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<strong>Film</strong> <strong>Calendar</strong><br />

May 6-June 30, 2016<br />

Tom Hiddleston in HIGH-RISE, starting May 13<br />

Chicago’s Year-Round <strong>Film</strong> Festival<br />

3733 N. Southport Avenue, Chicago<br />

www.musicboxtheatre.com 773.871.6607<br />

Mother’s Day<br />

with Mamma Mia<br />

MaY 8<br />

Page 5<br />

Norman Lear<br />

in person!<br />

MaY 16<br />

Page 6<br />

GrindHouse<br />

<strong>Film</strong> Fest<br />

JUNE 3-5<br />

Page 9<br />

Blue Velvet:<br />

30th Anniversary<br />

STARTs JUNE 10<br />

Page 10<br />

Cinema<br />

Slapdown<br />

Starts JUNE 15<br />

Page 30


exclusively available at Custom Eyes<br />

bartonperreira.com<br />

Welcome<br />

to the Music Box Theatre!<br />

Feature PRESENTATIONS<br />

4<br />

5<br />

8<br />

10<br />

11<br />

12<br />

13<br />

THE FAMILY FANG<br />

HIGH-RISE<br />

WEINER<br />

BLUE VELVET<br />

THE IDOL<br />

DE PALMA<br />

TICKLED<br />

STARTS MAY 6<br />

STARTS MAY 13<br />

STARTS MAY 27<br />

STARTS JUNE 10<br />

STARTS JUNE 10<br />

STARTS JUNE 17<br />

STARTS JUNE 24<br />

14-19<br />

COMMENTARY<br />

SINCE 2003<br />

The <strong>Film</strong> Studies Center presents<br />

3539 N. SOUTHPORT AVE. CHICAGO, IL 60657 | 773 871 2020<br />

www.customeyes2020.com<br />

PHILIPPE GRANDRIEUX’S<br />

ART OF SENSATIONS<br />

three Chicago premieres<br />

with Grandrieux in person<br />

21<br />

22<br />

23<br />

24<br />

26<br />

27<br />

28<br />

28<br />

29<br />

30<br />

4<br />

5<br />

6<br />

7<br />

8<br />

9<br />

10<br />

11<br />

12<br />

SERIES<br />

CLASSIC MATINEES<br />

MIDNIGHTS<br />

SILENT CINEMA<br />

STAGE TO SCREEN<br />

ANIME FILMS<br />

ART & ARCHITECTURE IN CINEMA<br />

CINEMA SCIENCE<br />

SOUND OPINIONS<br />

NATIONAL SOCIETY OF FILM CRITICS<br />

CINEMA SLAPDOWN<br />

SPECIAL EVENTS<br />

NOTFILM<br />

MOTHER’S DAY WITH MAMMA MIA<br />

NORMAN LEAR IN PERSON<br />

CHICAGO CRITICS FILM FESTIVAL<br />

DEPAUL UNIVERSITY PREMIERE FILM FESTIVAL<br />

GRINDHOUSE FILM FESTIVAL<br />

SILENT SHAKESPEARE<br />

IGGY POP: LIVE IN BASEL 2015<br />

BRIAN DE PALMA FILM FESTIVAL<br />

MAY 8<br />

MAY 8<br />

MAY 16<br />

MAY 20-26<br />

JUNE 3<br />

JUNE 3-5<br />

JUNE 6<br />

JUNE 16 & 18<br />

STARTS JUNE 17<br />

UN LAC<br />

WHITE EPILEPSY<br />

MALGRÉ LA NUIT<br />

MAY 13-14<br />

FREE ADMISSION<br />

Logan Center for the Arts<br />

University of Chicago<br />

filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu<br />

Brian Andreotti, Director of Programming<br />

Ryan Oestreich, General Manager<br />

Buck LePard, Senior Operations Manager<br />

Stephanie Berlin, Public Relations & Special Events Manager<br />

Claire Alden, Group Sales and Membership Manager<br />

Julian Antos, Technical Director<br />

VOLUME 33 ISSUE 137<br />

Copyright 2016 Southport Music Box Corp.<br />

MusicBoxTheatre.com<br />

Published by Newcity Custom Publishing<br />

Newcitynetwork.com<br />

For information, email advertising@newcity.com<br />

or call 312.243.8786<br />

Cover Image from the film HIGH-RISE,<br />

coming to Music Box Theatre MAY 13.<br />

See page 5 for more information.<br />

Music Box Theatre 3733 North Southport musicboxtheatre.com<br />

773-871-6604 showtimes 773-871-6607 office<br />

3


Features and Special Events<br />

Starts May 6<br />

May 8<br />

feature<br />

presentation<br />

Special<br />

Event<br />

The Family Fang<br />

DIRECTED BY: Jason Bateman<br />

STARRING: Jason Bateman, Nicole Kidman, Christopher Walken<br />

105 minutes<br />

Sharp and affecting<br />

“ dysfunctional-family portrait”<br />

–Variety<br />

Adult siblings Baxter and Annie, scarred from an unconventional upbringing, return to their family home<br />

after an unlikely accident. When their parents— performance artists famous for elaborate public hoaxes—suddenly<br />

go missing under troubling circumstances, Baxter and Annie investigate. Unsure whether it’s<br />

foul play or just another elaborate ruse, nothing can prepare them for what they discover.<br />

Mother’s Day with Mamma Mia!<br />

Sunday, May 8 at 2pm<br />

This Mother’s Day celebrate with Meryl Streep and ABBA at the Music Box! Hosted by Dick O’Day,<br />

our interactive screening kicks off with a live pre-show 1970s fashion contest. Dress up in your best<br />

‘70s garb for your chance to win great prizes! Then play along with our audience participation guide<br />

while you watch the Broadway smash on the big screen.<br />

Special Mother’s Day Mimosas will be served in the Music Box Lounge!<br />

Hosted by<br />

Dick O’Day!<br />

May 8<br />

Special<br />

Event<br />

Starts May 13<br />

feature<br />

presentation<br />

Director<br />

Ross Lipman<br />

in person<br />

NOTFILM<br />

Sunday, May 8 at Noon<br />

Directed by: Ross Lipman<br />

Featuring: Buster Keaton, Samuel Beckett; 128 minutes<br />

Completely fascinating! For<br />

“ moviegoers who care about film,<br />

NOTFILM can be unreservedly<br />

recommended.”<br />

–Kenneth Turan, LA Times<br />

In 1964 writer Samuel Beckett set out on one of the strangest ventures in cinematic history: a collaboration<br />

with silent era genius Buster Keaton to create a short, avant-garde film titled FILM. Beckett<br />

was nearing the peak of his fame, which would culminate in a Nobel Prize five years later. Keaton, in<br />

his waning years, never lived to see Beckett’s canonization. The film they made has been the subject of<br />

praise, consternation, and controversy for decades. NOTFILM is the film essay on the making of Beckett<br />

and Keaton’s film and its philosophical implications. <strong>Film</strong>maker Ross Lipman has incorporated long-lost<br />

outtakes and audio recordings into a portrait of the astonishing collaboration of two of the twentieth<br />

century’s most extraordinary men.<br />

HIGH-RISE<br />

read RAY PRIDE’s<br />

commentary on page 14<br />

DIRECTED BY: Ben Wheatley<br />

Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss<br />

119 minutes<br />

Official<br />

Selection Toronto<br />

International <strong>Film</strong><br />

Festival 2015<br />

Dr. Robert Laing is the newest resident of a luxurious apartment in a high-tech concrete skyscraper<br />

whose lofty location places him amongst the upper class. Laing quickly settles into high society life and<br />

meets the building’s eccentric tenants: Charlotte, his upstairs neighbor and bohemian single mother;<br />

