While others I know leap into Christmas music and gift-buying almost immediately after their Halloween costumes are off, I try and stave off yuletide cheer as much as I can. It just seems rude to Thanksgiving, the only holiday left it seems where we don’t have to buy a lot of presents, just eat a lot of food together, to leapfrog it.
When I first heard about “Escape From Tomorrow” premiering at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, I naturally assumed I would never get a chance to see it. An edgy, hallucinatory drama shot secretly on the grounds of Disneyland? The mouse-eared attorneys from Magic Kingdom would surely shut that down faster than you can say “It’s a Small World.”
But not only has “Escape” escaped legal threats, but it’s opening Oct. 10 at Sundance Cinemas as part of the next round of its Screening Room series, setting aside Theater 1 for weeklong runs of independent, foreign and documentary films. This upcoming series is only five films instead of the usual eight, presumably because we’re getting into Oscar season, and the theater will want to have all six screens available for some fall heavyweight films.
Point Cinemas is gunning for Sundance.
I mean, it’s not quite that personal. But it seems pretty clear that Marcus Theatres, which owns both Point and Eastgate Cinemas in Madison, is looking at the success that Sundance and other arthouses have had in other markets, and are looking to replicate that success in their theaters. Which is an interesting move for the nation’s sixth-largest movie chain — can they bring that boutique feel to a building that has 16 screens?
Sundance and other theaters (particularly in the Landmark chain) have upped the ante for the moviegoing experience with more inviting exteriors, including lounges and alcoholic drinks that you can bring into the theater. So Point responded with the swanky new Take Five lounge, which looks nothing like a snack bar and everything like a hotel lounge, with a full bar.
Now Marcus (and Point) seems to be going after Sundance’s kind of programming with its Theatre Entertainment Network. Marcus has had such success with non-traditional types of programming (live theater, Rifftrax broadcasts, one-night-only screenings) that they’ve dedicated one screen at Point and Eastgate to this kind of fare, at least on weekdays. That also means limited runs of independent movies — the French-Canadian comedy “Starbuck” is playing once a day at Point and Eastgate through Thursday. And it means classic films — “Animal House” is also screening there through Thursday. They also have a series of comic short films, the “LOL Short Film Festival,” playing through Thursday.
Next week brings the indie drama “Between Us” and Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” for limited runs, while the horizon shows the Mads Mikkelsen drama “The Hunt” and John Carpenter’s “The Thing.” It’s kind of a grab bag (there’s also a Kirk Cameron special and a Paul McCartney & Wings concert in there somewhere), but Marcus can afford to experiment. In the days of 35mm film, it would have been unwieldy to have one-time-only showings of films, since it takes so long to change reels. In the age of digital, it’s just a matter of playing this file instead of that file. And with most of the movies costing $5 (special events are invariably more), it’s a good deal for audiences as well.
Whether audiences will respond is another matter — it seems strange that movies show at different times on different days, making it perhaps harder for viewers to plan to see one of the films. Sundance has had success at building a loyal following of older, pickier customers who will only see movies at Sundance — can Point do the same thing and also appeal to the masses? In any event, it’s a good thing that good movies will get a chance at theatrical distribution, and if Marcus thinks showing independent and classic movies is a sound business strategy, that’s great — one less screen showing “Getaway.” This is an interesting move worth watching.
I feel a little guilty saying this, given the subject matter of the film, but the post-show chat I hosted after a screening of “Act of Killing” at Sundance Cinemas a couple of weeks ago was a lot of fun.
The movie itself, which delves into the psyche of government-sanctioned Indonesian mass murderers, is no fun. But it is brilliant and thought-provoking, and it made me so happy to see by far the largest turnout for a Sundance chat come out — we filled the Overflow Bar, and it was a great conversation, as people shared their reactions to the film, including a few people who lived in Indonesia.
But the next movie I’m doing a post-show discussion for, “Stories We Tell,” deals with somewhat lighter subject matter. The chat will take place after the 6:55 p.m. screening on Tuesday, Sept. 10 in the Overflow Bar, located on the first floor of the theater, right across from the box office. Everybody’s welcome.
Actress and filmmaker Sarah Polley (“Away From Her,” “Take This Waltz”) turns the camera back on her own family in “Stories We Tell,” interviewing family members and friends to discover the story of her late mother, a story that brings with it some truly surprising revelations. It’s a film about the fractured state of a family’s history, how everyone holds their own perspective on past events, knitting fact, rumor and opinion together into a narrative that suits them best. I think it’s one of the best films of the year.
It’s a film that will give us lots to talk about. I hope you can join me!
