CRUCIAL VIEWING
Douglas Sirk's
THERE'S ALWAYS TOMORROW (Classic Revival)
Doc
Films (University of Chicago) – Wednesday,
7pm
One of the real gems of Doc’s
Sirk series, this 1956 drama has been praised as
one of the director’s best although it’s rarely
screened and remains unavailable for home viewing. Lovers
of studio-era Hollywood will find much to admire: a reunion
of the stars of DOUBLE INDEMNITY, Fred MacMurray and Barbara
Stanwyck; black-and-white cinematography by the great Russell
Metty (who shot TOUCH OF EVIL and SPARTACUS in addition
to most of Sirk’s 50s work); and a palpable sense
of middle-American despair. MacMurray plays a manufacturer
undergoing a mid-life crisis, tempted to leave his complacent
married life upon the appearance of old flame Stanwyck.
Tom Ryan notes on Senses of Cinema that this is neither
screaming melodrama nor a post-modern “subversion” thereof: “Here
and elsewhere, Sirk's films offer critiques of their characters,
but also extend to them an understanding and an empathy
that acknowledges their humanity.” (1956, 84 min,
35mm). More
info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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BATTLE OF THE CITIES
(Local)
Ice
Capades (526 N Ashland) – Wednesday,
8pm
A study in artistic differences tied
to culture and geography, Ice Capades’ ambitious
BATTLE OF THE CITIES FILM FESTIVAL invites eight North
American city-centric cinema collectives to submit short
(30-50 min) programs of their best recent work. Round
one pits Chicago's own Ice Capades against Vancouver’s
Hungry Ghost Cinema. The following week
brings three additional bouts: Providence vs. L.A., Memphis
vs. Iowa City, and Gainesville vs. Philadelphia. More
info at www.theicecapades.com.
x PISTOLARY:
Films and Videos by Peggy Ahwesh (Experimental)
Conversations
at the Edge / Gene
Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm
The wonderful Peggy Ahwesh will appear
in person this week, to present an eclectic screening that
brings together some of her best work. From the CATE program:
"Drawing from horror films, psychoanalysis, and the writings
of Bataille, Ahwesh’s
films and videos are sublime studies of sexual pleasure, relationships,
and notions of the self. The young Martina plays baby and
mother in MARTINA’S PLAYHOUSE (1989); rotting emulsion
censors ‘70s skin in THE COLOR OF LOVE (1994); and Laura
Croft gains subjectivity in SHE PUPPET (2001). Plus rarities
from Ahwesh’s personal collection. Co-presented with
Video Data Bank in conjunction with their release of
the 3-disc DVD anthology, PISTOLARY!."
(1989-2001, 85 min, various formats). Screening
details at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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Jafar
Panahi's OFFSIDE (New Foreign)
Music
Box – Screening Daily, check Reader
Movies for showtimes
Jafar Panahi returns with
his popular and critical success OFFSIDE, a fictional account
of a group of girls who pose as boys in an attempt to enter Tehran's
Azadi Stadium and watch Iran's 2006 World Cup-qualifying match
against Bahrain, since Iranian women are forbidden by law to
attend sporting events. Utilizing a documentary framework, the
film explores the vicissitudes of gender and youth culture in
modern Iran while refusing to schematize or stereotype. The sports
stadium functions as a microcosm to discuss tradition and change
while contributing to a carnivalesque atmosphere that allows
quotidian reality to be confronted and contested. Banned in Iran
and using entirely non-professional actors in superb performances,
the film maintains a critical edge despite its sentimentality
and utopianism. (2006, 93 min,
35mm). More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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STILL SHOWING:
Pedro Costa's COLOSSAL YOUTH (New Foreign)
Facets
Cinematheque – Sunday, 9pm
At last year's Toronto Film Festival, a small
group of critics led by Scott Foundas could be seen wearing
T-shirts that read, "VOTE FOR PEDRO." No, not that Pedro
(the king of middle-brow melodrama), but the other
Pedro (Costa): a Portugese filmmaker following up 2000's
IN VANDA'S ROOM with the two-and-a-half hour digital
video epic, COLOSSAL YOUTH (JUVENTUDE EM MARCHA). A mixture
of documentary and fiction assembled from more than 300
hours of footage shot over 15 months, the film follows
many of the same Cape Verdean immigrants who populated
IN VANDA'S ROOM as they are forced out of their Lisbon
slum and into government housing projects. Past, present,
reality, and fantasy merge in a challenging and beautiful
film whose visual style recalls Rembrandt and El Greco.
Perhaps the most divisive film of the festival circuit
last year, reportedly splitting the Cannes jury in two,
COLOSSAL YOUTH is an unquestionable polemic that will
leave no viewer without a passionate response. (Portugal,
2006, 155 min). More info at www.latinoculturalcenter.org/filmfest.
