Popcorn & Candy: Shadows & Rock
DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed
While not the oldest filmed animation there is, The Adventures of Prince Achmed holds the distinction of being the oldest one that survives to this day. Avant-garde artist Lotte Reineger developed an entirely new, and still utterly enchanting, technique for filmed storytelling. She took shadow puppetry and combined it with stop-motion filmmaking to tell a story based on 1001 Arabian Nights. Visually arresting, the film features meticulously constructed silhouetted figures, handcut from cardboard and lead by the artist, and manipulated frame by frame. Walt Disney took animation in an entirely different, and more mass-crowd pleasing, direction just a few years after, and Reineger's technique largely remained her own, rarely copied despite it's oddly magical charm.
Silent films provide unique opportunities for modern reinterpretation, since their soundtracks are up to whoever's screening them. This weekend's screening of Prince Achmed is a showcase for a new soundtrack for the film as much as it is for the film itself, as Baltimore instrumental act (and former DCist Three Stars subjects) Yeveto have composed a new score for the film. Yeveto are no strangers to reimagining soundtracks for classic silent films, having previously tackled the 1915 German horror film Der Golem. Saturday night the Honfleur Gallery screens Prince Achmed with Yeveto providing a newly dark soundscape for the mesmerizing images.
Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Honfleur Gallery, new live musical accompaniment by Yeveto.
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Reel Affirmations' festival has been a stalwart of the local festival calendar for nearly two decades, bringing some of the best in LGBT cinema to Washington. As a genre, gay and lesbian film can be pretty hit or miss. Like much indie filmmaking, good intentions sometimes outpace talent. Often, we're left us with films that squander loads of potential with sloppy storytelling, or films that make up for a lack of potential with loads of sloppy sex. Reel Affirmation's schedule looks to be heavy on films that avoid the stereotypical pitfalls. There are plenty of documentaries, often considered the strength of the festival, as well as plenty of serious minded dramas and award winners from other festivals. Tonight's opener is Laurie Lynde's Breakfast with Scot, which holds the distinction of being the first feature film with a gay theme (a gay couple, one of whom is a former pro hockey player) being allowed to use official logos and teams by a professional sports league, and has earned a number of accolades from other festivals. This year's festival will also feature the spoof Another Gay Sequel, which lampoons every gay film stereotype available.
Opens tonight and runs through October 21, with screenings at the AFI, the Goethe-Institut, the Lincoln Theatre and the Sixth and I Synagogue. See the schedule for full listings.
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What's wrong with this picture? Mike Leigh, maker of tense and anxious character pieces about the darkest corners of our souls that we'd prefer to keep in the shadows, has made a bright, cheery, colorful feel-good movie? And not only that, it's garnering reviews just as strong as any of his more serious-minded work. That could be because while his main character is a 30-year-old school teacher with an impossibly sunny disposition, that ever-present smile is in the face of the same everyday disappointments that we all face. Leigh excels at inventing characters who jump off the screen with their realism, this one just happens to be a character who won't let anything get her down, no matter what curveballs life throws her. Leigh sticks to his usual mode of working as well, giving excellent actors their characters and their stories, and letting them improvise how to get from point A to point B. Letting real people interpret characters as real people in the moment, with the camera running, is an idea that few, if any, directors have been able to control with the mastery and eloquence that Leigh's movies consistently have. Only difference this time is that you can leave the theatre with a smile instead of a cloud of restless misanthropy.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Bethesda Row.
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Billy Wilder's first bona fide classic is a masterclass in how to make a film noir. Shifty anti-hero looking for an angle? Check. Femme fatale determined to bring down everyone around her? Check. Poor schlub who got mixed up with the wrong dame? Check. House of cards falling in breathtaking slow motion? Absolutely. Fred MacMurray (who did his best work playing bastards for Wilder) is an insurance man who looks to cash in with Barbara Stanwyck by killing her husband and collecting on the policy. You know from the start this can't go as slickly as they hope, but Wilder's twisting screenplay provides more surprises than any movie based on this iron-clad a formula has any right to be. And if you're a fan of that particular formula, the AFI has plenty more where that came from. This weekend's Double Indemnity screenings are the kickoff for Noir City DC, the first D.C. edition of The Film Noir Foundation's noir festival that has been presented in L.A. and San Francisco.
View the trailer.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the AFI.
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Had enough of George W. Bush yet? Yeah, us too. The biggest question surrounding Oliver Stone's third presidential biopic may have less to do with whether it's any good or not, but rather whether anyone wants to sit through a two hour biopic on a guy three-fourths of the nation is pretty fed up with. Stone claims he's given Bush a fair shake, and he proved with his last film, World Trade Center that he's capable of making a film about a provocative subject without descending into polemic. Unfortunately, in that case, when Stone stopped yelling he turned into a maudlin mess. This time around, Stone is teaming with screenwriter Stanley Weiser, who is no stranger to either the very-near-hindsight political biopic (he wrote a 2003 TV movie about Rudy Giuliani), or to writing about powerful men having complete meltdowns (he previously teamed with Stone on Wall Street). Josh Brolin looks and sounds the part, as do most of the large supporting cast of familiar faces from the administration, but we wonder if Stone and Weiser can really come up with a comprehensive portrait that does much aside from skim the surface without a little distance for perspective. We're sure Stone will provide plenty to argue over; but do we still have the patience or the inclination to argue about Bush's legacy anymore?
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at theatres all over the area.