Summer’s winding down, folks. And with it goes the fluffy summer classic movies that Sundance Cinemas in Madison had been programming, like “Ghostbusters” and “Dirty Dancing” (which plays Wednesday (today) at 1:20 p.m. and 6:45 p.m.
When the series returns for another run on Wednesday, Aug. 28, things are going to get more serious. They’re going to get medieval, even, starting with Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 classic “Pulp Fiction.” I still viscerally remember seeing it opening night in Springfield, Illinois with some grad-student friends, crammed down into the front row, left side, because the theater was so packed, and feeling almost electrified by what I was seeing.
All of which is to say that, even if you’ve seen “Pulp Fiction” a dozen times since, it’s a movie that demands a big-screen experience with a crowd, which is why the Sundance Classics series is so valuable. And Madison audiences have definitely responded, selling out several screenings (such as “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in May) while, in other cities, the classics series has been discontinued for lack of interest.
Here’s the full schedule for the next Sundance Classics series:
Aug. 28 — “Pulp Fiction” — I loved “Django Unchained,” but this is still Tarantino at the height of his powers, a time-jumping, blood-pumping crime epic in which he seems also desperate to make every moment entertaining.
Sept. 4 — “The French Connection” — Everybody remembers the car chase, of course, but William Friedkin’s 1971 thriller is full of great scenes, from the cat-and-mouse game on the subway to Gene Hackman’s take-no-guff Popeye Doyle, a cop who skates uneasily close to the line between right and wrong.
Sept. 11 — “Some Like it Hot” — Okay, Billy Wilder’s comedy, about musicians Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon hiding out from the mob in an all-girl band, doesn’t fit with the “serious” theme of this post. Nobody’s perfect.
Sept. 18 — “To Kill a Mockingbird” — Harper Lee’s autobiographical novel became both a riveting courtroom drama and a resonant portrait about good versus evil in a Southern town, as seen through the eyes of the indefatigable Scout.
Sept. 25 — “Fight Club” — First rule of “Fight Club” is that you tell everyone to go see David Fincher’s bloody satire of masculinity in the age of corporate America.
Oct. 2 — “Vertigo” — You can’t do a classic series without a little Hitchcock, and his twisty, twisted tale of obsession and guilt in San Francisco turns the private eye drama into something much darker.
Last Wednesday, I had to beg, borrow and steal to get myself a seat to the sold-out screening of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” at Sundance Cinemas. I should have known to get to the theater earlier — that series routinely packs the theater on Wednesday nights. “E.T.,” which screens today at the theater, should be no exception. Even if you know the movie by heart (as I do with “Raiders”), it’s still so much fun to see it on a big screen with a big crowd. (Everybody still laughed when Indy shot the swordsman.)
Over on its facebook page, Sundance Cinemsa posted the schedule for its Summer Classics series, which looks like a blast. The theme (with one glaring exception) seems to be movies set in the ’50s but not made in the ’50s. So it’s a calendar of Enchantment Under the Sea dances, dirty dancing, and summer lovin’.
July 10 — “”Grease” — The 1978 musical is beloved by many. This is not intended to be one of those “singalong” screenings, but I bet will turn into one anyway.
July 1y — “Back to the Future” — Marty McFly goes from the ’80s to the ’50s in Robert Zemeckis’ clever and wildly entertaining sci-fi comedy.
July 24 — “Animal House” — Every Judd Apatow comedy, every Seth Rogen film ought to bow down and pay homage to the king of R-rated comedy.
July 31 — “American Graffiti” — Yes, George Lucas made this elegaic look back at the ’50s, with impossibly young Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford playing teens.
Aug. 7 — “Ghostbusters” — No ’50s tie-in here, but it’s the movie that I most associate with summer moviegoing. I can still vividly remember a Friday night screening in 1984, and how the audience of teenagers roared when Bill Murray said “It’s true. This man has no dick.”
Aug. 14 — “Dirty Dancing” — Nobody puts baby in a corner.
Between the six of them, there’s probably 1,000 quotable lines of dialogue. It should be a fun summer at the movies. Visit sundancecinemas.com for more information.
As I sat with about 60 other people at MMOCA Rooftop Cinema on Friday night, watching one harvester ant rip the head off another one on the big projection screen, I wondered if the concern that theatrical moviegoing is an endangered pastime might not be so grave.
Which is not to say that there isn’t reason for concern. But if you can fill seats for “The Hellstrom Chronicle,” as MMOCA did, there’s definitely room for hope.
