Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival (4/25/07)

Around the world every year, thousands of films are produced. Some are hits, some are flops, but there are still hundreds and hundreds of pictures that are ignored, forgotten, or just plain overlooked. That's where Roger Ebert comes in. Since 1999, Ebert -- playing off his decades of television film reviews -- has taken over a small theatre in Champaign, Illinois and shown overflow audiences the movies they missed. While the definition of "overlooked" might be somewhat strained for Ebertfest ("Patton," "La Dolce Vita," and "2001: A Space Odyssey"?), filmgoers will feast on such rarities as "Sadie Thompson" and "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" (with a screenplay by an unknown scriptwriter named... Roger Ebert). Though Ebert's health has not been the best of late, he'll attend this year's festival (beginning with today's screening of "Gattaca"), if only from the audience. So for Ebert and his movie feast, we give a hearty "two thumbs up."