hangars. To close, Mr. JaPan had a nice chat at the location shoot of Acrostar Productions’ PERFECT SOUL with Michele Hefner, a resident of Peoria and dedicated stage mother for her actress daughter Delilah “Dee” Hefner, who is putting on a producer’s hat for an upcoming episodic saga called PEORIA JOAN; the all-ages melding of Dora and Indiana Jones will star the younger Hefner as “Joni,” also known as “Peoria Joan,” who goes on a quest to keep the ruthless contractor “Victor Crane,” played by veteran Illinois stage actor Dave Krostal, from destroying the valuable history and secrets ingrained in Peoria River country. Some casting has been revealed on Facebook and additional roles need to be filled as detailed on this website. Go, Joan!

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

In today’s outing, inspired by Ye Ed’s set visit and brief participation in the filming of PERFECT SOUL this past week, we’ll share yet another example of promotional artwork for a project in the early goings, although S. J. Hermann’s adaptation of his own novel is clearly much further along than either THE DARK ONES or John Isberg and Swede Films’ BIG MUDDY. Debuted on Facebook at the Acrostar Productions fan group back in April, the devilishly eerie creation is by the artist Erik W. Wilson and based on a picture of lead actress Chloe Lutz taken by the movie’s director of photography, Ashley Hefner. (And, yes, you noticed; the Hefners are all related and very active in downstate filmmaking!) Immediately below, you will find an exclusive behind-the-scenes peek at Lutz in costume as “Nikki Strange,” makeup effects artist Beth Metcalf, and Hefner snapped by yours truly in between takes of a pivotal sermon sequence. We’ll soon share more images with you in service of articles recounting the making of PERFECT SOUL this year – the production has a second round of filming scheduled at their rural Illinois location in the fall – and RETURN OF THE CORN ZOMBIES, which is on the cusp of commercial release through BayView Entertainment after its filming last year in Champaign County. Hopefully, it will be an interesting read about the life cycles of low-budget independent film creation as seen through the Acrostar lens, and we thank their producer Ann Myrna for being generous in accommodating us to experience what they do.

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NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
28 YEARS LATER, BRIDE HARD, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN 20th anniversary (re-release), ELIO (animation), SITAARE ZAMEEN PAR* (in Hindi with English sub), BALLERINA, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES*, LILO & STITCH, MATERIALISTS, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING (6/20 on), Studio Ghibli Fest: THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY (animé) (6/22, 4 & 7 p.m., 6/24, 7 p.m., English sub; 6/23, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (6/23, 7 p.m.), F1 THE MOVIE sneak preview (6/25, 7 p.m.), F1 THE MOVIE, ME3AN 2.0 (6/26 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
28 YEARS LATER, BRIDE HARD, ELIO (animation), BALLERINA, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, THE LIFE OF CHUCK, LILO & STITCH, MATERIALISTS, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING. THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, SINNERS, THUNDERBOLTS* (6/20 on), Studio Ghibli Fest: THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY (animé) (6/22, 4 & 7 p.m., 6/24, 7 p.m., English sub; 6/23, 7 p.m., in Japanese with English sub), TOP GUN (6/22, 3 & 7 p.m.; 6/25, 7 p.m.), “‘Critical Role’ Live” (role-playing game competition) (6/25, 7 p.m., simulcast from Sydney, Australia), F1 THE MOVIE (6/26 on)

@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents “Summer Films on the Quad” feat. A MINECRAFT MOVIE (6/26, 9 p.m., free)

@ The Virginia Theatre, Champaign, IL
J-GEE & T Presents present “Jay & Silent Bob Aural Sects Tour” starring Kevin Smith & Jay Mewes (6/25, 7:30 p.m.)

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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Read the rest of this entry »

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!

