Are you a fan of the shoes Michael Jordan made famous? If so, you might want to join the hundreds (thousands?) of fans of MJ and his eponymous shoes who will converge at his statue outside the United Center at noon this Saturday to shoot the final scene of the documentary "Jordan Heads." Billed as "the most anticipated sneaker documentary ever," Saturday's shoot caps four years of production on the film. The documentary looks......

The Bicycle Film Festival is going on now, and this weekend includes a whole slew of documentaries, shorts, and foreign films, all about, well, you know. No Pee Wee's Big Adventure or Breaking Away, sadly. Passes for the whole fest are $27, and for specific nights $10.......

A new documentary is in the works to illuminate the flourishing DIY trend. Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY Art, Craft, and Design is the product of first-time filmmaker Faythe Levine, who was inspired to create the documentary after attending Chicago's Renegade Craft Fair in 2003: "No one was documenting what was going on," Levine said. "It was a bigger cultural community and it was leaking into mass media. They were starting to realize there......

Roger Ebert announced today that he too is leaving Ebert & Roeper, which means that poor ampersandy bastard has to run the show all by himself; Richard Roeper already announced his departure. In a statement he released today, Ebert writes "The [thumbs] trademark still belongs to me and Marlene Iglitzen, Gene [Siskel]'s widow, and the thumbs will return. We are discussing possibilities, and plan to continue the show's tradition."......

Alderman Brendan Reilly (42nd) really is the bad boy of City Council: Not only does he flout Mayor Daley's wishes, but ">he also smokes! He even believes the smoking ban was never "intended to limit artistic expression. It would be wise for us to ... allow theater productions to obtain a special waiver when smoking is a critical component of their performance." While Reilly wants the cast of Jersey Boys to be able to light......

The red carpet is being rolled out tonight at the Loews on Michigan for the Chicago premiere of Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, the first film based on an American Girl doll to be released in theaters. Cutie-pie Abigail Breslin stars as Kit, an American Girl living in 1934 during the Great Depression. Chicago natives Chris O’Donnell and Joan Cusak are also expected to be at the premiere of the film, in which O’Donnell plays......

Every Saturday night you'll find the second-floor auditorium of the Bank of America on West Irving Park Road in Portage Park packed with movie lovers. They come there to see a wide-ranging program of classics, rarities and good old-fashioned popcorn movies. The weekly screenings have now been going strong for over thirty years. A hardcore base of regulars keep coming back year after year despite the encroachment of cable TV, home video and the......

The extra big coffee isn't able to cure our case of the Mondays, but tonight's MAKE Magazine release party might just be the thing to help you ease into the week. Tonight's party at The Hideout celebrates the release of Issue #6 of the bi-annual Chicago-based literary mag, and they kickoff the week in style. Tonight's party features readings by Issue #6 contributors Danielle Aquiline, John Beer, Lindsay Hunter, Amy Leach, Michael Robins, and Kathleen......

There is arguably no genre of music littered with more forgotten figures than jazz. When it comes to pop and rock, every neglected album is just a Pitchfork blurb away from reappraisal and appreciation. But in the world of jazz, for every undervalued legend like Jimmy Scott whose work is rediscovered, there are dozens still consigned to near invisibility. Such a singer is Jackie Paris. He toured with Charlie Parker, performed with Lionel Hampton......

If you're looking for some breezy fun on a big-ass screen, you could do a lot worse than Kung Fu Panda, which opens tomorrow at Navy Pier's IMAX. You can probably guess the story of this new 'toon from the title. Po (voiced by Jack Black) works at his dad's noodle shop until he stumbles upon his destiny: he is the chosen Dragon Warror and must defeat an evil kung fu tiger, or something. The......

Re-imagining any children’s story by author Roald Dahl is a shoo-in for a fun and lucrative undertaking, as Dahl’s stories are both beloved and well known. Adaptations of Dahl’s work have been fairly consistent in the Chicago theater scene, with the BFG running at DePaul University’s Theater School last year, the multi-media show done by The Annoyance in March, and the Emerald City Theater’s puppet production of James and the Giant Peach closing last month.......

For the past several years, the bulk of screenings for the Chicago International Film Festival have been divided up between the AMC River East and the Landmark Century. No more. This autumn's festival will use screens at the AMC River East and 600 N. Michigan for the majority of the program. “We’re not going to be working with Landmark this year,” says Ryan Jewell, the festival’s managing director. “We liked the idea of everything......

Joe Swanberg isn't a typical filmmaker. His work is just as likely to capture characters discussing some quirky intricacy of life as it is graphic sex, and his on-going Chicago-set web series Young American Bodies is no exception. Audiences and critics are taking notice of Swanberg's style as he gains underground fame in the “mumblecore” genre, which is characterized by improvised, low-budget films that document the lives of introspective twentysomethings. His work portrays a......

Two months after the bill landed on his desk, the Guv signed it into law today with a photo op ceremony at Loop landmark Italian Village. So why the delay in signing the bill? The speculation is that G-Rod previously didn't want to have to take any questions from the press. Apparently he's gotten over his skittishness in exchange for some potentially good publicity. Also present were filmmaker Harold Ramis (director of both the......

Rumor has it that Hugh Hefner has signed off on Robert Downey Jr. to portray him in Playboy, the Hef biopic that may begin shooting as early as next summer. Downey is said to be interested but won't commit until a script is set and a director is announced. (Brett Ratner was initially signed on to direct but apparently, that's not happening anymore. [Ed note: Thank God.]) What does that mean for us Chicagoans? Potential......

