San Francisco Screenings: October 11 - 20, 2012

 

I'm not quite sure how I want to format this new portion of my blog that I'm going to dedicate to exciting upcoming screenings in San Francisco, so bear with me as I figure out the best format for this. This post will cover up till October 20th, and all screenings are subject to change. As far as current theatrical engagements are concerned, there's only one film for me, and that's Lee Daniels' disaster at the year's Cannes Film Festival, The Paperboy, which opened in San Francisco last Friday. From all of the descriptions and reviews I've glanced over, it sounds like Daniels has returned to the absurdness of Shadowboxer after a brief stint as an Oscar darling with Precious. The rest of the screenings are in chronological order.

October 11 - 21: The Arab Film Festival opens with Sameh Zoabi's 2010 comedy Man Without a Cell Phone at 7:30 pm at the Castro Theater. The traveling film festival, now in its sixteenth year, moves onto additional California locales in San Jose, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Other films screening at the festival include the French comedy Top Floor, Left Wing (Dernier étage gauche gauche), winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at last year's Berlinale; Faouzi Bensaïdi's heist drama Death for Sale, which will represent Morocco for the Best Foreign Language Film at next year's Oscars; Khalid Al-Haggar's Lust, which was Egypt's Oscar submission last year; Namir Abdel Messeeh's inventive documentary The Virgin, the Copts, and Me (La Vierge, les Coptes et moi...), which played at both this year's Berlinale and Tribeca Film Festival; and the Dutch road movie Rabat (pictured above). All screenings, except for the opening night gala, will be held at the Embarcadero Center Cinema.

October 11, 13, 14: Chantal Akerman's latest film, Almayer's Folly (La folie Almayer), comes to the Yerba Buena Center for a three-day run. The film is adapted from the novel of the same name by Joseph Conrad and reteams the director with her La captive star Stanislas Merhar.

 

October 11: The Thursday Film Cult will be hosting several horror-themed double features during the month of October at The Vortex Room. On the 11th, it will be a 16mm print of Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace (Sei donne per l'assassino) and Andrew Sinclair's Blueblood, a British occult film with Oliver Reed and Derek Jacobi. Showtime at 9pm.

October 12 - 14: At New People Cinema, the Film Society of San Francisco presents Taiwan Film Days, which will showcase seven Taiwanese films over its three days, including Edward Yang's classic four-hour epic A Brighter Summer Day, which is still MIA on DVD. Yang's widow is expected to be in attendance.

 

October 11 - 14: For those willing to make the trek north to Mill Valley, there are still a few days left of the 2012 Mill Valley Film Festival. Screening over the next four days: Leos Carax's Holy Motors (!); Lore, Cate Shortland's follow-up to her lovely Somersault; Cristian Mungiu's Beyond the Hills, a double prize-winner at this year's Cannes Film Festival (Best Actress, Best Screenplay); the latest from director Miguel Gomes (Our Beloved Month of August), Tabu; Hagar Ben Asher's Israeli sex drama The Slut; Abbas Kiarostami's Like Someone in Love; and a music doc about the recording of Stevie Nicks' 2011 album In Your Dreams, with Ms. Nicks herself (!!) in person.

October 12 - 19: Sure to attract a lively crowd, the Castro Theater will present another of its popular sing-a-long events to the film that began Walt Disney Animation's financial resurgence in the late 80s/early 90s (if you aren't counting The Rescuers Down Under), The Little Mermaid. I'd be willing to bet every plus-size drag queen within the city limits will be making at appearance as Ursula for (at least) one of the nightly screenings over its week run.

October 13: Midnites for Maniacs have programmed a rather impressive triple-feature for October: A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2; and Clive Barker's original Hellraiser. With a strange cast that joins Patricia Arquette, Laurence Fishburne, and Zsa Zsa Gabor with the leftovers of the first installment Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon (missing from the puzzling, gay panic second film), Dream Warriors is, without question, the best of the entire Elm Street series. In another unusual sequel to a hugely popular horror film, Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel, made twelve years after the original, has Dennis Hopper on the hunt for the murderous family. All three films are shown on 35mm, starting at 7:30 pm at the Roxie Theater.

October 13: If the above triple-feature doesn't suit your fancy, you can always go to the Clay Theater for a midnight screening of one of the "great" San Francisco films, Tommy Wiseau's The Room.

October 15: At the Roxie, Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1932 silent classic Vampyr will be screened with live score by Siouxsie and the Banshees co-founder Steven Severin. Screenings are at 7pm and 9:30pm.

October 19 - 25: Andrea Arnold's stunning adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights begins a week-long run at the Opera Plaza Cinema. Expect a review from me sometime soon.

