2012WINTERCALENDAR NOVember 30th through FEBRUARY 28th
Dec. 8, Jan. 12 & Feb. 9
December 25 January 3
Starts January 4
Silent Cinema
December 14 December 24 29th Annual
Christmas Show
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
ANY DAY NOW
Page 7
Page 11
Page 12
Page 13
February 15-28
December 31
Second Saturday
New Years Eve 70mm Festival on the SS Poseidon Page 18
Page 40
January 31
February 14
Sundance USA CASABLANCA and a Sweetheart Sing-A-Long Page 42
Page 43
Welcome
to the Music Box Theatre!
Welcome! I hope you had a great fall season. I know we did at the Music Box. In fact, I want to thank everyone who recently came to see SLEEPWALK WITH ME. You helped make it the best performing film in our history, AND the Music Box was the second highest grossing movie screen IN THE NATION on Labor Day weekend! And of course, a special thanks to Ira Glass and Mike Birbiglia for making such an entertaining film. Another recent honor came when Paul Thomas Anderson personally offered us a sneak preview of THE MASTER because we are the only theater around still capable of presenting 70mm film. That fact actually inspired one of the highlights of this calendar: a two-week festival of 70mm films starting February 15. This just may be your last time to see 70mm presentations of films like 2001 and VERTIGO because the studios won’t be making new prints. The 70mm festival is just one of the highlights on the new schedule. Since I can’t mention them all, I’d like to just draw your attention to the many outstanding new documentaries, including Ken Burns’ CENTRAL PARK FIVE, WEST OF MEMPHIS (sure to be an Academy Award Nominee) and the next installment in the Up Series, 56 UP. And be sure to see all three films distributed by our own Music Box Films: STARLET ("One of the year's most arresting, heartfelt indies" - Los Angeles Times), ANY DAY NOW (winner of the Audience Choice Award at the Chicago Film Festival) and HAPPY PEOPLE (written, narrated and co-directed by Werner Herzog). Finally, a reminder to email a photo of you and your family enjoying a past edition of the annual MUSIC BOX CHRISTMAS SHOW to boxoffice@musicboxtheatre. com and we will add it to the big-screen slideshow preceding this year’s 29th edition (December 14-24). Here is to a great 2013!
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Best regards, Brian Andreotti Director of Programming Music Box Theatre
MATINEES
4-5
SATURDAY SECOND SILENT CINEMA
FEATURES
7 9-19
EDITORIALS
20-35
SPECIAL EVENTS
38-43
MIDNIGHTS
44-45
Cover Photo by Ari Neiditz Photography - www.arineiditzphotography.com
Thank you for assisting us in distribution Royal George Theater
Winter 2012
3
MATINEES
AND THE WINNER IS....
OSCAR® WINNING FILMS
12/29-30 1/5-6 1/13 1/19-20 1/26-27 2/2-3 2/10 2/16-17 2/23-24
Sunrise On the Waterfront A Place in the Sun All About Eve It Happened One Night Network Casablanca Gigi Midnight Cowboy
on the waterfront
sunrise
DEC. 29-30
JAN. 5-6
JAN. 13
SUNRISE
ON THE WATERFRONT
A PLACE IN THE SUN
(F. W. Murnau, 1927, 89m)
(Elia Kazan, 1954, 108m)
(George Stevens, 1951, 122m)
One of the most beloved silent films, F. W. Murnau’s SUNRISE was his first film in the US. George O’Brien is a married farmer tempted away from his wife, Janet Gaynor, by a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife. When the farmer’s wife escapes her murderous husband, he has a change of heart and must find his wife in the big city to which she’s fled and bring her home. Featuring the most adorable drunk pig you’ll ever see on film!
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Wintertime is effectively Oscar Season for cinephiles with studios piling on all the titles they hope to get nominated within the narrow band between November and December. From then until the awards ceremony, the film world is abuzz with nothing but Oscar predictions. This year, with the announcement that the nominations will be made two weeks earlier than in previous years, the entire season is now officially booked solid. We thought we’d take this opportunity to take a look at some past award winners and see how this year’s crop stacks up!
Music Box Theatre
Winner of eight Academy Awards, sweeping all the majors, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. Marlon Brando’s searing performance as an ex-prize fighter turned longshoreman struggling to stand up to his corrupt union bosses earned him great acclaim, and rightfully so. Karl Malden is the crusading Catholic priest who serves as moral inspiration for Brando’s dockworker.
George Eastman (Montgomery Clift) is the poor nephew of a rich industrialist who takes a job in his uncle's factory. While working there, George begins dating fellow factory worker Alice "Al" Tripp (Shelley Winters) but when George meets society girl Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor) and experiences all of the unattainable wealth and status she represents, George must choose between two very different worlds, with dire consequences.
JAN. 19-20
JAN. 26-27
FEB. 2-3
ALL ABOUT EVE
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
NETWORK
(Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950, 138m)
(Frank Capra, 1934, 105m)
(Sidney Lumet, 1976, 121m)
FEB. 10
FEB. 16-17
FEB. 23-24
CASABLANCA
GIGI
MIDNIGHT COWBOY
(Michael Curtiz, 1942, 102m)
(Vincente Minnelli, 1958, 115m)
(John Schlesinger, 1969, 113m)
The young and ambitious Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) has managed to befriend the great but temperamental stage actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis) but the cynical theatre critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) can see right through Eve’s sweet facade to her true, manipulative intentions! Joseph L. Mankiewicz walked away with an Oscar for Best Director and Screenplay, though in an odd twist mirroring the film, both lead actresses lost out to upstart Judy Holliday.
A classic of the screwball comedy genre and an excellent mockery of the confines of the newly-enforced Production Code! Ellie (Claudette Colbert) is a spoiled heiress who decides to run away from her family. Aiding her in her journey is Peter Warne (Clark Gable), a reporter with a good eye for a juicy story. In exchange for an exclusive, Peter agrees to escort Ellie to her snobbish aviator beau. But a lot can happen on a crosscountry bus trip!
This film is absolutely everything Aaron Sorkin’s middling THE NEWSROOM aspires to be. A struggling television network gives notice to longtime news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) and, in retaliation, Beale sensationally announces on live television his intention to commit suicide on air. In doing so, Beale becomes a major TV icon and one of the most valuable assets to the network, being effectively rebranded 'the mad prophet of the air-waves.’
network
The most beloved film romance of all time! Set in French-controlled Morocco during the early days of World War II, an American expatriate (Humphrey Bogart) meets a former lover (Ingrid Bergman), with unforeseen complications. Winner of Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay and just in time for Valentine’s Day!
Winner of all nine Academy Awards it was nominated for, this charming musical is set in Fin de siècle Paris, a time of boredom and cynicism for the wealthy bourgeois. Against this backdrop is Maurice Chevalier, a rich playboy weary of the conventions of Parisian society. He strikes up a platonic friendship with courtesan-in-training Gigi (Leslie Caron), but love adds a surprise twist to this delightful turn-of-the 20th century Cinderella story.
Jon Voight moves to New York City with the naïve intention of becoming a gigolo and getting rich. Down on his luck, he meets sickly Ratso (Dustin Hoffman chewing up all the scenery that shouting “I’m walkin’ ‘ere!” allows) and the two become steadfast anchors for each other as they attempt to survive on the streets of the Big Apple. The only X-rated film to win an Oscar!
Matinees
5
S E I V O M D L O NOW H C T A TO W
RE AMIN G T S S IE V O M R FO LU S P U L U H D O U R RE VIE WS N A O N NE TFLIX O M A D E R . C E R O G A C H I C
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Music Box Theatre
second saturday silent cinema
SECOND SATURDAY
SILENT CINEMA
WINTER 2013
The second Saturday of every month at noon! Now in its third smash year!
Named by Chicago Magazine as the Best New Film Series of 2011 and recently hailed by the Chicago Reader’s J.R. Jones as one of the best movie matinee series in the city; the Music Box Silent Cinema Series is presented on the second Saturday of each month at noon! All films are shown “authentically” in 35mm at proper silent film speed and aspect ratio with live accompaniment by Dennis Scott at the Music Box theatre organ!
12/8: Oliver Twist 1/12: The Last Days of Pompeii 2/9: Within Our Gates
Ticket info:
Tickets $10 each $8 for students and seniors. Available at the Box Office and online.