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Paul Verhoeven's BLACK BOOK (New Release)
Music Box – Screening Daily, check Reader Movies for showtimes
Dutch iconoclast Verhoeven,
mastermind behind ROBOCOP, SHOWGIRLS, STARSHIP TROOPERS, and a
host of other brilliant American blockbusters, has turned out another
insightful masterpiece in BLACK BOOK, his first Dutch film in almost
a quarter century. It takes guts to make a World War II film that
suggests that anti-fascism can be as narrow-minded as fascism or
that any notion of national identity (the identity of the oppressed
just as much as the oppressors, the resistance fighters just as
much as the forces they resist) is a lie... And then have the gall
to start and conclude in Israel! The film also reconsiders mainstream
cinema and its genres, inventively perverting thriller and spy
movie tropes to build Verhoeven's most thorough and captivating
moral and political statement to date.
(145 min, 35mm). More
info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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ALSO RECOMMENDED
SPLIT
PILLOW presents CHICAGO 360 v2 (Documentary)
Chicago
Filmmakers – Friday, 8pm
Split Pillow is a non-profit production company whose work is largely centered
around local issues and communities. Unabashedly Chicago-centric, they emphasize
collaboration, improvisation and the odd creative decisions that occur when multiple
filmmakers work on a single project. The second installment of their CHICAGO
360 series, which chronicles Chicago subcultures, consists of five short documentaries;
topics include swing dancers, department store Santas, poetry slams and struggling
MCs. Visit Split Pillow's website to
see trailers for their longer movies and learn more about their projects.. More
info at www.chicagofilmmakers.org.
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Eisenstein's POTEMKIN w/ Live Accompaniment
(Special Event)
Chicago
Cultural Center – Friday,
8pm
The Chicago Cultural Center
has been cultivating a reputation as a great venue for
silent film with live accompaniment, presenting coordinated
ensembles and original compositions replacing the standard piano/organ
scores and improvisations. The focus here is really the music,
with most of the films being projected from DVD. This Friday
sees Sergei Eistenstein’s
essential BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN scored by the Golden Arm Trio,
an Austin-based group led by composer Graham Reynolds. The
free admission and relaxed mood provide comfortable atmosphere
to experience this interesting take on an potent classic. Location:
Cassidy Theatre, Chi Cultural Center, 77 E Randolph.
x Hawks' THE CROWD ROARS
(Classic Revival)
LaSalle
Bank Cinema – Saturday,
8pm
“He’s
a speed-mad race driver who laughs at death…she’s
the girlfriend who packs dynamite in her kisses and TNT in
her slaps! If they don’t make your heart pound with
excitement, you’re not human!” What sounds today
like an ideal tagline for GRINDHOUSE was actually cooked up
75 years ago to advertise Howard Hawks’s blazing tale
of rival race-car drivers. A former racer, Hawks was unabashedly
cynical about why the crowd really roars, saying, “If
you took the danger out of it, they wouldn’t come… there
were always two or three people killed, and they flocked to
see that.” That said, he wasn’t above giving the
people what they wanted: the stylishly choreographed, edge-of-your
seat race scenes are littered with spectacular crashes and
fiery deaths. (1932, 85 min, 16mm). Venue
Information.
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CHOCOLATE
BABIES (Documentary)
Chicago
Filmmakers / Roosevelt University – Saturday, 8pm
Presented by Chicago Filmmakers as part of their Gentlemen’s Queer Quarterly
series in conjunction with RU Proud, Stephen Winter’s rarely screened
and commercially unavailable 1997 film concerns "an underground band of
HIV-positive, queer, urban, transvestite activists of color" using guerrilla
tactics to expose the hypocrisies and corruption of the political handling
of AIDS and whose radical methods of resistance prove difficult to maintain.
Roosevelt president Charles Middleton will introduce the screening. Special
Location: Roosevelt University, Ganz Hall, 430 S. Michigan Ave, 7th Floor. More
info at www.chicagofilmmakers.org.
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DOMINATRIX WITHOUT MERCY (Cult Revival)
Music
Box – Friday & Saturday,
midnight
The final installment in Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford's Sleazoid Express
series is the 1976 porn film DOMINATRIX WITHOUT MERCY. This S/M obscurity was
originally credited to Shaun Costello, although he dismissed this rumor saying "I
never shot a golden shower so I doubt this is mine." The shoestring plot
involves a woman answering a sex personal ad and ending up in a dominatrix's
den; the film itself is notable if only for its cast of just about every famous
70s NYC porn star save Linda Lovelace--look for Fred Lincoln, who played Weasel
in LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, in a small role. Shown with exploitation trailers.
