Coffee mug w/ unlimited refills, commemorative hats, bookworms. (photo courtesy of Thompson McClellan/Ebertfest)

Having kept a low profile thus far due to a recent fall, Roger Ebert started day 3 with a brief and very welcome onstage appearance to read (via his laptop’s soothing, otherworldly voice) the introduction he had written for his good friend Paul Cox, who was in attendance (heck, the whole festival was dedicated to him) to accompany the 2011 feature documentary by David Bradbury about Cox’s recent health struggles, On Borrowed Time. After only a minute or two standing at the podium, Ebert had to step down and content himself with sitting next to his wife and fest host, Chaz Ebert, who finished reading his introduction.

On Borrowed Time follows Cox’s long, contemplative journey from the desperate depths of you-have-six-months-to-live to a miraculous live-saving rare-blood-type liver transplant. Along the way we meet numerous friends, collaborators, and lovers (and the occasional hat trick) who gush admiration for the iconoclastic Australian filmmaker for his female-focused, AARP-friendly films and his engaging charm as a dancing-on-tables partier. That personality doesn’t quite come across from Cox in the film, which is understandable, since the man had been fighting for his life at the time, but I never really could connect the man on screen (or on stage, following the screening) with the man his friends were so breathlessly describing.  And it’s hard to judge his filmmaking talent from the numerous short clips featured in the doc. Two things they did tell me? 1) Dude’s just nuts for boobs and 2) his films all have the look of made-for-US-TV circa 1982. The closest I’d come to watching a Cox film was when I once DVR’d his 2000 film Innocence on an Previous Films of Ebertfest TCM special—my viewing partner and I only made it 15 minutes in before looking at each other with a simultaneous “Nope” and a mutual exhale of sweet relief. (*Delete*) Obviously he’s a unique and great talent—too many very smart people like his stuff to dispute that, and Ebert himself has featured three of his films at previous fests—but his work is decidedly not for me. Much like olives! (Yuck.) As a fellow festgoer later joked out the side of his buttery, popcorned mouth, I “musta forgot to drink the Paul Cox Kool-Aid.”

In the Q&A, Cox seemed to have mixed feelings about the documentary, complaining about the ending being rushed (it was) and sounded a little bitter towards director Bradbury’s aggressive tactics in procuring shots of his actual surgery, having told the surgeon that he had Cox’s permission to shoot in the operating room, which he definitely did not. When he later begged Bradbury to cut that footage, Bradbury refused—Cox darkly chuckled when Chaz remarked that maybe this unwanted exposure was a karmic payback, after so many years of vulnerably exposing his actors in the nude. He went on to say, “This movie started out as a snuff film, really,” and that he wouldn’t have agreed to be involved in this kind of production if he “wasn’t already on the way out.”

And Cox (aka, LL Cool P) is reportedly still a ladykiller—I overheard multiple ladies telling tales of his dashing charm (“What a beautiful man!”)

Before the Q & A, Chaz told an eerie story about how she felt Cox has some kind of cosmic link with Roger—apparently when Roger had an aneurysm, before Chaz contacted anyone with then news, Cox called Chaz to tell her about a dream he’d had of Ebert getting sick, describing things that Ebert had just experienced of which Cox would have had no way of knowing.  The rest of his dream turned prophetic, assuring Chaz that Roger would indeed recover, and would end up connecting with a bigger audience than ever. One can’t argue with the outcome there. 

Up next was Ebertfest’s consistently biggest draw, The Alloy Orchestra, a trio of odd-instrument-playing (including a chamber pot [!], theremin, singing saw, etc) musicians who this year performed their distinctive, original score for a series of silent shorts from 1906-1926 called Wild and Weird, including the shortest D.W. Griffith film, 1909’s Those Awful Hats, and the lesser known Wladyslaw Starewicz’s The Cameraman’s Revenge, a charming stop-motion animation starring bugs as a cheating movie cameraman/husband and his equally cheating wife. A slightly extended version of Wild and Weird (including Georges Méliès’ famous A Trip to the Moon, which had been cut for this performance to focus on lesser seen oddities) is available on DVD, so if you don’t have a problem with several minutes of writhing close-ups of eyeballs (and who would?), this is pure movie nerd fun and definitely worth checking out.