The concern, expressed well by Mark Riechers at Madison Arts Extract last week, is that there’s a large group of movie lovers in Madison who don’t go out to the movies. They’ll come out in droves for the Wisconsin Film Festival, but when independent films come back to Sundance Cinemas and elsewhere, the theaters are nearly empty. Granted, this is a problem everywhere; when I was last home visiting my parents in Denver, I sat in the city’s majestic Mayan Theatre all alone to see “Rust and Bone.”
But I think Madison has a particular challenge, having to do largely with the fact that we’re a second- or third-tier market with first-tier taste in movies. Independent films don’t usually open everywhere at the same time the way “The Internship” does; instead, they roll out slowly, starting in New York and Los Angeles, spreading to cities like Chicago and San Francisco, eventually making their way to some smaller markets if they’re doing well enough. It’s a cinematic Doppler effect: you hear about a movie through reviews in the New Yorker or New York Times, and then weeks or months later you see it. A larger city like Denver can largely dictate when an indie movie will get to their theaters, but for Madison, we seem to largely have to wait and see for many of them to trickle down to our level.
The problem for Sundance is that they don’t often know when the films will finally make it to Madison until, sometimes, the Tuesday before the Friday they open. That’s not much time to build up any word of mouth that a film is opening. If a movie that already has a fair bit of advertising and viewer interest, such as “Before Midnight” or “Much Ado About Nothing,” it has a good chance of making a big splash. Madison will usually come out big to support those films, judging by the lines at the concessions counter at Sundance. But other, lesser-known films might arrive without much notice, and if audiences aren’t willing to take a chance on them, they could open and close in a week. And, as the price of going to the movies goes up, audiences are less likely to take those chances.
Of course, there are exceptions; “Free the Mind,” a film made in Madison about meditation research at the UW, ended up being a surprise hit for Sundance, playing for several weeks. Sundance does broadcast what’s playing through its e-newsletter, and programs smaller indie movies into its Screening Room Calendar, which maps out weeks ahead what arthouse movies will be showing. And there are media resources (such as, ahem, this blog) that feature reviews and news about what movies are playing. But in general, the burden is on the viewer to keep track of what’s playing where and when.
And, as Mark points out, the rise of Netflix Instant and VOD has changed the equation. On the one hand, streaming makes a vast treasure trove of movies available for movie lovers, cheaply and easily. That’s an unalloyed great thing, giving good films that might have tanked theatrically (or never even made it to a Madison theater) the chance to be seen. The trade-off, though, is that there’s no sense of urgency for audiences to go see a film in theaters, because they know it will inevitable end up on DVD. (And yet so called “day-and-date” releases, simultaneously out on VOD and in theaters, seems to be working for indie distributors like IFC and Magnolia. Go figure.)
Yet, in Madison, we’re blessed to have this other strain of filmgoing, exemplified by Rooftop Cinema, Cinematheque and the Wisconsin Film Festival, that seems to do very well. Those Studio Ghibli films that screened Sunday afternoon at the Chazen this past semester were absolutely packed, the festival never seems to go wanting for crowds, and folks will turn up to see almost anything, no matter how off-the-beaten-path, at Cinematheque or Rooftop. The other encouraging sign I’d point to is the continuing success of the “Classics” series at Sundance Cinemas, which often has the biggest crowds of any theater there on a Wednesday night. We actually outpace other Sundance theaters in larger cities like Houston when it comes to our support of classic movies.
All of which is to say that there’s we’re ahead of the game compared to many other places — there’s a lot of movies to see, and a lot of appreciative and hungry movie fans who could go see them. The challenge continues to be making sure audiences know what movies they can get out to see, and why it’s important they do so.
I’ve got nothing against Steven Spielberg’s beloved 1982 family classic “E.T. The Extraterrestrial.” I showed it to my own kids for the first time a few months ago and they loved it (although it may have helped that I shut it off just when E.T. started getting the sniffles.)
But it seems a little odd that Madison audiences have gotten so many chances to see the film in so many different ways over the past few weeks. First, Madison Parks kicked off its “Moonlight Movies” series of outdoor family movies in May with a screening of “E.T.” at Olbrich Beach.
Then, last Monday, the Lakeside Cinema series at the Memorial Union Terrace kicked off its series of outdoor films — all having to do with aliens or outer space — with, you guessed it, “E.T.” (“Spaceballs,” not quite as heartwarming, plays this Monday night.)
And now, when I was at Sundance Cinemas on Sunday to see “Frances Ha” for the second time, I saw that Sundance’s Classics Series is devoted the month of June to the works of Steven Spielberg. And screening on Wednesday, June 19 is, of course, “E.T.” My only question at this point is why the Rooftop Cinema series at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art couldn’t have worked in a “E.T.” screening in its June series — perhaps playing it backward to make it a little more avant-garde.