6/18: Perry C. Morris (vice president, board of trustees, Champaign County Historical Museum, Champaign, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Just some quick hits for this Report because Mr. JaPan is running on fumes and nervous anticipation. (We’ll explain the happier aspects of that in a future filing.) First, Champaign Movie Makers is meeting on Monday, June 16, 7 p.m., at their home away from home and film sets, the Esquire Lounge in downtown Champaign, where you’ll be guaranteed to hear all about Pens to Lens movies in the works. Second, our friend Bob Zimmerman of R.A.Z. Films has been on the scene this last week videotaping the practice sessions and sightseeing of the returning members of REO Speedwagon, just like seemingly every other media outlet in the C-U, leading up to the band’s charity concert at the UI State Farm Center tomorrow night, Saturday, June 14; we’ll eventually learn what REO and R.A.Z.’s plans for the footage will be. Third, the Illinois Film Office has announced the annual Shortcuts short film competition for Illinois-based students and young people age 22 and under with a submission deadline of August 31. Unlike in the past where the end goal for entrants was to be selected and possibly awarded at a Shortcuts screening, the current iteration is promising the overall Shortcuts winner will play (and a few other Shortcuts films might play) at an event scheduled for November in Rockford that is called 815HORTS and is casting its own net for content worldwide; you can read more about that at the website of what we take is the promotions and marketing firm behind 815HORTS, Plus Seven Company. Fourth and finally, Acrostar Productions has announced the horror-adventure they filmed covertly in the Champaign County outskirts the summer of last year, RETURN OF THE CORN ZOMBIES, is completed and the assets delivered to their distributor, BayView Entertainment, which will soon offer the film on streaming sites and BD-R media. Corntastic!

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

What, we never shared the supremely moody poster for RETURN OF THE CORN ZOMBIES with you? Let’s remedy that right now! Co-directed by Mia Katz, who has contributed to several Acrostar sets in various capacities and acted in the predecessor now available to view on Tubi and elsewhere, ATTACK OF THE CORN ZOMBIES, and S. J. Hermann, the Acrostar founder and horror-crime novelist whose writings have formed the basis for most of the company’s films to date, RETURN is set in the Seventies and follows an all-new cast of characters as they navigate the heartland of America invaded by the corn-fed undead. In a previous Calendar, we shared some early stills from the various scenes filmed by the cast and crew of RETURN when they were working in east central Illinois last September. Your humble editor, who visited the set during that active time, is about to do it again as less a wallflower and more a direct participant on Acrostar’s newest feature, PERFECT SOUL, which began production this week and continues for at least one more week on location before a hiatus. He’ll tell you how it went in due time.

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LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Esquire Lounge, Champaign, IL
Champaign Movie Makers* meeting (6/16, 7 p.m.)

@ Illini Union Ballroom, UIUC, Urbana, IL
The African Kinship Reunion (TAKiR) present BOUND: AFRICANS VS. AFRICAN-AMERICANS documentary screening w/filmmaker Peres Owino (6/14, 5 p.m., free w/reservation) Tickets

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, MATERIALISTS, THE UNHOLY TRINITY, BALLERINA, BRING HER BACK, DAN DA DAN: EVIL EYE (animé) (in Japanese with English sub or English dub), FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES, KARATE KID: LEGENDS, LILO & STITCH, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING, THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME (6/13 on), DOGMA 25th anniversary (re-release) (6/13-6/15), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (6/16, 7 p.m.), SINNERS (6/19, 7 p.m.), 28 YEARS LATER, ELIO (animation) (6/19 on)

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, THE LIFE OF CHUCK, MATERIALISTS, THE UNHOLY THREE, BALLERINA, BRING HER BACK, DANGEROUS ANIMALS*, FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES, FRIENDSHIP*, KARATE KID: LEGENDS, THE LAST RODEO*, LILO & STITCH, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING, THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, THE RITUAL*, SINNERS, THUNDERBOLTS* (6/13 on), RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (6/14, 2:30 p.m.; 6/15, 3 & 7 p.m.; 6/18, 7 p.m.), FINDING FAITH (faith film) (6/16-6/17, 7 p.m.), “‘Critical Role’ Live” (role-playing game competition) (6/19, 7 p.m., simulcast from Sydney, Australia), 28 YEARS LATER, ELIO (animation) (6/19 on) *single screenings daily except for THUNDERBOLTS*

@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents “Summer Films on the Quad” feat. SNOW WHITE (6/19, 9 p.m., free)

@ Prairie Farm/Centennial Park, Champaign, IL
Champaign Park District presents “Moo-vie Nights at Prairie Farm” feat. CHICKEN LITTLE (6/13, 8 p.m., free)

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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Read the rest of this entry »

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!