Wilder, a charismatic documentarian who lives with his pregnant wife Helen; and Mr. Royal, the enigmatic<br />

architect who designed the building. Life seems like paradise to the solitude-seeking Laing. But as<br />

power outages become more frequent and building flaws emerge, particularly on the lower floors, the<br />

regimented social strata begins to crumble and the building becomes a battlefield in a literal class war.<br />

4 Music Box Theatre May-June 2016 Features and Special Events 5


Features and Special Events<br />

May 16<br />

®<br />

Special<br />

Event<br />

Norman<br />

Lear<br />

in person!<br />

NORMAN LEAR:<br />

JUST ANOTHER VERSION OF YOU!<br />

May 16 at 7pm<br />

DIRECTED BY: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady; 92 minutes<br />

One Night<br />

Only!<br />

Tickets and full festival passes are on sale now<br />

www.musicboxtheatre.com/festivals/CCFF2016<br />

Now in its fourth year, the only film festival<br />

created and curated by a film critics association returns!<br />

Check out a few of this year’s Chicago premieres:<br />

Arguably the most influential creator, writer, and producer in the history of television, Norman Lear<br />

brought primetime into step with the times. Using comedy and indelible characters, his legendary 1970s<br />

shows such as All In the Family, Maude, Good Times, and The Jeffersons, boldly cracked open dialogue<br />

and shifted the national consciousness, injecting enlightened humanism into sociopolitical debates on<br />

race, class, creed and feminism. NORMAN LEAR: JUST ANOTHER VERSION OF YOU! is the definitive<br />

chronicle Visit: of www.BTDChicago.com<br />

Mr. Lear’s life, work and achievements, but it is so much more than Expires an arm’s-length, 1-31-15 pasttense<br />

biopic; at 93, Mr. Lear is as vital and engaged as he ever was.<br />

American Fable<br />

Another Evil<br />

Dark Night<br />

Demon<br />

Disorder<br />

First Girl I Loved<br />

The Fits<br />

Goat<br />

In a Valley of Violence<br />

Life, Animated<br />

Little Men<br />

Operator<br />

The Other Half<br />

Trash Fire<br />

Under the Shadow<br />

The Music Box Theatre<br />

now sells beer and wine!<br />

Enjoy our rotating<br />

selection of craft beers<br />

and fine wines with a film.<br />

All titles, screening dates, times and guest appearances are subject to change.<br />

6 Music Box Theatre May-June 2016


Features and Special Events<br />

Starts May 27<br />

June 3-5<br />

feature<br />

presentation<br />

Special<br />

Event<br />

GRINDHOUSE FILM FESTIVAL<br />

Presented by Dan Halsted<br />

All films<br />

presented in<br />

35 mm!<br />

WEINER<br />

DIRECTED BY: Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg<br />

96 minutes<br />

read steve prokopy’s<br />

commentary on page16<br />

Anthony Weiner was a young congressman on the cusp of higher office<br />

when a sexting scandal forced a humiliating resignation. Just two<br />

2016<br />

SUNDANCE FILM<br />

FESTIVAL – WINNER<br />

U.S. Grand Jury Prize:<br />

Documentary<br />

WEINER has drama, laughs and<br />

“ surprises. It’s the full package.”<br />

–New York Post<br />

A rollicking and never-dull insider’s<br />

“ view of a political campaign.”<br />

–Variety<br />

years later, he ran for mayor of New York City, betting that his ideas would trump his indiscretions.<br />

He was wrong. With unprecedented access to Weiner, his family and his campaign team, WEINER is<br />

a thrilling look inside a political comeback-turned-meltdown. What begins as an unexpected surge<br />

to the top of the polls takes a sharp turn once Weiner is forced to admit to new sexting allegations.<br />

As the media descends and dissects his every move, Weiner desperately tries to forge ahead, but the<br />

increasing pressure and crippling 24-hour news coverage halt his political aspirations.<br />

Climb aboard the exploitation starship as we travel to the outer reaches of cinematic insanity! In<br />

the 1970s and ‘80s, distributors trying to creatively sell strange movies in over-saturated markets<br />

unwittingly created some of the most mind-blowing pieces of cinema to ever rip through a film<br />

projector. Buckle up for the insanity!<br />

Friday, June 3<br />

GRINDHOUSE TRAILERS<br />

This is a compilation of some of the best grindhouse trailers of<br />

all time. We’ll see Italian horror, blaxploitation, sexploitation,<br />

hicksploitation, revenge films, kung fu obscurities. All the wildest<br />

scenes, strangest taglines, and oddball promotional gimmicks<br />

packed into two-minute cinematic roller coaster rides.<br />

Saturday, June 4<br />

OLD SCHOOL KUNG FU DOUBLE FEATURE<br />

THE MYSTERY OF CHESS BOXING (1979) The original<br />

Ghostface Killer is on the loose! A vicious villain with an unstoppable<br />

five element technique, Ghostface is killing off all his old rivals.<br />

SHAOLIN VS. WU TANG (1981) An evil lord murders a Wu<br />

Tang master in an attempt to turn the Shaolin and Wu Tang<br />

against each other. The two schools each begin training to<br />

prepare for a showdown while the villainous lord attempts to<br />

combine the two styles to become the supreme kung fu master.<br />

Sunday, June 5<br />

EXPLOITATION DOUBLE FEATURE<br />

GATES OF HELL (1980) A surreal Italian gutmuncher from<br />

gore-maestro Lucio Fulci! A priest commits suicide and unwittingly<br />

opens the gateway to hell. The rotting dead rise from their<br />

graves to feed on the living in gruesome fashion, while a psychic<br />

and a journalist attempt to stop the rancid carnage.<br />

SECRET SCREENING An extremely rare 35mm print of one<br />

of the greatest exploitation films ever made! Not to be missed in<br />

this incredibly scarce big screen appearance.<br />

Dan Halsted is the head film programmer<br />

at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland<br />

OR. He’s an avid film collector, with<br />

a passion for Hong Kong cinema, and in<br />

2009, he unearthed a massive collection<br />

of extremely rare 35mm kung fu films.<br />

8 Music Box Theatre May-June 2016 Features and Special Events 9


Features and Special Events<br />

June 6<br />

Starts June 10<br />

feature<br />

presentation<br />

Special<br />

Event<br />

From<br />

the two-time<br />

Academy Awardnominated<br />

director<br />

of PARADISE NOW<br />

and OMAR<br />

Silent Shakespeare<br />

Part of<br />

Shakespeare<br />

400 Chicago!<br />

Presented by Chicago Humanities Festival & Chicago Shakespeare Theater<br />

Monday, June 6 at 7pm<br />

Featuring rare clips from silent films, lively commentary, Chicago actors and the audience gathered at<br />

the Music Box Theatre, Judith Buchanan, a world expert on silent films and Shakespeare, transports<br />

you back one hundred years, when Shakespeare’s beloved works first found themselves translated<br />

into the new medium of moving pictures. Join us for what will certainly be a unique evening of<br />

imagery and acting.<br />

THE IDOL<br />

DIRECTED BY: Hany Abu-Assad<br />

Starring: Qais Atallah, Hiba Atallah, Abd-Elkarim Abu-Barakeh,<br />

Teya Hussein, Tawfeek Barhom, Dima Awawdeh<br />

Palestine; Arabic with English subtitles; 95 minutes<br />

Thoroughly captivating,”<br />

“–Justin Chang, Variety<br />

Irrepressibly optimistic.”<br />

“–Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter<br />

Based on an incredible true story! Gaza. Synonymous to so many with conflict, destruction and despair<br />

but to Mohammed Assaf and his sister Nour, Gaza is their home and their playground. It’s where they,<br />

along with their best friends Ahmad and Omar, play music and football and dare to dream big. Their<br />

band might play on secondhand, beaten-up instruments, but their ambitions are sky high. For Mohammed<br />

and Nour, nothing less than playing the world-famous Cairo Opera Hall will do. It might take them<br />

a lifetime to get there but, as Mohammed will find out, some dreams are worth living for.<br />