OLIVER TWIST (Frank Lloyd, 1922, 80m) A wonderful adaptation of Charles Dickens’ famous novel about a young orphan who falls in with a man who trains children to be thieves. Jackie Coogan, at the height of his juvenile stardom, plays the titular orphan and Lon Chaney charismatically inhabits the meaty role of Fagin - an ideal part for the master of makeup! Filled with a cast of memorable characters, this film is one of the most faithful cinematic adaptations of Charles Dickens' original saga. Print courtesy of Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII (Carmine Gallone and Amleto Palermi, 1926, 144m) A decadent feast for the eyes, this Italian silent was based on Edward BulwerLytton’s 1834 book of the same name, arguably the most popular historical novel written in the nineteenth century. Bulwer-Lytton’s tale of the young dandy Glaucus and his beloved, the beautiful Ione, was the canonical narrative of Pompeii’s destruction. Glaucus’ jealous rival, the Egyptian priest Arbaces, slays Ione’s brother Apaecides, whom he has failed to convert to his mystery religion. Exploiting the love of the blind slave girl Nydia for Glaucus, her master, Arbaces proceeds to blame Glaucus for the murder. Then Mount Vesuvius strikes: the eruption kills the villain and blind Nydia guides Ione and Glaucus through the rain of ashes to safety outside of the collapsing city. Screening in a restored, color-tinted print courtesy of the British Film Institute. WITHIN OUR GATES (Oscar Micheaux, 1919, 79m) The earliest surviving African-American directed feature film, the sole print of this superb race film was discovered in Spain and painstakingly restored by the Library of Congress in 1993. The emotionally powerful story centers around a black schoolteacher who finds the battle against racism is everywhere when she goes North to raise money for better schools. Seen as a response to D. W. Griffith’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION, the film portrays the contemporary racial situation in the United States during the early twentieth century - the years of Jim Crow, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration of blacks to cities of the North and Midwest, and the emergence of the "New Negro". Shot mostly in Chicago! Print courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Silent Cinema
7
MONSIEUR
LAZHAR
OSCAR-NOMINATED The Epic Story of Innovation In The Movies
AN CLASS CROWD-PLEASER THAT SURPASSES THE CRITICS' REPORT CARD
96%
Made over 6 years, on 4Tomatometer continents, covering 11 decades and 1000 films “The cinematic event of the year…extraordinary.” Written and Directed by Mark Cousins | NEW YORK NEWSDAY -Daily TelegraphNEW YORK DAILY NEWS Edited by Timo Langer Produced by John Archer
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE | WASHINGTON POST The Story of Film: An Odyssey is an epic journey through the history of world cinema and a treat for movie lovers around the globe. Guided by film historian Mark Cousins, this bold 15-partominated love letter for an Oscar for Best to the movies begins with the invention of motion Language Film, Monsieur Foreign pictures at the end of the 19th century and tells the moving and poignant Lazhar concludes with the multi-billion dollar globalized story of a Montreal middle school class digital industry of the 21st.
N
shaken by the death of their well-liked
Featuring legendary filmmakers and actors Audio: English 2.0 teacher, including Bernardo Bertolucci, Charles Burnett, and Jane the 55-year-old Algerian Video: Widescreen 16x9 who offers his services as a Campion, Claudia Cardinale, Youssefimmigrant Chahine, Running Time: 915 min BONUS FEAT Terence Davies, Claire Denis, Stanleysubstitute Donen, Kyokoteacher and aids the process Kagawa, Abbas Kiarostami, Baz Luhrmann, Paul of collective healing. From Stage to Screen • Big Talk Interview Catalog# MBFHE-046 Schrader, Alexander Sokurov, Robert Towne, Gus Alice and Simon Audition Tapes • Bachir Van Sant, Sharmila Tagore, Lars Von Trier, Wim Wenders, Haskell Wexler, Yuen Woo-Ping AVAILABLE FROM
5-Disc Deluxe Box Set
Includes 44-page Collector's Booklet and Viewer's Guide
© Southport Mus © Southport Music Box Corporation d/b/a Music Box Films 2012.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM MUSIC BO MOZART’S SISTER
THE DEEP BLUE SEA
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM MUSIC BOX FILMS
www.musicboxfilms.co
www.musicboxfilms.com
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Music Box Theatre
features november 30 - december 6
WUTHERINGHEIGHTS DIRECTED BY: Andrea Arnold STARRING: Kaya Scodelario, James Howson, Solomon Glave
d n's Re.aMcGnavi
Z o rick iew 0 Pat rev 2
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Sweepingly old-fashioned and yet bracingly modern perfectly describes director Andrea Arnold’s new adaptation of Emily Bronte's WUTHERING HEIGHTS and her fresh and distinct new take on a beloved classic is a visual poem, both meditative and visceral. The epic saga of Heathcliff and Cathy’s passionate and troubled relationship is a timeless and powerful love story but in this brilliantly realized version, the director strips away the romanticized, gothic interpretations audiences may be familiar with. Instead she gives us an evocative, spare and uncompromising film that beautifully captures the original voice of the author’s work; profound, emotional and sometimes dark.
november 30 - december 6
A Liar's Autobiography The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman
DIRECTED BY Bill Jones, Jeff Simpson
ing Starrf the five oginal ori ns! o Pyth PRESENTED IN GLORIOUS 2D! Despite the fact that Graham Arthur Chapman very selfishly died in 1989 he is currently staging a triumphant return to the silver screen in his latest film A LIAR’S AUTOBIOGRAHY. Not a documentary and not a Python film, A LIAR’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY is an animated and factually totally incorrect biography of one of the founding members of the Monty Python. Prior to his death, Chapman recorded himself reading his own book and those recordings have now been ingeniously used to share Chapman’s story and his own take on his somewhat bizarre and abbreviated life. Fellow Pythons John Cleese, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam also turn up, playing themselves and other characters, along with a few surprise guests.
Features
9
Stev Read eP revi rokop y e Pag w on 's
december 7 - 13
e2
THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE
DIRECTED BY Ken Burns, David McMahon, Sarah Burns
1 A new documentary from award winning filmmaker Ken Burns, THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE is a powerful film about a tragic miscarriage of justice. In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were arrested for, and swiftly convicted of, beating and raping a woman in Central Park. The ‘five’ each spent between 6 and 13 years in prison before a shocking confession and DNA evidence proved them innocent. Called the “crime of the century” by Mayor Ed Koch this remains one of the biggest media stories of our time and a reminder of how sensationalist media and snap judgments can forever alter lives.
starts december 7
STARLET
DIRECTED BY: Sean Baker STARRING: Dree Hemingway, Besedka Johnson, Stella Maeve
Special Jury Prize
- Los Angeles Times
d Rea ide's Pr Ray view on
Winner!
Reykjavik International Film Festival - Fipresci
re
e 34 Pag
Critics’ Award
Locarno International Film Festival - First
Prize Junior Jury
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- Filmmaker Magazine
“Dree Hemingway gives a performance of flaky charm and tender sensitivy.”
Winner!
SXSW Film Festival -
Winner!
“A beautifully directed tale of human connection that lingers long after its closing credits.”
STARLET explores the unlikely friendship between 21 year-old aspiring actress Jane and elderly widow Sadie after their worlds collide in California’s San Fernando Valley. Jane spends her time getting high with her dysfunctional roommates and taking care of her chihuahua Starlet, while Sadie passes her days alone, tending to her garden. After a confrontation at a yard sale, Jane finds something unexpected in a relic from Sadie’s past. Her curiosity piqued, she tries to befriend the caustic older woman. Secrets emerge as their relationship grows, revealing that nothing is ever as it seems.
Music Box Theatre
DECEMBER 14 - 24 th
29 Annual Music Box Christmas Show
One of the most popular and beloved Christmas traditions in Chicago is celebrating its 29th anniversary this year. Each year, holiday revelers are greeted by none other than Santa Claus, live and in person. Santa welcomes the audience and, accompanied by the theater organist, leads them in the singing of the most cherished Christmas carols of all time. The lyrics are projected onto the theater’s screen so no one misses a chance to sing their hearts out. Then the audience sits back and enjoys a Christmas movie classic. Some folks like to keep the music going and opt to see WHITE CHRISTMAS so they can sing the timeless lyrics of Irving Berlin along with Bing Crosby, Danny Kay and Rosemary Clooney. Others prefer to cheer for Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey and hiss Mr. Potter during a showing of the heart-warming IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (Frank Capra,1946).
And those truly filled with holiday spirit see BOTH films! Advance Tickets:
Day of Tickets (if available):
Single Feature: $12 Double Feature: $17 Children under 13: $10 or $15 double feature
Single Feature: $14 Double Feature: $20 Children under 13: $10 or $15 double feature
TICKETS NOW ON SALE!
SCHEDULE
For Groups of 20 or more, please email groups@musicboxtheatre.com or call 773-871-6607 Friday, December 14th 6:40 • It’s A Wonderful Life 9:45 • White Christmas
Friday, December 21st 3:35, 9:45 • It’s A Wonderful Life 6:40 • White Christmas
Saturday, December 15th 12:30, 6:40 • White Christmas 3:35, 9:45 • It’s A Wonderful Life
Saturday, December 22nd 12:30, 6:40 • White Christmas 3:35, 9:45 • It’s A Wonderful Life
Sunday, December 16th 12:30, 6:40 • It’s A Wonderful Life 3:35 White Christmas
Sunday, December 23rd 12:30, 6:40 • White Christmas 3:35• It’s A Wonderful Life
Thursday, December 20th 6:40 • White Christmas 9:45 • It’s A Wonderful Life
Monday, December 24th 12:30• White Christmas 3:35• It’s A Wonderful Life
Features
11
DECEMBER 25 - JANUARY 3 TH 0 5
SARY
IVER
ANN
“The film holds up not only for its historical parallels but also because it’s thrilling and, in its present incarnation, it looks breathtaking.” – Fred Kaplan, New York Times
Mik e DIRECTED BY: David Lean STARRING: Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn
Rea
d W arti ilmingto cle n's
Pag on e 30
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA Winner of seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture in 1962, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is a timeless motion picture masterpiece and this year marks its 50th anniversary! In honor of its five decades as one of best films ever made Sony Pictures Entertainment has released a meticulous 4K digital restoration created from the original 65mm negative. This is a rare opportunity to see this film on the big screen with the detail and range of color and brightness that is only possible with a restoration of this magnitude. Directed by David Lean (The Bridge on the River Kwai) and starring Peter O’Toole in a career making performance, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is the No. 7 film on the American Film Institutes (AFI) list of the “100 Greatest Movies of All Time”.