 Closing the day was Iranian writer/director Asghar Farhadi’s spellbinding critical hit—and 2012 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner A Separation, with an introduction by distributor Sony Pictures Classics dude (and regular Ebertfest guest) Michael Barker who told the packed house (in a monotone similar to that of “Toby” from TV’s The Office) that “Except for (the) Berlin (International Film Festival), this is the largest screen it’s ever played.” The Virginia Theater’s enormous screen was the perfect canvas for Farhadi’s engrossing tale of two well-meaning Iranian families—one middle class, one working class—entangled in a web of accusations and deceit that ultimately leads them to plead their very different sides of the story in court.

An enlightening Q&A followed (after a slightly awkward start, when moderator Nell Minnow [of Beliefnet.com] referred to fellow panelist Paul Cox as “Peter,” causing the entire audience to loudly groan their disappointment in concert), with most of the interesting color/background provided by Omer Mozzafar, one of Ebert’s much ballyhooed Far Flung Correspondents and an expert theologian, who provided some interesting insight to the film’s many cultural subtleties lost on American movie viewers—like how all the actresses wore head scarves all the time, when in reality they would only do so outside of the home. The panel mentioned how eye-opening the Iranian courtroom scenes were—casual and lawyer free!  Apparently if you are responsible for the death of another, you are given the choice of paying “blood money” or going to prison, or in some cases, hanging. Oh—and there’s still such a thing as debtors’ prison in Iran! How old timey!

Stay tuned for Days 4 and 5! Citizen Kane! Tweetups! Michael Shannon in a sleeveless hoodie puffer jacket!

Grade:             B

.

BTW:  Keep you eye out for Jackie Earle Haley as the family’s 1970’s caretaker and

appearances from both Christopher Lee and Alice Cooper.

NOTE: The film is dedicated to Dan Curtis who created the original series and was a true Tim Burton-style innovator of his day.  Interesting that Jonathan Frid, who was Barnabas in the TV series, died just a few weeks ago.

Inside the Virginia Theatre, Googling "champaign county tent."

While everyone was disappointed that comedian-turned-actor Patton Oswalt had to last-minute cancel his multiple scheduled Ebertfest appearances—per fest host Chaz Ebert, weather trouble on the NYC set of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty required reshoots that kept the actor on set—Oswalt sent/posted an extremely lengthy message of apology that resulted in an admiring tweet from Roger Ebert himself, describing the apology as “Transcendently graceful,“ and saying of the actor, “This is a very nice man.” It was with this development, all warm and fuzzy feelings decidedly intact, that Ebertfest Day Two audiences generously embraced Oswalt’s dark 2009 indie drama Big Fan, the story of Paul, a loner New York Giants fanatic (the kind that spends his shifts in a mostly deserted parking garage painstakingly creating the detailed scripts he uses when calling into his favorite late night sports talk radio show) who is left hospitalized and somewhat broken after a chance encounter with one of his football heroes turns slightly (though innocently) stalker-ish, and then into a brutal assault. In his first leading role, Oswalt is a revelation as Paul, creating a deeply sympathetic character that is at the same time growing darkly, and possibly violently, unmoored. In the revealing Q & A following the screening, Big Fan director Robert Siegel (also known for writing Darren Aronofsky’s Oscar nominated The Wrestler, as well as being a former editor-in-chief of satirical newspaper The Onion) said that he was for the most part unable to take advantage of Oswalt’s natural talent for improv due to the actor’s extreme lack of sports specific knowledge. And when he did get some great topic-appropriate improv, he often had to tell the sharply intelligent Oswald “dial it back a little” and dumb up his dialogue a bit. Siegel also mentioned that he didn’t audition Oswalt for the role, hiring the untested dramatic actor on “a hunch” that he could pull off this seriously dark dramatic role.  As for Big Fan’s muted, grainy look and feel, Siegel said it was mostly inspired by ‘70s films like Saturday Night Fever, and he admitted a soft spot for actresses from the same decade like Karen Black and Marcia Jean Kurtz—he cast the latter in the crucial role of Oswalt’s nonplussed mother.

