"Hoop Dreams" director returns with "The Interrupters"

Before I get into that, I don't tune in for many awards shows beyond a bit of the Golden Globes and most of the Oscars, but the Critics Choice Movie Awards, airing tonight on VH1, has gotten one of its kudos exactly right.

Quentin Tarantino, who has been making extraordinary use of music in his movies for many years, will be receiving the very appropriately named Music+Film Award. Though there are many examples of how his ear for music has enhanced his movies, the one that is permanently burned on my brain is that refrain of "putting out the fire with gasoline" from David Bowie's "Cat People" as Shoshanna is plotting the ultimate revenge in "Inglorious Basterds." Priceless.

If they could tell me exactly when that might happen, I'd tune in, but since that won't be happening, I can't imagine I will. In other news, however, the director of "Hoop Dreams," Steve James, is back with a new documentary, "The Interrupters," which is premiering at the Sundance Film Festival this year.

To put it as hokely (yes, I fully realize that isn't even terribly close to a word) as possible, "Hoop Dreams" was really a formative movie for me in that at the time I really was kind of ignorant about the power of documentary filmmaking. I can still remember watching Siskel & Ebert's rapturous review of "Hoop Dreams," and then loving the movie just as much as they did myself.

Since then (1994), James has made several more films, none of which, I'm ashamed to admit, I have seen, but coincidentally, "At the Death House Door," which he co-directed with Peter Gilbert, is being screened this Sunday at 1:30 p.m. in the Social Hall of St. Joseph Catholic Church here in downtown Macon. Yeah, I'll turn out for that.

And finally getting to the point, "The Interrupters," a collaboration with journalist and author Alex Kotlowitz, examines the lives three of the titular individuals who intervene in situations to try and prevent violence in Chicago. Like "Hoop Dreams," this should be a fairly harrowing journey with three people who used to live lives of crime themselves. Over the course of a year, it focuses on three specific situations that need some serious defusing.

Here below are the trailer and poster for the flick which, since I'm not going to Sundance (though I am hopefully returning as a guest of the Atlanta Film Festival 365 - bully), I'll eventually get to watch from Netflix's impressive doco library. And with that, I'm off to work. Peace out.

See Roger Ebert speak - and I defy you not to weep

Roger Ebert has certainly issued some dubious reviews during his long career (I rented "Knowing" on his advice, and man are those two hours or so I'd desperately like to have back), but you certainly can't deny he has an irresistible passion for movies.

I first fell in love with his work when I saw him on TV with the late, great Gene Siskel reviewing "Hoop Dreams." I had never heard of the movie at the time, and neither had I then or since heard someone just get so incredibly amped up about a single movie (and this time, thankfully, he was dead right.)

Recently, of course, Ebert has been suffering from cancer that has left him unable to say much of anything. Leave it to Oprah, of course, to land his return to speaking - with the help of modern technology - as he did on yesterday's show about Sunday night's Oscars.

Below is a clip of him with his wife, Chaz, unveiling his new voice tool for the first time - followed by, at least until it gets pulled down, the first portion of his Oprah appearance. And, like I said, I defy you to not get at least a little choked up when watching this, as I surely did this morning. Enjoy, and have a perfectly passable Wednesday. Peace out.