STARTS June 10<br />

June 16 & 18<br />

Special<br />

Event<br />

feature<br />

presentation<br />

BLUE VELVET<br />

DIRECTED BY: David Lynch<br />

Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper,<br />

Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern; 120 minutes<br />

read pat mcgavin’s<br />

commentary on page 18<br />

30th<br />

Anniversary<br />

DCP<br />

Restoration<br />

A sensual mystery thriller about strange happenings in a small all-American town. A college student<br />

stumbles across a bizarre mystery and wants to know more, perhaps too much more. The oblique<br />

world he’s found lurking beneath his hometown’s picture-postcard veneer is about to become<br />

violently stranger.<br />

IGGY POP: LIVE IN BASEL 2015<br />

Thursday, June 16 & Saturday, June 18 at 9:45pm<br />

There‘s a reason why many consider Iggy Pop the godfather of punk—every single punk band of the past<br />

and present has either knowingly or unknowingly borrowed a thing or two from Pop and his late-‘60s/<br />

early-‘70s band, the Stooges, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.<br />

Iggy Pop, an outstanding artist known for his outrageous and unpredictable stage antics, sings at the<br />

Baloise Session in Basel, Switzerland, where he was honored with a 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award.<br />

This fantastic performance features all of Iggy Pop’s top hits, including “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “The Passenger,”<br />

“Lust for Life” and many more.<br />

Recorded October 24, 2015<br />

10 Music Box Theatre May-June 2016 Features and Special Events 11


Features and Special Events<br />

Starts June 17<br />

Starts June 24<br />

feature<br />

presentation<br />

feature<br />

presentation<br />

De Palma<br />

DIRECTED BY: Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow<br />

Starring: Brian De Palma; 111 minutes<br />

A must-see for all cinephiles”<br />

“–The Playlist<br />

A delightful, illuminating career<br />

“ reflection”<br />

–Variety<br />

One of the most talented, influential and iconoclastic filmmakers<br />

of all time, Brian De Palma’s career started in the ‘60s and has<br />

included such acclaimed and diverse films as CARRIE, DRESSED TO KILL, BLOW OUT, SCARFACE, THE<br />

UNTOUCHABLES, CARLITO’S WAY and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. In this lively, illuminating and unexpectedly<br />

moving documentary, directors Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow engage in a personal and<br />

candid discussion with De Palma, exploring not only his life and work but also his singular approach<br />

to the craft of filmmaking and his remarkable experiences navigating the film business, from his early<br />

days as the bad boy of New Hollywood to his more recent years as a respected veteran of the field.<br />

TICKLED<br />

DIRECTED BY: David Farrier and Dylan Reeve<br />

92 minutes<br />

After stumbling upon a bizarre “competitive endurance tickling” video<br />

online, wherein young men are paid to be tied up and tickled, reporter<br />

Captivating and Jaw Dropping”<br />

“–The Hollywood Reporter<br />

A humorously titillating entry<br />

“ hook that soon gives way to an<br />

engrossing conspiracy-thriller.”<br />

–Variety<br />

David Farrier reaches out to request a story from the company. But the reply he receives is shocking—the<br />

sender mocks Farrier’s sexual orientation and threatens extreme legal action should he dig any deeper.<br />

So, like any good journalist confronted by a bully, he does just the opposite: he travels to the hidden<br />

tickling facilities in Los Angeles and uncovers a vast empire, known for harassing and harming the lives of<br />

those who protest their involvement in these films.<br />

PLUS…<br />

a Brian De Palma<br />

<strong>Film</strong> Festival!<br />

<strong>Film</strong>s include:<br />

THE PHANTOM OF PARADISE<br />

(1974, 92m)<br />

THE UNTOUCHABLES<br />

(1987, 119m)<br />

DRESSED TO KILL<br />

(1980, 105m)<br />

BODY DOUBLE<br />

(1984, 114m)<br />

…and many more!<br />

12 Music Box Theatre May-June 2016


Calculated Chaos<br />

The Fully-Constructed World of HIGH-RISE<br />

By Ray Pride<br />

“Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing<br />

reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this<br />

huge apartment building during the previous three months.”<br />

high-rise STARTS may 13.<br />

SEE PAGE 5 FOR DETAILS.<br />

From that deft setting, J. G. Ballard’s slim 1975 novelcum-provocation<br />

about the potential wages of indolence<br />

and the easily snarled bonds of social decorum,<br />

HIGH-RISE, slides into calculated chaos. Ben Wheatley<br />

and Amy Jump’s adaptation announces itself with a<br />

gambit, dropping us into destruction in media res,<br />

with assured narration and a luxury apartment in teeming disarray, and glimpses of things to come, or that<br />

have happened already, not limited to a bloodied electric carving knife and a shank turning on a spit with a<br />

suspiciously fluffy paw on it.<br />

SMALL BATCH<br />

• OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK •<br />

ESTATE WINERY<br />

Wheatley has the Kubrickian cajones to attempt a fully-constructed world, rife with invented elements, to<br />

approach the seething sensibility of Ballard. Plus, the American poster even dares make a cocky nod to the key<br />

art for Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. .<br />

In the present tense of a “community of the future,” the humans that scamper and snoop and snipe and banter<br />

and soon battle in stylized play of class conflict include the surgeon Dr. Laing (Tom Hiddleston, on television<br />

with “The Night Manager” and more Marvel movies), Sienna Miller, and as the creator of this terror town, a<br />

weary-voiced but sanguinary-tilting Jeremy Irons. Irons makes the most of lines like, “Of course, I’m a modernist<br />

by trade” and purring about a terrible act being “for the good of the building.”<br />

The building is Brutalist architecture, asserting itself against dusky sky, one of several towers in some sort of<br />

outlands, a city and thin distant clouds on the horizon, a dream that seems farther away than the nightmare<br />

the film readily descends into. It’s a wholly constructed world, which filmmakers seldom make the strenuous<br />

effort to fabricate, a world not our own. Each detail is calculated and sinister, down to a uniform set of fonts<br />

for all the conveniences and appurtenances of the exclusive apartments-cum-barracks-cum-bunkers, spaces<br />

William S. Burroughs might have savored for hard, heavy presence.<br />

Raucous shambles await in this drunken bloody nightmare. Moments of brief pastoral prettiness have their<br />

flipside: if there is a moon above, there will be candlelight and screams below. Ripe with sordid beauty even in<br />

its tumults of violence, HIGH-RISE functions in a future, futuristic setting firmly demarcated by the 1970s, the<br />

time in which Ballard’s novel was set, yet it is not our world, and yet it is intended to be wholly ours, a place of<br />

privilege and brutality where idle hands form fists or readily take up weaponry or utter such offhand incitements<br />

as “I should have married someone like you, stoic and perfectly breasted. You know, I’d ideally like to<br />

get between those thighs of yours one of these days.”<br />

“It looks like the unconscious diagram of some kind of psychic event,” Dr. Laing says of one of the mad, fantasticated<br />

drawings of Irons’ creator. Wholly plotted out and supremely self-conscious, Wheatley’s construction<br />

world gets between the pages and into the headspace of Ballard with perverse joy.<br />

