Film Spring Movies
posted by on March 12 at 12:07 PM
The local calendar-programmed theaters have all miraculously released their schedules around same time. This deserves a Slog post.
At Northwest Film Forum: The By Design festival is wrapping up this week with screenings of the font doc Helvetica. Other highlights: La Chinoise for Godard fans (starts this Friday), The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival for Dylan fans, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait for headbutting fans. New indies from American directors include the SIFF ‘07 alum Shotgun Stories, Ramin (Man Push Cart) Bahrani’s Chop Shop, and Harmony Korine’s Parisian meta-celebrity picaresque Mister Lonely (with Denis Levant as a Charlie Chaplin impersonator!). For the hardcore cineaste, there are two programs of short films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. And there are lots of revivals: Alain Resnais’s Muriel, Divorce, Italian Style, Breathless, La Dolce Vita, Le Doulos (again so soon!), 8 1/2, Pierrot le Fou (again so soon?), and Leo the Last.
SIFF Cinema has its schedule together, but the website is a little confusing. Here’s what they’re playing: The two-week Global Lens series starts next week (highlights include the SIFF ‘07 alums Opera Jawa and The Bet Collector), then a documentary about 21st-century womanhood, then some Buddhism-related movies (including the excellent The Saltmen of Tibet, the terrible Dreaming Lhasa, and the sad/cute ’80s classic Why Has Bodhi Dharma Left for the East?), a couple of fair trade agitdocs (The Price of Sugar and All This in Tea), and then a long stretch of revival stuff from United Artists (Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, Martin Scorsese, etc).
Grand Illusion’s new slate kicks off next week with Funky Forest: The First Contact from Taste of Tea director Katsuhito Ishii, then the Chinese melodrama Lost in Beijing and then it’s all Bette Davis for three weeks straight. Rad.
And at the Varsity, a classy series of festival darlings, including the enviro doc The Unforeseen, the Camera d’Or winner Jellyfish, Hou Hsiao Hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon, and, uh, Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears (after SIFF is over).
A better bet would be Girls Rock!
(and if any real friends need, I could get tix to see one of the girls in it perform before the show itself)
Gurl, you are so out of control with all the italic-bold combos.
Pierrot le Fou is probably playing because it was just rereleased on DVD.
Is the United Artists schedule on the SIFF website & I am blind, or were the details just in a press release?
I can tell you that Le Doulos and Pierrot Le Fou both are screening because they fit the program (BELMONDO vs. MASTROIANNI) perfectly, as well as the fact that they weren't seen by nearly enough people on recent outings. I went to both films and sat in lonely auditoriums. I hope this will bring more attention to these works and will be an exciting way for film goers to engage them; through the lens of the actor who stars in them.
@2: Yeah, well. It looks better in This Weekend @ the Movies, no?
@3: Yes, and same with Breathless, actually, but Pierrot just had a weeklong run at the Varsity preceding the DVD release--seems like overkill.
@4: Doesn't look like it. I didn't realize that. Here's the full lineup:
THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, Wed April 30th at 7:30 pm
THE GREAT ESCAPE, Thurs May 1st at 7:30 pm
IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, Tues May 6th at 9 pm
MARTY, Tues May 6th at 7 pm
NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, Wed May 7th at 8 pm
ANNIE HALL, Fri May 9th at 7 pm
MANHATTAN, Fri May 9th at 9 pm
WEST SIDE STORY, Sat May 10th at 2 and 8 pm
SOME LIKE IT HOT, Sun May 11th at 2:15 pm
THE APARTMENT, Sun May 11th at 7:30 pm
JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG, Mon May 12th at 7 pm
THE LAST WALTZ, Tues May 13th at 7:30 pm
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, Wed May 14th at 8 pm
MIDNIGHT COWBOY, Fri May 16th at 8 pm
RAGING BULL, Sat May 17th at 2 and 8 pm
DR. NO, Sun May 18th at 2 and 6 pm
GOLDFINGER, Sun May 18th at 4 and 8 pm
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, Mon May 19th at 7:30 pm
LAST TANGO IN PARIS, Tues May 20th at 7:30 pm
THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY, Wed May 21st at 7 pm
If you haven't seen it, you really should see The Thomas Crown Affair. Man, that chess playing ...
Anyone care to point out that Annie Hall and Manhattan have both also seen recent week long revivals. So soon?
My, people are touchy today. The whole UA program is boring, in my opinion. They're leaving out the smaller-scale stuff that's screening in the NYC version (http://www.filmforum.org/films/unitedartists.html). But I don't particularly like any of these distributor series that SIFF Cinema is doing--the Kino one was totally random, and most of the Rialto movies, while comprising a more coherent program, had screened here within the last couple of years.
How can you do a UA program without Heaven's Gate?
@10 Heaven's Gate, the film that destroyed the company... let's celebrate!
The thing about these distributor series that I like is that they make good excuses to replicate old-style repertory programming, with a wide variety of films playing in any given week. The UA stuff may be mostly overexposed, but as a Seattle movie buff for 28 years, I think these may be the first theatrical screenings of Thomas Crown, Marty, Nuremberg and probably The Great Escape since at least 1980. It's debatable if any of them really deserve it, but I'll definitely be in the audience for all of them (none of which I've even seen on video).
Comments Closed
In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).