Wednesday, July 9, 2008 East Central Illinois

10th Annual Roger Ebert's Film Festival 2008

Famed director to attend this year's Ebertfest

By: The News-Gazette
Friday, March 28, 2008
Story Photo

Photo by: ILM/Universal Studios

The Hulk as seen in 'Hulk.'

CHAMPAIGN – Acclaimed director and University of Illinois graduate Ang Lee is one of the highlights of the 10th annual Ebertfest at the Virginia Theatre in downtown Champaign.

The film festival, hosted by noted film critic, Urbana native and UI grad Roger Ebert, takes place April 23 to 27. Other guests scheduled to appear at the festival, with films hand-picked by Ebert, include director Paul Schrader, actor Joey Pantoliano, a return performance by the Alloy Orchestra, director William Forsyth, actress Christine Lahti, actress Aida Turturro, choreographer Tricia Brouk and more.

Festival films include "Hamlet," "Delirious," "Yes," "Canvas," "Shotguns Stories," "Underworld," "The Real Dirt on Farmer John," "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters," "Hulk," "The Band's Visit," "Housekeeping," "The Cell" and "Romance and Cigarettes".

Lee, who does not often appear at public events, has become one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, with his movies earning high praise. His last film, "Lust, Caution," a story of power and political intrigue, set in World War II-era Shanghai, was nominated for "Best Foreign Language Film" at the Golden Globes. It garnered a number of other awards, as well.

According to the Internet Movie Database, Lee's next film is "A Little Game," set for release next year.

Lee was born in 1954 in Pingtung, Taiwan, and after graduating from the National Taiwan College of Arts, came to the United States to attend the UI, where he received a bachelor's degree in theater/theater direction.

He turned his eye to film when he entered the master's degree program in film production at New York University. While attending the film program, he served in 1983 as assistant director on Spike Lee's student film, "Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads." Lee went on to write several screenplays, with his directorial debut in 1992 with "Tui shou" ("Pushing Hands").

His next film, "Hsi yen" ("The Wedding Banquet"), received Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. It also won a Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival.

Lee's first mainstream Hollywood movie, if it can be called that, was 1995's "Sense and Sensibility," starring Emma Thompson. It was nominated for "Best Picture" and won an Oscar for "Best Adapted Screenplay" for Thompson.

Among Lee's most critically acclaimed movies are "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" from 2000 and "Brokeback Mountain," co-starring the late Heath Ledger, from 2005.

This year's Ebertfest films, in order of appearance, are:

– "Hamlet," a 70mm film directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh, an adaption of William Shakespeare's play, "has a visual clarity that is breathtaking. It is the first uncut film version of Shakespeare's most challenging tragedy. ... Branagh's version moved me, entertained me and made me feel for the first time at home in that doomed royal court," Ebert writes.

– "Delirious," starring Steve Buscemi as a paparazzi and his unpaid assistant as they try to get famous by taking shots of the famous. "Delirious," by writer-director Tom DiCillo, "has a special quality because it does not make paparazzi a target but a subject," Ebert says.

– "'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)," Ebert says. "I celebrate these transgressions. 'Yes' is alive and daring, not a rehearsal of safe material and styles."

– "Canvas," features Joe Pantoliano, Devon Gearhart and Marcia Gay Harden as they portray a family caught up in the turmoil of mental illness. "'Canvas' is a heartwarmer, a touching story of these people for whom the only response to mental illness is love," Ebert writes.

– "'Shotgun Stories,' a first feature by writer-director Jeff Nichols, 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," Ebert writes.

– "Underworld," a silent film from 1927, was directed by Josef von Sternberg and revolves around 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" is a documentary that shows the death of a family farm and its rebirth. "This is a loving, moving, inspiring, quirky documentary that was made while the lives it records were being lived," Ebert writes.

– "'Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters' is the most unconventional biopic I've ever seen, and one of the best. In a triumph of concise writing and construction, it considers three crucial aspects of the life of the Japanese author Yukio Mishima (1925-1970)," Ebert says of the 1985 film.

– "Hulk" is by Lee and based on the Marvel comics superhero. "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," Ebert writes.

– "The Band's Visit" is about members of an Arab band who find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere. The film 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, Ebert says.

– "Housekeeping," 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, arrives to look after them.

"At the end of the film, I was quietly astonished. I had seen a film that could perhaps be decribed as being about a madwoman, but I had seen a character who seemed closer to a mystic, or a saint," Ebert writes.

– "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 perverse killer. "'The Cell' is one of those movies where you have a lot of doubts at the beginning, and then one by one they're answered, and you find yourself seduced by the style and story," Ebert says.

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

"John Turturro's 'Romance & Cigarettes' is the real thing, a film that breaks out of Hollywood jail with audacious originality, startling sexuality, heartfelt emotions and an anarchic liberty," Ebert writes.

EBERTFEST SCHEDULE

Wednesday, April 23

7 p.m. "Hamlet" (238 minutes).

Thursday, April 24

1 p.m. "Delirious" (107 minutes). Guest: director Tom DiCillio.

4 p.m. "Yes" (99 minutes)

8:30 p.m. "Canvas" (100 minutes), preceded by "Citizen Cohl: The Untold Story," a short film tribute to longtime Ebert friend Dusty Cohl. Guest: director Barry Avrich. Other guests: "Canvas" director Joseph Greco, producers Adam and Lucy Hammel, and actor Joey Pantoliano.

Friday, April 25

11:30 a.m. "Shotgun Stories" (92 minutes). Guest: director Jeff Nichols.

2:30 p.m. "Underworld" (80 minutes), accompanied by Alloy Orchestra.

7 p.m. "The Real Dirt on Farmer John" (83 minutes). Guests: John Peterson and director Taggart Siegel.

10 p.m. "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters" (121 minutes). Guest: director Paul Schrader.

Saturday, April 26

11 a.m. "Hulk" (138 minutes). Guest: director Ang Lee.

3 p.m. "The Band's Visit" (89 minutes). Guest: director Eran Kolirin.

7:30 p.m. "Housekeeping" (117 minutes). Guests: director William Forsyth and actor Christine Lahti.

11 p.m. "The Cell" (108 minutes). Guest: director Tarsem Singh.

Sunday, April 27

Noon. "Romance and Cigarettes" (115 min). Guests: actor Aida Turturro and choreographer Tricia Brouk.

4:30 p.m. "Canvas." Free screening at the Virginia Theatre, by the Champaign County Anti-Stigma Alliance, a group that challenges disability discrimination and promotes education and awareness. A panel of guest speakers will follow the screening.

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