6/10: Allen Richards (publisher, B-Independent.com, VA)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Now that we’re back in this space, Ye Ed tells us that we should Report. So, Report we shall. First up is the obvious one – there’s a new feature film that is currently on location in Piatt and Ford counties, as many of you have probably seen by now on social media and through the local press. CHILI FINGER is described as a dark comedy in previous articles by The Hollywood Reporter and Reel Chicago and is directed by Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad of Beyond the Porch, LLC, in Los Angeles, who are teaming with the LA post-production house Gold Tree Studios on the picture. Written by Helstad, the story is about a woman played by Judy Greer who claims to find a human finger in her order at a fast-food restaurant and attempts to cash in on it; John Goodman, Sean Astin, and Bryan Cranston also have roles in the film, the rights for which will be sold internationally at the American Film Market and so on once it’s finished. There is no word that we’ve found about how long the production will be in the area or if they might hit the C-U, but the residents and city leaders of Monticello and Paxton are clearly loving the limelight so far.

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While it will be some time before CHILI FINGER can be seen, we have mere days to wait before we can start watching the television series REVIVAL, a pet project of prolific indie producer Aaron B. Koontz and our own Luke Boyce of Shatterglass Films and Flyover Film Studios, on SyFy. Adapted from the acclaimed series by writer Tim Seely, artist Mike Norton, and publisher Image Comics, the Canada-lensed show will debut next Thursday, June 12, at 9 p.m. CST on the cable channel and each episode will be available to stream on Peacock one week after its debut. The show follows a rural Wisconsin police officer played by Melanie Scrofano, star of SyFy’s previous hit WYNONNA EARP, as she witnesses the phenomena of the recently deceased coming back to life including her sister. Executive producers and showrunners Boyce and Koontz talked with Tara Bennett of SyFy Wire about switching gears from an independently mounted, feature-length treatment to serialized storytelling for the NBC sister network and briefly brought up REVEALER, the religion-and-end-times thriller that Shatterglass and The Line Film Co. made covertly in the C-U during a low ebb in pursuing this project. REVIVAL also stars David James Elliott, Romy Weltman, and Stephen Ogg along with Chicago native Phil Brooks, famously known as CM Punk.

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Finally, John Isberg of Swede Films in Champaign announced during our hiatus that, despite all signs leading many to believe that FINAL SUMMER PART II was on deck, his next production will actually be a horror-comedy called BIG MUDDY and take its inspiration from the regional legends of sasquatch-type creatures. Isberg and team are gearing up for a late summer shoot this year and will launch an Indiegogo campaign on July 3, right after they venture to southern Illinois and partake in the annual Big Muddy Monster Fest of Murphrysboro on Saturday, June 21. According to the Internet Movie Database, Isberg has already cast a good group of Midwest indie horror regulars for BIG MUDDY such as FINAL SUMMER actors Myles Valentine, Seth Boyer, and Bishop Stevens, ATTACK OF THE CORN ZOMBIES and GRINNERS standout Magdalena Conway, STRANGER THINGS veteran and UIUC professor Aaron Muñoz, BLACK MOLD’s Andrew Bailes, and Nathan Brandon Gaik, the towering talent from Bloomington-Normal who will portray “Big Muddy” akin to his turn as the title fiend in Paul A. Brooks’ HUNTING FOR THE HAG, albeit with a more mellow vibe. Also set to appear are Ari Lehman from the original FRIDAY THE 13TH and Oliver Robbins from the original POLTERGEIST. Look for more “Big” news when we get it in…