There's been a certain amnesia in the collective memory when it comes to the 2000 presidential election. Part of that can probably be traced to 9/11. The rest is pure buyer's remorse. And perhaps now that Bush has some of the lowest approval ratings ever recorded, it might be the perfect time to revisit that perverse moment, without precedent in modern US history, where for 36 days we weren't sure who our next president......

The 44th annual Chicago International Film Festival, Cinema/Chicago, and Warner Brothers have teamed up to treat Chicagoans to an advance screening of the newest Batman installment, The Dark Knight. Well, more specifically, you will have to treat yourself, since tickets to the gala event are $150 apiece. The Dark Knight Gala will feature a tribute to director Christopher Nolan, and dinner following the IMAX screening, shown two days before the movie’s official release on July......

Our favorite movie at last year's REELING was V.O. by William E. Jones, which takes non-hardcore, "linking" sequences from vintage gay porn and juxtaposes them with the soundtracks of various classic foreign art films. As we wrote at the time, "The collision is a revelation, by turns hilarious and moving. By leaving out all the actual sex from the original porn, what we are left with is a strikingly ethnographic mosaic of a vanished world."......

We weren’t aware that there were plans to make a fourth Terminator movie, but this is what we learned today: Terminator Salvation: the Future Begins is set to hit theaters in May 2009, and Chicago hip-hopper Common is set to play a character named Barnes, a freedom fighter for the human race. Currently, Common is preoccupied with his eighth album “Invincible Summer,” slated for release in mid-July. [S-T] Meanwhile, enjoy Common’s visual dialog with the......

Since retiring from the Reader earlier this year, Jonathan Rosenbaum has been as busy as ever. He's finishing up his film lecture series at the Siskel, which includes the upcoming screenings of Play Time, his all-time favorite movie. (For a great list, check out his Alternate Top 100 Films/Movies). And his website is now up and running. It's bulging with content dating back to 1987 and also features a Publications and Events section. You......

Try to make it over to the Landmark if you have some free time today; today is your last chance to catch the Hennegan brothers’ new documentary about the Kentucky Derby. The First Saturday in May follows five horses on the path to the 2006 Kentucky Derby, the year _______ won.* Much like Spellbound did in 2002, the documentary serves to show the training and utter devotion that goes into preparing for the culminating moment......

From today's Tribune, Chris Borelli does a fine job interviewing George Motz, the man behind the film "Hamburger America" and its new companion book listing the top 100 burgers in the country. Like most on the East Coast, Motz thinks that Chicago is too "hot dog crazy", not to mention being hung up on "that stupid pizza thing," to have a hamburger identity. The next time Mr. Motz is in town, we invite him......

Roger Ebert, still recovering from complications from surgery associated with salivary cancer, recently broke his hip and won't be hosting the 10th Ebertfest, his annual movie festival in Urbana. From his column in today's S-T: Illness has been playing an unwelcome role in my life these days. After unsuccessful surgery in January, I ended up back in the friendly confines of the Chicago Rehabilitation Institute. Graduating from there in good shape to attend Ebertfest, I......

Eighth grade students from Franklin Middle School in Champaign have written, produced, and acted in a short film about the effects of bullying. Part of an anti-bullying curriculum that will be instated by Franklin and other schools throughout the U.S. next year, the film shows some situational examples of bullying and its consequences, and hopes to make an impact on bullying by provoking classroom discussion on the topic. Bullying has gone high tech since the......

We had the good fortune recently to speak with Barry Gifford, one of our favorite contemporary authors. His newest book is Memories from a Sinking Ship, a "fictional memoir" about growing up in mid-fifties Chicago (and Key West and New Orleans). Roy is a youngster shuttled from place to place, alternating between his beautiful, vivacious mother and his estranged, gangster father. For a sizeable chunk of the book he lives at 6312 N. Rockwell,......

Check out this no-budget recreation of the Dark Knight trailer. Credit due to K for the find.......

Hitchcock got the ball rolling. Orson Welles experimented with it too. But it wasn't until Russian Ark (and the advent of digital video, with its high-capacity recording capability) that an audacious technical challenge was satisfyingly fulfilled: shoot an entire feature-length film in a single take. Aleksandr Sokurov's surreal voyage through St. Petersburg's Hermitage showed exactly what the form is capable of and received nearly universal critical plaudits. Now writer/director Aram Rappaport plans to try......

Having seen the controversial new movie Funny Games over the weekend at the Landmark Century, we feel compelled to chime in. In case you haven't heard about it, it's provocateur Michael Haneke's nearly shot-for-shot English-language remake of his own 1997 film, which was in German. Naomi Watts and and Tim Roth play a well-to-do married couple just arriving at their summer home for a vacation, with their young son and beautiful sailboat in tow. Soon......

The biggest, and most sickening, food-related news this week was yesterday's admission to a congressional panel by Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. President Steve Mendell that "downer cattle" were forcibly slaughtered by his now-defunct company and forced into the American food supply. The result was last month's recall of over 143 million pounds of beef. Mendell was forced to watch undercover videotape of downer cattle, which are too sick to stand on their own and barred......

Evidence by Godfrey Reggio is a short, rather disturbing film made up of footage of children watching TV. We don't see what they're watching (Dumbo actually). We only see their docile, glazed expressions. They just sit there, absorbing. By the time they reach adulthood, kids will have been bombarded with tens of thousands of images. But today's kids are also more likely than ever to actually create their own images. All you need is a......