The latest on Blu-ray and streaming includes The Addams Family, Pain and Glory, and Gemini Man.
A tribute to the late character actor in Seymour Cassel, one of the great faces in American independent film.
With FilmStruck gone and no real alternative filling the void at present, Amazon is in a prime position to grab up fans of classic movies.
A list of films and special events to check out when attending this year's Chicago International Film Festival.
An interview with actress Lana Wood about her experience making John Ford's masterpiece, "The Searchers."
A chronological commentary celebrating the performances of Gena Rowlands.
Strong female characters and "Trinity Syndrome"; Spielberg's next two films; the ugly aftertaste of Louie Season 4; 'Mad Men' and family relations; Roddy McDowall's home movies.
A year after the death of Roger Ebert, our critics and contributors on the site that bears his name were asked to share a memory of the man.
This week, Ebert Club bids farewell to Marie Haws! Chaz shares her thoughts and plans for the Ebert Club, and introduces the new Chief Correspondent of the newsletter, Sheila O'Malley. Additionally, we have included a brief survey for Ebert Club subscribers. We want to hear from you!
From the Grand Poobah: The name of this video is "Tarantino vs. the Coen Brothers." It is a rather brilliant editing accomplishment. The better you know the Tarantino and Coen films, the more you may like it. I predict it will go viral.
"Calcuttan Cats," a short story by club member H. W. Cimmerian, is newly online at "O'Rourke's magazine," the online lit mag that Ebert publishes from time to time.
Q. I noticed the letter in the Answer Man from Daniel Stender of Ames, Iowa, who had a project of paintings of scenes from movies featuring people dressed in bear suits but who could only think of two titles, "The Shining" and "The Science of Sleep."
It was the kind of story that made you willing to linger over the after-dinner coffee. "What do you know about the death of Thomas Ince?" Peter Bogdanovich asked me. I knew a little. Like everyone with a fascination for Hollywood gossip, I'd read Kenneth Anger's legendary book Hollywood Babylon, in which he speculates that Ince, "The Wizard of Westerns," died after drinking bootleg booze on William Randolph Hearst's yacht.
CANNES, France--The so-far disappointing 2003 Cannes Film Festival stirred from its torpor over the weekend with sex, violence and dogma. This being Cannes, dogma got the most attention, as Lars Von Trier, a founder of the minimalist Dogma movement, unveiled his three-hour "Dogville." This is one of the most confounding and exasperating films of the festival, and maybe it is brilliant, but I will not be able to determine that until I have recovered from the ordeal of sitting through it.
PARK CITY, Utah--From despair to victory, the South African documentary "Amandla!" has the widest range of emotion of any film at this year's Sundance. It follows the history of the struggle for freedom in terms of the movement's music--which was, as one singer observes, a weapon the apartheid government could not disarm.
David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer, sits repentant in his cell and says he wishes that Spike Lee would just let him alone. He does not approve of Lee's new film, "Summer Of Sam," which opens nationally on Friday. Berkowitz, who has not seen the film, no doubt assumes it is about him and his crimes. He may be surprised to discover he is a supporting character with just a couple of walk-ons, and a brief dialog scene in which a dog does most of the talking.
CANNES, France -- Spike Lee's "Summer Of Sam" has the right title. It isn't a film about David Berkowitz, the serial killer who named himself Son of Sam - but about the summer of 1977, when his bloody string of murders coincided with a heat wave and skirmishes in the ongoing American cultural war.
Some directors and writers won't talk about their work. You suggest a theory and they elevate an eyebrow and nod and drum their fingers and imply that no such thing as a thought ever crossed their minds about the work in question.
The films of John Cassavetes come in a deluge of words and emotions, of grand and sad gestures, of characters who want to love and don't know how. His people are often balanced between the terror and exhilaration of manic-depression. Since he uses the same friends and family members again and again, since he sometimes uses his homes as locations, there is a feeling sometimes that he's cutting close to the bone: His movies are the autobiography of his emotions.
CANNES, France -- On the day that he won the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, Sean Penn sat with his wife, Robin Wright, and co-star John Travolta and talked about the spirit of John Cassavetes.
Great Movies