Ray Pride is longtime film critic of Newcity, news editor of MovieCityNews.com and a contributing editor of<br />

<strong>Film</strong>maker magazine. His photos and other work are linked at muckrack.com/ray-pride<br />

14 Music Box Theatre May-June 2016<br />

DABLON<br />

VINEYARDS<br />

Winery & Tasting Room


THE NAKED TRUTH<br />

A View of the Modern Political<br />

Landscape with WEINER<br />

By Steve “Capone” Prokopy<br />

weiner STARTS may 27.<br />

SEE PAGE 8 FOR DETAILS.<br />

“Same Old Schlong & Dance,” “Weiner’s<br />

Second Coming,” “Weiner Pull Out,” “Weiner’s<br />

Rise & Fall,” “Tip of the Weiner,” “Weiner<br />

Exposed,” “Weiner: I’ll Stick It Out.” These are<br />

all examples of some of the tasteful headlines<br />

that appeared in that bastion of fine journalism,<br />

the New York Post, over the several years in<br />

which former U.S. Representative from New<br />

York Anthony Weiner was embroiled in<br />

multiple scandals involving lewd and explicit<br />

photos and text messages to various women.<br />

The justifiable uproar that followed the original<br />

scandal eventually led to him resigning from Congress in June 2011, but only two years later, he was a frontrunning<br />

candidate for mayor of New York City before a new round of revelations came to light, probably<br />

best remembered due to his chosen online alias “Carlos Danger.”<br />

Directors Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg do a sometimes shockingly thorough job of covering the Weiner<br />

mayoral campaign, giving the viewer the necessary backstory to make the second wave of sexting seem all the<br />

more shocking—especially since many of the texts were sent after he resigned from Congress. Although he<br />

never cops to it, Weiner clearly has some variety of sex addiction that only seemed to escalate once he got<br />

caught. But before he was dethroned as one of the Democratic Party’s shining stars, he was a congressman<br />

who passionately fought for keeping health benefits for 9/11 rescue workers when Republicans were on the<br />

verge of pulling the plug on them. And during his run of mayor, it was clear that many of his ideas for New<br />

York City were good ones that many voters supported.<br />

To add an ironic twist to Weiner’s story, in 2010 he married Huma Abedin, a long-time aide to Hillary<br />

Clinton, who served as her Deputy Chief of Staff at the State Department. Some of the film’s most palpably<br />

uncomfortable moments come between the husband and wife as they attempt to figure out what campaign<br />

events she feels comfortable attending by his side. It’s clear that after the first scandal, they went through<br />

intensive marriage counseling, even contemplating separation, but made it through together. After the<br />

second set of revelations, her mood alters dramatically, as you might expect, and the camera captures every<br />

sideways glance and If-Looks-Could-Kill glare. Even in their happier moments, Abedin is clearly a reluctant<br />

participant in this documentary.<br />

For most of the shoot, the filmmakers stay silent as they attempt to take a fly-on-the-wall approach to the<br />

documentary, but there are some moments where they break their silence with both Weiner and Abedin<br />

because to not comment or question the current state of the campaign or marriage would be almost<br />

unforgivable. The access granted to Weiner is astonishing at times. He invited the crew into his life, thinking<br />

they’d be documenting one of the greatest comeback stories in politics, only to have a new round of texts<br />

and photos leak, followed in kind by more outrage and jokes.<br />

WEINER is a fascinating view of the modern political landscape, which feels more like a battleground than<br />

a place for ideas. Weiner rarely hid from the media; he put himself in front of reporters every chance he<br />

could, hoping just one of them would want to talk about the issues, and he was consistently disappointed.<br />

Often gracious and patient, but occasionally passionate and frustrated, Anthony Weiner was a victim of his<br />

own desires, certainly, but the film also shines a light on the unbridled glee with which the press tore him<br />

and his family down. It’s a rather disgusting portrait of both sides of the camera.<br />

The most remarkable element to WEINER is that even if the second scandal hadn’t broke, the doc would<br />

have still been a gripping examination of a cutthroat campaign. The film reveals Weiner to be the perfect<br />

politician in many ways. He possessed a fiery persona that flared up right on cue during speeches and debates;<br />

his ideas about how to improve the city were so beloved by citizens that they often booed his opponents<br />

if they brought up the original scandal; and voters loved his wife to such a degree that many would have<br />

preferred it if she’d run for office, which made her the perfect target after the scandal, with such sensitive<br />

headlines as “What’s Wrong With You?” (again, courtesy of the New York Post) running next to her photo<br />

after the second scandal broke, and she continued to stick with her husband.<br />

WEINER is not designed to change your mind about Anthony Weiner. The odds are fairly strong that your<br />

opinion of him (assuming you have any), his poor choices, and his policies will remain largely unchanged<br />

at the end of this work. Instead, the film attempts to give more of a complete picture of a news story that<br />

largely played out as a series of punchlines in the press, on the talk shows, and around water coolers. Some<br />

in the film question why Bill Clinton—who officiated at Weiner’s wedding—was forgiven for his indiscretions,<br />

doing far worse than Weiner (remember, Weiner had no inappropriate physical contact with anyone). The<br />

unsatisfying answer given by one person is, “Clinton is different.”<br />

Based on a sit-down interview done by the filmmakers with Weiner months after his lost mayoral race, it<br />

becomes clear that part of the reason he agreed to allow cameras to follow him was to put a certain part<br />

of his life behind him. He certainly got more than he bargained for, but because of that, WEINER is one of<br />

the most unbelievable and sometimes grotesque (for many reasons that don’t have to do with cybersex)<br />

political profiles in recent memory.<br />

Steve Prokopy is the Chicago Editor for Ain’t It Cool News (www.aintitcool.com), where he has contributed<br />

movie reviews and filmmaker and actor interviews under the name “Capone” since 1998. From 2005-15,<br />

he was on staff at the Chicago-based media outlet GapersBlock.com as the site’s Friday film critic with<br />

his Steve@theMovies column, which now appears weekly at the newly launched ThirdCoastReview.com.<br />

GENE SISKEL FILM CENTER<br />

FRANCOFONIA MAY 6 - 19 JUNE 10 - 16<br />

NEW FROM THE DIRECTOR OF RUSSIAN ARK!<br />

PRODUCER KAREN SHAPIRO IN PERSON 6/10!<br />

164 North State • siskelfilmcenter.org<br />

16 Music Box Theatre May-June 2016


Bracing, Upsetting and Vital<br />

BLUE VELVET at 30<br />

By Patrick Z. McGavin<br />

From the moment it first appeared—<br />

voluptuous, staggering, startlingly funny—<br />

David Lynch’s fourth feature BLUE VELVET was<br />

a film so rich in its meaning and associations<br />

the movie achieved the sublime and<br />

unaccountable.<br />

blue velvet STARTS june 10.<br />

SEE PAGE 10 FOR DETAILS.<br />

Lynch was working in very personal and knotty<br />

material. It was never sensationalized or cheap.<br />

It was always a work fixed in time, of Ronald<br />

Reagan’s “Morning in America,” except that<br />

here was also a work that transcended time.<br />

Woody Allen called it the best film released that year. Roger Ebert panned it. “It’s an anomaly—the work<br />

of a genius naïf,” Pauline Kael wrote. The movie is again front and center thanks to a digital restoration<br />

marking its 30th anniversary.<br />

BLUE VELVET is unmistakably a work of its maker’s interests and preoccupations. The artistry is not Lynch’s<br />

alone. The velvet and deeply saturated color photography of the cinematographer Frederick Elmes is<br />

exceptionally vivid and suggestive. The great sound designer Alan Splet brings a great aural richness eerily<br />

synchronized to the intricate visual design. Lynch’s soundtrack, of Roy Orbison and Bobby Vinton, is also<br />

just right, aided by the unsettling and intoxicating score of Angelo Badalamenti.<br />