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

Well, that was inspiring to see. Your humble editor escaped the house on the edge of an American small town for a spell and attended the first Savoy Lumière at the Savoy 16 + IMAX over the weekend. I only was able to sit in for three shows, but I saw good things and said hello to a few familiar faces. It will be of great interest to see how this endeavor matures and the C-U responds over time. An admirably devoted Daily Illini student writer, Anna Williams, went as well and filed multiple reports on all days of the event starting with this one. Amy Penne has also had the Lumière pulse and shared this notice at Smile Politely on the Audience Award winners tallied up after the screening of SALLY. Below are a few pictures I took on Saturday, May 31, before and during the last show of the day, THE OTHER PEOPLE, a very low-key spooker about a family who gets more than they bargained for in their new home. Seated at the check-in table is Thomas Nicol, who has coordinated with the Savoy 16 in the past on behalf of his sadly departed Krampusnacht Freeky Film Festival, and sitting up front with festival director Nat Dykeman in Theater 8 is the festival guest Chad McClarnon who directed, co-wrote, and co-produced THE OTHER PEOPLE for his company, Best Part Productions of Nashville, Tennessee. We’re still going to look at a few aspects of the Lumière and cinema-going in the C-U over the next few weeks before moving on, so stay tuned.

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LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Fire Doll Studio, Champaign, IL
UI Flatlands Dance Film Festival and Krannert Art Museum present “Good House Keep Film Screening” feat. Laura Chiaramonte (6/11, 6:30 p.m., free)

@ Gallery Art Bar, Urbana, IL
UI Flatlands Dance Film Festival presents “Experimental Dance Film Performance and Talkback” feat Laura Chiaramonte, Matt Harsh, and Tessa Olson (6/10, 7 p.m., free)

@ Illini Union Ballroom, UIUC, Urbana, IL
The African Kinship Reunion (TAKiR) present BOUND: AFRICANS VS. AFRICAN-AMERICANS documentary screening w/filmmaker Peres Owino (6/14, 5 p.m., free w/reservation) Tickets

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
BALLERINA, DAN DA DAN: EVIL EYE (animé) (in Japanese with English sub or English dub), DANGEROUS ANIMALS, THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, THE RITUAL, BRING HER BACK, FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES, FRIENDSHIP, KARATE KID: LEGENDS, LILO & STITCH, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING, SINNERS*, THUNDERBOLTS** (6/6 on), DOGMA 25th anniversary (re-release) (6/6-6/8), ESCAPE FROM THE 21ST CENTURY (6/9, 8 p.m., in Mandarin with English sub), HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (6/11 on) *single screenings daily

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
BALLERINA, DANGEROUS ANIMALS, THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, THE RITUAL, BRING HER BACK, FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES, FRIENDSHIP, JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE*, KARATE KID: LEGENDS, THE LAST RODEO, LILO & STITCH, A MINECRAFT MOVIE*, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING, SINNERS, THUNDERBOLTS* (6/6 on), UFC 316: Merab Dvalishvili vs. Sean O’Malley, more (mixed martial arts) (6/7, 9 p.m., simulcast), TWILIGHT (6/8, 3 & 7 p.m.; 6/11, 7 p.m.), THE AMERICAN MIRACLE: OUR NATION IS NO ACCIDENT (faith docudrama) (6/9-6/11, 7 p.m.), HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (6/11 on) *single screenings daily

@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents “Summer Films on the Quad” feat. PADDINGTON IN PERU (6/12, 9 p.m., free)

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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Read the rest of this entry »

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Since we covered all the base tenets of the brand-new-to-Champaign County film festival, Savoy Lumière, in our previous report, we’ve decided for this installment of our coverage to let you in on our conversation with its founder and director, Nat Dykeman. Now residing in Sidney with his wife, children, and fur babies while taking advantage of the “micro-urban” spoils in the immediate Champaign-Urbana region, Dykeman has a fresh sandbox to play in with his entrepreneurial verve and organizational strengths. He’s lived throughout the state of Illinois and fleshed out his interests in many ways –lasting accomplishments include the Lake County Film Festival, which is still going strong in its Grayslake home, and the Chicago independent feature QWERTY directed by Bill Sebastian and starring Dana Pupkin-Sebastian and the late Eric Hailey, which is still available to enjoy in all its modest charm – so we can expect him to find new ways in our neck of the cornfields to expand on his activities. The last year’s worth of single-show screenings held at the Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX in Savoy has led up to Lumière and, as Dykeman hints more than once in our exclusive interview, the possibility is real he will branch out with his Chambana Film Society label to the benefit of those in our communities who dare to “look elsewhere” for their arts, entertainment, and culture. Film Society films are not mass-produced product, that is guaranteed.

