C-U Biz-en-scène: 05.19.2011
“C-U Biz-en-scène” appears every Thursday/Friday on C-U Blogfidential to give our readers a succinct snapshot of the cinema activity in and near Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA. Please support the artists and their work, attend screenings and events, and otherwise become active in our esoteric little world!
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MFHQ & YOU:
Not Easy to Ease Into Summertime, at this Time
What crossed wires your humble editor doth have! The more he attempts to orchestrate priorities in the life maintenance department forced by certain situations, the more his brain goes bonkers cooking up content ideas for C-U Blogfidential that he may or may not have time to properly launch thanks to said situations. What’s a poor man (in the financial sense of the term) to do? While we work overtime figuring out how to prop him up, please scroll down to encounter interesting items for the reading and heeding as well as your enjoyment:
- To no one’s surprise – well, at least no one frequenting the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters – here comes yet another University of Illinois on-campus film event we learn about through the most archaic means. (Thank goodness we’re nearly mastered the art of spotting pertinent coffee shop fliers in the nick of time!) Given the sponsor of this plainly-titled “Movie Marathon,” the UI’s Spurlock Museum, we can presume real and reel history inform the choices which include SPARTACUS, THE LION IN WINTER, THE EMERALD FOREST, both the 1932 and 1999 editions of THE MUMMY, and a set of silent shorts including THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY. All programs will be introduced by current and emeritus professors, while full information can be found right here on Spurlock’s Web calendar;
- For next week’s Champaign Movie Makers meeting at Class Act Interactive, 114 S. Neil St., Champaign, 7 p.m., attendees are encouraged to bring their favorite production gear and discuss how they augment, if not improve, the filmmaking experience;
- Thomas Nicol of Tangeant Productions and ex-Illini Film & Video president Andrew Stengele will collaborate on a new short – involving a comedy club and an automaton – and then submit it to the Robot Film Festival taking place this July in New York City. Our fellows need extras to fill up said comedy club setting, which more than likely will resemble a redressed Mike ‘n Molly’s, so please write tdnicol [at] gmail [dot] com and let him know you’d like the best seat on the set in the house this Saturday, May 21, with start and end times to be revealed;
- Similar to his participation last year in the Ireland travel course that yielded his short, PRAY FOR THE SOUL OF THOMAS GAGE, C-U photographer Jason Lindsey along with Enrique Pacheco will lead creative folks into the scenic wilds of Iceland from August 2-7 to experiment with filmmaking and time-lapse photography of the super-hot DSLR camera stripe. More information is available here;
- Eric Shellito of ARTEZEN Design in Bloomington, IL, is looking for videographers adept with green screen technique that could help him produce a promotional video. Please inquire via the contact information on this page;
- We’ll finish up the bullet point action this week by throwing down some festival information we’ve received in recent weeks through our MICRO-FILM channels! Reeling, Chicago’s annual gay and lesbian film extravaganza, returns for its 30th edition in November and will take film submissions now through Friday, June 24. The UK Jewish Film Festival of London is also accepting entries through Wednesday, June 29; further information can be accessed at this Web site. Finally, ever wonder what types of projects might be shortlisted for something called Bio: Fiction, the Synthetic Biology Film Festival, and held in Vienna, Austria? Here’s a wall of wonderful streaming weirdness providing the answer (and probably inspiring hundreds more questions about life, the universe, and everything synthetic within it) should you choose to check it out!
What missed opportunity your humble editor doth see in the above! Have you caught it not, dearest readers? We relinquish our hesitation and reveal it to you now: Could the “Movie Marathon” programmers not have offered the Saturday midnight slot to that epitome of gauze-wrapped revisionist history, THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS VS. A MUMMY, and make it a triple feature? Blasphemy, we say! Of course, pairing the Mummy, Ted Johnson, with Saturday’s supposed “Rapture” might tempt the Fates a little too readily in its conceptual ridiculousness…
MEDIA LINKS
Film production laborers and Abraham Lincoln super-fans living in Illinois can most likely forget seeing Hollywood amble downstate later this year; an Associated Press wire story reports that Steven Spielberg will film his biopic LINCOLN, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, in Virginia. CUBlog readers can also strike one local media project off the checklist although it’s more than worthwhile to continue following; Melissa Merli reported in last Sunday’s News-Gazette that Paul Holze of Groundwork Global Media was a finalist selected by Google to participate in the first YouTube Creator’s Institute, which will be held at the University of Southern California (where Holze will participate, from his and GGM’s new home base in Tucson, AZ) and Columbia College Chicago. Congratulations to Holze and GGM partner Stephanie Stean for increasing the profile of their documentary series, THE STORY OF HAPPINESS, to which the Institute workshops will be applied. A demerit goes out to the N-G, however, for being stingy and not selecting this story as Internet-worthy. Boo.