DECEMBER 28 - JANUARY 3 "A terrific French thriller. Belongs to a select circle of twisty top-notch Gallic suspense movies." – The New York Times
Paul (Romain Duris) has everything. He’s a successful Parisian lawyer, he has a beautiful wife, two adoring children and a glimmering future as a partner in the law firm he co-owns with his mentor Anne (Catherine Deneuve) but beneath this façade is a man frustrated by a lack of creative fulfillment and his conformist bourgeois life. One startling revelation, one moment of rage and one staggering decision changes everything. Adapted from Douglas Kennedy’s novel and transposed from America to Europe, THE BIG PICTURE is a psychological thriller that masterfully explores questions we’ve all asked ourselves. Is it possible to disappear, to start over, to reinvent ourselves and, ultimately, to become someone else entirely.
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Music Box Theatre
starts january 4 “Alan Cumming delivers what is possibly his best performance to date.” - Boyd Van Hoeij, Variety
ANY DAY NOW
DIRECTED BY: Travis Fine STARRING: Alan Cumming, Garret Dillahunt, Isaac Leyva
d Reais Fine
Winner!
Chicago International Film Festival 2012 Audience Award
v Tra le on tic
ar
e Pag
Winner!
Seattle International Film Festival 2012 Best Actor Award, Alan Cumming & Audience Award
27
Winner!
Outfest 2012 Audience Award & Best Actor Award, Alan Cumming
In the late 1970s, when a mentally handicapped teenager is abandoned, a gay couple takes him in and becomes the family he’s never had. But once their unconventional living arrangement is discovered by authorities, the men must fight a biased legal system to adopt the child they have come to love as their own. www.musicboxfilms.com
january 4 - 10 “a cool yet compassionate look at two people bound by love and shared struggles in a world of haves and have-nots.” – Manohla Dargis
DIRECTED BY: Ursula Meier STARRING: Kacey Mottet Klein, Lea Seydoux
SISTER, Ursula Meiers’ (Home) latest offering, has already been selected as Switzerland’s official entry in the Foreign Oscar race. 12 year-old Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein) supports both himself and his defeated older sister (Lea Seydoux) by stealing ski equipment from the wealthy visitors at the ski resort up the mountain and then descending the mountain to resell the goods. The literal high-low geographical separation is the perfect metaphor for the siblings’ relationship as well as their circumstances. SISTER is a calmly, heartbreaking story about a boy forced to grow up too soon and his precarious relationship with his only family member. Gillian Anderson also makes a brief and effective appearance as one of the wealthy tourists. Beautifully acted and timelessly touching the story of this impoverished brother and sister bound together in circumstance and desperately trying to survive will stay with viewers long after the film ends.
Features
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january 11 - 17
Mee direc t the person tor in openin weekend
g
DIRECTED BY: Chicago native Linda Goldstein Knowlton In profiling Chinese adoptees in contemporary America, Linda Goldstein Knowlton (THE WORLD ACCORDING TO SESAME STREET) has created a deeply moving documentary illustrating that even the most specific of experiences can be universally relatable. Of the roughly 80,000 girls who have been adopted from China since 1989—a decade after China implemented its One Child Policy—the film intimately follows four teenagers: Haley, Jenna, Ann, and Fang. These four wisebeyond-their-years, yet typical American teens, reveal a heartbreaking sense of self-awareness as they attempt to answer the uniquely human question, “Who am I?” somewherebetweenmovie.com
starts january 18 In 1993 three eight year old boys in the small town of West Memphis, Arkansas were brutally murdered and three local teenagers were arrested and convicted for the horrific crime. The story captured the attention of the entire nation and since then it has been told and retold in several documentaries but the latest, WEST OF MEMPHIS, by Academy Award nominee Amy Berg is by far the most provocative to date. WEST OF MEMPHIS tells the untold story behind the extraordinary fight to bring the truth to light, uncover new evidence and exonerate three men imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. www.sonyclassics.com
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Music Box Theatre
Directed by: Amy Berg
january 25 - 31
Br
DIRECTED BY: Marcel Carne
ea t Re New hta k st or DC ing at P io n!
STARRING: Jean Gabin, Michel Simon, and Michele Morgan
A foggy night, a desolate road and a free ride have brought Jean (Jean Gabin) to a lonely bar in the port city of Le Havre where he’s about to find both love and trouble. He’s a broke, hungry, army deserter hoping to start a new life but that plan changes when he meets Nelly (Michele Morgan), a 17 year-old run away. Jean quickly finds himself entangled in a web of jealousy, passion and crime that can’t be escaped, at least not without sacrificing the woman he loves or himself. In PORT OF SHADOWS (Le Quai des brumes) the inimitable team of director Marcel Carné and writer Jacques Prévert created what has been described as one of the most definitive examples of the pre-war “poetic realism” genre and a stark, gritty story of lonely souls wrestling with destiny.
january 25 - 31 Sidney Stratton (Alec Guiness), a brilliant young research chemG ist, is obsessed with inventP ing an “everlasting fiber” but C n! STUNNIN wD having made quite a nuisance of Ne ratio himself he’s been reduced to a to s e R lowly lab dishwasher. Fiercely determined and encouraged by the mill owners beautiful daughter Daphne (Joan Greenwood), he succeeds in finally creating the miracle fabric that never gets dirty and never wears out! Wearing a white suit made of this wonderous textile, Sidney is forced to defend his discovery when he is confronted, harassed and chased by the mill owners and trade unions who want to suppress his invention; A classic story of the common man battling the Establishment. Director Alexander Mackendricks’ THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT (1951) is a stunning DIRECTED BY: Alexander Mackendrick example of the famed “Ealing STARRING: Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, and Cecil Parker Comedy” films.
Features
15
starts february 1
“BRILLIANT! The UP SERIES is on my list of the ten greatest films of all time.” Roger Ebert
56 UP continues an extraordinary look at the unfolding of lives. THE UP SERIES has been called “an inspired, almost noble use of the film medium” by renowned film critic Roger Ebert. In 1964, acclaimed filmmaker Michael Apted began by interviewing 14 children from diverse socio-economic backgrounds from all over England. By asking the children about their lives and their dreams for the future, differences in attitudes and opportunity were witnessed and recorded. For almost half a century, Apted has interviewed the original group every seven years, examining the progression of their lives. Now they are 56. firstrunfeatures.com/56up/
starts february 8 The new drug of choice is called ‘Soy Sauce’ and it promises an out-of-body experience with every hit. Users experience the unimaginable as they drift across time and dimensions but, like with all drugs, there’s a hitch. Some who come back are no longer human and it doesn’t take John (Rob Mayes) and David (Chase Williamson) long to realize a silent otherworldly invasion is underway. Based on the wildly popular, genrebending book by David Wong, brought to life by director Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, Bubba Ho-Tep) and also featuring Paul Giamatti, JOHN DIES AT THE END is a weird, wild and funny horror, sci-fi ride. Mankind needs a hero but can John and David save humanity? No. No, they can’t…
16
Music Box Theatre
john dies at the end
DIRECTED BY: Don Coscarelli STARRING: Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes, and Paul Giamatti
tor Direc relli ca Don Cosuled to sched ning r ope appea kend! e e w
JOHN DIES AT THE END is a thoroughly unpredictable horrorcomedy – and an immensely entertaining one, too.” – Variety
february 15 - 21 DIRECTED BY: Bavo Defurne STARRING: Ben Van den Heuvel, Eva van der Gucht, and Thomas Coumans
A Poetic, dreamlike valentine to the exquisite agony of first love.” -Attitude Pim lives with his neglectful mother, Yvette, in a run-down house, on a dead-end street, in a small town, somewhere on the Belgian coast. Life here smells of cold French fries, cheap cigarettes, vermouth and stale beer. As a lonely kid, Pim brightens up his life dreaming up princesses and beauty queens, but as a teenager he dreams of Gino, the rugged boy next door- his motorcycling hero. But Gino is not such a dreamer. Or is he? NORTH SEA TEXAS is a bittersweet story of teenage love and loss.
north sea
texas
starts february 22
Happy People:
DIRECTED BY: Werner Herzog, Dmitry Vasyukov STARRING: Werner Herzog
A YEAR IN THE TAIGA
Deep in the Siberian wilderness, 300 people inhabit the remote village of Bakhtia. The village can only be reached by helicopter or by boat; there is no telephone, no running water or medical aid and the daily lives and cultural traditions of the locals have barely changed for centuries. Narrated and codirected by acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog, HAPPY PEOPLE is a visually stunning documentary that tells the story of a culture virtually untouched by the modern world.
www.musicboxfilms.com Features
17
FEBRUARY 15 - 28
Music Box Theatre Films to include: Vertigo West Side Story Playtime 2001: A Space Odyssey ...more films to be announced!
that during this season of giving, Remember we have just two simple rules:
Collect $300 of receipts from 5 or more SHOP Lakeview merchants and receive
1.
$50
in SHOP Lakeview Dollars!
Shop locally from November – December 31, 2012 and save your receipts.
3.
2.
Collect $300 worth of receipts from 5 or more SHOP Lakeview merchants.
Turn your envelope and receipts into the Lakeview Chamber of Commerce at 1409 West Addison and receive $50 in SHOP Lakeview Dollars, redeemable January 1 – February 28, 2013.
SHOP Lakeview Dollars are redeemable at over 150 Lakeview Businesses… Use them to shop, dine, or indulge! It’s that easy! Complete promotion details are available at www.shoplakeview.net
www.thisislakeview.com
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Music Box Theatre
www.lakeviewchamber.com
www.shoplakeview.net
SHOP Lakeview is fully funded by SSA #27.
Tickets on sale in January
70mm Festival An epic format deserves an epic festival! For TWO WEEKS in February, we're screening over a half-ton of celluloid, including a brand new print of 2001!! We've already spent over 100 man-hours getting our 70mm equipment ready for this, and we're sure to spend some more to make sure even if you HAVE seen 70mm before, you've NEVER seen it like this!