 Next up was Jamaican-born, New Jersey-raised writer/director Alrick Brown’s ambitious Rwandan genocide epic, Kinyarwanda. Fans of IFC’s 2004 reality series “Film School” might recognize Brown—it’s interesting to see how far the young filmmaker has come in a few short years. Shot in 16 days for $250,000, his gorgeously photographed Kinyarwanda manages to get every bit of its indie-sized budget on the screen, and then some. His cast, a mix of professional actors and nonactors, shines with natural, grounded performances infused with the appropriate gravitas for the delicate subject matter, with the exception of pro Cassandra Freeman’s scenery chewing as the tough-as-nails and usually beret’d Lt. Rose, in a delivery so often over-the-top that it repeatedly pulled me out of the story. That being said, it’s refreshing to see a female character looming large and in charge of troops like this. The story certainly merits seriousness—basically a nonlinear collection of intercut, surprisingly connected short stories that dissect the root conflicts between the Hutu and Tutsis that eventually sparked into a horrific genocide of an estimated 800,000 people, Kinyarwanda is an important story, and Brown patiently explains the small details, the triumphs and failures at the heart of the horror, in a way that serves to uncover the whys of the tragedy, rather than the hows. In the following Q & A, Brown described himself as being from the Alfred Hitchcock school of filmmaking, more interested in building tension with violence that is heard and heard of, as opposed to showing it onscreen. He uses this method to great effect in Kinyarwanda—constantly building tension in a way that feels like the screen is at any time in danger of being overwhelmed and crushed by dark forces whirling just outside of its beautifully constructed frame.

Closing out Day Two was Terri, a quirky, bittersweet 2011 indie dramedy about the titular overweight loner teen (in a wonderful performance by Jacob Wysocki in his first role) who’s given up trying to fit in—comfortable enough in his own skin to wear only pajamas to school, where he never arrives for class on time—and spends most of his free time taking care of his ailing guardian uncle (masterfully underplayed by The Office’s Creed Bratton) until a well-meaning Assistant Principal (John C. Reilly, whose innate doofus sweetness is warmer than ever here) takes him underwing, a development that brings something new into his world: friends. In the following Q & A, director Azazel Jacobs displayed refreshingly little ego, and star Jacob Wysocki displayed a refreshingly tiny cap (of the like worn by 12-year-old skater kids in ‘90s cereal commercials). Wysocki explained that, while he came from an improv sketch comedy background, the Terri set was the first set he’d been on, period, and it was more than a little intimidating to shoot a scene with Reilly on his first day. He needn’t have worried—they instantly had an easy rapport that carried throughout the shoot. Jacobs said that Wysocki was a natural actor, although he occasionally had to ask Wysocki for a “little less Jacob,” when the young actor’s comedic performance was a little more than what would make sense for the character, an instruction the actor says he understood immediately.

Wysocki stuck around for the rest of the week’s screenings, eventually tweeting on the way home: “Goodbye Champagne! You were weird but cool.” If Champaign had fingers and a twitter account, I’m sure s/he would have responded in kind, however with an avuncular PS: “Please step away from the hat, son. You are welcome.”

It is cold here! Send mittens!

While Ebertfest 2012 started out with a disappointing announcement—one of this year’s big name guests, comedian/actor Patton Oswalt, cancelled his fest appearances only minutes before opening night remarks by producer/co-host Chaz Ebert—the capacity crowd’s unbridled enthusiasm in Champaign, Illinois’ gloriously shabby chic Virginia Theatre was in no way diminished.

While SML wasn’t initially super excited about revisiting opening night feature Joe Versus the Volcano, the quirky fantasy was enthusiastically received, and won our hearts with its surreal staging, quirky, absurd dialogue, and top notch comic performances–Tom Hanks, his mullet wig, and Meg Ryan, a comedy knockout playing three very different and well defined characters. In the following Q&A with Joe Director of Photography Stephen Goldblatt, when panelist Christy Lemire mentioned that Goldblatt’s most recent works were Julie & Julia and The Help, the people sitting behind SML cried out, “Wow!” and “Oh my God!” for altogether different reasons than had SML upon discovering this info weeks before.

A comedic short film preceded the next feature, entertaining internet personality spoof The Truth About Beauty & Blogs, amounts to a fun homemade actor’s reel, which is pretty much what it was, according to very smartly dressed writer/co-producer/actor Kelechie Ezie in the Q&A.