The casting is perfect, and the secondary characters, like Dean Stockwell’s epicene gangster, are memorable<br />

and frighteningly alive. MacLachlan gives a remarkably shaded turn that is both open and self effacing. The<br />

long limbed, gorgeous Dern is a revelation. In the greatest performance of her career, Rossellini gets lost<br />

in the part of Dorothy, tragic, beautiful and soulful. Hopper brings such a sexual menace and cruel energy,<br />

his handsomeness was never used to such powerful effect. A gifted filmmaker in his own right, Hopper<br />

had a wounding, sharp gift of language, gesture and intonation. He makes Frank’s derangement deeply<br />

human and recognizable.<br />

BLUE VELVET was never about shock. It opened up Lynch’s underground aesthetic to a wider audience. It<br />

was art, bracing, upsetting and vital. How magnificent to once again celebrate its existence.<br />

Patrick Z. McGavin is a Chicago writer and film critic. His reviews, essays and film festival reports have<br />

appeared in Cineaste, filmjourney.org, RogerEbert.com and the London film magazine Empire. He also<br />

maintains the film website www.lightsensitive.typepad.com<br />

Lynch always wanted the film to be his follow up to his extraordinary 1977 black and white debut,<br />

ERASERHEAD. He needed to prove himself with larger budgets, and he turned out his sharp and pungent<br />

adaptation of THE ELEPHANT MAN. Lynch’s DUNE was a legendary folly, but a necessary one in his<br />

evolution as an artist that demonstrated his uncanny ability to collapse boundaries between the avant<br />

garde and the industrial cinema.<br />

A trained painter, Lynch had a genius instinct for working through the abstract and the unconscious. I<br />

disagree with Kael. The naïvity was always a cover to make his ideas more accessible. He stylized his images<br />

but always located the dark humor, like the opening sequence where a man watering his lawn suffers a<br />

stroke and Lynch undercuts our sympathy by having the neighboring dog voraciously lap up the jutting<br />

water coming out of the hose.<br />

The three decade anniversary reissue is telling, because part of what made the movie so unnerving was<br />

how Lynch seamlessly suggested the past superimposed over the present tense—his vision of social rot and<br />

transgression underneath the placid surfaces echoed the key works of Otto Preminger and Alfred Hitchcock.<br />

The movie’s fictional Lumberton, summoned through brilliant production design and painstakingly detailed<br />

sets, has an eerie authenticity.<br />

Lynch also deftly merged tones and mood, upbraiding the coming of age story with much darker<br />

implications coloring a horror noir that intertwined self discovery with intimations of sex, kink, violation<br />

and surrender. “I don’t know if you’re a pervert or a detective,” Sandy (Laura Dern) tells Jeffrey Beaumont<br />

(Kyle MacLachlan), the protagonist. A college kid, Jeffrey discovers a detached human ear that kicks the<br />

plot in motion.<br />

Jeffrey is ensnared into a criminal underworld as his fantasies and avid need for experience collapse against<br />

two strikingly realized figures, the alluring and damaged torch singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) and<br />

the crime boss Frank (Dennis Hopper). The celebrated 20 minute centerpiece brought about by Jeffrey’s<br />

sexual initiation with Dorothy, touching on voyeurism, emotional vulnerability, corruption and death,<br />

throbs with a hallucinatory power.<br />

18 Music Box Theatre May-June 2016<br />

THE WORLD’S FIRST FILM<br />

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DEDICATED TO DEVELOPING<br />