Voulez-vous parler avec moi ? One-week intensive initiation course starts November 12 Fall/Winter 8-week session is Nov. 26–Feb. 2 All levels, all ages, all en français! Visit our website for FREE TRIAL CLASSES REGISTER NOW at (312) 337-1070
re Mo start ses clas nuary Ja ! 7
810 N. Dearborn Street Tel 312.337.1070
www.af-chicago.org
Features
19
editorials
WUTHERING HEIGHTS REVIEWED By Patrick Z. McGavin
Andrea Arnold made her name when her 2005 short “Wasp” won the Academy Award. Her two feature-length films, “Red Road” and “Fish Tank,” both won prizes at Cannes and proved her one of the fresh and exciting new voices in British art cinema. She deepens the excitement of her early work with her most exciting and galvanizing work to date, a forceful and visually spectacular reimagining of Emily Brontë’s 1845 novel, “Wuthering Heights.” She answers, through her oblique, harshly beautiful telling, the most insistent question of any new adaptation of Brontë’s tragedy. What new is there to say about a work with multiple versions already readily available? Arnold has a particular affinity for expressing complex inner feelings through the expressive capabilities of the camera. In “Red Road,” it was cool and disturbing notion of surveillance and being watched. In “Fish Tank,” it was more volatile and intense, built around a young girl’s nascent sexuality. Arnold and the screenwriter Olivia Hetreed deploy a bifurcated structure, eschewing the novel’s flashback structure, in exploring the complicated and ultimately tragic all-consuming love that develops between Heathcliffe (played as a boy by Solomon Glave), the young orphan, and his adopted sister Cathy (Shannon Beer in mid-19th century Yorkshire). The first half, concerned with the children’s growing attachment, is severe, immersive and highly tactile. The landscapes are threatening and beautiful, the weather seemingly medieval. The new movie was shot again by the peerless Robbie Ryan, and the movie keenly visualizes, through the repeated shots of motion and feeling, rolling down hills, thrashing about in the mud, the almost primal attraction of the two. Their connection is deep and palpable. Brontë famously described her protagonist, Heathcliffe, as a “dark-skinned gypsy.” Arnold uses that as a radical takeoff for her thrilling piece, casting two-light skinned black actors in the pivotal role. The notion of the other replaces the standard themes of class and ownership. After a horrible moment involving Cathy’s unhinged brother causes Heathcliff to flee, the story advances some years. Heathcliff (played as a young adult by James Howson) is a social striver and gentleman with reputation and money while Cathy (Kaya Scodelario) is trapped in a pallid marriage to a rich though insufferable Linton (James Northcote). It hardly matters, the illicit and passionate feelings between the two inevitably and naturally re-ignite with consequences and pain. Arnold is faithful to Brontë’s spirit and prose, but she finds her own vernacular. This “Wuthering Heights” is very much of a piece with her other two features. It breathes and lives as cinema. The use of off-screen sound and space, the concern with nature and wonder makes for a continuously exciting and intelligent rendering of the story. In Arnold’s harshly beautiful world, the tragedy of the two has an Old Testament fury, a story of an Eden irrevocably damaged. This is not the safe and meticulously recreated world of English manners and reserve, but something that cuts deeper and more fundamental to human feeling and emotion. It brings it home with a vengeance.
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THE COLOR OF JUSTICE:
THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE By Steven “Capone” Prokopy
It’s not a coincidence that Spike Lee’s DO THE RIGHT THING was released about two months after the horrific event that is the jumping-off point of THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE, a rare theatrical release from master documentarian Ken Burns (along with his sister Sarah Burns and brother-in-law David McMahon). As Lee’s benchmark work confirms, New York City was being torn apart by racial tension and an aggressive police force and mayor, Ed Koch, hellbent on a certain kind of law and order. In late 1989, sections of the city were in something of an upswing—money was finally coming in after decades of collapse, and the resulting economy was strong. At the same time, a social moat had been established around certain neighborhoods, and a locked-in underclass struggled to make ends meet. To make matters worse, crack cocaine entrenched itself in these neighborhoods at about this time, making cash and guns a part of the mix; young black men were an “endangered species,” according to one subject interviewed in the film. With racial tensions at an all-time high in the Big Apple, a 28-year-old female investment banker went jogging one night in Central Park. At around the same time, a group of mostly black young men went on a tear through another part of the park, beating up and otherwise harassing random passers-by. What happened next was the subject of debate for more than a decade. As the police and most press were more than willing to report, some of these men crossed paths with the jogger, beat and raped her mercilessly. What followed was textbook coercion and self-fulfilling prophecy by both police and the district attorney’s office, and eventually all of those put on trial went to jail until their indictments were set aside in 2002, more than 12 years after their swift conviction. THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE does an important job of setting the tone of the city while the trial was happening. Borderline prejudicial words like “wilding” and “wolf pack” were introduced into the public vernacular, and even though their forced confessions told wildly contradictory stories, the prosecution and the jury essentially ignored this. Perhaps the greatest miscarriage was perpetrated by the media (a fact that New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer readily admits), which all but declared the youths guilty from the minute they were arrested. The film enlists testimony from historians, social psychologists and law experts to tell its story, but the most compelling words come from the now-grown suspects themselves (all but one is interviewed on camera; another only gives an audio interview), who not only detail the events as they unfolded, but also give moving and terrifying accounts of life in prison for so many years. As one of the five makes clear, “Vacating the sentence didn’t vacate my time in jail.” THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE is diligently researched and laid out in a straight-forward, but powerful manner. But at its core is a message of a city’s racial chasm coming to a head during this trial. The point is made by both black and white interview subjects that if the victim had been black, the case
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wouldn’t have received nearly the level of attention. Fueling these heating emotions were a mayor calling the suspect “animals” and the trial “a test of our criminal justice system.” Even Donald Trump got in the opportunistic act, putting out a full-page newspaper ad calling for the death penalty to be brought back to New York with the strong implication that it be applied in this case, despite all of the suspects being underage. The most infuriating part of this story is that the serial rapist who eventually confessed to the jogger attack could have easily been a suspect back in 1989 if the police weren’t so committed to railroading these easily manipulated kids. The biggest slap in the face to the original suspects was that their innocence and release didn’t receive a fraction of the coverage in the press that their arrest and trial did. The media is just as efficient at covering its mistakes as law enforcement and the D.A.’s office. Like many great documentaries, THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE will make audiences’ blood boil, as it demands viewers take a pause before convicting someone in the mind at any point before all the facts are known. It’s a fair and shameful testament to our human desire for vengeance, even if the focal point of our rage isn’t the guilty party. Consider it that rare cautionary tale where the truth actually did come out in the end. Steve Prokopy is the Chicago Editor for Ain’t It Cool News (www.aintitcool.com), where he has contributed film reviews and filmmaker & actor interviews under the name “Capone” since 1998. In 2005, he also joined the staff of the Chicago-based media outlet GapersBlock.com as the site’s Friday film critic with his Steve@theMovies column.
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NOV 30 – DEC 6 DEC. 7-13 DEC. 14-20
NOV. 30 DEC. 1
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
DEC. 8
DECEMBER 8
30th
THROUGH
FEBRUARY
28th
WINTER FILM CALENDAR
CHICAGO'S YEAR ROUND FILM FESTIVAL
2012 NOVEMBER
STARTS DECEMBER 7
NOVEMBER 30 DECEMBER 6
DEC. 17
ONE DAY ONLY!
NOVEMBER 30 DECEMBER 6
DECEMBER 18
A CHRISTMAS STORY
IT’S A BOB CLARK CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!
The Alternative Xmas Double Feature!
DEC. 19
KILL BILL Vol 1 & 2 AND GRINDHOUSE!
DOUBLE-HEADERS!
TARANTINO
A DOUBLE-FEATURE OF QUENTIN
THE CENTRAL PARK DECEMBER 7 - 13 FIVE
NOVEMBER 30 - DECEMBER 6
The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman
A Liar's Autobiography -
Music Box Theatre | 3733 N. Southport Ave. Chicago, IL 60613 | 773-871-6604 (showtimes) | 773-871-6607 (office) | www.musicboxtheatre.com
Evil Dead 2
DEC. 7
The Room
29th Annual Music Box Christmas Show
Sit back and enjoy a Christmas movie classic. Some folks like to keep the music going and opt to see WHITE CHRISTMAS so they can sing the timeless lyrics of Irving Berlin along with Bing Crosby, Danny Kay and
SUNRISE
DECEMBER 29-30
DECEMBER 28-29
Get Crazy
JANUARY 5-6 On The Waterfront
Django
JANUARY 4-5
JANUARY 12 SECOND SATURDAY SILENT CINEMA
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII
Rosemary Clooney. Others prefer to cheer for Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey and hiss Mr. Potter during a showing of the heart-warming IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (Frank Capra,1946). And those truly filled with holiday spirit see BOTH films!
DECEMBER 14 - 24
DEC. 27 7:30pm
DECEMBER 25 - JANUARY 3
JANUARY 11 - 17
Interactive Audience Guide!
Party Favors!
Chapagne Toast!
