C-U Blogfidential

“Lost” underground local cinema has recently crawled its way onto the Internet in the forms of THORAXX II: THE BREEDING and ONE ROACH FOR SEAMUS, distinct species with a common genus (Pi Omega Omega) and family (Mike ‘n Molly’s).

We love you all, but we also love not killing ourselves. Find out what will be happening at the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters while C-U Blogfidential kind-of-sort-of takes the rest of the summer off!

If you think we’re going to dredge up the story about Brendan Fraser and co. filming the Harvard graduation scene in WITH HONORS on the UIUC Main Quad in 1993 … well, we’ll get to that one later. Right now, let’s talk real life instead of reel life.

C-U Confidential and the Art Theater Co-op in downtown Champaign, IL, invite you to take a survey of locally-made cinema today, Friday, April 12, 2013, during the fourth annual New Art Film Festival. It’s bound to surprise!

It’s time for the Champaign-Urbana community to give itself a boost in supporting the integration of film and media production into our very fabric of being. That includes teaching the kids that making movies is alright.

In this edition of C-U Blogfidential’s NEW all-purpose column, “The C-U Film Leader,” we talk about Dreamscape Cinema budget fundraising, Nina Paley surprises, and the 75th birthday of the Normal Theater!

In the second helping of our brain-food-for-thought regarding the survival of local movie theaters, we conjure the ghosts of brick-and-mortar cinemas past complete with a visual ode to downtown Champaign’s former Rialto Theater.

Seemingly, we’re unable to escape the topic of local movie theaters potentially biting the dust if they can’t afford the highly expensive projection equipment necessary to show movies offered only as digital files. Here is the first of two fresh ruminations about it.

Please read through the complete line-up for the third annual New Art Film Festival, celebrating locally-made cinema at the Art Theater in downtown Champaign on Friday, April 20, 2012, and then experience the real deal with us tonight!

From the “Images of the Week” Dept.: After seeing the Martin Scorsese film HUGO and its loving depiction of the first visionary filmmaker, Georges Melies, your humble editor recalls a quiet moment spent with Papa George on January 13, 1992.

Our current shout-out to locally produced media goes to our man Troy Michael and Innocent Words Magazine, his long-standing labor of love which recently eclipsed the 10th anniversary of its first publication.

From the “Images of the Week” Dept.: Santa Claus-derived madness erupts from MFHQ, stemming from the discovery of an American one-sheet for the Mexican fantasy SANTA CLAUS in a Champaign, Illinois used book store that no longer exists.

In this edition of C-U Blogfidential’s all-purpose column, “C-U Biz-en-scène,” we invoke the “Short Form” clause out of necessity while re-gifting our weekly Calendar feature listing the movies now playing/renting near you!

In this edition of “The Double Life of a Cinéaste,” author Tyler Tharpe expresses wonderment at the lack of respect horror movie classics seem to receive in his market, while bemoaning technological “advances” in his line of work.

From the “Images of the Week” Dept.: In this second of three installments featuring images culled from our archives pertaining to the movies of Champaign, Urbana, and the cities beyond, we highlight (mostly older) random activity!