COMEDIC STORYTELLERS.<br />

FOR MORE INFO<br />

VISIT RAMISFILMSCHOOL.COM<br />

OR CALL (312) 664-3959<br />

Cinespace is proud<br />

to support Chicago’s<br />

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industry and creative<br />

communities.<br />

WWW.CHICAGOFILMSTUDIOS.COM


Music Box Member<br />

Becoming a member at the Music Box is a great way to<br />

support the quality programming at the independently<br />

owned and operated historic movie theatre, lounge<br />

and garden. This includes our holiday classics, talk<br />

backs, film festivals, visits from directors, producers,<br />

and actors, as well as our regular midnight, matinee,<br />

and feature presentations.<br />

join today<br />

• Discounted tickets<br />

• Members-only screenings<br />

• Advanced purchase for<br />

special screenings<br />

• Restaurant discounts<br />

• Deals on Music Box <strong>Film</strong>s DVD’s<br />

• Bottomless popcorn<br />

• Discounted house wines<br />

SERIES<br />

Classic Matinees<br />

Saturdays & Sundays at 11:30am<br />

Foreign Masterpieces<br />

The Music Box takes you around the world<br />

with seminal classics from master filmmakers.<br />

May 14 & 15 May 28 & 29<br />

8 ½<br />

Dir. Federico Fellini, 1963, 35mm,<br />

138 mins, Italy<br />

Marcello Mastroianni plays<br />

Guido Anselmi, a director<br />

whose new project is collapsing<br />

around him, along with his<br />

life. One of the greatest films<br />

about film ever made, Federico<br />

Fellini’s 8½ turns one man’s<br />

artistic crisis into a grand<br />

epic of the cinema. An early<br />

working title for 8½ was THE<br />

BEAUTIFUL CONFUSION, and<br />

Fellini’s masterpiece is exactly<br />

that: a shimmering dream, a<br />

circus, and a magic act.<br />

THE SEVENTH SEAL<br />

Dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957, 35mm,<br />

96 mins, Sweden<br />

Disillusioned and exhausted<br />

after a decade of battling in<br />

the Crusades, a knight (Max von<br />

Sydow) encounters Death on a<br />

desolate beach and challenges<br />

him to a fateful game of chess.<br />

Much studied, imitated, even<br />

parodied, but never outdone,<br />

Bergman’s stunning allegory of<br />

man’s search for meaning, THE<br />

SEVENTH SEAL was one of the<br />

benchmark foreign imports<br />

of America’s 1950s art-house<br />

heyday.<br />

June 4 & 5 June 18 & 19<br />

June 25 & 26<br />

register online<br />

at musicboxtheatre.com<br />

or visit our box office!<br />

THE RED SHOES<br />

Dir. Michael Powell & Emeric<br />

Pressburger, 1948, 35mm, 133 mins,<br />

United Kingdom<br />

A glorious Technicolor epic<br />

that influenced generations<br />

of filmmakers, artists, and<br />

aspiring ballerinas, THE RED<br />

SHOES intricately weaves<br />

backstage life with the thrill of<br />

performance. A young ballerina<br />

(Moira Shearer) is torn between<br />

two forces: the composer who<br />

loves her, and the impresario<br />

determined to fashion her into<br />

a great dancer.<br />

YOJIMBO<br />

Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1961, 35mm,<br />

110 mins, Japan<br />

The incomparable Toshiro<br />

Mifune stars in Akira Kurosawa’s<br />

visually stunning and darkly<br />

comic YOJIMBO. To rid a terrorstricken<br />

village of corruption,<br />

wily masterless samurai Sanjuro<br />

turns a range war between two<br />

evil clans to his own advantage.<br />

Remade twice, by Sergio Leone<br />

and Walter Hill, this exhilarating<br />

genre-twister remains one<br />

of the most influential and<br />

entertaining films of all time.<br />

M<br />

Dir. Fritz Lang, 1931, DCP, 99 mins,<br />

Germany<br />

In his harrowing masterwork<br />

M, Fritz Lang merges trenchant<br />

social commentary with<br />

chilling suspense, creating a<br />

panorama of private madness<br />

and public hysteria that to<br />

this day remains the blueprint<br />

for the psychological thriller.<br />

A psychopathic murderer of<br />

young girls terrorizes a German<br />

city causing public hysteria and<br />

intense police investigations,<br />

which in turn disrupts organized<br />

crime. The contrasting worlds of<br />

the police and the underworld<br />

are juxtaposed as they both<br />

resolve to hunt, capture, and try<br />

the murderer.<br />

Matinees 21


MIDNIGHTS<br />

SERIES<br />

MIDNIGHTS<br />

May 6 & 7<br />

May 13 & June 17<br />

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD<br />

(George Miller, 2015, 120 mins, 35mm)<br />

THE ROOM<br />

(Tommy Wiseau, 2003, 99m, 35mm)<br />

Friday & Saturday Midnight Screenings<br />

June 3 & 4<br />

June 10 & 11<br />

THE FINAL GIRLS<br />

(Todd Strauss-Schulson, 2015, 88 mins, DCP)<br />

3 NINJAS<br />

(Jon Turteltaub, 1992, 84 mins)<br />

SILENT CINEMA<br />

Classic silent films the way they were meant to be seen! Featuring<br />

a live musical score on the famous Music Box organ by<br />

Dennis Scott, Music Box House Organist.<br />

DENNIS<br />

SCOTT AT THE<br />

MUSIC BOX<br />

THEATRE<br />

ORGAN!<br />

May 14 & June 18<br />

ROCKY HORROR<br />

PICTURE SHOW<br />

(Jim Sharman, 1975, 100m, 35mm)<br />

June 24 & 25<br />

TWIN PEAKS:<br />

FIRE WALK WITH ME<br />

(David Lynch, 1992, 135 mins, 35mm)<br />

May 27 & 28<br />

REPO MAN<br />

(Alex Cox, 1984, 92 mins, 35mm)<br />

Rare 35MM<br />

Screening!<br />

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD<br />

(George Miller, 2015, 120 mins)<br />

From George Miller, mastermind behind<br />

the legendary “Mad Max” franchise, comes<br />

a return to the world of the Road Warrior.<br />

Haunted by his turbulent past, Max believes<br />

the best way to live is to wander alone. Nevertheless, he becomes swept up with a group fleeing across<br />

the Wasteland, led by an elite Imperator, Furiosa. Pursued by a vicious warlord and his gangs, Max must<br />

survive in a high-octane chase across the desolate, deadly landscape. Winner of 6(!) Academy Awards,<br />

with nominations for Best Picture and Best Director.<br />

3 NINJAS<br />

(Jon Turteltaub, 1992, 84 mins, 35MM)<br />

**Saturday, June 11 screening will include a pre-party in the<br />

Music Box Lounge, sponsored by Pipeworks Brewing Co!**<br />

While their friends are spending the summer playing, three young<br />

brothers—Rocky, Colt and Tum Tum—are learning the ways of the<br />

ninja from their wise grandfather. As the boys’ FBI agent father closes in on capturing notorious arms<br />

dealer and evil ninja-master Hugo Snyder, the balance of power shifts when Snyder kidnaps the brothers.<br />

Suddenly, the boys are caught in the middle of an incredible adventure they never dreamed possible.<br />

Surrounded by danger, they must rely on their wits, as well as the ancient ninja ways, to even the odds<br />

and defeat the unscrupulous Snyder!<br />

THE FINAL GIRLS<br />

(Todd Strauss-Schulson, 2015, 88 mins, DCP)<br />

When Max and her friends attend an anniversary screening of “Camp<br />

Bloodbath,” the infamous ‘80s horror film that starred Max’s late<br />

mother, they are mysteriously sucked into the silver screen. Trapped<br />

inside the cult classic movie, they must team up with the fictional<br />

and ill-fated camp counselors, including Max’s mom as the scream queen, to battle a machete-wielding<br />

killer. With the body count rising in scene after iconic scene, who will be the final girls left standing and<br />

live to escape this film?<br />

SUNRISE: A SONG OF<br />

TWO HUMANS<br />

Directed by F.W. Murnau<br />

1927, 94 mins, DCP<br />

Wednesday, May 18 at 7:30pm<br />

One of the most acclaimed silent films of all<br />

times, F.W. Murnau’s heart-wrenching romance<br />

SUNRISE was his first film in the United States.<br />

George O’Brien is a married farmer tempted<br />

away from his wife, Janet Gaynor, by a slatternly<br />

woman from the city, who tries to convince<br />

him to drown his wife. When the farmer’s<br />

wife escapes her murderous husband, he has<br />

a change of heart and must find his wife in the<br />

big city to which she’s fled and bring her home.<br />

Featuring the most adorable drunk pig you’ll<br />

ever see on film!<br />

Tol’able David<br />

Directed by Henry King<br />

1921, 99 Mins, 35MM<br />

Saturday, June 11 at Noon<br />

Young David Kinemon (Richard Barthelmess)<br />

lives in a small West Virginia farming village and<br />

wants to be taken seriously by those around<br />

him—particularly by the pretty girl (Gladys<br />

Hulette) who lives on a nearby farm. When<br />

a family of hooligans led by Iscah Hatburn<br />

(Walter P. Lewis) moves into town, David<br />

watches as they wreak havoc. After David’s<br />

father dies, David must summon his inner<br />

strength and take it upon himself to stop the<br />

fugitive Hatburn clan.<br />

35 MM Print from the Museum of Modern Art<br />

22 Music Box Theatre May-June 2016 Silent Cinema 23


SERIES<br />

From Stage To screen<br />

THE STRATFORD FESTIVAL PRESENTS<br />

The Stratford Festival has been setting the standard<br />

for classical theatre in North America for more than 60<br />

years. Since the revolutionary first season, more than<br />

26 million theatregoers from around the world have visited the Stratford Festival. Now<br />

partnering with SpectiCast, the acclaimed repertory theatre presents three exciting<br />

plays captured live in September 2015. Working with renowned Producer and Director<br />

Barry Avrich, and his exceptional team at Melbar Entertainment, the plays are captured<br />

using 10 cameras and 128 tracks of sound to create a sensational high-definition,<br />

surround-sound experience remaining faithful to the stage version of the production.<br />

HAMLET<br />

Directed for the stage by Antoni Cimolino<br />

Directed for the screen by Shelagh O’Brien<br />

Presented by The Stratford Festival & Specticast<br />

May 14 at noon<br />

May 24 at 7pm<br />

A ghostly visitor with a shocking secret, a daughter devastated<br />

by loss, a deadly duel and the most famous question in all of drama: Shakespeare’s<br />

iconic tragedy will hold you spellbound. HAMLET has been called the greatest play in the<br />

English language, and this production from the world-renowned Stratford Festival—the<br />

most complete, most fulfilling, most satisfying in decades of theatergoing. Jonathan Goad<br />

is witty and courageous in the title role, but also deeply human. The film excites and surprises<br />

at every turn, with a cast of some of the finest classical actors in the world bringing<br />

to life the most intense and heartbreaking relationships the stage has ever seen.<br />

THE ADVENTURES OF PERICLES<br />

Directed for the stage by<br />

Scott Wentworth<br />

Directed for film by Barry Avrich<br />

Presented by The Stratford Festival & Specticast<br />

May 28 at noon<br />

June 7 at 7pm<br />

A storm at sea brings love into the life of Pericles, Prince of<br />

Tyre, and another snatches it away. This magical production of Shakespeare’s epic tale is a<br />

delight for the eye and ear. Filled with music and brilliant spectacle, it follows a fairy-tale<br />

hero on a miraculous journey to one of literature’s most poignant reunions. Evan Buliung<br />

gives a sweeping performance, portraying the dashing young prince with verve and<br />

swagger, and taking him into his elder years with sorrowful tenderness. Moving and fun<br />

from beginning to end, it is a story rarely told, and one you won’t soon forget.<br />

