Life Itself

CHICAGO – What better way to get over the post-election hangover than hearing from the progressive lion, Michael Moore. Moore was on the Red Carpet at the 50th Chicago International Film Festival, and ran into an old friend, Chaz Ebert.

CHICAGO – The 50th Chicago International Film Festival has hit its final six days, continuing to offer Chicagoans an electrifying group of films from around the world. The festival breaks down these films in several categories, including the Main Competition, New Directors, Docufest, Out-Look (LGBT), World Cinema, After Dark and Spotlight Scandinavia.

CHICAGO – We’d all be so lucky to live a full life of love, success and dignity. But earning it and then dying with it is the ultimate accomplishment.

CHICAGO – We will never see the likes of his kind again – the influential arbiter of cinematic taste, whose magic thumb could make or break the dreams of both filmmaker and film fan. The journey of Roger Ebert, the most influential film critic of our times, is told in the new documentary, “Life Itself.”

CHICAGO – The iconic film critic and renaissance man, Roger Ebert, deservedly gets a full documentary film treatment of his 2011 memoir, “Life Itself,” and who better to create it than the Chicago-based director of “Hoop Dreams,” Steve James. And who better to produce and guide it than Roger’s soulmate, his wife Chaz Ebert.

CHICAGO – The only thing Roger Ebert loved more than movies and his wife, Chaz, was “Life Itself”. The riveting new documentary, which opens on Friday, July 4, 2014, premiered in red-carpet Chicago style on June 30, 2014. HollywoodChicago.com publisher Adam Fendelman interviewed Chaz Ebert and the film’s director, Steve James (“Hoop Dreams”).

CHICAGO – The buzz at Sundance was for a documentary about the life of a film critic – but that film critic happens to be Roger Ebert, and the film is an adaptation of his memoir, “Life Itself.” Magnolia Pictures announced yesterday that they have acquired U.S. theatrical, Video-On-Demand and home entertainment rights to the film, and are planning on a summer release.

The instant-response nature of our media has forced a bizarre question on nearly every minute of the Sundance Film Festival — “Is it a GOOD year?” Journalists and festival goers talk in hushed tones about the first time they saw beloved Sundance films like “Clerks,” “Bottle Rocket,” “Winter’s Bone,” or “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and wonder if there’s anything this year to compare. Personally, I had a spectacular year.

It’s funny how things start to pair up over festivals. You’ll notice themes across at least two films, maybe more. Could just be the exhaustion. The six films I’ve seen since I last filed a diary definitely partner nicely and yet one can also trace through lines through them, despite their completely different genres. Let’s get going…

The Sundance Film Festival kicks off this Thursday night, January 16, 2014 and history tells us that one of your favorite films will premiere there. Last year, we covered the Sundance premieres of “Before Midnight,” “Upstream Color,” “The Way Way Back,” “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” “We Are What We Are,” and many more. And Chicago Critics Film Festival hits “Stories We Tell,” “The Spectacular Now,” and “The Kings of Summer” premiered in Park City in 2013.