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v
a star-studded evening
of wearable art
(a benefit for the ATHENS AREA ARTS COUNCIL)
Featuring a runway show complete with paparazzi
and your favorite "faux-leberties" as well as a cash raffle
•pay $5 more and become a member of AAAC
purchase VIP tickets at www.athensarts.org
or send a check to AAAC, RO. Box 122, Athens, GA 30603 to reserve a seat
FiBERVfSIONS
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complimentary appetizers provkied by sponsoring restaurants with a cash bar
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Do You Gamble?
□ If so, you may qualify for a research study on gambling behavior.
□ Participation will include a telephone screen and one in-person
assessment.
□ You will be compensated $30 in cash for 3 hours of participation.
□ Call (706) 542-5010 for more Information.
This study is being conducted by the Department of Psychology
at the University of Georgia.
The University of Georgia
NEWS OF ATHENS' CINEMA SCENE
Big, Sad America: I think I first saw Wim
Wenders' Paris, Texas in a theater around
1985, not long after it came out, when I was
in high school in Chicago. I must've seen it
at least once since then, but I'm sure the last
time was close to 20 years ago. I've always
remembered it as a great and deeply reso
nant film, but when I decided to see it again
now that it's been reissued by Criterion on
DVD and Blu-Ray, I realized I really couldn't
remember many details about it. So much the
better—it's always such a pleasure to revisit a
film you loved as a young person from a com
pletely fresh perspective later in life.
It's a simple, modest story: after four years
of literally aimless drifting, Travis (Harry Dean
Stanton) is reunited with his eight-year-old
son Hunter (Hunter Carson), who has been
cared for in the interim by Travis' brother and
sister-in-law, Walt and Anne (Dean Stockwell
entirely naive generosity. The kid, it turns out,
is the most legitimately self-aware and inde
pendent character in the film. But sadly, one
suspects, lie'll probably get over it.
V Arthaus Happenings: Cine is starting to
put together this year's Summer Classic
Film Series, which will likely get rolling
around July. I'm planning to introduce one
of the films, and it's to be hoped that many
far greater local luminaries will sign ori to
do the same. Stay tuned... The downtown
cinema's application for nonprofit status is
still being reviewed after about a year and
a half, according to founder and director
Brigitta Hangartner. In the meantime, Cine's
continued to bring in a pretty outstanding mix
of high-profile, quasi-indie titles a*nd major
foreign releases. That's exemplified on the cur
rent marquee, which boasts the long-awaited
Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, currently playing at Cine.
and Aurore Clement). As he begins to put his
life back together, Travis realizes he needs
to see his estranged wife, Jane (Nastassju
Kinski), again, and he and Hunter set out to
find her. But it's the implications Wenders
and writer Sam Shepard, neither a stranger to
investigations of loneliness and alienation,
find in the situation, characters and, espe
cially, the settings, that give the film that
resonance I remembered so strongly.
Paris, Texas is a German-French co-pro
duction; it's not easy to think of non-North
American (and non-British) productions that
are made in the U.S. (Wong Kar-Wai's 2007
My Blueberry Nights is the last big one that
comes to my mind, but surely I'm forgetting
something), and that can provide for inter
esting perspectives. It's also (like the Wong
film) an American road movie, which means,
among other things, that it's an inquiry into
the nature of America. Wenders regards this
nation's cities, towns, highways and deserts
with a keen, alien eye, from a distance that is
alternately incredulous and fetishizing.
What he finds is a looming, gaping
oblivion, whether in the endless Texas plains,
scarred with power lines and railroad rights-
of-way, or an over-mortgaged suburban SoCal
hillside Shangri-La, looking incongruously and
inconveniently down on the constant, cacoph
onous arrivals and departures at LAX. Anne
and Walt have found protection from it in
Hunter, which Travis' return puts in dire jeop
ardy. Travis and Jane—separately, but both
because of their shared failure as spouses and
parents—have taken refuge in it; the film
is about what they will do with the second
chances granted them by fate and Hunter's not
new film from Sofia Coppola. Somewhere;
Alejandro Gonzalez Iriarritu's Biutiful; and the
quirky Hollywood comedy Cedar Rapids, which
I'll admit looks pretty good. The exception is
the National Geographic doc The Last Lions,
which depicts, in spectacular fashion, a peril
ous journey undertaken by a lioness and her
two cubs on Botswana's Okavango Delta. In
the near future, keep an eye out for the much-
heralded Of Gods arid Men, Abbas Kiarostami's
Certified Copy, which won Juliette Binoche
the best actress prize at Cannes last year, and
a second Athens run of The King's Speech.
Check www.athenscine.com for details.
Last Bits: The EcoFocus Film Festival is pre
senting the documentary Fresh, which explores
the movement toward healthy and sustain
able food production in American agriculture,
Thursday, Apr. 7 at the Georgia State Botanical
Garden. Get there at 6:30 for a pre-screening
reception; find out more at www.ecofocus-
filmfest.org... The Apr. 7 iFilms screening at
the ACC Library is Bhutto, a doc about the
life of the assassinated Pakistani prime min
ister. Apr. 14 is Pretty Bird, a comedy starring
Billy Crudup, Paul Giamatti and Kristen Wiig.
Screenings are at 7 p.m.; more info can be had
at www.clarke.public.lib.ga.us... The Apr. 7
film in the ICE-Vision series, 8 p.m. Thursdays
in Rm. S150 of the Lamar Dodd School of Art,
is the genuinely bizarre, over-the-top 1977
Japanese horror cqmp-fest House. The Apr.
14 screening, co-sponsored by WUOG, will be
the 1983 New York City hip-hop/grafitti scene
time capsule Wild Style.
Dave Marr film@llagpole com
12 FLAGPOLE.COM-APRILS, 2011