Smile Politely. Speak Directly. A Champaign-Urbana Culture Blog

Lucky for Lee Marvin fans and thanks to films such as No Country for Old Men, along with movies such as The Proposition, and television shows such as Deadwood, the Western is currently undergoing something of a mini-renaissance.

Like any genre, the Western remains malleable and ubiquitous enough to reflect contemporary themes and concerns, while the elements remain the same; unshaven men baking in the desert sun, looking to kill one another for various motivations of revenge and/or justice.

However bad circumstances become in the poverty-stricken, war torn landscapes of developing countries, it's important to remember that conditions are often much worse for the girls and women of these societies. The oppression and impoverishment of half the world’s population is rarely addressed in the media, but it’s real and all the more insidious for its ubiquity.

Tonight, the Krannert Art Museum, will host a private screening of A Powerful Noise, a documentary following the lives of three women from disparate countries dealing positively with issues of oppression and poverty in their cultures.

It’s the return of the world’s best buttered popcorn! That’s right — grab your car keys, it’s drive-in season once again in Gibson City, and that means the scent of summer is on the wind. About a forty minute drive away from Champaign and well worth the trip, the Harvest Moon is a twin drive-in movie theater on the outskirts of Gibson City on Route 47 South. In a time when over 80 percent of the nation’s movie-going public have only faceless multiplexes to house their films, the drive-in is not only a dwindling rarity in America, but a necessary novelty. Those who have never experienced a drive-in movie are cheating themselves from a wealth of memories.

According to Dwight from TV’s The Office, rules are what separate humans from animals. In 1925, a new book of rules was enforced upon professional football, and the sport was changed forever. The gridiron was tamed, groomed, and all the fun was lost in the complicated intricacies of right and wrong. Leatherheads, George Clooney’s new film about the sport’s wakeup to the cold bath of regimentation, proves that rules are for idiots like Dwight.

I’m going to be honest. Going in to see this film, I was blissfully unaware of what the title Stop-Loss meant. I thought perhaps it was a strangely-worded political statement on the filmmaker’s position on the Iraq war. “Stop the loss” of our soldiers. “Stop the loss” of life. Looking back on it, the title can take on that connotation if you take away its proper definition. The term “stop-loss” is actually a military term that means a soldier has been called back into active duty after he or she has been scheduled to end their term in the service. This issue is the basis of the film, directed by Kimberly Peirce, and brings the injustice of this policy to light. It's enough to make the film worthwhile and it may just also serve as an anti-recruiting measure for our army.

Long before the Coen brothers garnered Oscars for their own pseudo-western masterpiece, screenwriter/director John Huston crafted the definitive tale of greed giving birth to violence amidst the barren landscapes of the southwest. That No Country for Old Men took place in Texas, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is famous for it’s brilliant evocation of Mexico, makes little difference.

Each movie posits the wide-open austerity of all that sand, all that sun, and all those cacti as a sort of stand-in for Dante’s multi-tiered hell.

If you missed the release of Cloverfield at the local cineplex, you have another chance tonight and Thursday at the Virginia Theater. And wouldn't you know it, the lead actor, Michael Stahl-David, and I both went to Lincoln Park High School and graduated the same year. Even better, we were in the drama program together. But you don't see me landing a major motion picture role, do you?

Yes, Michael made it as an actor in New York, and this past weekend, I ran into my old friend at SxSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas. Even though everyone wants a piece of him, he ever-so-lovingly answered some questions for me and my not-so-glamorous job here at Smile Politely. I didn't even have to go through his publicist.

In a past life, you were...: a chimney sweep.

Most ridiculous job you had to take on in order to pay the bills: I was a bike taxi driver in Times Square.

The execution of a vision is the thing that breaks or makes a film. The more vast and imaginative the vision, the harder it is to see realized. But in the case of director Todd Haynes’s latest film, I’m Not There, a courageous vision was well worth the effort thanks to an amazing cast, a well-plotted set of vignettes, and a figure worthy of such an ambitious picture.

Sink into the seats at Virginia Theatre to take in what is arguably the greatest movie of all time. This Saturday, the historical downtown theater unspools the film Citizen Kane, the American Film Institute’s number one on the big screen.

Snow, freezing rain, mud, soggy boots, bitter temperatures and gray skies: Welcome to winter in Champaign–Urbana.

It’s true that this year we’ve enjoyed some uncharacteristic meteorological reprieves. (And with the mercury expected to hit the mid-40s on Christmas day, we probably have a few more in store.) But when the wind chill sweeps off the prairie at 15 degrees it’s officially time to consider protective measures. Short of hibernating, lying on the couch under a blanket with a large stack of DVDs is your best bet. If you have some good entertainment options (and a lackey to bring you your flicks), you may not have to leave the house until spring.

Read on for some DVD winter winners, guaranteed to keep your mind away from the ice age brewing outside your windows.

The pleasure of movie-watching as a sport is uncovering undiscovered treasures far away from the new releases section of your local video store. This task usually isn't too difficult with foreign films as many gems from other cultures don't even show up on our radar screens in the United States (which is really too bad because it's our loss). This is particularly true for popular Indian cinema, affectionately referred to as "Bollywood" movies (as in, Bombay+Hollywood). Even if you have Indian friends, Bollywood movie recommendations are hard to come by as some people seem surprisingly embarrassed by their love for this genre. High-brow conversations about Indian cinema usually center around Mira Nair's latest project or the classic films of Satyajit Ray. When That's Rentertainment's "employee picks" rack offered up a 1995 Bollywood film I'd never heard of, I eagerly rented it out of curiosity. The movie was called Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, loosely translated as "The Braveheart Will Take the Bride", and I was rewarded with one of the most unapologetically satisfying movie-watching experiences of my life.

When I first saw Gary Hustwit's new documentary Helvetica at American Institute of Graphic Arts' Intent/Content Conference in Nashville, I was skeptical. As a graphic designer, I had an opinion about the subject. I wondered how an 80-minute documentary about a typeface that I've been trying to avoid since the 1980s could at all be interesting. Was I surprised. Hustwit is such a good filmmaker that he can make watching water boil fascinating. But in this film, he didn't have to do too much because the people he chose to interview were so passionate about the topic that they poured their heart out for his camera. What Hustwit ended up with was more than a film about a font. Helvetica is the best film about the graphic design profession ever made (not that there have been that many, or even one).

Helvetica is a Swiss typeface that was developed in 1957 and became, arguably, the most used typeface in the world.