View image The most famous phone box in the world. After the screening of Bill Forsyth's long-unavailable masterpiece "Housekeeping" at Ebertfest (about which more later) somebody asked him why he used the word "moving" in a key piece of dialog…
Seeing a series of exquisitely subtle films that includes Jeff Nichols' "Shotgun Stories," Eran Kolirin's "The Band's Visit" and Bill Forsyth's "Housekeeping," you become sensitized to how clumsy most movies are about unloading their expository details. These Ebertfest films and…
The Illini Student Union wi-fi network has been down since late Friday/Saturday morning, so I'll have to file more when I get back home (I'm between planes in Chicago now, on airport wi-fi). I think the Saturday convention of student…
In Sally Potter's "Yes," there's a scene in a restaurant kitchen in which a Lebanese chef and a young Brit-punk dishwasher get into fierce confrontation (you can't really call it an "argument") over politics and religion. The kid grabs a…
View image David Bordwell and Bill Forsyth on an Ebertfest panel. (photy by Thompson McClellan) My Ebertfest has already been made for me because I spoke to Bill Forsyth yesterday and, at one point, he said "Great." This is major…
APRIL 25, 2008--Every year I keep meaning to include "Joe vs. the Volcano" in Ebertfest, and every year something else squeezes it out, some film more urgently requiring our immediate attention, you see. The 1990 John Patrick Shanley film, starring…
My Ebertfest has already been made for me because I spoke to Bill Forsyth yesterday and, at one point, he said "Great." This is major — particularly for a guy who, with his friends, went around saying "Great" in Gordon…
View image Writer-director Tom DiCillo in the limelight. (photo by Thompson McClellan) After the Ebertfest screening of "Delirious" Thursday afternoon, writer-director Tom DiCillo ("Johnny Suede," "Living in Oblivion," "Box of Moonlight," "The Real Blonde" (1998)) recalled sending Roger Ebert an…
April 24, 2008 -- On Wednesday morning I became seduced by the idea that I would, after all, somehow turn up at the festival. I would get there by ambulance, limo, MediVan, who knows what? But at the present I…
After the Ebertfest screening of "Delirious" Thursday afternoon, writer-director Tom DiCillo (pictured above and director of "Johnny Suede," "Living in Oblivion," "Box of Moonlight," "The Real Blonde") recalled sending Roger Ebert an e-mail. He was in despair over the distributor's…
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