TV/Streaming
Home Entertainment Guide: February 2022
The latest on Blu-ray and streaming, including Encanto, Eternals, House of Gucci, and Criterion editions of The Piano and Miller's Crossing.
The latest on Blu-ray and streaming, including Encanto, Eternals, House of Gucci, and Criterion editions of The Piano and Miller's Crossing.
A fond look back at photos of past Ebertfest gatherings as well as the 20th anniversary Ebertfest video, in preparation for resuming the film festival September 8-11, 2021.
The pioneering character actor always brought something extra to every project.
An announcement of passes going on sale Friday, November 1st, for the next Ebertfest Film Festival that takes place April 15-18, 2020, in Champaign, Illinois.
Go ahead and scream. No one can hear you.
An article announcing the 20th Anniversary of Ebertfest April 18-22, 2018 and tickets on sale November 1st.
An article about Ebertfest, Roger Ebert's Film Festival 2017 passes, which are now on sale.
The latest on Blu-ray and DVD, including "The Invitation," "Sing Street," "Louder Than Bombs," "Keanu" and "Hardcore Henry."
An article on Ebertfest 2016 passes available for purchase on November 2nd.
The visceral impact that Ridley Scott's "Alien" had in 1979 can never quite be recaptured, partly because so many movies have adapted elements of its premise, design and effects over the last three decades -- from John Carpenter's remake of "The Thing" (1982) to David Cronenberg's remake of "The Fly" (1986) to "Species" (1998) and "Splice" (2009). No movie had ever looked like this. And it still works tremendously -- but let me tell you, in 1979 a major studio science-fiction/horror film that hinted darkly of interspecies rape and impregnation was unspeakably disturbing. (It got under my skin and has stayed there. We have a symbiotic relationship, this burrowing movie parasite and I. We nourish each other. I don't think Ridley Scott has even come close to birthing as subversive and compelling a creation since.)
The thing is, the filmmakers actually took out the grisly details involving just what that H.R. Giger " xenomorph" did to and with human bodies (the sequels got more graphic), but in some ways that made the horror all the more unsettling. You knew, but you didn't know. It wasn't explicitly articulated. Dallas (Tom Skerrit) just disappears from the movie. The deleted "cocoon" scene (with the haunting moan, "Kill me...") appeared later on a LaserDisc version of the film, and then was incorporated into the 2003 theatrical re-release for the first time. The deleted footage:
Marie writes: Why a picture is often worth a thousand words...Production still of Harold Lloyd in "An Eastern Westerner" (1920)
Welcome to a special Halloween edition of the Newsletter! Marie writes: the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris is considered one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world, in addition to being the final resting place of many a famous name. From Édith Piaf, Sarah Bernhardt and Chopin to Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison and Georges Méliès, the well-known sleep on the tree-lined avenues of the dead and which you can now explore in a virtual 360 degree tour...
ENTER Père-Lachaise