News

Chicago – On Tuesday, December 3rd, the Midwest Independent Film Festival will award their “Best of the Midwest” honors with a ceremony at The Underground Nightclub in Chicago. The evening will be hosted by Festival Director Mike McNamara, and nominees include “The Kings of Summer,” directed by Justin Vogt-Roberts, “Sole Survivor,” directed by Ky Dickens and “Be Good,” directed by Todd Looby.

The ‘Best of the Midwest’ Awards Are Tuesday, December 3rd

Photo credit: MidwestFilm.com

The Midwest Independent Film Festival is a year-round movie event in Chicago that takes place the first Tuesday of every month, at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema. The festival has been named by Chicago Magazine in their “Best of Chicago” issue, and has become one of the top places for local filmmakers, producers and actors to network in the city.

The nominees for the “Best of the Midwest” Awards are as follows….

Best Music Video...

Updated: The Tugg screening of Qwerty met its initial ticket goal, so the screening will indeed take place. Plenty of tickets are still available!

I tend to avoid big Hollywood romantic comedies these days -- too formulaic, too mean-spirited, too dumb. (And let's not get started on the sexism.) I get my romantic-comedy fix from film festivals, because the indie films in this genre are often witty and smart and fun to watch, with well-written characters.

So it was with Qwerty, which I caught at Dallas International Film Festival this year. After the jump, you can read what I had to say about the film back then.

Qwerty is finally getting an Austin screening -- but it's via Tugg, so a specific number of tickets must be sold in advance for the screening to take place. Right now, they've got to sell about 30 tickets before 7:30 pm today (December 11). If enough tickets are sold,...

Chicago – Taking the game of Scrabble and making it a thread for a romantic comedy and competitive intrigue is a wholly original idea. Director Bill Sebastian and screenwriter Juliet McDaniels guides a Chicago cast through the maze of those words in the new film “Qwerty.”

Rating: 3.0/5.0

The title refers to what is defined as the American keyboard standard – the first six letters in the top row spell out “qwerty.” But in the context of the film’s narrative, it is a maximum Scrabble word, garnering big points if used at the right time or the right part of the game board (triple word score!). The pursuit of words for Scrabble competition is the background of this Chicago-based story, which in front features a well-done romantic coupling between two outsider souls. Director Bill Sebastian displays a deft touch with the many themes, and uses creative composition to cover up some of the script’s character flaws.

Directed by Bill Sebastian, Qwerty tells the story of Zoe (Dana Pupkin), a lonely “word nerd” who puts her peculiar talents to work for the Chicago Dmv by checking every vanity plate request for a hidden dirty meaning (like, say, A55 5Ex). She harbors a dream to compete in the National Scrabble Championship, but with constant rejection coming from both her family, who consider her a black sheep, to her co-workers, who consider her weird, she can’t seem to push herself to enter.

That is, until she meets Marty (Eric Hailey), a man who has all but lost the will to live. After a quirky meet cute (Marty gets fired from his job at a retail store for ranting about overpriced underwear), the two spend the day together and soon enough the two fall in love. In Marty, Zoe finds the strength to stand up to her family and...