JANUARY 4 - 10
JANUARY 14 7:30pm
jimi hendrix
LIVE AT WOODSTOCK
Screening of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
DECEMBER 28 JANUARY 3
BA R RY M O R E
STARTS JANUARY 4
ANY DAY NOW JANUARY 13
A Place In The Sun JANUARY 11-12
The Thing
DEC. 31 11:00pm
DEC. 21-27 DEC. 28 – JAN 3 JAN. 4-10 JAN. 11-17
NOV 30 – DEC 6 DEC. 7-13 DEC. 14-20
NOV. 30 DEC. 1
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
DEC. 8
DECEMBER 8
30th
THROUGH
FEBRUARY
28th
WINTER FILM CALENDAR
CHICAGO'S YEAR ROUND FILM FESTIVAL
2012 NOVEMBER
STARTS DECEMBER 7
NOVEMBER 30 DECEMBER 6
DEC. 17
ONE DAY ONLY!
NOVEMBER 30 DECEMBER 6
DECEMBER 18
A CHRISTMAS STORY
IT’S A BOB CLARK CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!
The Alternative Xmas Double Feature!
DEC. 19
KILL BILL Vol 1 & 2 AND GRINDHOUSE!
DOUBLE-HEADERS!
TARANTINO
A DOUBLE-FEATURE OF QUENTIN
THE CENTRAL PARK DECEMBER 7 - 13 FIVE
NOVEMBER 30 - DECEMBER 6
The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman
A Liar's Autobiography -
Music Box Theatre | 3733 N. Southport Ave. Chicago, IL 60613 | 773-871-6604 (showtimes) | 773-871-6607 (office) | www.musicboxtheatre.com
Evil Dead 2
DEC. 7
The Room
29th Annual Music Box Christmas Show
Sit back and enjoy a Christmas movie classic. Some folks like to keep the music going and opt to see WHITE CHRISTMAS so they can sing the timeless lyrics of Irving Berlin along with Bing Crosby, Danny Kay and
SUNRISE
DECEMBER 29-30
DECEMBER 28-29
Get Crazy
JANUARY 5-6 On The Waterfront
Django
JANUARY 4-5
JANUARY 12 SECOND SATURDAY SILENT CINEMA
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII
Rosemary Clooney. Others prefer to cheer for Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey and hiss Mr. Potter during a showing of the heart-warming IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (Frank Capra,1946). And those truly filled with holiday spirit see BOTH films!
DECEMBER 14 - 24
DEC. 27 7:30pm
DECEMBER 25 - JANUARY 3
JANUARY 11 - 17
Interactive Audience Guide!
Party Favors!
Chapagne Toast!
JANUARY 4 - 10
JANUARY 14 7:30pm
jimi hendrix
LIVE AT WOODSTOCK
Screening of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
DECEMBER 28 JANUARY 3
BA R RY M O R E
STARTS JANUARY 4
ANY DAY NOW JANUARY 13
A Place In The Sun JANUARY 11-12
The Thing
DEC. 31 11:00pm
DEC. 21-27 DEC. 28 – JAN 3 JAN. 4-10 JAN. 11-17
An Interview With , Filmmaker
Travis Fine
Patrick Z. McGavin
ANY DAY NOW is the third feature of Travis Fine, the actor turned filmmaker. The movie tells the story of Rudy (Alan Cumming), a female impersonator who becomes emotionally drawn to Marco (Isaac Leyva), an abandoned handicapped teenager. Dramatically, the story turns on the legal struggles of Rudy and his lover, Paul (Garret Dillahunt) to secure custodial rights of the young boy. Fine talked about the film, its history and making during a recent interview. Question: How did the script originate? Travis Fine: I was looking for an original script to direct. I had all the pieces in place, but I didn’t have a script. I just wanted a completed script. George Arthur Bloom was the original writer. He lived on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn when it was really rough and tumble. He knew this guy Rudy, a larger than life character from the neighborhood. In the building where Rudy lived was this kid who was terribly handicapped, both mentally and physically. The kid’s mother was a drug addict. There were times when Rudy would just help the kid out, bring him toys to play with. George was inspired by this relationship these two had developed, and he wrote a fictional story of adoption. The film almost got made a number of times. There were a number of actors attached to the project, Tommy Lee Jones, Sylvester Stallone. Ultimately, as writers do with a lot of projects, George gave up on it. He said, “I guess this one didn’t work.” It sat there, unnoticed, for twenty years, until George’s son, P.J. Bloom, my music supervisor and old high school friend of mine, heard that I was looking for an original script to direct. P.J. said, ‘My dad wrote this script.’ I was very interested in this Ratso Rizzo kind of character of Rudy. It had elements of pieces of films I liked, and so I optioned the script. I called George, and I said, ‘I’m going to rewrite your script.’ To his credit, he said have at it. I started with page one, and I inserted the character of Paul. In the original, Paul was in the opening scene and then you never see him again. I wanted to create a love story and this idea of Rudy as a revue performer who becomes a singer. I also expanded the legal case. Question: The movie is really a love story about people who are marginalized, like Marco, because of his disability, or Rudy and Paul, because of their sexuality. The casting was crucial. Travis Fine: Alan Cumming was always the first actor cast. We always knew we needed that lynchpin. Once you have that lynchpin, it becomes much easier to bring other high quality people in. I like to sit with a project. I like to come up with lists and people. When I was doing research on adoption, I came across the name of Ricky Martin. I called up his management agency and they said he was completely booked until 2013. The manager asked me what the story was, and once I described, he said, ‘That sounds like Alan Cumming.’ Alan was also his client. I loved what he did in Cabaret, and that’s what I needed for Rudy, someone who was dangerous, sexy, smart and funny. I got him the script, we had a Skype conversation and he said he’d love to do it. Question: It sounds as though you had a similar serendipity in finding the boy, Isaac Leyva, for the role of Marco. Travis Fine: We put the word out, through Down’s Syndrome associations throughout the country, that we were looking for a boy thirteen and up. We preferred to have somebody over eighteen who could play a
Editorial
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At the end of the first scene, he gave that big Isaac smile that lights up a room. It turns out he was from Los Angeles, and he studied at a place called Performing Arts Studio West. In the first audition, the one I saw on computer, I didn’t have any of the kids play all the scenes. In one of the scenes, the kid had to say some rough language. Down Syndrome people typically shy away from violence, anger, or anything that is very upsetting to them. We tried to push Isaac in his acting, and he started to really shake. I thought, ‘This isn’t going to work.’
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teenager. We watched a lot of auditions. Most of them were tough to watch. All of them were non-actors. Their disabilities ranged from slight to really severe. Then I saw Isaac on an audition tape, and from the first moment he spoke, there was something engaging about him.
We went out to the parking lot, and my wife, Kristine Fine, who’s a very smart producer told me, ‘You always said you were going to have to build a part around the kid.’ She said, ‘Play with the kid’s silence.’ That night, I stayed up until four in the morning and I rewrote the scene. We brought him back in, we read him and he was perfect. Question: How do you think your own background and training as an actor has shaped your work as a writer and director? Travis Fine: One of the things I feel a certain strength is writing and developing characters that actors want to play. As an actor, I always knew what kind of characters I wanted to play. It’s allowed me to become a better writer of characters. On the set, it’s a huge benefit because every actor speaks in a sense a different language. They come from a different training, a different background, and they need something different to get to the place they need to get to. Jeffrey Tambor was my acting teacher, and watching him work with lots of different types of personalities, people speaking different languages, I think it allowed me to very quickly discern about the various actors, how they work and what they need to make it work. I feel very comfortable working with them and being around actors. Question: Your own career as an actor has been very eclectic, from studio films to independent works and a lot of high-profile television. Travis Fine: One of the benefits of being in a big-budget film or a well-run television series, I’m talking good projects, is that you see how things how should be done. You see how directors should work, or a crew. My wife and producing partner, Kristine, she worked in one-hour drama television at David Kelly Productions for seven or eight years, and she knows how a good set should be run. We set the bar high on our own productions. There are certain protocols. It’s not about throwing money at it. It’s about being professional.
My last big film as an actor was not a pleasant or professional experience. It was a big Hollywood comedy done in poor taste, I thought. Having seen that, I also fully appreciate how important it is there are filmmakers who making movies without a hierarchy of executives and marketing specialists. Question: Why did you shift the setting from Brooklyn to Los Angeles? Travis Fine: We started physical production May 24, 2011; it was a five-week shoot. The project was originally set for New York, and we started pre-production. I was all set to fly to Brooklyn and I realized I didn’t know anything about Brooklyn. I made the decision to re-set the film in Los Angeles. It didn’t change the story. Liam Finn, a producer and location scout, was an expert of [California] locations. A youth correction facility in Whittier, California. It had a classroom that could be a school, a gym that could be a basketball court, the roads where we could do some of the driving scenes. They had the mental institution. We could land there, and have a cost effective way to not try to jump the whole city. We went to Lacy Street Studios, and it provided multiple apartments. We went to a library, which used to be an old courthouse in Culver City; they had two different courtrooms, interior of the jell cell, the interrogation room, the judge’s office and Paul’s office. We did steal some shots, of Marco walking stuff, using a small digital cameras. Question: The movie casts a hard light on the difficulties gay men and women encounter in the legal system who want to adopt children. Travis Fine: There are a million LGBT parents in this country. There are somewhere between 2-6 million LGBT people who have said they’d like to adopt or have indicated if the time was right, they’d like to be a parent. If they’re a fit person, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and if they have a home that’s safe and stable, and give love to somebody nobody else in the world wants, that person should be allowed to bring a child into their home, regardless what they do in the privacy of their bedroom when the door closes. Patrick Z. McGavin is a Chicago writer and film critic. His reviews, essays and film festival reports currently appear in Time Out Chicago, Boston Phoenix and Cineaste. He also maintains the film blog, www.lightsensitive.typepad.com.
