This year, the mentorship program is a retreat. How is this different from years past, and what will this change look like? In past years, it was the mentor meeting the mentee in person or via Zoomfor 30 minutes minimum a month for six months. They could decide where they want to take it. The … Read more
OTHER CHANGES Animated feature films submitted in the International Feature Film category are now eligible for consideration in the Animated Feature Film category if eligibility requirements outlined for both categories are met. The new eligibility period for the International Feature Film category is November 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024. In the Writing categories, a final shooting script will now be … Read more
The first evening show of the day was Frank Borzage’s “The Lady,” starring the incomparable Norma Talmadge. I first saw this film a few years back as part of the online component of Pordenone, but I may as well have never seen it for how much the big screen transformed the experience. Talmadge at one … Read more
Ebertfest 2018, Days 4 & 5: Daughters of the Dust, The Big Lebowski, 13th and More One of the most rapturous ovations I’ve seen in the six years I’ve been attending Ebertfest was received by Ava DuVernay, the celebrated director who flew to Champaign, Illinois, amidst a busy schedule, in order to attend the Saturday … Read more
Barghouti’s family, longing for him, speak as though he will find release. The more profound point here, present in all the films of this Festival, is that as they watch the Occupiers seize their towns, their homes, and their bodies, the Palestinians cannot help but persist. His resistance, whether from a rooftop speech or torture in … Read more
By focusing on its central relationship drama, “Kill Your Lover” never fully devolves into the sweaty social critique that it sometimes threatens to become. In dialogue with each other—as well as sex and bite-sized memories that come back to them as they quarrel—we see Gilmour and Quigley-Murphy’s characters as quarrelsome, fully-realized people who, at the … Read more
1:30PM – ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004): For its twentieth anniversary, Ebertfest screens Michel Gondry’s sci-fi romantic fantasia, about a separating couple (Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet) who choose to erase their memories of each other through experimental technology. 4:30PM – LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING (2023): The soul sensation gets a suitably kaleidoscopic … Read more
You can tell that the Overlook’s organizer have already cultivated a receptive audience for their programming given how engaged and focused theatergoers’ questions were after each screening. People were really excited to find out more about whatever they just saw, including a special screening of “Me,” Don Hertzfeldt’s trippy, unsettling 23-minute long musical. Most people … Read more
SING SING Director: Greg Kwedar | 105 mins Divine G (Colman Domingo), imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn’t commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other men who are incarcerated, including wary newcomer (Clarence Maclin), in this stirring true story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art, … Read more
It’s worth keeping in mind that critics haven’t seen any of these films, and in some cases, we don’t even have a really strong sense of what a particular movie is about. Also important: Handicappers will sometimes base their predictions on who the jury president is, assuming that the kind of film that he or … Read more