Favorites from the decade that was

Fifty fillets of film, alphabetically ordered. Now I can finally get on with my life.

You know the deal

Chalk it up to my finals week aloofness: there’s an extremely worthwhile movie playing at the Cinematheque tonight—information that I totally neglected to share with you, dear reader, yesterday afternoon. No harm, no foul.

The ‘theque will conclude its Fall 2009 schedule as well as its short series of films directed by Alain Resnais with the musical “Same Old Song” (1997). Skip it at your own peril. If it’s half as good as Resnais’s 2003 musical “Not on the Lips,” ‘theque-goers are in for a genuinely enjoyable couple of hours. The screening will begin at 7:30PM. (So come after your 5:05-7:05PM final.)

This CineWeekend in CineMadison

Another stacked (and frozen) weekend for patrons of UW’s invaluable Cinematheque. The ‘theque will screen two feature films by Alain Resnais: on Friday night (at 7:30PM), the iconic and unmissable “Last Year at Marienbad” (1961); on Saturday night (also—gasp—at 7:30PM), “Mon oncle d’Amérique” (1980). The former is, of course, one of the 20th century’s greatest works of art (no BS; it’s as shining an example of modernism’s inherent playfulness as is, say, Finnegans Wake); I haven’t seen the latter but Resnais’s later work never fails to interest with its formal idiosyncrasies and cleverly deployed eccentricities. The opportunity to see “Marienbad” on 35mm is something you really ought not to pass up—especially when tickets cost a mere $0.00.

Also, by way of reminder: It ain’t free but “Antichrist” opens at the Orpheum this afternoon. Can’t imagine that the theater’ll be very crowded for this one, but those who do go are undoubtedly in for an experience-and-a-half.

(Visual) Quotes of quotes of quotes of quotes, 12/7

A triple, taken from Not on the Lips (2005).

Free on-campus screenings for this, our beloved weekend of 12/4-5

Quite a weekend for those of you who don’t neglect the robust film scene here at UW.

Tonight at the Cinematheque: the final film in the ‘theque’s Vincente Minnelli retrospective, Home From the Hill (1960), starring none other than Hollywood’s original Hercules, Robert Mitchum. The Minnelli series has really been one home run after another, so I’m inclined to believe that Home From the Hill will be every bit as engaging and borderline psychedelic as the rest of V.M.’s Technicolor melodramas. I haven’t personally seen this one, but here’s Jonathan Rosenbaum’s capsule review (courtesy of his website):

One of Vincente Minnelli’s best ‘Scope and color melodramas (1960), adapted by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank from William Humphrey’s novel. Set in a small town in Texas, the plot centers on a troubled family: a promiscuous patriarch (Robert Mitchum) and his frigid wife (Eleanor Parker) compete for the loyalty of their son (George Hamilton), who discovers that he has an illegitimate half brother (George Peppard). With Luana Patten, Everett Sloane, and Constance Ford. 150 min.

The screening begins, as always, at 7:30PM.

Saturday night at the Cinematheque: a trio of documentary shorts by Alain Resnais entitled Art/History. The triptych will consist of Guernica (1950), Les statues meurent aussi (1953) and the paradigm-shifting Nuit et brouillard (1955). More information on the Cinematheque’s series of six films (directed) by Resnais can be found here. In my mind, this is the main event of the Cinematheque’s Fall schedule; seeing Nuit et brouillard at least once in one’s life is something of a moral imperative. Resnais may be known primarily for his excursions into the territories of high modernism (such as Hiroshima mon amour, Muriel and L’année dernière à Marienbad [which the ‘theque is screening next week]) and high theatricality (Mélo, Privates Fears in Public Places), but these documentaries constitute an essential chapter in the oeuvre of one of cinema’s all-time innovators. Your attendance at this screening (which begins, believe it or not, at 7:30PM) is mandatory, as far as I’m concerned.

And now for something totally different: South African sci-fi flick District 9 (2009) is screening at the Play Circle Theater in Memorial Union on both Friday and Saturday nights at 7:00PM and 9:30PM. Didn’t get a chance to see this one myself but the buzz was surprisingly ecstatic, so you could definitely do worse than to swing by.

As impressive as this roster may seem, I’m undoubtedly omitting a screening or two. Looks to me as though you’ve got a lot to consider, Madison.

Something else hath arriveth!

The wait, once again, is over: the UW Cinematheque has announced its schedule for the Fall 2009 season. I honestly don’t where to begin in breaking down the various programs, but as a visit to the Cinematheque’s website quickly reveals, the schedule is absolutely loaded. We’ll be getting retrospectives devoted to the directors Vincente Minelli (nine of his most well-known films), Alain Resnais (including his collaborations with Chris Marker AND what I believe is the newly restored print of L’année dernière à Marienbad [!]) and Grigori Alexandrov (a major “whoa” for those of us who are severely interested in Soviet cinema); a thematic series about border politics (including Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three and Chantal Akerman’s De l’autre côté [!]); Luis Buñuel’s The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz on my birthday; and these are just the films which immediately jump out at me. Stay tuned for more analysis of the schedule when I have time to digest it and research the films themselves. But let there be no doubt: We lucked out in a big way. This schedule looks outstanding.