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50 Years Later: Lawrence of Arabia By Michael Wilmington
Please note, this article is printed with the permission of the author and was originally published in The A List: The National Society Of Film Critics’ 100 Essential Films (2002) DAVID LEAN’S LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is an aesthete’s epic: a battle film where the carnage is waged on immaculate sands against high skies, where the heroes are improbably handsome and the desert a golden, dazzling backdrop for their adventures. Based on the exploits of T.E. Lawrence of Arabia during World War I, this much-prized classic can be faulted at times for its history or psychology, but never for its looks. Few adventure films ever have had such astonishing physical beauty As shot by Freddie Young (and his great second unit cinematographer Nicolas Roeg), there’s a scintillating clarity in the city and village scenes (done mostly in Seville, Spain, and Morocco) and the vast Saudi Arabian landscapes: movielands as haunting as John Ford’s Monument Valley: a Xanadu of boys’ adventure, dune after dune sliding off toward the blinding sky. Though the movie is full of sand and heat, we don’t always feel them. Lean’s chilly precision cools the desert off, kisses some of the blood off Lawrence’s hands. I saw LAWRENCE for the first
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time at the age of fifteen, and for years afterward I could recall much of it at will - especially the long sequence where Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) sees Sharif Ali Ibn El Kharish (Omar Sharif) for the first time riding toward him through the desert in shimmering heat waves that seem to break Sharif Ali’s camel mount into black abstract fragments: the vision an eerie harbinger of disasters to come. (Lean held this truly hypnotic shot, in his first cut, for almost twice the length we see here. Later, he lost his nerve and shortened it). The whole movie is a vast objet d’art, full of grand tableaus, sweeping action, and polished, epigrammatic speeches. The dialogues (written by playwright Robert Bolt and, uncredited, Michael Wilson) drip with irony and foreshadowing. LAWRENCE has been attacked for the way O’Toole’s magnetic performance and limpid blue eyes turn the title character into a mask and a cipher. But, if we want the history, we can always read Lawrence’s SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM or the rest of the source material. Lean’s film gives us something different: high adventure wedded to stunning visual beauty, esthetic excitement married to bloody danger, suave irony coupled with chaos and futility. O’Toole’s Lawrence is an adventurer who flirts with disaster, wants to be consumed by another culture. The huge close-up early on where he holds his finger in the lighter flame - which immediately dissolves into the desert landscape - suggests a desire to annihilate part of himself, become something purer, harder: “playing with fire” in a deep and dangerous way. We remember afterward the quiet delight with which he first travels through the Arabian desolation, the blanched anguish on his face at his leave-taking, his intoxicated glee in battle, and the way his face crumbles when he flirts with death once too often. If I were a more sophisticated fifteen-year-old, I might have guessed that Sharif Ali’s memorable entrance presaged something far more intense. Like many of Lean’s other films, especially BRIEF ENCOUNTER and DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is a tale of impossible love. But here the lovers (subconscious, of course) are Ali and “El Arens,” who consummate their passion only in bloody warlike deeds. Something may have happened between Lawrence and his desert comrades in real life, but never here. The sense of frustration becomes a shiver under the film’s hot vistas, and when Lawrence is finally raped and sodomized in the film, by the oily Turkish bey played by Jose Ferrer (one of the “lost” scenes restored for the 1989 re-release), it plays like a twisted fulfillment of these teasing undercurrents. He’s captured by the beys men right after sporting with Ali on a spy mission - playing madman, god, and tease. All throughout the film, Ali is both sidekick and simmering presence - but, more important, he comes to stand for the impossible union with Arab culture Lawrence wants. O’Toole was twenty-five when he made Lawrence (so was Sharif). He’d acted mostly at the Bristol Old Vic and done a handful of films (including THE SAVAGE INNOCENTS with Lawrence costar Anthony Quinn, where director Nick Ray had another actor redub O’Toole’s dialogue). But Lawrence remains his greatest role and performance, an incredibly effective piece of anti-typecasting. If Lawrence had been cast correctly as a smaller man (like John Mills in Terence Rattigan’s LAWRENCE stageplay ROSS), the movie would have lost much of its impact. It might not even have worked as well with Lean’s first choice, Marlon Brando - who would probably have been wilier and more sensual. Instead, this is Lawrence as he might have imagined himself: aesthete-adventurer,blond god. In O’Toole’s burned hands, Lawrence swings between exhilaration and despair, madness and glory, the poles on which the movie pivots. The pragmatic newsman follows his exploits, Bentley (Arthur Kennedy, as a fictionalized Lowell Thom-
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as), calls Lawrence a “shameless exhibitionist” - but by the end he’s a shameful exhibitionist, an intensely private man who has somehow willed himself into extroversion, toppled over into giddy excess, before his inevitable entombment in legend. We remember O’Tooles face, but the film is really a portrait of its maker, David Lean. Lean shot for two years, spending and shooting prodigally. (Sharif Ali’s entrance alone took more than a month.) And that reckless perfectionism is reflected in the movie’s form: the glassily beautiful surfaces, the turbulent interior. Lean is a maker of huge, ravishing, uneasy films, and this is an epic-his highest achievement - that thrills and disturbs as you watch it; so taut and fine it seems at any moment, like O’Tooles Lawrence, ready to snap. Lean began as an editor for Michael Powell and others. In the 1930s, in fact, he was known as the best cutter in England, and his structural brilliance is obvious though the whole film. Its two-part construction of rise and fall, glory and decline, is crucial to the final effect. The complete LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is a symphony of war, and its very amplitude is part of its power: poetry and bloodbaths, battles and reverie, genius and madness. In LAWRENCE, the idea of male bonding, that action movie staple, is raised to a sublime and scary level - as if all the politics of the region hinged on one man’s bruised psyche, as if the earth turned on his burned heart. The movie is a stirring portrait of a genuine hero, but Lean’s LAWRENCE OF ARABIA also critiques what it celebrates. And in part, it undermines what it exalts. That’s one reason why it’s still one of the great movie epics: an archetypal daydream of bravery and disaster. See it once - as I did in my teens - and it stays with you: the dunes, the sky, the search for the lost man; “It is written...”; Anthony Quinn as the hawk-faced Auda Abu Tayi crying, “I am a river to my people!”; the screaming desert raid on the train (shot by Andre De Toth); El Arens’s white robes gleaming in the sun, then stained with blood and betrayal; the taking of Aqab - and, at the very beginning, those shots of the green English countryside and Lawrence’s wild ride on his Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle, a burst of boyish exhilaration that ends in twisted wreckage on a quiet country English road. Michael Wilmington’s reviews can be read at MovieCityNews.com
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LAWRENCE OF ARABIA By The Numbers The Music Box Theatre is excited to present this 50th Anniversary Digital Restoration of this epic. Here are some amazing facts: 1962 Academy Awards for LAWRENCE OF ARABIA Academy Award for Best Picture, Academy Award for Original Music Score, Academy Award for Best Director, Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Academy Award for Film Editing, Academy Award for Best Art Direction, — 7: “Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” T.E. Lawrence’s memoir published in 1926. His handwritten versions debuted in 1922. 7: Academy Awards in 1963, including best picture and director (David Lean). 216 minutes: Running time. 15 minutes: Intermission. 35 minutes: Deleted from original film until 25th anniversary restoration. 2 months: Time spent by team from Sony’s Colorworks to match color and density from original film, including hand coloring individual pixels of sand. 8.8 million: Pixels per frame after scanning the negatives. (4,096 pixels (horizontal) x 2,160 pixels (vertical) = 8.8 million pixels per frame.)
