“Movie Houses of Worship” is a regular feature spotlighting our favorite movie theaters around the world, those that are like temples of cinema catering to the most religious-like film geeks. This week, we highlight the important theaters in Roger Ebert‘s life. If you’d like to suggest or submit a place you regularly worship at the altar of cinema, please email our weekend editor. The Art Theatre Location: 126 W. Church Street, Champaign, IL Opened: November 12, 1913, as The Park Theatre. Reopened as The Art on October 3, 1958. No. of screens: 1 Why Ebert worshipped here: ”I learned about the art of film [here]…The atmosphere of the Art reflected the new beatnik culture of the ’50s, and to walk through the doors was like breathing the air of freedom. There wasn’t any popcorn for sale, but the coffee was free, black, and strong, and at the age of 16, sitting in the dark wired on caffeine and trying to puzzle through Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly, I felt I was on the brink of amazing discoveries about the world, life, and myself…I remember those movies at the Art so vividly. The posters outside, with their stark surrealistic images and bizarre typography. The earnest bohemians in the lobby, sipping their coffee and talking like the captions on ‘New Yorker’ cartoons. The notion that in a movie you had never heard of you could discover truths you had never dreamed.” [Entertainment Weekly, 1991] “At a time when the exhibition of art and independent films is in jeopardy, the

The problem with cinephilia is that eventually one feels that they begin to run out of ‘essential’ films to see. The act of watching movies is continually a process of discovery, but as one continues to watch films not as a hobby but as a part of their life-blood, it becomes harder to find individual titles that are revelatory and profound, movies that shape an alter not only your conception of cinema, but art and life as well. The more you see, the fewer new experiences you have – not only because you may have traversed the corners of whatever canon you’ve chosen to cover, but because individual titles become objects of interest accentuating a larger understanding of the medium rather than individual exploits of incredible worth. To see a truly outstanding film, then, becomes an even more rare and valuable occurrence. David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1946) is simply one of those films that I’m surprised I hadn’t seen before, not because I have any pretensions toward having anything approaching a “comprehensive” knowledge of film, but because it’s a work of such profound perfection that it seems only natural that this movie would have been made in this precise way. It’s an audacious, incongruous film, exceptional and unmatched. It’s a devastating and beautiful film that I’m not surprised has survived time’s test, for its themes are as insightful and resonant as its storytelling is engrossing and affecting.

Everyday, come rain or shine or internet tubes breaking, Film School Rejects showcases a trailer from the past. Today’s trailer teaches us how to die like a gentleman, to live like a human being, and to whistle while we work. Plus, the movie won 7 Academy Awards. Not too shabby. Think you know what it is? Check out the trailer after the jump.