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW<br />

Directed for the stage by Chris Abraham<br />

Directed for film by Barry Avrich<br />

Presented by The Stratford Festival & Specticast<br />

June 12 at 11:30am<br />

June 21 at 7pm<br />

Courtship or conquest? The breakdown of a defiant spirit or<br />

a breakthrough that liberates a heart deprived of love? This<br />

scintillating production of Shakespeare’s boisterous comedy<br />

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW will stir your emotions as you follow the love story of<br />

Katherina and Petruchio—the feisty lovers at the center of Shakespeare’s most pointed<br />

social commentary. Deborah Hay gives a performance for the ages as the Shrew and Ben<br />

Carlson is the perfect counterpoint as her plotting suitor, creating a chemistry that sets<br />

the stage alight.<br />

Encore<br />

Presentation<br />

ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS<br />

Presented by National Theatre Live<br />

June 25 at 11:30am<br />

For a limited time only, National Theatre<br />

Live’s Encore Series brings a selection of<br />

award-winning British theatre productions<br />

to your local cinema.<br />

Featuring a Tony Award-winning<br />

performance from host of THE LATE LATE<br />

SHOW, James Corden, the uproarious<br />

ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS was a<br />

runaway hit both in London’s West End<br />

and on Broadway. Fired from his skiffle<br />

band, Francis Henshall becomes minder<br />

to Roscoe, an East End hood looking to collect a debt from his<br />

fiancée’s dad. But Roscoe is really his sister Rachel posing as her<br />

own dead brother, who’s been killed by her boyfriend Stanley.<br />

Holed up at The Cricketers’ Arms, the ravenous Francis spots<br />

the chance of an extra meal ticket and takes a second job with<br />

Stanley, who is hiding from the police and waiting to be re-united with Rachel. To prevent<br />

discovery, Francis must keep his two guvnors apart. Simple.<br />

For more on these productions, The Stratford Festival, and National Theatre<br />

Live, visit MusicBoxTheatre.com<br />

24 Music Box Theatre May-June 2016 Stage to Screen 25


SERIES<br />

Anime <strong>Film</strong>s<br />

DOU KYU SEI – CLASSMATES<br />

Saturday, May 7 at Noon<br />

& Wednesday, May 11 at 7:30pm<br />

(Dir. Shoko Nakamura, 2016, 60 mins)<br />

Rihito Sajo is an honor student who got perfect<br />

scores in every subject on his entrance exam.<br />

Hikaru Kusakabe is in a band and popular among<br />

girls. They are “different kind of guys,” who would<br />

have never crossed paths. But one day Hikaru<br />

offers to help Rihito prepare for their upcoming<br />

chorus festival and improve his singing skills.<br />

As the two meet after school, they feel one<br />

another’s sound, listen to each other’s voices, and begin to harmonize as their hearts start to beat<br />

together. Two adolescent boys–learning not only about each other, but also about themselves–<br />

struggle and get confused; however, they eventually get to understand each other. As the time to<br />

start thinking about their futures approaches, what do these young men find as they try to move<br />

forward…<br />

HARMONY<br />

The Second <strong>Film</strong> of the critically-acclaimed<br />

Project Itoh Trilogy<br />

Tuesday, May 17 at 7pm (English subtitles)<br />

& Saturday, May 21 at Midnight<br />

(dubbed in English)<br />

(Dir. Michael Arias & Takashi Nakamura, 2016,<br />

120 mins)<br />

In a future ruled by an unwavering dedication<br />

to good health, three high school girls attempt<br />

suicide as the ultimate act of rebellion. One girl,<br />

Tuan Kirie, survives but can’t shake the hatred<br />

she has for the “perfect world” she lives in. Years<br />

later, a simultaneous mass suicide rocks the globe and sends society into a state of shock. A small<br />

group of terrorists stands up to take credit for the event, claiming they’ve hijacked the consciousness<br />

of every person on the planet. Tuan suspects an old friend might be involved, but how could that<br />

be when she¹d supposedly killed herself years earlier? Desperate for answers, Tuan launches an<br />

investigation that takes her across the globe chasing the ghost of her old friend.<br />

Art & Architecture<br />

in Cinema<br />

Captured exclusively for the cinema this ground-breaking<br />

series brings the world’s greatest works of art, and their<br />

environs, to cinemas nationwide. Enjoy unprecedented<br />

big screen access into the lives of renowned artists, their<br />

art, and the fabulous museums and galleries that are not<br />

only the custodians of such masterpieces, but works of<br />

art in their own right.<br />

LEONARDO DA VINCI:<br />

THE GENIUS IN MILAN<br />

May 21 & 22 at 11:30am<br />

(90 mins)<br />

Under the watchful gaze of 4K cameras, Leonardo<br />

da Vinci’s famous painting “La Belle Ferronière”<br />

is removed from the wall, packed and sent to<br />

Milan where, on the occasion of EXPO 2015, the<br />

most important cultural event of the year will be<br />

inaugurated: “Leonardo 1452- 1519.” This exhibition<br />

is the result of six years work by leading Leonardo<br />

experts, retracing the multiple paths travelled by<br />

the mind of the genius: the foundation of drawing,<br />

the role of nature and science, comparison<br />

between the arts, reflection on the ancients, the<br />

unity of knowledge, images of the divine, myths<br />

over the centuries, and more.<br />

RENOIR: REVERED AND<br />

REVILED<br />

June 18 & 19 at 11:30am<br />

(87 mins)<br />

Pierre-Auguste Renoir is known and loved<br />

for his impressionist paintings of Paris. These<br />

paintings count among the world’s favorites.<br />

Renoir, however, grew tired of this style and<br />

changed course. This stunning film—based on<br />

the remarkable collection of 181 Renoirs at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia—examines the direction<br />

he then took and why it has provoked such extreme reactions. What may surprise many is that among<br />

the artists who were highly influenced by Renoir’s new works were the two giants of the 20th century—<br />

Picasso and Matisse. The film is a fresh new biography of this artistic giant, and places Renoir as a critical<br />

link between the old and the new.<br />

26 Music Box Theatre May-June 2016 Cinema Science 27


SERIES<br />

Field Trips:<br />

Cinema Science with The Field Museum<br />

Join The Field Museum at the Music Box Theatre for a special series of film screenings dedicated<br />

to diving into the science behind the big screen. In this ongoing series, The Field Museum brings<br />

science professionals and lecturers to the Music Box Theatre to introduce the films and provide<br />

a forum for discussion following the film.<br />

Wednesday, June 1 at 7pm<br />

THE MESSENGER<br />

Tuesday, May 10 at 7pm<br />

Directed by Su Rynard<br />

Su Rynard’s wide-ranging documentary THE MESSENGER explores our deepseated<br />

connection to birds and warns that the uncertain fate of songbirds might<br />

mirror our own. THE MESSENGER brings us face-to-face with the human-made<br />

perils that have devastated thrushes, warblers, orioles and many other airborne<br />

music-makers. On one level, THE MESSENGER is the artful story about the<br />

mass depletion of songbirds, and about those who are working to turn the tide. On another level, THE<br />

MESSENGER is an engaging, visually stunning, emotional journey, with unique glances into the influence<br />

of songbirds on our own expressions of the soul.<br />

Featuring a discussion with Dr. Peter Marra, Director of Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center in Washington<br />