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STARLET REVIEWED:
AN UNLIKELY PAIR By Ray Pride
Sean Baker’s Starlet is shot through with a drowsy widescreen California haze, capturing a climate without seasons, where the passing of the youth of the beautiful and young is as unremarked upon as the quiet rustle of the elderly through grocery stores and hedgerows and rowhouses. Even indoors, curtains closed, sun-bright diffusion whitens the rooms. (The end credits boast that the movie was “filmed on location in Beautiful San Fernando Valley California.”) The through line of “Starlet”’s story is the Harold And Maude-like blossoming of an unlikely friendship between two women, 21-year-old Jane (Dree Hemingway) and the older Sadie (85-year-old Besedka Johnson), who meet after Jane finds money inside a yard-sale purchase from solitary Sadie and Jane becomes fascinated with what lies behind this woman’s façade to the point of becoming a stalker. Both Hemingway, daughter of Mariel, greatgranddaughter of Ernest, and Johnson are first-time actors, and the notes they hit as their two very different characters, both of whom are revealed to be far different from what they first seem, are as fresh and vital as any this year. Johnson, discovered at a Hollywood YMCA, had never acted, but her line deliveries are comic gold, pained, exasperated, territorial, as in the run-on “I’m playing bingo leave me alone.” Jane’s a Florida transplant, new to Los Angeles, apartment surfing, and presently crashing in a room courtesy of her friend Melissa (Stella Maeve) and her small-time hoodlum boyfriend, Mikey (James Ransone). We’re not entirely certain what’s up with these girls at first as Baker holds his cards close. Jane’s playing party girl, to be sure, and we fear the Valley sex industry is not far away. Jane’s filled with immaterial opinions, making considered judgments about ordinary things: the effect’s comic but also slowly reveals a character in search of something to do with her life, and also in need of a maternal connection that Sadie might provide. “Maybe I should just go to IKEA or something,” Jane says. “Don’t waste money on new shit, go to a yard sale,” Melissa says, unwittingly setting the movie in motion, sending the willowy blonde, midriff-baring, pastel-clad, Converse hightop-brandishing, Chihuahua-toting Jane toward a city that puts its trash on the street, at a price of three dollars or twenty-five cents. The insistent halation in the images by cinematographer Radium Cheung make Jane whiter-thanwhite, near-translucent, but streets and parks also hum, capturing a region in a way akin to what the late cinematographer Harris Savides was up to in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg and Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere (both 2010). It promises the illusion of tranquility, torpor, a giddy blindedness. It matches Jane’s guileless character, Hemingway’s blissed-innocent performance. Starlet is rich with the sort of non-judgmental, near-ethnographic attention to detail that marked Baker’s two excellent, earlier features, Take Out (2004), about the paces of a New York Chinese restaurant delivery man, and Prince of Broadway (2008, released 2010), about a Ghanaian street hustler in New York who finds himself liberated by a child. In all three features, with a delicate vérité brush of the hand, Baker illustrates the lives of outsiders. How do such women in the San Fernando Valley sex industry get through their day? Notes are taken; notes are struck. The documentary meticulousness extends from Jane’s temporary lodgings, with an exploded suitcase crowned by a
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Music Box Theatre
pair of sneakers that match the orange of her nail polish, to the details of how a porno episode is shot with a newcomer, in the ways of the act, the co-workers’ camaraderie, the actions behind the camera. (The jumpy but rigorously designed sex-shoot is as artfully constructed as an old-fashioned reveal-conceal fan dance, or the montage of body bits in the key lovemaking scene in Godard’s Un femme mariée.) Baker may be the least celebrated of the practitioners of a New American Neorealism that would include the estimable likes of Ramin Bahrani and Jeff Nichols. How do we find the electricity of connection in the clutter of the everyday? But in Starlet, he also finds moments that float beside the story, in a manner akin to the elliptical minimalism of Martha Marcy May Marlene, with which it shares producers. A key, electronic musical theme begins and ends at eccentric, but effective intervals. (When Jane drives alone, her car’s filled with rap music she seems not to notice, despite the violent, antagonistic lyrics.) Plus, the widescreen camera often moves off the characters into a different frame, as when the shot travels with Jane as she crosses a street, with high tension electrical towers in the background, and the image floats for just a moment toward the horizon even as she leaves frame. It’s weirdly lovely, even magical as the musical theme kicks. But these details don’t detract from the characters; the suspicion of the older woman, the heartfelt daffiness of the younger. Sadie’s not quite Edie Beale, and Jane’s not exactly Rollergirl, despite her range of 1970s-style (or American Apparel-style) skimpies and rompers and range of high top colors. The screenplay parcels information reluctantly, but both Hemingway and Johnson speak volumes through their splendid, detailed, often hesitant, but always-precise performances. Even the side characters have dimension, as when Melissa, a lying, temperamental mess, when asked to ponder a moral question, thinks, then answers, “Yeahh, I’m not high enough for these stupid questions.” Jane and Melissa are two young women, selling, being bought, young for a moment, who could just grow as old as Sadie in this never-changing climate. What Jane and Sadie learn together will change all that. Ray Pride is film critic of Newcity, news editor of MovieCityNews.com and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine. Photos and other work are at raypri.de
Editorial
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SPECIAL events NOVEMBER 30 - DECEMBER 6 Scrooge & Marley is a modern-day variation on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” Recounted from a gay sensibility, with heart, comedy and music, the magic of Dickens’ timeless tale of a man’s redemption at the holidays—thanks to the help of three ghostly spirits—comes alive from a fresh perspective that will appeal to audiences of every persuasion. The cast includes out actor David Pevsner (Liz & Dick) as Scrooge and SNL alumnus Tim Kazurinsky as Marley’s Ghost.
Special vent VIP E
11/29
scroogeandmarleymovie.com
DIRECTED BY: Richard Knight, Jr. and Peter Neville STARRING: David Pevsner, Tim Kazurinsky, Rusty Schwimmer, Bruce Vilanch, Megan Cavanagh, Richard Ganoung, David Moretti, Ronnie Kroell, JoJo Baby, Becca Kaufman, and Narrated by Judith Light
DECEMBER 17 - ONE DAY ONLY! For one day the Music Box relives Sundance 2012 with a selection of ten short films from the 2012 festival. Fueled by artistic expression and limited only by their runtime, short films transcend traditional storytelling. They are a significant and popular way artists can connect with audiences. From documentary to animation, narrative to experimental, the abbreviated form is no longer just for the novice. (Total Run Time: 95m)
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Music Box Theatre
The Arm, USA
Fungus, Sweden
Bear, Australia
Meaning of Robots, USA
Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, England
The Return, Kosovo
First Birthday, USA
Robots of Brixton, England
Fishing without Nets, Kenya/USA
Song Of The Spindle, USA
DECEMBER 18
The Alternative Xmas Double Feature! IT’S A BOB CLARK CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!
A Christmas Story Try not to shoot your eye out when we tell you this news, but we’re doing the best damned Christmas double-feature in town today! If you’re unfamiliar with the genius that is Bob Clark (and you should be - try to track down a copy of TURK 182 if you can!), he directed two of the most perfect Christmas movies ever: 1974’s proto-slasher film BLACK CHRISTMAS (starring Keir Dullea and Margot Kidder) and the mother of them all, 1983’s A CHRISTMAS STORY. See them together on this one night only! Both in glorious 35mm! (Black Christmas, 1974, 98m; A Christmas Story, 1983, 93m)
DECEMBER 19
A DOUBLE-FEATURE OF QUENTIN TARANTINO DOUBLE-HEADERS! KILL BILL Vol 1 & 2 AND GRINDHOUSE! Are you as excited for DJANGO UNCHAINED as we are? Well good golly, hop in your Pussy Wagon and get your butts primed with our double-header of Quentin Tarantino double-headers! First up is KILL BILL vols 1 & 2, the cinematic mashup starring Uma Thurman as a badass samurai assassin looking to take down her former boss Bill (David Carradine). Next up is GRINDHOUSE, Tarantino’s homage to the great cinema of the 1970s, screened in its original double-feature theatrical version, complete with all those amazing trailers!
Special Events
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DECEMBER 27 at 7:30pm “DAZZLING VIRTUOSITY! Christopher Plummer gives an achingly funny, memorably strong and debonair performance.” - Vincent Canby, The New York Times
BA R RY M O R E DIRECTED BY: Erik Canuel STARRING: Christopher Plummer, John Plumpis
BARRYMORE, set in 1942, follows acclaimed American actor John Barrymore, a member of one of Hollywood’s most well known multi-generational theatrical dynasties. No longer a leading box office star, the play finds Barrymore reckoning with the ravages of his life of excess while rehearsing a revival of his 1920 Broadway triumph in RICHARD III. We are pleased to offer BARRYMORE the captured-live stage production starring Academy Award Winner Christopher Plummer, plus “making of” documentary, BACKSTAGE WITH BARRYMORE featuring Helen Mirren, Julie Andrews, and Zoe Caldwell (Performance is 84m plus a 45m documentary: total running time 129m) barrymorethefilm.com
DECEMBER 31 at 11:00 pm
Screening of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE
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Music Box Theatre
Interactive Audience Guide!
Party Favors! Champaigne Toast!
january 14 at 7:30pm
jimi hendrix
LIVE AT WOODSTOCK Hendrix’s seminal performance at Woodstock in 1969, in high definition and surround sound. LIVE AT WOODSTOCK, Jimi Hendrix’s headlining appearance at the most famous festival in rock music history, is rivaled only by his set at Monterey Pop for sheer legendary status. But the two are very different. The rock guitarist was a virtual unknown in America when he delivered his literally incendiary performance at Monterey in 1967. A little more than two years later he was an established star, picked to close this mammoth three-day show.
JANUARY 23 & FEBRUARY 10 Best of British theatre broadcast to a cinema near you
The Magistrate by Arthur Wing Pinero
John Lithgow takes the title role in this classic Victorian farce.
17 January 2013 Varying dates internationally
ntlive.com
Proudly supported by
When amiable magistrate Posket (John Lithgow) married a widow, Agatha (Nancy Carroll), he had no idea that she’d deceived him by dropping five years from both her age and that of her son. Several years later, on the evening of a pleasant dinner party the Poskets have planned, Mrs. Posket is suddenly afraid her secret may be revealed. True to the classic Victorian farce, a series of accidental meetings, coincidences and improbable situations drive this uproarious, crowd-pleasing comedy forward to it’s satisfying conclusion. The National Theatre Live production of Arthur Wing Pinero’s THE MAGISTRATE was directed by Timothy Sheader and stars Academy Award nominee and Tony Award winner John Lithgow in one of his funniest roles yet; THE MAGISTRATE will have audiences everywhere doubled up with laughter!
www.ntlive.com
Special Events
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JANUARY 31
Sundance Film Festival USA “I saw my final film of Sundance 2010 here in Chicago. It was my best Sundance experience.” – Roger Ebert
Guaranteed to sell out! Order your tickets today!
The Sundance Film Festival expands to audiences across the country for one special night of film and dialogue. On January 31st, the Sundance Film Festival dispatches nine filmmakers from Park City to nine cities across the country to screen and discuss their directfrom-Festival films with audiences. In past years, the Music Box has welcomed PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN for a screening of JACK GOES BOATING and JULIE DELPY for 2 DAYS IN NEW YORK. What film and filmmaker will we welcome this year? Photo by Stephen Leung.
FEBRUARY 13 at 7:30pm
SOUND OPINIONS AT THE MOVIES:
trying to se duce u’re o me , M “Y rs
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Every week, Sound Opinions fires up smart and spirited discussions about a wide range of popular music, from indie rock to classic rock, hip hop to R&B, and every genre under the sun. This week they head to the movies with THE GRADUATE.
. Robinson... Aren’t you?”
