On occasion, the Screengrab lets me bring you news from the rich world of film writing in my home town of Chicago. In the Tribune this week, foreign correspondent John Crewdson — inspired by Rendition — contemplates whether or not 'message' movies are really effective vehicles for spurring social change, and film blogger Michael Phillips talks to Mark Ruffalo about how his religious upbringing influenced his art. In the Sun-Times, Miriam Di Nunzio gets Malcolm McDowell to make the curious admission that he doesn’t think Caligula "is as bad as it once was" (has it somehow gotten better over the years?), and local legend Roger Ebert wins a Gotham Award from the Independent Feature Project. And in the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum, as part of his upcoming "Unseen Orson Welles" project, brings us the Italian neo-Marxist Giorgio Agamben’s choice of "the most beautiful six minutes in the history of cinema." — Leonard Pierce