(1976, 65 min). More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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Alfred E. Green's BABY FACE: UNCUT (Classic
Revival)
Music
Box – Saturday & Sunday,
11:30am
Every so often prolific studio director Green (frequently
labeled "underrated" by Rosenbaum) is upheld as a bonified
auteur, but make no mistakes: the most substantial and lasting
controbution to 1933's BABY FACE comes from precode queen Barbara
Stanwyck, never more sly, sexy, and brutally to-the-point than
here, as former speakeasy prostitute Lily Powers. Taking her
shrewd talents to a big city firm, the blunt bombshell's winning
formula of quick, steamy romance followed by haughty demands
and threatening innuendo helps hersuccessfully ascend the corporate
ladder, leaving her male bosses crippled and helpless. The uncut
version, recently discovered by archivists at the Library of
Congress, adds Nietzschean and imagistic depth to Stanwyck's
character, providing a more accurate portrait of the calibrated
Hollywood subversion of the early 30s. More
info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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BORDER POST (Contemporary
Foreign)
Facets
Cinematheque – Sunday, 1:30pm
From the Facets website: "This comedy about people on
the verge of tragedy unfolds at an army base along the Yugoslav-Albanian
border in the spring of 1987. The boring daily routine of the young
soldiers suddenly changes when the commanding officer decides to
hide a personal problem by declaring a state of emergency." (2006,
95 min, 35mm). On Saturday from 10am-3pm, Rajko Grlic, director of
BORDER POST as well as 10 other award-winning features, will teach
a "master class" that will "lay out the foundations
of the who, what, why and how of film directing." Advance registration
is recommended. More info at www.facets.org.
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Spike
Lee's BAMBOOZLED (Revival w/ Lecture)
Gene
Siskel Film Center – Friday & Tuesday,
6pm
By and large, critics have torn
apart Spike Lee's 2000 video satire, which presents black
actors in black face as stand-ins for the real-world black
entertainers who get rich by feeding the contemporary corporate
media machine with self-abasing content. Though the analogy
does carry a certain poignance, the criticisms are not without
basis--Lee's didactic approach to filmmaking , which serves
him so well in classics like DO THE RIGHT THING (1989) and
recent masterpiece WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE (2006), becomes problematic
when it articulates ideas as haphazardly conceived they are
here. That said, as with MALCOLM X (1992), the shortcomings
of Lee's moral tale don't diminish its noteworthiness, and
the accompanying lecture by film scholar Jacqueline Stewart
will certainly give fascinating and necessary context to this
polemical work. (135 min, 35mm). More
info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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LIAR LIES: Contemporary Performance for the
Camera (Special Event)
Depaul
University Museum – Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, 6pm
Chi Jang Yin, assistant professor of Media
Arts at Depaul University, curates this three-night series of film
and video performances that features international artists like
Meredith Monk but focuses mainly on the work of Chicagoans such
as Ben Russell and the Goat Island performance group. The series
covers a broad range of work, noting: "Contemporary performance art ranges from highly personal
concerns to broad social and political issues, from the spontaneous
to rigorously scripted and choreographed pieces." Informal
discussion will follow each screening. Details: http://museums.depaul.edu/artwebsite/newsevents/
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Agnes Vàrda's
THE GLEANERS & I (Special
Event)
Mess
Hall – Thursday,
7pm
Northside artspace Mess Hall continues its
Waste Stream Diversions project with this screening of Agnes
Vàrda's
documentary THE GLEANERS & I (2000, 82 min), a poetic examination
of contemporary gleaning practices, along with short film
GONE TOMORROW: THE HIDDEN LIFE OF GARBAGE (2005, 19 min),
which "explores the history and politics of garbage." More
info at www.messhall.org.
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ALSO PLAYING AT DOC
FILMS
One of the most respected
films on the subject of class conflict, SALT
OF THE EARTH (1954)
also introduced new practices to US independent filmmaking,
casting actual salt miners and small-town police and granting
them final say on the script. The film was meant to serve as
a “crime to fit the punishment” of the Hollywood
blacklist, as its recreation of a lengthy strike passionately
endorses anti-capitalist and pro-union sentiments considered
treasonous at the time. Rosenbaum's Reader capsule is a powerful
endorsement. Also playing: a revival of last year’s
underrated indie OLD JOY; a program
of Keystone Kops shorts; Kon Ichikawa’s cynical war film THE
BURMESE HARP (1956);
and a double bill of Victor Erice’s classic SPIRIT
OF THE BEEHIVE (1973) and its reference point, James
Whale’s
FRANKENSTEIN (1931). Full
schedule and details at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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THIS WEEK AT BLOCK
CINEMA
Block Cinema continues its
series of contemporary Turkish cinema with Fatih
Akin’s 2004 feature HEAD
ON (Friday, 8pm),
a film that mirrors the Turkey's current struggle
with its Muslim roots and European aspirations
with its depiction of Turks living abroad in Germany.