Arguably, no other movie of the 60s turned counterculture angst into popular culture. The biggest box office surprise of the decade, it was an Oscar-winner for director Mike Nichols, and Dustin Hoffman’s star-making breakout role. Simon & Garfunkel’s score started a new trend in soundtrack music and offered one memorable moment after another. This screening is presented by Sound Opinions, the world’s only rock and roll talk show.
Music Box Theatre
FEBRUARY 14 at 7:30pm The Music Box Theatre’s annual screening of the classic film CASABLANCA begins with a special “Valentine’s Day Sweetheart Sing-Along” featuring a selection of memorable love songs complete with projected lyrics and accompaniment from the Music Box organ. Songs include “You are My Sunshine”, “Bicycle Built for Two” and “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” After the sing-a-long you and your sweetheart will be treated to the timeless CASABLANCA, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, one of the greatest romantic films of all time.
Presented with a Sweetheart Sing-Along
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Special Events
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midnights 11/30-12/1 Evil Dead 2 12/7 The Room 12/8 The Rocky Horror Picture Show 12/28-29 Get Crazy 1/4-5 Django 1/11-12 The Thing 1/18 The Breakfast Club 1/19 Rocky Horror 1/25-26 Videodrome 2/1-2 Groundhog Day 2/8 The Room 2/9 The Rocky Horror Picture Show 2/15-16 Phantom of the Paradise 2/22-23 Labyrinth
evil dead 2
groundhog day
the labyrinth
Monthly screenings of The Room and The Rocky Horror Picture Show!
DEC. 7, FEB. 8
DEC. 8, JAN. 19, FEB. 9
THE ROOM
THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW
(Tommy Wiseau, 2003, 99m)
This “electrifying American black comedy about love, passion, betrayal and lies” stars (and was directed, written and produced by) the mysterious Tommy Wiseau, and has been a cult favorite in LA for years. “Enter The Room and leave forever changed!”
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Music Box Theatre
(Jim Sharman, 1975, 100m)
This notorious horror parody -- a fast-paced potpourri of camp, sci-fi and rock 'n' roll, among other things -- tracks the exploits of naïve couple Brad (Barry Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon) after they stumble upon the lair of transvestite Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry). The film -- a bizarre musical co-starring Meat Loaf and Richard O'Brien -- bombed in its initial release but later gained a cult following at midnight showings. Screening with Midnight Madness shadowcast!
NOV. 30 - DEC. 1
DEC. 28-29
JAN. 4-5
EVIL DEAD 2
GET CRAZY
DJANGO
(Sam Raimi, 1987, 84m)
(Allan Arkush, 1983, 92m)
(Sergio Corbucci, 1966, 91m)
The lone survivor of an onslaught of flesh-possessing spirits holds up in a cabin with a group of strangers while demons continue their attack. Has it really been 25 years since this puppy came out?? Bruce Campbell hasn't aged a bit! Say it with us: Dead by dawn! Dead by dawn!
A wildly kinetic ride through the punk and new wave scenes of the early-80s! It’s your typical let’s-puton-a-show-to-save-the-place taken to a Muppets-like extreme with a cavalcade of cameos (Malcolm McDowell out-swaggerin’ Jagger! Lou Reed does Dylan!) and bizzaro left-field jokes that you’ll probably miss because you were too busy laughing at the previous chuckler. Ed Begely Jr plays an evil media mogul intent on shuttering an old concert hall, and its up to plucky young promoter Alan Garfield to put on the best New Year’s Eve concert ever to earn enough scratch to buy up the lease himself. THIS ROCKER IS NOT ON DVD!
A film more violent and pessimistic than anything that ever came before it! Here comes horseless, dark-clad, blazingly blue-eyed Franco Nero dragging a coffin through the inches-thick mud of a crummy town, seemingly populated only by whores and a bartender — and fought over by bandidos and red-hooded clansmen. Featuring Nero’s starmaking role, and the first of what became 30+ official and unofficial sequels. In Italian with English subtitles.
JAN. 11-12
JAN. 18
JAN. 25
THE THING
THE BREAKFAST CLUB
VIDEODROME
(John Carpenter, 1982, 109m)
(John Hughes, 1985, 97m)
(David Cronenberg, 1983, 89m) 30th Anniversary!
John Carpenter's stunning masterpiece of horror is the perfect film to screen in the middle of winter, when we’re all bundled up in our North Face jackets, our beards frozen solid with ice. A group of weary scientists enduring the winter in an isolated camp deep in Antarctica chance upon an alien spacecraft buried in the ice. Helicopter pilot MacCready (Kurt Russell) must lead the men in discovering who among them is human and who is not.
Detention sucks. And Saturday detention? Boy, you gotta do something pretty bad to get stuck with that. All the charming faces of the 80s - Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall - are here each a different high school stereotype forced to sit through detention at Shermer High in the mythical Chicago suburb of Shermer, Illinois in John Hughes’ universally-loved film.
FEB. 1-2
FEB. 15-16
FEB. 22-23
GROUNDHOG DAY
PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE
LABYRINTH
(Harold Ramis, 1993, 101m) 20th Anniversary!
C’mon. We’ve GOT to run this film on Groundhog Day! Bill Murray is an asshole weatherman cursed with having to relive the one day of the goddamned year he can’t stand in that cesspool of a town Punxsutawney, PA thanks to a stupid blizzard. After indulging in a bout of hedonism and numerous suicide attempts, he begins to re-examine his life priorities and in the process figures out how to charm the pants off Andie MacDowell.
(Brian De Palma, 1974, 92m)
Praise be to whatever dark lord made this unholy masterpiece! Brian De Palma’s glam-rock musical, featuring songs by Paul Williams, is a coked-out mashup of T Rex, Hitchcock, Universal Monsters, and Rocky Horror. Winslow Leach is a promising musician whose work is stolen by the evil producer Swan (played to pig-faced perfection by Paul Williams). Tortured and beaten for attempting to reclaim his music, Winslow transforms into the steeltoothed, cape-wearing, leather-clad Phantom, out to wreck havoc upon Swan’s new nightclub, The Paradise!
The wet, rubbery Papa Bear of the body-horror genre celebrates its 30th anniversary this year! James Woods is a freelance television producer, shopping around only the most underground of shows on TV. When he picks up a rouge satellite signal for a weird torture-porn show that might contain a brain virus, his girlfriend Deborah Harry gets off on it, disappears, and then things really get weird. Long live the New Flesh, right?
(Jim Henson, 1986, 102m)
Teenage Sarah makes the big mistake one night of wishing her baby brother away; now she must navigate the diabolical Labyrinth and confront the goblin king Jareth in order to rescue him. Another Jim Henson visual feast, starring a super-young Jennifer Connelly and featuring original songs by the goblin king himself, David Bowie!
Midnights
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a Film by
LAZHAR
Philippe Falardeau
MONSIEUR
AN OSCAR-NOMINATED CLASSROOM CROWD-PLEASER THAT SURPASSES THE CLASS! CRITICS' REPORT CARD
96% Tomatometer
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS | NEW YORK NEWSDAY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE | WASHINGTON POST
N
ominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, Monsieur Lazhar tells the moving and poignant story of a Montreal middle school class shaken by the death of their well-liked teacher, and the 55-year-old Algerian immigrant who offers his services as a substitute teacher and aids the process of collective healing.
BONUS FEATURES From Stage to Screen • Big Talk Interview with Philippe Falardeau Alice and Simon Audition Tapes • Bachir’s Story • Alice’s Report
AVAILABLE FROM
© Southport Music Box Corporation d/b/a Music Box Films 2012
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MISS MINOES
MOZART’S SISTER
THE DEEP BLUE SEA
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM MUSIC BOX FILMS
www.musicboxfilms.com
Music Box Theatre
Winter 2012
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PRESENTATION
RUN DATE
PAGE
MATINEES December 29 – February 24 4-5 SECOND SATURDAY SILENT CINEMA December 8, January 12, February 9 7 FEATURES: WUTHERING HEIGHTS November 30 – December 6 9 A LIAR’S AUTOBIOGRAPHYTHE UNTRUE STORY OF MONY PYTHON’S GRAHAM CHAPMAN November 30 – December 6 9 CENTRAL PARK FIVE December 7-13 10 STARLET Starts December 7 10 29TH ANNUAL CHRISTMAS SHOW December 14-24 11 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA December 25 – January 3 12 THE BIG PICTURE December 28 – January 3 12 ANY DAY NOW Starts January 4 13 SISTER January 4-10 13 SOMEWHERE BETWEEN January 11-17 14 WEST OF MEMPHIS Starts January 18 14 PORT OF SHADOWS January 25-31 15 THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT January 25-31 15 56 UP Starts February 1 16 JOHN DIES AT THE END Starts February 8 16 NORTH SEA TEXAS February 15-21 17 HAPPY PEOPLE Starts February 22 17 70mm FESTIVAL February 15-28 18 SPECIAL EVENTS: SCROOGE AND MARLEY November 29 – December 6 38 SUNDANCE INSTITUTE SHORTS December 17 38 ALTERNATIVE CHRISTMAS DOUBLE FEATURE December 18 39 TARANTINO DOUBLE FEATURE December 19 39 BARRYMORE December 27 40 NEW YEAR’S EVE ON THE SS POSEIDON December 31st 40 JIMI HENDRIX 70TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION AT WOODSTOCK January 14 41 NT LIVE: THE MAGISTRATE January 23 & February 10 41 SUNDANCE USA January 31st 42 SOUND OPINIONS PRESENTS: THE GRADUATE February 13 42 CASABLANCA With a Sweatheart Sing-A-Long February 14 43 MIDNIGHTS November 30 – February 23 44-45
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