Saturday, November 7, 2009 East Central Illinois

11th Annual Roger Ebert's Film Festival 2009

Ebert celebrates his film festival's 10th year

By: Melissa Merli
Thursday, April 17, 2008

Roger Ebert senses that his 10th film festival starting Wednesday at the Virginia Theatre might just be the best yet.

"Few people have heard of some of the films, but they may be very surprised and impressed," he said via e-mail. "Special events to acknowledge the anniversary?

"Yes: The whole festival!"

He said the 13 films are quirky, selected through "instinct, strength of emotion and delight in being taken by surprise" and promised that festival-goers will be blindsided by some of them.

They range from Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" on opening night to Ang Lee's thoughtful adaptation of the story of the comic-book hero Hulk to a documentary on the death and rebirth of a family farm to sci-fi to humanist dramas.

And though Roger Ebert's Film Festival has dropped "Overlooked" from its title, the movies this year certainly fit that definition.

"As the crisis in film distribution deepens, this is a reminder of what we are missing," he said.

Ebert is especially happy that "Hamlet" will be shown in 70mm, which he considers an overlooked format. The screening might be literally the only opportunity in a lifetime for festivalgoers, as Branagh loaned the festival the sole remaining print of the movie.

The festival, a special event of Ebert's alma mater, the University of Illinois College of Media, also will fulfill his longtime ambition to honor another UI alumnus: Lee, the first Asian to win an Academy Award in directing.

Lee will be here in person with "Hulk," which Ebert believes is the most overlooked of the director's films. It will be shown at 11 a.m. April 26. Individual tickets are sold out.

Ebert, though, will not be onstage to talk with Lee or other guests. He has not regained his speaking voice, lost to complications after surgery for salivary-gland cancer.

"I took a real whammy with this third surgery but am again in full possession of such necessities as walking, smiling, thinking, reviewing movies and giving 'thumbs ups,'" he wrote.

Indeed, in a recent column on Ebert published in The New York Times, film critic A.O. Scott noted that Ebert has hardly lost his voice. Scott wrote the column after Ebert announced that he has left his weekly movie-review TV show because he is unable to speak but has resumed writing reviews for The Chicago Sun-Times, where the Urbana native began working 40 years ago.

Scott noted Ebert's productivity as something other film critics cannot hope to match and wrote that his prolific pace does not entail a compromise in quality.

"It is this print corpus that will sustain Mr. Ebert's reputation as one of the few authentic giants in a field in which self-importance frequently overshadows accomplishment," Scott wrote. "His writing may lack the polemical dazzle and theoretical muscle of Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris ... but the plain-spoken Midwestern clarity of Mr. Ebert's prose and his genial, conversational presence on the page ... make him a more useful and reliable companion for the dedicated moviegoer.

"His criticism shows a nearly unequaled grasp of film history and technique, and formidable intellectual range, but he rarely seems to be showing off. He's just trying to tell you what he thinks and to provoke some thought on your part about how movies work and what they can do."

Ebert said he was "gobsmacked" by Scott's generosity. Most of Ebert's fans and his festivalgoers would not be: To the latter, Ebert is a favorite native son and the benevolent and beloved overlord of his festival.

This year, Ebert said he plans to be "sort of a benign presence in the back row, exuding love of movies and those who love them.

"I will be onstage to a certain degree, but not a lot. No ambitious plans as of now for a 'computer voice' except for some prepared statements. The movies are the important thing about the festival, not me."

The experts who will conduct the onstage Q&As will include David Bordwell, who Ebert called perhaps the most respected film scholar in America, as well as Time magazine critic Richard Corliss and other Ebert friends: Bill Nack, Richard Roeper and Mary Corliss.

"Many loyal supporters will pitch in to do the intros, led by my wife Chaz," Ebert wrote. "The presence that's missing this year is our dear colleague Dusty Cohl, to whom the festival is dedicated. His wife Joan, our friend of more than 30 years, will be right there in the back row with us, however, flying the flag."

Here is the lineup, with Ebert's descriptions of the movies (time schedule and onstage guests listed below):

– "Hamlet" (1997). Directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh in the title role, "'Hamlet' is long (four hours) but not slow, deep but not difficult, and it vibrates with the relief of actors who have great things to say, and the right ways to say them."