D.C. In his 17 years with the Smithsonian, he has become an international leader in avian conservation<br />

science focusing particularly on the ecology of migratory birds, urban ecosystem ecology,<br />

and disease ecology.<br />

Presented by<br />

Sound Opinions at the Movies<br />

THE HARDER<br />

THEY COME<br />

The latest installment in the Sound<br />

Opinions at the Movies series is the<br />

groundbreaking reggae sensation<br />

THE HARDER THEY COME. Jimmy<br />

Cliff stars as an aspiring young singer<br />

who leaves his rural village for the city of Kingston, hoping to make a<br />

name for himself. Robbed on his first day in town, he finds work with<br />

a bullying preacher and an unscrupulous music mogul. In desperation,<br />

the simple country boy turns outlaw, at war with both the police and<br />

his rivals in the ganja trade. This gritty, groundbreaking film brought<br />

reggae music to the international stage, made Jimmy Cliff a star, and<br />

demonstrated that music and art can change the world. DCP provided<br />

by Xenon Pictures.<br />

Rock critics Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot, the hosts of Sound Opinions from WBEZ, will be on hand<br />

to introduce the film. Advance tickets are available at SoundOpinions.org.<br />

The National Society<br />

of <strong>Film</strong> Critics Series<br />

The National Society of <strong>Film</strong> Critics is made up of the leading film critics in the United States,<br />

whose purpose is to promote the mutual interests of film criticism and filmmaking.<br />

The Music Box Theatre presents a brand new series along with three members of the National<br />

<strong>Film</strong> Society of <strong>Film</strong> Critics who are living and working in Chicago. Chicago Reader film editor<br />

Jim Jones, Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips and Jonathan Rosenbaum will present three<br />

of their favorite films with a post show discussion!<br />

Tuesday, May 31<br />

STRANGER THAN PARADISE<br />

presented by Jonathan Rosenbaum<br />

(1984; dir. Jim Jarmusch; 89 minutes, 35MM)<br />

STRANGER THAN PARADISE is an odd, low-key comedy about a trio<br />

of misfits—an everyday guy, his Hungarian female cousin, and his<br />

geeky best friend—who decide to take a road trip across the United<br />

States on the spur of the moment. Over the course of their voyage, they have both good and bad luck,<br />

meet a number of bizarre and interesting characters, and are frequently bored.<br />

Jonathan Rosenbaum, former film critic for the Chicago Reader (1987-2008), maintains a website archiving<br />

most of his work at jonathanrosenbaum.net<br />

Tuesday June 7<br />

THERE WILL BE BLOOD<br />

presented by Michael Phillips,<br />

Chicago Tribune film critic<br />

(2007; dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 158 minutes, 35MM)<br />

THERE WILL BE BLOOD won the 2008 Best <strong>Film</strong> award from the<br />

National Society of <strong>Film</strong> Critics. Paul Thomas Anderson’s loose<br />

adaptation of the Upton Sinclair novel “Oil!” is actually about something, or many things—greed, capitalism,<br />

American success stories—while succeeding as one of the great performance showcases in modern cinema.<br />

Michael Phillips is the film critic of the Chicago Tribune. He started his career writing about the movies for<br />

the Twin Cities weekly, City Pages. He’s pleased to be a new member of the National Society of <strong>Film</strong> Critics.<br />

Tuesday June 14<br />

LIFE IS SWEET<br />

presented by Jim Jones, Chicago Reader editor<br />

(1990; dir. Mike Leigh; 103 minutes, 35MM)<br />

LIFE IS SWEET, chosen as best film of 1991, tells the story of a workingclass<br />

family in suburban London whose easygoing patriarch, played<br />

by Jim Broadbent, impulsively buys a snack-vending trailer in hope of making a few extra pounds.<br />

J.R. Jones is film editor for the Chicago Reader and author of “The Lives of Robert Ryan”<br />

[livesofrobertryan.com] (Wesleyan University Press). He was elected to the NSFC in 2015.<br />

28 Music Box Theatre May-June 2016 29


SERIES<br />

Cinema Slapdown at<br />

The Music Box Theatre!<br />

Starting its tenth year, Columbia College Chicago’s CINEMA SLAPDOWN is a unique screening<br />

series that has achieved cult status. A wildly entertaining hybrid of film discussion, knockdown,<br />

drag out debate and audience interaction, CINEMA SLAPDOWN believes that all films can<br />

be passionately argued.<br />

At each session of CINEMA SLAPDOWN we screen a well-known, discussion-worthy film. It<br />

can be anything from a documentary that polarized its audience to a big award winner that<br />

left many scratching their heads and asking “Why?” Following the screening, two debaters,<br />

one who loves it and the other who hates it, engage in a heated argument about the film, then<br />

open themselves up to the audience. The debaters will be announced in mid-May.<br />

Movies for Summer:<br />

June 15<br />

“ ”<br />

- TIME OUT NEW YORK<br />

BOB ROBERTS<br />

"A pointless and insulting attack on American<br />

values, or a freakishly on-point prophecy Trumped<br />

by reality.”<br />

July 13<br />

DO THE RIGHT THING<br />

“An honest and compassionate look at the state<br />

of American race relations in the pre-Rodney<br />

King era, or just another 'joint' that thinks reverse<br />

stereotyping and divisiveness equals ‘something<br />

important to say'”<br />

“Confirms Larraín as one of the more<br />

genuine talents working in Cinema today.”<br />

- THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER<br />

30 Music Box Theatre May-June 2016<br />

SHOWGIRLS<br />

August 10<br />

“A trenchant and penetrating look at the crass side<br />

of the American success ethic, or a campy piece<br />

of cinematic waste best handled with oven mitts<br />

and a pair of tongs.”<br />

FIND IT WHEREVER YOU WATCH MOVIES<br />

@musicboxfi lms<br />

musicboxfi lms.com


Producing the Future<br />

Their sTories are our sTory. We produce more Than movies. We produce filmmakers.<br />

colum.edu/cinema<br />

Collin SChiffli (BA ’09)<br />

Director: AnimAls<br />

Debut feature; winner 2014 SXSW Grand Jury Prize;<br />

winner 2014 Chicago <strong>Film</strong> Critics Association<br />

Audience Award<br />

Director: Ghostophobia<br />

Second feature (in development)<br />

RheA BozzACChi (BA ’12)<br />

Director & Writer: vCArd<br />

Debut feature (in production); initially developed<br />

in Columbia College’s Semester in LA program at<br />

Raleigh Studios, Hollywood<br />

Writer: Cheat, Cheat, Bang, Bang: short film for<br />

Fulton Market <strong>Film</strong>s<br />

Intern: Fulton Market <strong>Film</strong>s, Chicago; Hutch<br />

Parker Entertainment, LA; <strong>Film</strong>Engine, LA<br />

RoBeRt-CARniliuS (MfA ’15)<br />

Director & Writer: JAspA Jenkins<br />

2014 Student Academy Award finalist (winner<br />

Midwest regional award)<br />

Director & Writer: Pulse<br />

Thesis short film (in production)<br />

Director & Writer: McTucky Fried High<br />

Comedic animated web series (in production)<br />

GARy MiChAel SChultz (BA ’01)<br />

Director & Writer: VinCent-n-roxxy<br />

Unified Pictures production starring Anton Yelchin<br />

and Megalyn Echikunwoke (in production)<br />

Director & Writer: Devil in My Ride (2013)<br />

Multiple award-winner now in wide Video On<br />

Demand release<br />

Co-Producer: Rudderless (2014)<br />

William H. Macy’s feature directing debut starring Billy<br />

Cruddup; premiered at 2014 Sundance <strong>Film</strong> Festival<br />

Cinema Art + Science

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