So
many movies, so little time. In anticipation of our readers becoming hopelessly
addicted to SSX3, we’ve prepared this handy film calendar which will tell you
when to put the controller down, wipe the Doodle dust from your trousers, and
head for the theater. Some of these dates are subject to change, so you might
want to double-check them before venturing out into the cold.
December 6:King of the Hill‘s Mike Judge and stick-figure guru Don Hertzfeldt
have curated The Animation Show, a special collection of — you guessed it
— animated shorts playing tonight at the Dryden Theatre. You’ll see new, old,
foreign, and domestic works of varying length and quality here, including
Judge’s Saturday Night Live short
that eventually served as the basis for his wickedly funny feature Office Space, as well as Herzfeldt’s Rejected, a frighteningly violent look
at why I’m afraid to talk to girls.
December 12 to 14: The only thing wackier than
the content of Matthew Barney’s five Cremaster films is the fact that he
made them out of order (4, 1, 5, 2, 3). Beginning in 1994 and culminating in
2002, the Cremaster cycle covers such
beloved topics as freemasonry, dental surgery, zombies, gangsters, and
demolition derbies. If you’re among our sicker readers, you may have seen one
or two of Barney’s films, but this is your big (and probably only) chance to
catch all six-and-a-half hours over the same weekend… in order, no less.
Tonight, the Dryden Theatre screens Cremaster
1 and Cremaster 2, while Saturday
night sees the unspooling of the three-hour Cremaster
3. Sunday will, of course, conclude the series with Cremaster 4 and Cremaster 5.
December 17: Peter Jackson’s amazing Lord of the Rings trilogy finally draws
to a close with The Return of the King. And if you’re not interested in seeing
it, you might want to go ahead and have your head examined.
December 25: The only obstacle
preventing The Return of the King from laying siege to the Oscars like Orcs storming Mount Doom is Cold
Mountain, director Anthony Minghella’s big-screen adaptation of Charles
Frazier’s flowery Civil War drama. To say Mountain is packed with stars might be the year’s biggest understatement. The two female
leads (Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger) have been nominated for Oscars each
of the last two years. The film also stars Jude Law as well as some guy named
Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is, literally, buried so deep in the incredibly
impressive list of acting talent, you might not even catch his name.
December 26: The notion of Sean Penn,
Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro appearing in the same film should motivate
even the most sloth-like City readers
to queue up, but the fact that 21 Grams is also Alejandro González
Iñarritu’s follow-up to the brilliant, awe-inspiring Amores Perros may prevent you from sleeping in sheer anticipation.
The film, which once again twists three stories around a car accident, doesn’t
come close to disappointing, either. The only problem Grams poses is to Oscar voters: Do they honor Penn for this, or for
Mystic River?
January 2: You were dazzled by the
return of insanely bloody swordplay with Kill
Bill, Volume 1, and are fidgeting like a little kid who has to pee really
bad while waiting for the second half to surface in theatres. The Dryden
Theatre’s Heroic Grace program,
which begins tonight with Come Drink With
Me and runs throughout January, should tide you over until the actual
killing of Bill (or, better yet, Takeshi Kitano’s Zatoichi). Titles include One-Armed
Swordsman, Golden Swallow, Vengeance!, Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Blood
Brother, and Return to the 36th
Chamber. These are the films Tarantino lovingly incorporated into his
latest, so do yourself a favor and see the source material.
January 3: Have you ever seen 2001:
A Space Odyssey on the big screen? Then I guess I know what you’re
doing tonight at the Dryden Theatre. Warning: If your name is Dave, do not hit
the weed before seeing this film.
January 4: Two days after the Dryden
Theatre debuts the Heroic Grace program, they unveil an equally impressive but
far tamer series of films involving the
Beatles. Tonight is a double feature of the Beatles-less It’s Trad, Dad! plus Go Go Mania, which features appearances
by The Animals and Herman’s Hermits, as well as the Fab Four. The Beatles
program runs through February and will feature the usual staples of Yellow Submarine, A Hard Day’s Night, Help! and The Magical Mystery Tour. But
there are lesser-seen gems, too, like The
Hours and Time, What’s Happening! The
Beatles in the USA, How I Won the War,
Wonderwall, The Magic Christian, and Let
it Be.
January 9: Xerox employee Frank Hannah
wrote a script called The Cooler, which was made into a
low-budget indie with William H. Macy playing the eponymous mush who can’t
catch a break at the casino. When the film screened at Sundance, it was scooped
up for $1.5 million and dropped into a December release slot generally reserved
for Oscar bait, so that should tell you how good it’s going to be.
January 16:Big Fish isn’t the
eagerly awaited screen debut of Abe Vigoda’s character from Barney Miller. Fish is, however, the latest from professional nut job Tim Burton,
which should frighten off anyone interested in today’s only other opening of
note — Girl with a Pearl Earring, the bodice ripper about the subject
(Scarlett Johansson) of Johannes Vermeer’s (Colin Firth) famous painting.
January 17: Did you ever wonder if
films like The Matrix Revolutions and
Beyond Borders might be better
without all of the mindless banter? If so, you’re in the same boat as György
Pálfi, the 27-year-old writer-director of Hukkle, a dialogue-free Hungarian
film screening tonight at the Dryden Theatre. Sit and watch as an old man with
hiccups sits and watches what seems like an average day in his tiny village. But
it’s not. So pay attention.
This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2003.