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We’re grateful to have had the chance to get reacquainted with Dykeman. Not unlike with our friend in DIY film David Gracon, who we met long distance in the halcyon MICRO-FILM days well before he moved into the C-U area for several years and taught at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, our man Dykeman has circled around in our world. Early on in his tenure with the Lake County Film Festival and during the course of yours truly preparing what would be the final issue of MICRO-FILM, we both moonlighted as guest jurors to watch many hours’ worth of DVD screeners with films that would play the first Illinois Independent Film Festival at the Arcadia Theatre of St. Charles in 2005. Meeting onsite at the venue and jabbering briefly between screenings, we did not keep in touch much after that due to your humble editor’s general avoidance of the Windy City hubbub. So now, we’ve met again and begun catching up about our lives and the movies. It’s been a treat, to be honest. Dykeman sports a big energy and loves to pour over whatever is on the table at the moment; you will get his honest thoughts at all times and he is not afraid to champion what he loves and call out when something sucks hard. It is with this seasoned blend of working experience and discerning taste that we root for his hard work to pay off and for Champaign-Urbana-Savoy to not only take note of it, but join him on an exciting film-filled journey.

The first Savoy Lumière runs through Monday, June 2, at the Savoy 16. Please visit the festival website for daily schedules as well as options to purchase your tickets in advance. Our talk about the impetus behind his new adventures in the C-U can be read below when you’re not living it up at the Lumière!

~ Jason Pankoke

Read on, MacDuff…

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C-U Blogfidential: Greetings, Nat, and thank you for speaking with us! The first Savoy Lumière film festival at the Savoy 16 theaters, organized under the Chambana Film Society umbrella, will also be the first movie showcase of scope to premiere in Champaign-Urbana-Savoy in more than a decade. What kind of experiences and opportunities do you hope our cities and residents might get from attending Lumière?

Nat Dykeman: Ah ha! I will probably be using this phrase, “of scope,” more often.

I love how many short film festivals there are in town [although a] singular screening every year is not what many people picture as a festival. On the one hand, you have to remember that the Lake County Film Festival is still pretty much the only festival “of scope” where I’m from, so I’m kind of used to this situation. And, I’m new to the area, so I only have a sense of what’s come before and what I’m trying to live up to.

Where I’m from [in the Grayslake, Illinois region north of Chicago], there was no basis for something like this. People would hear about the film festival and ask, “What’s a film festival?” My standard answer is, “It’s like Bonnaroo [Music & Arts Festival] but for movies.” Someone asked me once if they had to make a movie to attend.

The history of film festivals and art theaters and an art scene in general [in Champaign-Urbana-Savoy] is mostly a relief to me, so I don’t have to hope that attendees are going to discover the magical world of film festivals and/or independent film [like they’re an unknown quantity]. I just hope they enjoy the movies and the experience, and [then] get excited about all of the other ideas for screenings I have.

Unlike the film festivals I’m used to, being once-a-year affairs, the fact that I’ve already had twenty screenings since last year also eases some of the pressure of the [Lumière] film festival. Recently, I’ve started thinking of this festival like a birthday party. It’s a celebration, certainly, but it’s not just celebrating itself but the whole year that’s come before.

Read the rest of this entry »

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!

5/31: Joshua Brucker (filmmaker, THE FAIRFIELD COUNTY FOUR, Horror Dadz Productions, Watseka, IL)
6/1: William Pace (faculty associate of digital media production, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ)
6/1: Bill Yauch (producer/cinematographer, AMBER ROSE, Shut Up and Do It Productions, Champaign, IL)