Closing out opening night was Phunny Business: A Black Comedy, a laugh a minute, but often too slick by half documentary about entrepreneur Raymond Lambert’s famous Chicago comedy club All Jokes Aside, a spectacular crossroads of black comedy partly responsible for helping launch heavyweights like Steve Harvey, Dave Chappelle, Bernie Mac, and Cedric the Entertainer. While there are plenty of laughs throughout, the onscreen narration by subject/writer/producer Lambert felt forced and oversold, and exactly like the talking heads in today’s crop of “unscripted” reality shows. The result felt self-aggrandizing and a little phony. But luckily, with so many interesting, funny interviews and consistently hilarious clips from the club’s early ’90s heyday, this can only be a very minor complaint.

In the following Q&A, director John Davies told a funny story about when he worked as a Production Assistant for “Sneak Previews” back in its early public television days and once rewrote part of an Ebert review while transcribing it for the teleprompter. When Ebert reached the new lines he called over Davies and gave him a few stern words, followed by the christening of a new nickname: Functional Illiterate.

Stay tuned for recaps of Days 2 through 5, featuring the Alloy Orchestra, momentary eye contact with Doug Benson of “Doug Loves Movies,” and an all-strings version of “Smooth Criminal”!

MARLEY (2012) 

Grade:       A+

BTW:  The film is in limited release, but is also available on iTunes and Facebook.

JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI (2011/IN THEATERS)     

Grade:        A

We cannot start crying already!

Anybody who has exchanged more than a sentence or two with me recently has surely gotten an earful of excitement regarding the upcoming release of DisneyNature’s latest natural world doc, Chimpanzee, which follows a 3-year-old chimp named Oscar (well, named by the filmmakers) as he is orphaned in the jungle and eventually adopted and raised by a grown male chimp, which is apparently some rare shit in the jungle. Watch the trailer HERE and try not to cry. In DisneyNature’s consistently exceptional output (including 2007′s Earth, 2009′s Oceans, and 2011′s African Cats) the filmmakers don’t pull any emotional punches to keep from upsetting the kids–the life or death, kill or be killed, eat or be eaten realities of the wild are very much in the forefront of these harrowing adventures, but they very rarely veer into animal torture porn territory. Unlike say, National Geographic Society Films, which regularly produces phenomenal natural history docs as well, but can be a bit more ruthless about showing the audience the worst possible image they would ever hope to see…and then continue showing it until the viewer is left drained and emotionally exhausted. There’s a particular scene in NGSF’s The Last Lions that is the saddest, most heartbreaking depiction of animal suffering I’ve ever seen–and the scene’s final “money shot” is lingered on just a bit too much. (I cannot go into specifics without making Kimberly cry FOREVER.) It is brutally honest. Well, brutal, anyway. NG is also known for creating narratives out of a random collection of footage, like in their also excellent, harrowing 2007 Arctic Tale, where you are introduced to walrus and polar bear families, following them over the first year of raising new babies. (YES THEY ARE BABIES, PEOPLE.) It isn’t till the end credits that the filmmakers admit that, yes, this was actually just a collection of several different animals, and the footage was just masterfully shaped into a story. But, it’s SO well done, and its super ecofriendly message is SO wonderfully pushy, that it’s difficult for me to fault them for some creative editing.

So this is a must-see, particularly if you need the type of good, cleansing cry that only an orphaned animal with big glassy eyes can bring. Tickets sold in the first week (April 20 through 26) benefit the Jane Goodall Institute, which is one of our favorite institutes. (Goodall is also the subject of an excellent 2010 documentary, Jane’s Journey, which features some captivating stories about raising a small child in Gombe around a bunch of sexually mature chimpanzees. Spoiler alert: The child doesn’t like it!)

MIRROR MIRROR (2012/IN THEATERS) 

Grade:             C

BTW:  Critics and audiences are evenly split on this film—Rotten Tomatoes puts it at 49% from Critics and 53% from Audiences.  Here’s hoping this summer’s Snow White and the Huntsman with Kristen Stewart as Snow, Charlize Theron as a very deadly Queen, and Chris Hemsworth as the Huntsman delivers more.  Standees for this next version are already up in the theater for you to view as you’re leaving Mirror Mirror!

