movie Glossary
Catch-Up Movie
A film that frustrates the audience because the characters spend the bulk of the film slowly and laboriously learning information that the audience was given during the first 10 minutes. (See "In Dreams.") Stuart Cleland, Evanston
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Admission (PG-13)
by Richard Roeper
Has Tiny Fey ever played a character we weren't rooting for?
In smart features such as “Mean Girls,” “Baby Mama” and “Date Night,” on the just-completed NBC series “30 Rock,” on “Saturday Night Live” and in her book “Bossypants” or even co-hosting the Golden Globes, Fey's either likable or lovable. We're on her side, through all her pratfalls and fashion faux pas and quick, self-deprecating quips.
On the Road (R)
by Roger EbertAlthough Jack Kerouac's “On the Road” has been praised as a milestone in American literature, this film version brings into question how much of a story it really offers. Kerouac's hero, Sal Paradise, becomes transfixed by the rambling outlaw vision of a charismatic car thief, Dean Moriarity, and joins him in a series of journeys from his mother's apartment in Ozone Park, N.Y., as they crisscross the continent to Chicago, Denver, San Francisco and then back again, until it occurs to Sal “I've never been south.” They turn to Mexico, finding in its long, straight cactus-lined roads, some secret to themselves. They also find marijuana; the two may not be unrelated.
Guest Reviews
Alex Kazhinsky of Lincolnwood is this year's Grand Prize winner in the annual Outguess Ebert contest — and tells me, "It's a big thrill to win your contest after playing it for so many years!" Kazhinsky had a perfect score across all the categories. "For many years," he says, "I have worked as an actor in Chicago's entertainment industry. I've had speaking roles in independent films, web series, and commercials. Some of my most notable roles are the following:
The Ballad of Narayama (Unrated) (1958)
"The Ballad of Narayama" is a Japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. What a space it opens up between its origins in the kabuki style and its subject of starvation in a mountain village! The village enforces a tradition of carrying those who have reached the age of 70 up the side of mountain and abandoning them there to die of exposure.
ebert's dvd commentaries
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Jay Leno and I go way back. One of my fondest memories is of Jay chasing me around the parking lot of the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles. I always tell people that I thought of the Bel-Air, which I could still afford in those days (long long ago), as more a sanitarium than a hotel. You know how in L.A. your waiter has probably written a screenplay or two? At the Bel-Air, one of the parking attendants had actually starred in an ABC network series several years earlier! He played a wolf-boy.
PRESS RELEASE: CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Terrence Malick's 1978 film "Days of Heaven" won an Oscar for best cinematography, and Roger Ebert likely found that no surprise. It is "above all one of the most beautiful films ever made," Ebert said in a 1997 review. So it's only appropriate that the film will open the 15th annual Roger Ebert's Film Festival on April 17 in the big-screen, newly renovated Virginia Theater in downtown Champaign.
I have watched with a kind of petrified fascination in recent years as the world creeps closer to what looks to me like disastrous climate change. The poles are melting. Ocean levels are rising. The face of the planet is torn by unprecedented natural disasters. States of emergency have become so routine that governors always seem to be proclaiming one. Do they have drafts of proclamations on file?
When I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I must have driven past the little park a few times. Hyde Park, where the University is located, is a neighborhood including fraternity houses, foundation headquarters, school department offices, even President Obama's family home. Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House can be found there, and Henry Moore's chilling death's-sculpture marking the place where scientists first split the atom.
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The last words spoken in David Mamet's HBO feature film "Phil Spector" are "reasonable doubt." The first words appear in white letters on a black screen: This is a work of fiction. It's not "based on a true story." ... It is a drama inspired by actual persons on a trial, but it is neither an attempt to depict the actual persons, nor to comment upon the trial or its outcome.
But what really matters is the Muriels. You know, that time-honored annual movie award that is not named after Bette Davis's Uncle Oscar, but after co-founder Paul Clark's guinea pig. Throughout the month of February (the 6th through the 23rd), the winners have been announced, as you know because you've been regularly clicking on the Muriels link right here on Scanners. Anyway, you know what "Argo" can do; the Muriel voters, on the other hand, chose to give the top prize to what, to me, was obviously the most rewarding movie experience of the year: Leos Carax's "Holy Motors."
Another brawl in the square
Another stink in the air!
Was there a witness to this?
Well, let him speak to Javert!-- Javert, a character in the musical "Les Misérables" I was an eyewitness to "Les Misérables." After repeated exposure to that dreadful theatrical trailer-cum-featurette about how the singing is all done live on camera! -- It's live! It's Live! IT'S LIVE! -- I had no intention of seeing Tom "The King's Speech" Hooper's film version of the 1980s stage musical. But when it finally came out, some of the reviews were so bad that part of me wanted to see what the stink was all about. Still, I'm not a masochist; I don't enjoy going to movies I know I'm probably predisposed to dislike just so I can dump on them. On the other hand, there's nothing better than having your low expectations upended. I did enjoy that Susan Boyle YouTube video back in 2009, but that was all I knew about the musical. I remained curious but skeptical. And then ...
Opening Shot Project Index
• Jana J. Monji in Los AngelesWomen's History month is just the right time to watch, "Miss Navajo," a documentary that premiered at Sundance in 2007 and was broadcast on PBS the same year. The title alone may turn people away if you are, like me, not a big fan of beauty pageants but Miss Navajo is the kind of pageant that perhaps even Gloria Steinem could get behind.
• Jana J. Monji in Los AngelesWith the passing of Andy Williams, I keep imagining his golden tenor singing Henry Mancini's "Moon River." The song talks about crossing life in style. "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is all about fashionable cafe society and love; in an adult fairy tale, you can have both even if you are two drifters.
More than anyone else, Jeannette Hereniko introduced me to the concept of the cinema of the Pacific Rim. I knew Ronald Richie through his books, and in particular learned from him about Ozu. More than anyone else, he was responsible for the introduction of Japanese films to the West, Particularly when he brought a group of great titles to the Venice Film Festival, circa 1960. He also wrote fiction and on Japanese society, and a wonderful autobiographical travel book, The Inland Sea, about a young GI who returned to Japan after WWII and stayed, inspired a film. Here is Jeanette's appreciation of Donald, who died on Feb. 19. -- RE
• Krishna Bala Shenoi, in Bangalore, IndiaIn my copy of his book "Scorsese," Roger Ebert wrote these words: "Every movie lover needs a hero." I've found mine in Steven Spielberg. Spielberg has been my hero ever since I, in my childhood, saw his more popular films (" Jaws," "Temple of Doom," "Hook," " E.T.," "Close Encounters," et al.), but recently, as I covered areas in his filmography I hadn't before, and doubled back to some that I didn't quite remember, I was struck by how much he really is my hero.
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