FIELD REPORT DU HQ | From Wherever It May Be Said

Why not lift our Report embargo a couple of weeks early to allow for a full-on Savoy Lumière takeover? “Glad to oblige!” shouts Ye Ed from across the MFHQ office. Since we’ve been late in getting our festival coverage filed for your planning needs, dearest readers, we’re going to point you to a few other media sources where publicity for the event have already appeared. First, Smile Politely’s Amy Penne gives the Lumière a giant vote of confidence in her preview and interview with organizer Nat Dykeman and, if you don’t already realize the movies and local movie mavens hit a sweet spot for her, it is made very clear in this article. Also adding to the visibility of Lumière is this nice overview provided by Sam Rink at the IPM Newsroom in which he talks with Dykeman as well as Keenan Dailey and Trude Namara of BRIM (Thursday, May 29, 6 p.m.) and Chase Todd of AN AFFAIR AT THE END OF TIME (Sunday, June 1, 3:15 p.m.). WCIS-TV, the ABC affiliate in Springfield, ran this notice and it reads like a press release sent over by the Village of Savoy, which signed on as the first major sponsor of Lumière, as it directly quotes village president John Brown and trustee Larry Kanfer ahead of our man Dykeman. (In fact, it is a press release; we had to look on the Savoy municipal website to find a link to a PDF of it as it was not readily appearing in Google searches.) We know through the grapevine that at least a couple of radio segments were had at places like WEFT-FM and the Lumière is being name-checked by organizations who always have one eye on community activity that can translate into economic gains, such as the Champaign County Film Office and Experience Champaign-Urbana. All in all, a passable first-time showing for the C-U at large to afford the Lumière their time and attention in advance. They’ll get the hang of it…

IMAGERY DU C-U | Picturing Our Scene on the Screen

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Why not push back our archives photo series yet one more week to allow for a full-on Savoy Lumière takeover? “Sounds just dandy!” yells Ye Ed from across the MFHQ commissary. We’re taking the simple route with this department and dressing up the Calendar with one-sheet art for features playing this weekend at the Savoy 16 + IMAX as a part of Lumière: FREE LEONARD PELTIER (Saturday, May 31, 1:30 p.m.), NEVER NOT YOURS (Sunday, June 1, 5:30 p.m.), and INBETWEENING (Sunday, June 1, 7:30 p.m.). Let’s also mention the two animated films pictured here that will appear in the all-ages show, QUELM SALVA directly above and BIRD DRONE at the top (Saturday, May 31, 11 a.m.) Visit the festival subsite up at Chambana Film Society for more details about these and all the other films scheduled throughout the weekend. Please enjoy yourselves, take your friends, and share the good times online!

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LOCAL FILMS & EVENTS | Support Your Media Storytellers

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
Chambana Film Society presents the 2025 Savoy Lumière* film festival (5/29-6/2) Information

NOW PLAYING | Champaign-Urbana Area

@ AMC Champaign 13, Champaign, IL
BRING HER BACK, KARATE KID: LEGENDS, TORNADO, FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES, FRIENDSHIP, THE LAST RODEO, LILO & STITCH, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING, SINNERS, THUNDERBOLTS* (5/30 on), AMC “Screen Unseen” (mystery movie) (6/2, 7 p.m.), DANGEROUS ANIMALS sneak preview (6/3, 7 p.m.), BALLERINA sneak preview (6/4, 7 p.m.), BALLERINA, DAN DA DAN: EVIL EYE (animé) (in Japanese with English sub or English dub), DOGMA 25th anniversary (re-release), THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME (6/5 on)

@ Phoenix Savoy 16 + IMAX, Savoy, IL
BRING HER BACK, JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE, KARATE KID: LEGENDS, THE ACCOUNTANT 2*, FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES, FRIENDSHIP, THE LAST RODEO, LILO & STITCH, A MINECRAFT MOVIE, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING, SINNERS, THUNDERBOLTS* (5/30 on), The Metropolitan Opera: Il Barbiere di Siviglia (5/31, 12 p.m., simulcast; 6/4, 1 & 6:30 p.m., recorded), GREASE (6/1, 3 & 7 p.m.; 6/4, 7 p.m.), BALLERINA (6/5 on) *single screenings daily (except for THUNDERBOLTS*)

@ Main Quad, Illini Union, UIUC, Urbana, IL
Illini Union Board presents “Summer Films on the Quad” feat. THE UNBREAKABLE BOY (6/5, 9 p.m., free)

@ Prairie Farm/Centennial Park, Champaign, IL
Champaign Park District presents “Moo-vie Nights at Prairie Farm” feat. A BUG’S LIFE (5/30, 8 p.m., free)

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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Read the rest of this entry »