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Thursday, Mar. 22 at 8:30 p.m.
SOME LIKE IT HOT (NR) 1959. Billy Wilder directed this runaway
(literally), subversive screwball comedy starring Jack Lemmon,
Tony Curtis and an absolutely iridescent
Marilyn Monroe. Two down-on-their-luck
musicians, Jerry (Lemmon) and Joe (Curtis),
in Prohibition-era Chicago witness a mob
hit in a garage and are soon running for
their lives. They grab their chance to join
an all-girl band on its way to a resort in
Florida by dressing up like refined con
servatory-educated ladies (Daphne and
Josephine). On the train-ride South, Joe is
immediately smitten with the voluptuous,
sweet, but not terribly bright Sugar Kane
Kowalski (Monroe), the singer and mandolin
player for the ensemble. Things really get
complicated in Florida, as Joe (Curtis do
ing a hilarious, dead-on impression of Cary
Grant) masquerades as a shy millionaire
to win Sugar's affections, while Jerry, er,
Daphne is pursued by an amorous playboy
(Joe E. Brown). Somewhere in all this, the
mob guys show up and all hell breaks loose. This bawdy, gender
bending comedy was nominated for six Oscars. Monroe sings the
spicy "Runnin' Wild" and what would become her signature song,
"I Wanna Be Loved By You." Special invited guest will be former
President and COO of Turner Entertainment, Roger Mayer.
LAURA (NR) 1944. Otto Preminger (Anatomy of a Murder) is in
peak form with this classic film noir. A beautiful career girl (Gene
Tierney) is brutally murdered in her apart
ment with a shotgun blast to the face. The
detective assigned to investigate, Mark
McPherson (Dana Andrews, excellent as the
square-jawed world-weary working class cop),
spends time trying to figure out who she re
ally was and why someone would want to kill
her in such gruesome fashion. He interviews
her friends, reads her diaries and starts to un
ravel what may have happened to her. Was it
the handsome but dull-witted playboy fiance
(yes, that's right, Vincent Price before he was
the king of horror), Laura's mentor, viper-
tongued (and seemingly flamingly gay) gos
sip columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb,
who received a well-deserved Oscar nod for
his venomous performance) or someone else?
Abetted by the haunting portrait of Laura
that hangs in her apartment, McPherson be
gins to fall in love with the dead girl. A shocking revelation and
many contrived plot twists later, the truth is revealed. But still,
contrived or not, the film succeeds in spite of it all. Special guests
at the screening will be Norm Aladjam and David Oppenheim.
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (PG) 1975. Michael Caine and
Sean Connery star in John Huston's epic adaptation of Rudyard
Kipling's short story, "The Man Who Would Be King." Caine and
Connery star as Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnahan, British ex
soldiers in India. Having had enough of civilization, the two set
out for Kafiristan, a country where no white man has been since
Alexander the Great. Their mission: to become kings of the na-
WAITING FOR GUFFMAN (R) 1996. The curse of living in a
fame-obsessed culture is that everyone with the least bit of talent
(and plenty without) never feels more than
a hair's breadth from their due acclaim, yet,
as in the Beckett play that serves as a basis
for this devilishly funny mockumentary,
nothing ever seems to happen. In Waiting
for Guffman, one group of such people and
their effete director Corky St. Clair (comic
mastermind Christopher Guest, who was
also the film's real
director) plan an
elaborately farcical
musical theatre ex
travaganza to honor
their modest home
town, Blaine, MO.
Blaine is known for
its bumbling founder's
mistaken belief that
he'd reached the
Pacific, UFO landings
and renowned stool production. The painfully
familiar small community theatre cast, in
cluding such Guest movie regulars as Eugene
Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Fred Willard (special
guest at the screening) and Parker Posey (as,
respectively, a coke-bottle spectacled den
tist, a husband-and-wife travel agent team,
and a Dairy Queen employee) are convinced
that Corky's long-past
off-off-off-off Broadway
connections have secured them a once-in-a-
lifetime opportunity in the shape of one Mort
Guffman. Throughout, the movie percolates
with instantly quotable off-the-cuff dialogue
and builds to one of the most anti-climactic
climaxes in recent movie history.
Friday, Mar. 23 at 8:30 p.m.
Friday, Mar. 23 at 1:30 p.m.