Wednesday brings filmmaker Robert Arlyck , who
will present his 2006 documentary FOLLOWING
SEAN,
a sequel to a short he made in the late 1960s about
the 4-year old son of San Francisco hippies; the
feature has Arlyck tracking down his now adult
subject and seeing how the legacy of 60s idealism
has played out in his life. On Friday, Block
will also be hosting a free panel featuring writers
for popular television shows; they will discuss
their work and answer questions about television
scripting. Synopses
and more info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
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CHICAGO PALENSTINE
FILM FESTIVAL (Contemporary)
Gene
Siskel Film Center – Check Reader
Movies for showtimes
As the Film Center's vanguard festival of films
from and about contemporary Palestine enters its second and
final week, highlights include: ENCOUNTER POINT (2006, 85 min,
screening Sunday, 3pm & Wednesday, 6pm), which chronicles
efforts of activists on both sides of the Israel/Palenstine
divide, advocating peace of tolerance in the face of rage and
violence; BELONGING (2006, 68 min, screening Wednesday, 7:45pm
with short), documenting the struggles of a Palestinian-American
family, from the Great Depression in the US to the Middle East
in the late 60s, a period of great violence in the war against
Israel; and two programs of short films, screening Saturday
and Sunday. As’ad Abu Khalil, visiting professor of political
science at UC Berkeley, will introduce and lead a discussion
following Saturday's screening. Full details
at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
x LATINO FILM FESTIVAL (New Foreign)
Facets Cinematheque / Landmark Century Centre / Piper's Alley
In its final week, the 23rd Chicago Latino Film Fest
will be screening an assortment of South American, Spanish, and
Portuguese cinema. Readers are advised to consult the Latino Cultural
Center's website, as well as the Reader's guide to the festival.
Full schedule and details at www.latinoculturalcenter.org/Filmfest/.
x CREMASTER
RETURNS (Avant
Garde)
Gene
Siskel Film Center – Check Reader
Movies for showtimes
By popular
demand, the Film Center resurrects its
run of films by New York art star Matthew
Barney. This week's offerings are Barney's
feature length allegories, CREMASTER
3 (2002,
182 min) and DRAWING
RESTRAINT 9 (2005, 135 min). The
former, aptly summarized by Slant Magazine
as a "three-hour
tour through Barney's Art Deco cock," draws
heavily on Celtic, Masonic, and American
mythology, employing rigid Kubrick-esque
cinematography in a display of modern masculinity
in all its tumescent glory--Barney's
most spectacular and accomplished work,
if perhaps his most overblown. The latter,
DR9, is a symbolic exploration of resistance
and creativity set on a Japanese whaling
ship, co-starring and scored by his partner,
Björk. More
info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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FILMS AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD (New Foreign)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Screening daily, check Reader Movies for showtimes
Few countries in the 20th century
have inspired as much interest from outsiders as Tibet. Despite
Western fetishization and romanticization, the country itself
remains mired in concrete social problems that go beyond a vaguely-defined “freedom.” This
week, the Film Center hosts two films that re-examine and de-mystify
the liberal American view of this isolated
nation: the Swiss documentary ANGRY MONK (2005,
97 min) centers on Gedrun Choephel,
an influential figure in 20th century Tibetan culture whose views
were often critical of the country’s political and social
policies; DREAMING LHASA (2005, 90
min) is a fictional feature about an American documentary filmmaker
making a movie with Tibetan exiles in India. Reduced price admission
will be offered to those who buy tickets to both movies. Details at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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STILL SHOWING: IDIOCRACY
(Cult Revival)
Music
Box – Friday & Saturday,
midnight
Last year, Twentieth Century
Fox buried the theatrical release of Mike Judge's angry, righteous
sci-fi satire, failing to promote their $30 million investment,
which opened only in a handful of multiplexes and ultimately
grossed less than half a million. Fortunately, the Music Box
is picking up the slack, resurrecting this curmudgeon's delight
at midnight. Luke Wilson (in the role he was born to play) is
a couch potato who finds himself transported 500 years into the
future, to an America overrun by morons. The brilliantly dumbed-down
dialogue verges on haiku, but Judge articulates his slyest jokes
in the scenery: making good on his background as a cartoonist,
the art direction and set design exaggerate NASCAR-style overbranding
to kaleidoscopic extremes. Like last year's other dystopian warning
siren, CHILDREN OF MEN, the scariest proposition of IDIOCRACY
is how far-fetched it is not. (2006, 84 min, 35mm). More
info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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ALSO
PLAYING |
DOMINATRIX WITHOUT MERCY