Image by Kagan McLeod, courtesy of Ebertfest.com

To a certain breed of film nerd (myself included), the yearly unveiling of the Ebertfest lineup is a time of great excitement and just a little chin scratching. And, true to form, the newly revealed list of films/guests scheduled for this April’s Ebertfest is sure to raise plenty of yays and maybe only a couple ehs. Such is the spice and homespun charm of this very unusual film festival. Beyond a couple of E-fest programming staples, say, including at least one classic and one or two Africa-related VERY SERIOUS dramas (this year, Citizen Kane and Kinyarwanda, respectively), there’s really no way of guessing what will turn up. These are films Ebert digs, period, and this festival in his hometown of Champaign, IL is his equivalent of the cool grad student deejaying for a party of adoring underclassmen.

Screenings generating the most buzz so far are 2011′s fabulously unsettling Take Shelter, with actor Michael Shannon and director Jeff Nichols in the house for a Q&A (although I tend to think of Ebertfest Q&A more as Kn’A) and 2009′s indie Big Fan featuring a Q&A with star actor/comedian Patton Oswalt. Oswalt’s pulling double duty at the fest, also hosting a separate, free late night screening (at the nearby university’s Foellinger Auditorium) of a film he handpicked: the 1949 Alec Guinness comedic gem Kind Hearts and Coronets. According to Ebert, when Oswalt agreed to attend with Big Fan, “he went one additional step (saying): ‘I’d like to personally choose a film to show to the students, and discuss it.’” Ebert, forever a film professor at heart, was quick to comply.

Also generating serious buzz is the unlikely opening night screener 1990′s Joe Versus the Volcano, which I’m kind of interested in seeing again, having seen it only once, during its original theatrical run. I remember kind of liking it? It certainly left no impression, or compelled me enough for a repeat viewing. But, I was 18 then, and SO stupid (seriously, I can tell you some stories), so I’m interested to see if it’ll go down any differently this time around. Or is it possible that Joe director (and very successful playwright) John Patrick Shanley has only directed two films (this and the mostly pretty good film adaptation of his hit play Doubt) for good reason? (For a similar doomsday scenario, see previous E-fest pick, The New Age, by 2 time director (and very successful screenwriter) Michael Tolkin. Better yet, don’t! Seriously.)

The fest’s several free-to-the-public morning panels are always worth your time, but two in particular stand out this year: a demonstration by the Champaign-based team that manufactured those amazing visual effects scenes for Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life and a Shooting Your Short Film workshop by Huntsville, AL no-budget filmmaking guru Don Tingle. Hit those two presentations and even you could be making your very own pretentious, plotless, and super pretty short films by summertime! (Don’t be afraid to live the dream, people.)

Someday we hope to win a Golden Thumb for Excellence in Film Festival Attendance

While the unconventionally presented fest-closing screening of Citizen Kane–played with Ebert’s acclaimed DVD audio commentary as a clever way to “bring his voice back into the festival”–sounds interesting, the rest of Ebert’s description of the screening gets a little confusing, as he explains that he also would like it presented as he often did during his years teaching film at various university and institution gigs, where any audience member that has a question or comment about what they are watching just yells out “STOP!” and the film is paused and discussed as needed. Considering the caliber of questions that these superfans sometimes come up with… I’m expecting something akin to the old Chris Farley bit: “STOP! OK, Mr. Ebert, remember that time? When you said that funny thing about that movie? That was AWESOME. You are THE BEST.” Crowds don’t come much more fawning than these. But, considering the alternative, I’ll cheerily stick with ‘em.

Also screening is a film I had waiting for me on Blu-ray at the library the very day the schedule was announced: the Vera Farmiga-directed Higher Ground. I canceled the hold–there’s no comparison to seeing a movie for the first time in the gorgeous Virginia Theatre on its massive screen, in a pin-drop-quiet crowd of film nuts just like you.

Nothing could sell this fest better than the newish beautifully produced promotional documentary short streaming from Eberfest.com–featuring testimonials from 2011′s guests, including actress Tilda Swinton, director Richard Linklater, and actor/director Tim Blake Nelson–which manages to encapsulate and explain the whole experience uncannily. SML can’t wait to go back and enjoy some Steak ‘n Shake.

SALMON FISHING N THE YEMEN (2011/ IN THEATERS) 

Grade:             B +