– "Delirious" (2007). Writer-director Tom DiCillo's work has a "special quality because it does not make paparazzi a target but a subject. It sees Les, the name of the (Steve) Buscemi character, whose name itself tells you what you need to know about him. It watches him work, it goes home with him, it listens while he espouses his paparazzi code to a new friend named Toby (Michael Pitt)."

– "Yes" (2005). "'Yes' is a movie about love, sex, class and religion, involving an elegant Irish-American woman (Joan Allen) and a Lebanese waiter and kitchen worker (Simon Abkarian). They are known only as She and He. 'She' is a scientist, married lovelessly to a rich British politician (Sam Neill). 'He' was a surgeon in Beirut, until he saved a man's life only to see him immediately shot dead. Refusing to heal only those with the correct politics, he fled Lebanon and now uses his knives to chop parsley instead of repairing human hearts."

– "Canvas" (2007), preceded by "Citizen Cohl: The Untold Story," a short film tribute to Cohl. "'Canvas' is a serious film about mental illness and a sentimental heartwarmer, and succeeds in both ways. It tells the story of a 10-year-old whose mother is schizophrenic, and whose father is loyal and loving but stretched almost beyond his endurance. ... The portrayal of schizophrenia in the film has been praised by mental health experts as unusually accurate and sympathetic."

– "Shotgun Stories" (2007). "(I)t creates implacable tension between two sets of half-brothers in rural Arkansas. Three brothers, who live together, are the product of a marriage by an alcoholic father who deserted them and a mother who should have. Their parents couldn't even be bothered to name them, and they are Son, Kid and Boy. After the father sobered up and became successful, he fathered four more children."

– "Underworld" (1997). Kristin Thompson wrote for the Ebertfest Web site of Josef von Sternberg's silent film: "The plot is relatively simple, dealing with a love triangle that develops between gangster 'Bull' Weed, the reformed drunkard, 'Rolls Royce,' whom he takes on as his right-hand man, and Bull's girlfriend 'Feathers.'"

– "The Real Dirt on Farmer John" (2006). A documentary on a northern Illinois farm. "This is a loving, moving, inspiring, quirky documentary that was made while the lives it records were being lived. We get a sure sense for the gradual death of the American family farm, the auctions of land and farm equipment, the encroachment of suburban housing and then an almost miraculous rebirth through the introduction of organic gardening."

– "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters" (1985). The life of Japanese author Yukio Mishima "obviously supplies the materials for a sensationalistic film. Paul Schrader has not made one. Instead, his takes this most flamboyant of writers and translates his life into a carefully structured examination of three different Mishimas: public, private and literary."

– "Hulk" (2003). "Like the Frankenstein stories that are its predecessors, 'Hulk' is a warning about the folly of those who would toy with the secrets of life. It is about the anguish of having powers you did not seek and do not desire." Lee's version is "the most talkative and thoughtful recent comic-book adaptation," less about a green monster, more about wounded adult children of egomaniacs.

– "The Band's Visit" (2008). An Egyptian band, the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, are lost in the middle of the Israeli desert, having taken the wrong bus. "Another bus will not come until tomorrow. 'The Band's Visit' begins with this premise, which could supply the makings of a comedy, and turns into a quiet, sympathetic film about the loneliness that surrounds us. Oh, and there is some comedy, after all."

– "Housekeeping" (1987). "The movie, set some 30 or 40 years ago in the Pacific Northwest, tells the story of two young girls who are taken on a sudden and puzzling motor trip by their mother to visit a relative. Soon after they arrive, their mother commits suicide, and the girls are left to be raised by elderly relatives. A few years later, their mother's sister, their Aunt Sylvie (Christine Lahti), arrives to look after them."

– "The Cell" (2000). "'The Cell' is a bizarre mixture of science fiction and serial murders, mind games and pop psychology, wild images and haunting special effects. It's a thriller and a fantasy, a police movie and a venture into the mind of a killer so perverse he could see Hannibal Lecter and raise him."

– "Romance and Cigarettes" (2007). John Turturro's "story involves a marriage between Queens high-steel worker Nick (James Gandolfini) and tempestuous wife Kitty (Susan Sarandon), who found a poem he wrote to his mistress (Kate Winslet), or more accurately to that part of her he most treasures."

Other festival stories