After the jump, Jasper Pierce volunteered his ideas on being overworked and underappreciated, his book's roots in Champaign-Urbana, and the potential for revolution in the United States. Stick around and check it out.

Whether you’ve seen none or a hundred westerns, chances are the conventions of the genre are rattling around somewhere in your consciousness. Images of dusty cow-towns, duels at high noon on Main Street and marauding, savage injuns’ (the genre’s term, not mine) are part and parcel of films of this kind and they are ingrained in our national consciousness like the pledge of allegiance and grandma’s apple pie. It’s obvious from his latest directorial effort, Appaloosa, that Ed Harris knows these tropes like the back of his hand, as those mentioned above and many more pop up, all rendered with a loving sense of nostalgia for bygone days. His has a romantic vision of the West and while there are those that may object to the film’s simplicity, there are enough variations on these themes to make it worthwhile.

Editor's note: Chuck Koplinski wrote a review for The Visitor on May 30 and the link is embedded in the film's title below.

Area filmgoers are in a for a treat as character actor Richard Jenkins will be appearing at the Normal Theater to introduce the film, The Visitor, a moving film that has garnered well-earned critical acclaim and is a timely examination of the United States’ immigration policy and our country’s place in the world. Jenkins, a graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University, will be on hand to discuss the film and take questions afterwards, as will his co-star in the movie, Danai Jekesai Gurira.

You may think differently if you’re one of those sex addicts who gets satisfaction in seeing flashes of 60+ year old women in the nude, or holding onto the panties of the members of your Sex Anonymous meetings that you sneak off to the bathroom with.

But unless you fall within those parameters, the darkness of Choke isn’t worth sitting through for that very tiny glimpse of light that is the film’s conclusion.

Instead of seeing Choke, just order late night Cinemax. You’ll get the same poor acting, cheesy writing, but definitely more pleasure.

There was once a video game known as Captain America and the Avengers for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Game Systems. Playing the game as a child, I always chose the stalwart Avenger Iron Man and despite my professed dorkiness, this was the extent of my experience with the character of Tony Stark/Iron Man before I saw Jon Favreau's Iron Man. So, unlike most of my analyses of superhero media, my perspective on Iron Man was rather neutral: I was, for once, a normal moviegoer, an unbiased observer. And I have to say, I didn't like it that much.

The riskiest move where films are concerned these days is to attempt to make a movie that relies on charm or romantic ideals. Swing Vote dared to do this by reviving the formula that made director Frank Capra a household name and withered at the box office. It appears that a similar fate awaits David Koepp’s Ghost Town, an unabashedly sweet work that not only provides a showcase for one of the most talented comedic actors working today but also stands as a throwback to the era of the 30s and 40s, when lighthearted but genuine films of this sort were commonplace.

Have you ever been to a party and hovered awkwardly around a group of the party-goers, trying to engage in the conversation but feeling completely left behind, without anything resembling a frame of reference by which to understand the particulars of language, gestures, euphemisms, and the very subjects of their talk? That's what Sex and the City: The Movie was for me. While watching it, I felt excluded, like I was standing at a party to which I was not invited: not bored, really, just uncomfortable.

Abortion has once again become a hot topic, with the upcoming election possibly changing decades of social policy on the issue. As such, the Independent Media Center is providing more fuel to the fire by screening two groundbreaking documentaries by filmmakers Sarah Diehl and Angie Young: Abortion Democracy: Poland/South Africa and The Coat Hanger Project. The first, Abortion Democracy by Diehl is a Berlin-based film which compares and contrasts the differences in policies in South Africa and Poland regarding abortion and their impact on the lives of women, arguing for a liberalization of abortion laws. Young's The Coat Hanger Project focuses on the current state of the Unites States' pro-choice/reproductive movement 35 years after Roe v. Wade and specifically targets the post-1973 generation.

Filmmakers Diehl and Young will be at the IMC to participate in a Q&A after the screenings and artwork by Heather Ault will also be on display — she describes her work as, "...the history of contraception and abortion through visual narratives as a way to reframe how the public understand women's reproductive health care."

The event begins tonight at 7 p.m. and both films are free. The Independent Media Center is located at 202 S. Broadway St. in Urbana.

It has often occurred to me that there existed a time as recently as my early adolescence when television shows were not regularly released in DVD box sets. I wonder how people survived in the days before you could sit down for five or six hours with your favorite TV show without commercial breaks and before you were able to skip the intro you've seen a million times — back when you had to start watching your show at precisely the same time each week.

Half the suspense of a Coen brothers film comes from the fact that these directors cannot be trusted in keeping their characters safe. Preparing to engage oneself in a romp with the Coens should be likened to heading out on the road with your legally blind 90-year old grandmother at the wheel. Dig your fingers into the nearest hunk of upholstery and expect some wild times ahead. So if you haven’t learned your lesson by now, take warning: these directors could care less if you like their film; they just want to make a good movie.

On Saturday night, The Highdive hosted two excellent Chicago bands: Pinebender and Dianogah. Both have been making music for over decade and this weekend's show highlighted this fact — each band put on an excellent show. It also helped that the sound in The Highdive was stellar both in the audience and up on stage (as pointed out by Chris from Pinebender many, many times while they played). People trickled in during Pinebender's set until there was a modest crowd by the start of Dianogah.

Click the jump to read about Dianogah's set.

In a 2004 article, David Foster Wallace wrote, “Still, after all the intellection, there remain the facts of the frantically clanking lid, the pathetic clinging to the edge of the pot.”

The sentence comes toward the end of an essay called, “Consider the Lobster,” a reflection on the Maine Lobster Festival that, to my mind, represents quintessential Wallace: thoughtful and cerebral and satirical and meandering and overrun with footnotes and, in the end, gratifyingly complex.

Some movies come from out of nowhere to surprise and delight you, as well as re-instill a degree of hope for the medium as well. Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges did that for me when I saw it earlier this year in Chicago and I eagerly awaited its release here so that I might spread the word about the discovery I had made. But alas, the film was never released locally, part of a blundering campaign from Universal Studios who obviously didn’t know how to market this existential gem disguised as farce. (When I mentioned the film to a colleague of mine recently she said she thought it looked “slapsticky” from the trailer.) One of the reasons the publicity arm at Universal didn’t know what to do with the film is because it’s uncommonly smart. That’s probably why it bombed in its limited run as well, as it is common knowledge audiences don’t want to think when they go to the movies. Cinema managers hate it as well because then they have to deal with patrons moaning, “Brain hurts!” like the Frankenstein monster as they wander out of the theater.

Bigger releases (i.e. films that you remember being in the theaters) this week include Tina Fey's venture into movie stardom, Baby Mama, and Jackie Chan and Jet Li's collaboration The Forbidden Kingdom. The consistently disappointing and yet never-ending Smallville sees its seventh season come out today, along with David Caruso's latest operatic television masterpiece CSI: Miami, which has also somehow made it to a seventh season and beyond.

Assuming you're not into CSI (and all apologies if you are), this week offers a couple choices for the discerning video renter. First up is The Fall, directed by Tarsem Singh, one of the many people with only one name who seem to be drawn to the arts. As Tarsem explains in the rather terrible making-of feature on the disc, he doesn't care if his movie is "the biggest piece of shit you've ever seen," as long as he and his crew have fun making it. Whether or not this is a healthy attitude for a filmmaker to have doesn't seem to have bothered directors David Fincher or Spike Jonze, who "present" The Fall which assumedly means they footed a lot of the bill for it.