PLAYING THIS WEEK
@ The Art Theater, Champaign, IL: THE BEAVER (5/20 on), SUCKER PUNCH (5/20, 5/21, 5/26, 10 p.m.), Coppelia (5/14-5/15, 12 p.m., ballet)
@ Class Act Interactive, Champaign, IL: Champaign Movie Makers meeting (5/24, 7 p.m., free)
NEW! @ Spurlock Museum, UIUC, Urbana, IL: Movie Marathon 2011 (5/20-5/22, free, see below for schedule)
@ The Avon Theater, Decatur, IL: JANE EYRE, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES, THOR (5/20 on)
@ The Normal Theater, Normal, IL: THE AFRICAN QUEEN (5/19-5/22)
@ The Lorraine Theatre, Hoopeston, IL: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES, THOR (5/20 on)
@ Gemini Cinemas, Villa Grove, IL: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES, THOR (5/20 on)
@ The Onarga Theatre, Onarga, IL: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES (5/20 on)
@ Princess Theatre, LeRoy, IL: RIO (5/20-5/22)
@ Harvest Moon Drive-In, Gibson City, IL: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES, THOR (5/20-5/22)
@ Route 66 Drive-In, Springfield, IL: TANGLED, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES, FAST FIVE, PAUL (5/20-5/21)
@ That’s Rentertainment, Champaign, IL: THE MECHANIC, THE RITE, THE OTHER WOMAN, JUSTIN BIEBER: NEVER SAY NEVER, THE ROOMMATE, BLOOMINGTON, OPA!, more! (5/17 on)
@ Centerbrook Drive-In, Martinsville, IN: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES, THOR (5/20-5/22)
@ Hi-Pointe Theatre, etc., St. Louis, MO: “Vincentennial” (Vincent Price celebration, 5/19-5/28)
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Locally produced movies and events featuring locally produced movies are marked with an asterisk (*). Go see ‘em!
COMING SOON
5/27: THE UNINVITED (1944) w/Troy Taylor
@ The Avon Theater, Decatur, IL, 10 p.m., free
6/2-6/9: Chicago Underground Film Festival, Chicago, IL
NEW! 6/4: PARANOIA* local movie premiere w/filmmakers
@ Hoogland Center for the Arts, Springfield, IL, 8 p.m.
6/23-6/26: Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, Chicago, IL
7/19-7/24: Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival, Palatine, IL
9/16-9/18: Route 66 International Film Festival
@ Hoogland Center for the Arts, Springfield, IL
10/6-10/20: Chicago International Film Festival, Chicago, IL
10/28-10/30: Freeky Creek Short Film Festival
@ Sleepy Creek Vineyards, Fairmount, IL
NEW! 11/3-11/12: Reeling Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival, Chicago, IL
11/10-11/12: Embarras Valley Film Festival
@ EIU campus/Will Rogers Theater/etc., Charleston, IL
11/10-11/20: St. Louis International Film Festival, St. Louis, MO
COMMUNITY FILM SERIES
The New Classics: Great Books to Great Films from the Past 50 Years
@ Danville Public Library, Danville, IL, 6:30 p.m.
6/13: FIELD OF DREAMS; 7/11: THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK; 8/8: INTO THE WILD; 9/12: TRUE GRIT (2010); 10/10: THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS; 11/14: ORDINARY PEOPLE; 12/12: FAIL SAFE 1964); 1/9/12: NEVER CRY WOLF; 2/13/12: AWAKENINGS; 3/12/12: ADAPTATION; 4/9/12: UP IN THE AIR
The News-Gazette Film Series 2011
@ The Virginia Theater, Champaign, IL, 1 & 7 p.m.
6/4: MOULIN ROUGE!; 7/23: BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S; 8/6: ARSENIC AND OLD LACE; 9/10: ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT; 10/8: THE EXORCIST; 11/5: THE GODFATHER; 12/3: THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
WILL-TV/Independent Lens “Community Cinema” series
@ The Art Theater, Champaign, IL, Time TBA
6/11: TWO SPIRITS
UNIVERSITY FILM SERIES
Global Lens 2011: International Films
@ Latzer Hall, University YMCA, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, 5:30 p.m.
5/19: THE INVISIBLE EYE, Argentina; 6/16: THE LIGHT THIEF, Kyrgyzstan; 7/21: SOUL OF SAND, India; 8/18: STREET DAYS, Georgia; 9/15: THE TENANTS, Brazil; 10/20: A USEFUL LIFE, Uruguay; 11/17: WHITE MEADOWS, Iran
NEW! Movie Marathon 2011
@ Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL
5/20: SPARTACUS (7 p.m.), 5/21: silent films incl. THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (10:30 a.m.), MAX HAVELAAR (2:30 p.m.), THE MUMMY (1932, 7 p.m.), THE MUMMY (1999, appx. 8:30 p.m.), 5/22: THE EMERALD FOREST (1 p.m.), THE LION IN WINTER (4 p.m.)
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That’s it for the “business of our scene” this week!
If you have relevant news, opportunities, dates, or promotions that you would like included in CUBiz, please forward the who, what, where, when, and how much to cuconfidential [at] gmail [dot] com.
Compiled by Jason Pankoke
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“C-U Biz-en-scène” no.43 © 2011 Jason Pankoke/C-U Blogfidential.