Arts & Entertainment - Film

October 2008

FILM

Detroit Film Theatre: Its director, Canadian wunderkind Guy Maddin, calls it a “docutasia.” His film My Winnipeg is half documentary, half surrealism, but one singular vision. It’s a dream about Maddin’s wintry hometown memories as a child. The work is witty and joyously demented. Oct. 2-4. • It’s that old love story of the beautiful weather girl torn between the decades-older novelist and the young heir to a pharmaceutical fortune gone awry. Filmed by Claude Charbrol, France’s grand master of suspense, A Girl Cut in Two twists and turns through dark passion and razor-sharp, seductive social satire, culminating with a shocking conclusion. Oct. 3-5. • Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress and the Tangerine is a documentary about the artist that, for six decades, has been at the forefront of successive new developments in art. The filmmakers followed Louise around her studio in Brooklyn and her home starting in 1993. Oct. 9-11. • Mike, a 30-something father with a crappy job, leaves California and visits his bohemian parents in New York. Once he gets there, he doesn’t want to leave. He reverts to his adolescence and decides his childhood home is the only place he wants to be. Momma’s Man is a funny, poignant achievement for filmmaker Azazel Jacobs. Oct. 10-12. • As if growing up and being a teenager isn’t hard enough, 15-year-old Alex has one more thing to tack on. She was born a hermaphrodite. Then Álvaro, a 16-year-old boy, shows up and the complicated gets a little more complex. XXY was the Grand Prize Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Critics’ Week. Oct. 16-18. • Two mothers, two daughters, a father, and a son travel between Turkey and Germany, finding one another, losing one another, and discovering what their own lives mean to one another. The Edge of Heaven won the best screenplay award in Cannes last year. Oct. 17-19. • Alexandra comes from filmmaker Alexander Sokurov, who created one of the cinematic milestones of the century in Russian Ark. In his new film, he examines the cost of war through a Russian grandmother on her way to visit her grandson’s military unit stationed in Chechnya. Along the journey she encounters the routines of military life, she rides in a troop transit, and, later, in a tank. Humanism is at the core of the film Alexandra. Oct. 23. • The Alloy Orchestra, which critic Roger Ebert has called “the best in the world at accompanying silent films,” has returned to the Detroit Film Theatre to provide a weekend of musical accompaniment to three classic silents: Josef von Sternberg’s rarely seen 1928 drama The Last Command is the story of a former Imperial General to the Czar of Russia who becomes a Hollywood actor playing, well, a Russian general. Now that’s full circle. Oct. 24. • Underworld is another von Sternberg film from 1927, cited as the first true gangster film — as well as the model of the gangster genre that followed. Oct. 25. • Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness is Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1927 film about of a Thai family’s struggle to survive the forces of nature. Shot in Siam (the old name of Thailand), the film captures the family’s constant clash with the wild animals around them. Oct. 26. Contact the DFT or visit the Web site for show times. All tickets $6.50-$7.50. 5200 Woodward, Detroit; 313-833-7900; dia.org/dft.

Detroit Science Center IMAX: The next best thing to actually going somewhere and seeing something in person is seeing it at an IMAX. So, if you can’t make it to the Grand Canyon, head on down to the Science Center for a little trip Out West. Grand Canyon Adventure will take you to one of America’s greatest sites, fly you over, and drop you down into this expansive natural monument. And it’ll cost just the price of a theater ticket. • From the deep, northern waters of Lake Superior to the eastern edges of Lake Ontario, Mysteries of the Great Lakes takes the viewer on a spin through some of most beautiful shorelines and scenery the nation has to offer. And you’ll stay dry. All through October. $7.25-$12.95. 5020 John R, Detroit; 313-577-8400; detroitsciencecenter.org.

Redford Theatre: Steamboat Bill, Jr. is the story of a young man, played by famed comedic actor Buster Keaton, just out of college following in his father’s footsteps as a captain of a Mississippi steamboat. And, of course, there’s love involved — the daughter of his father’s business rival. Oct. 4. • You’ll hear “nyuck, nyuck, nyuck” over and over again at the Redford Theatre’s “Three Stooges Festival,” which will feature six of the Stooges’ films from 1934 to 1939. Oct. 10-11. • House of Wax, a remake of the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum, stars Vincent Price as a wax sculptor who goes a little mad. This flick is also an early example of the 1950s 3-D movie craze. Oct. 17-18. • The Redford Theatre is having a little Halloween double-header of monsters and mayhem. First up is the 1933 release The Invisible Man, a story about a doctor who, upon becoming invisible, goes murderously insane. And next, the 1944 film House of Frankenstein stars the one and only Boris Karloff as, well, you know, Frankenstein. Oct. 24-25. All films $4. 17360 Lahser, Detroit; 313-537-2560; redfordtheatre.com.
 

This article appears in the October 2008 of Hour Detroit.
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