ELECTION (R) 1999. Tom Perotta's second
novel, Election, bristled with such flaying,
immediately palpable satire that director and
screenwriter Alexander Payne (Sideways) se
cured the rights for the film adaptation a full
three years before the book even hit book
stores. The story focuses on an English teach
er's midlife self-destruction, a spiteful first-
love breakup, and a nearly-apocalyptic stu
dent council election; all this done so deftly
as to remind audiences of the essential similarity of everyone's
petty struggles and yet it remains viciously funny. Perotta's star in
the film world would take a few more years to rise to the heights it
was destined for (he won an Oscar for his Sideways screenplay and
got an Academy nod for Little Children this year). But the char
acters ht created: cloying, duplicitous climber Tracy Flick (Reese
Witherspoon) driven by her controlling mother (Colleen Camp,
special guest at the screening); walking hornet's nest of frustrated
ambition Jim McAllister (a role that revived Matthew Broderick's
Friday, Mar. 23 at 4:30 p.m. Special FREE! Matinee
tive population, a feat they deem easy as they are white men,
and therefore superior in every way. Soon, Dravot sets himself up
as not only a king, but a deity, and falls for a beautiful local girl
(Caine's real-life wife Shakira). An explosive climax is followed by
a poignant and ultimately very satisfying ending. (How many pres
ent-day action movies can claim such?) This film is counted as one
of the best action-adventure films ever made—non-stop action,
gorgeous exotic locales, but also suspense, wit, drama and compel
ling lead actors with great chemistry. Christopher Plummer stars
as the young Kipling who records Daniel and Peachy's remarkable
story. Angela Allen, continuity supervisor for the film (and who
also worked on a total of 14 of Huston's films) will be present at
the screening.
Saturday, Mar. 24 at 1:30 p.m.
career); vindictive closeted lesbian cheerleaders, clueless jocks and
disaffected hipsters, are timeless. This film rang such archetypal
bells that Entertainment Weekly ranked it the 15th greatest High
School movie in cinema in spite of its R rating. The film was nomi
nated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and garnered three
Independent Spirit Awards.
MAD HOT BALLROOM (NR) 2005. The sole documentary in
this year's festival, Mad Hot Ballroom is to ballroom dancing what
Spellbound was to spelling bees. This award-winning film from first
time director Marilyn Agrelo (who will be Mr. Osborne's special
guest at the screening) follows a group of inner-city 11-year-old
kids as they learn ballroom dancing, working their way to the
city-wide competition. As with Spellbound, this film succeeds not
just because of the competitive element, but because the children
featured are so dynamic and interesting that the audience becomes
invested in each of the fifth graders profiled. The viewer learns not
Saturday, Mar. 24 at 4:30 p.m.
just about the compulsory dancing class they
must take, but about the amazing individual
each child is. Caught somewhere between
childhood innocence and teenaged cool, these
New York kids are absolutely captivating.
AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (NR) 1957.
Itself a remake that was later remade (and
prominently featured in Sleepless in Seattle),
An Affair to Remember is an odd mix of ro
mantic comedy and weepy melodrama. In
the film's first half, gadabout playboy Nickie
Ferrante (Cary Grant), engaged to an heiress,
is traveling on a cruise-ship from the French
Riviera back to the USA. He meets lovely,
witty Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) and the two
strike up an acquaintance that soon turns to love. Since Terry is
also engaged, they agree at the end of the voyage to meet at the
top on the Empire State building in six months to see if their love
is genuine and if
they should get mar
ried to each other.
At this point, get
out your handkei-
chiefs. Terry fails to
show up at the lov
ers' rendezvous and
they remain apart,
separated by fate
and their own foolish
pride, for most of the
rest of the film, until
a coincidence (and
a shawl) bring them
inexorably together
(as if you thought it Saturday, Mar. 24 at 8:30 p.m.
wouldn't happen!).
This film is ranked at No. 5 on the American Film Institute's Top
100 Love Stories. Actress and singer Mami Nixon, who provided
Kerr's singing voice in the film (and in The King and T) will be a
special guest at this screening.
THE SOUND OF MUSIC (NR) 1965. Though one of the lesser
known songs in the beloved score of Rodgers and Hammerstein's
final musical collaboration, "I Have Confidence" is notable in The
Sound of Music for one reason. As Julie Andrews, playing honey
voiced nun Maria who adopts the widower Baron von Trapp and
his seven children, passes under an archway, the group of extras
beyond contains the
actual Maria von Trapp,
upon whom the char
acter is based. Also
in that group are one
of the original von
Trapp children, and
a cKandchild. While
hardly noticeable
amidst the glorious
Bavarian scenery and
costumes, unsurpassed
musical performances,
and dancing as beauti
ful and carefree as any
ever committed to cel
luloid, this moment is
indicative of the kind
of magic that earned Sunday, Mar. 25 at 1:30 p.m.
the film five Academy
Awards and 10 nominations. Partly as a result of the arresting jux
taposition of such instantly recognizable tunes as "Edelweiss," "My
Favorite Things," "Do Re Mi," and the title song with the palpable
family hardship and, more sinisterly, the threatening appearance
of the Nazis in the second act, this classic remains, in adjusted
terms, the third highest-grossing film of all time. Special guest is
Mami Nixon, who played Sister Sophia in the film.
Margaret Moore and Brandon Waddell
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