I guess it’s a testament to “E.T” as a bonafide family classic that generations of moviegoers will turn out for, both older audiences feeling a touch of nostalgia and young families exposing their kids to the saga of Elliot, Gertie and their new houseguest. Still, that’s a lot of Reese’s Pieces.
The Spielberg series, by the way, shapes up like this, hitting four of his biggest films. Not an “Always” in the bunch.
Wednesday, June 5 — “Jaws” (1:30 and 6:45 p.m.) — Less family-friendly than “E.T.,” to be sure, but the film that pretty much invented the concept of the “summer blockbuster” works like gangbusters.
Wednesday, June 12 — “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (showtimes TBA) — Seriously, how great will it be to see Indy’s first outing on the big screen again with an audience?
Wednesday, June 19 — “E.T. The Extraterrestrial” (showtimes TBA) — See above.
Wednesday, June 26 — “Schindler’s List” (showtimes TBA) — Not exactly my idea of big-tub-0f-popcorn summer moviegoing, but a film you must see at least once. I wouldn’t make a plan to go out for drinks afterward, though.
It may be hard for a movie fan in Madison to think past the Wisconsin Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday and brings over 150 movies to town. But the festival will end eventually, and the trick is to keep your hunger for offbeat and interesting films going after it does.
Luckily, there will be plenty of chances to do so — the Union South Marquee Theater will jump into its Mini Indie Film Festival in late April. And Sundance Cinemas will kick off its next Screening Room calendar on Friday, April 19, the day after the Wisconsin Film Festival ends.
I’m especially excited about the new Screening Room schedule, as I’ll be doing a pair of post-show chats about a couple of the films in Sundance’s new Overflow Bar, located on the first floor where the gift shop used to be. And the first one should be a doozy. Visit sundancecinemas.com for more information.
“Upstream Color” (opens April 19) — Nine years ago, writer-director-star Shane Carruth made one of the best time-travel movies ever, “Primer,” on a budget of just $7,000. Now he returns with a beautiful and just as confounding sci-fi tale involving true love, an ageless organism, and pigs. I’m doing a post-show chat after the Monday, April 22 early evening show — I’ll post more details closer to the event.
“Room 237” (April 26) — If you miss Rodney Ascher’s engrossing documentary about the various arcane film theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” it’s coming back.
“The Angel’s Share” (May 3) — Acclaimed director Ken Loach returns with another tale of working-class life in the United Kingdom, in this case a comedy about four young Scotsmen and a cask of rare whisky.
“Koch” and “West of Memphis” (May 10) — A double dose of documentaries. “Koch” has nothing to do with the notorious Koch brothers, but instead follows the career of former New York Mayor Ed Koch. “West of Memphis” is a follow-up look at the lives of the West Memphis 3, three teenagers wrongfully convicted of murder, and the case that remains unsolved.
“Lore” (May 17) — Another film festival sellout, this drama follows a group of children, left alone after their SS parents are arrested after World War II, who must traverse Germany, and see the results of their parents’ legacy along the way. I’ll be doing a post-show cat after the early evening show on Monday, May 20.
“The Reluctant Fundamentalist” (May 24) — A Pakistani immigrant working on Wall Street has his allegiances tested after 9/11 in this film from director Mira Nair.
So this is pretty exciting. I’m partnering with the nice folks at Sundance Cinemas for “Conversations in Film,” an occasional series where I will host special screenings of films from their Screening Room calendar, the series devoted to indie films, foreign films and documentaries. After each film, join me up in the second-floor lounge at Sundance, 430 N. Midvale Blvd., for a lively discussion of the movie we all just saw.
The first one takes place on Tuesday, March 5 at 7:05 p.m., and the movie we picked to start off the series should be an ideal conversation-starter. It’s the documentary “A Place at the Table,” which looks at how, in the land of plenty and the home of the super-sized milkshake, 49 million Americans don’t get enough to eat. It’s a beautiful film as well as an insightful one, and one that I think will change a lot of people’s perceptions of what poverty is.
The usual ticket prices apply, although the nice thing about the Screening Room Calendar is that its exempt from the usual amenities fees at the theater. I’ve got one other “conversation” scheduled on Tuesday, March 26, for the drama “Any Day Now,” starring Alan Cumming and Garret Dillahunt. And we plan to do more as the Screening Room calendar continues. Hope to see you there!
Madison Movie 