October 20: To celebrate its 20th anniversary just in time for Halloween, Peaches Christ will present a screening/event of/for Robert Zemeckis' Death Becomes Her. Over the past year or so, I've seen Peaches screen/perform Showgirls, Ken Russell's Tommy, and Silence of the Lambs, and this will be the debut run of Death Becomes Her, with Peaches as Madeleine Ashton (Meryl Streep) and Heklina as Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn).

January Criterions and More!

January always poses an exciting month for Criterion releases, as it (hopefully) kick-starts the year with a bang, especially after their typically slow month of December. And with the January 2010 titles, Criterion crossed the 500 threshold, with Robert Rossellini's War Trilogy box set marking spine number 500, the trilogy being Rome, Open City [Roma, città aperta], Paisan [Paisà] and Germany Year Zero [Germania anno zero]. Steven Soderbergh's Che will finally bow on DVD and Blu-ray, as well as a resorted version of Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (on DVD and Blu-ray). Federico Fellini's 8½ will premiere on Blu-ray, which might be the first release of the film in high-definition anywhere.

More exciting than the mainline Criterion titles though is their new Eclipse set, available 19 January: Chantal Akerman in the Seventies. The set includes La chambre, Hotel Monterey, News from Home, Je tu il elle and Les rendez-vous d'Anna.

IFC also announced several titles for January. Jean-Claude Brisseau's À l'aventure, Paco Cabezas' The Appeared [Aparecidos], David Zellner's Goliath, Spike Lee's Passing Strange, Alan Brown's Superheroes and Armando Iannucci's hysterical In the Loop, which will also come in Blu-ray. All are set for 12 January. MPI, who releases IFC's titles, set a new date for The House of the Devil for 2 February, for those concerned.

IFC Films on DVD, Round 2 + Akerman + Petzold - Michael Jackson

Though you might have other things on your mind, I thought I'd post another DVD update. Through their new deal with MPI, IFC Films announced their second round of DVD releases after that Blockbuster/Genius drought. Unfortunately, all of their titles so far have been part of their Festival Direct package and not their theatrical releases (The Last Mistress, The Duchess of Langeais, A Christmas Tale, Hunger, Gomorrah, My Winnipeg, etc). On 15 September, look for Spiros Stathoulopoulos' single-take thriller PVC-1 and Baltasar Kormákur's White Night Wedding [Brúðguminn], which stars the Icelandic director's frequent actor Hilmir Snær Guðnason. On 29 September, Madonna's wretched directorial debut Filth and Wisdom and the Spanish thriller Fermat's Room [La habitación de Fermat] will be released.

Icarus Films has set a release date for Chantal Akerman's acclaimed, little seen From the East [D'Est] for 6 October, as well as David Barison and Daniel Ross' documentary The Ister for 3 November. Kino will release a double-feature of sci-fi/horror films from director Graham Reznick, I Can See You and The Viewer, on 28 September.

Cinema Guild will follow Project X's July release of Christian Petzold's The State I Am In [Die Innere Sicherheit] with his latest Jerichow on 27 August. And finally, it appears as if the elusive Phantasm II will make its way onto DVD on 15 September (though I can't back this up) from Universal. I know you've been waiting.

Drive, He Said, Husbands and Fuller from Sony (plus Jeanne Dielman and more)

Partially due to my weekend cold and also in hopes they'd throw an additional something exciting our way today, I'm a little late in posting the August Criterions. Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, starring Delphine Seyrig, will make its home video debut in the US on DVD 25 August. Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco, with Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale, hits on the same date, as well as Blu-rays of Kurosawa's Kagemusha (18 Aug) and Tati's Playtime (18 Aug). The Eclipse set for August sounds promising, a collection of five Nikkatsu noirs (25 Aug): Koreyoshi Kurahara's I Am Waiting, Toshio Masuda's Rusty Knife, Seijun Suzuki's Take Aim at the Police Van, Takumi Furukawa's Cruel Gun Story and Takashi Nomura's A Colt Is My Passport. Eric has a few other titles that might be part of a later Nikkatsu set from Eclipse.

Sony's got a huge line-up for the late-summer and fall, which Eric has already pointed out. A Sam Fuller box set (29 Sep) which includes Crimson Kimono, Underworld USA and Scandal Sheet; Cassaevetes' Husbands (18 Aug), which doesn't appear to be part of their "Martini Movies" set any more; 2 film noir sets, one with a re-release of The Big Heat, and a Rita Hayworth box (all 3 November).

Not mentioned on Filmbo's blog are a few other Sony releases. They've got a set called The New Hollywood Box Set for 15 September. The set includes Jack Nicholson's Drive, He Said, with Karen Black, Robert Towne, Bruce Dern and Henry Jaglom; Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces; Rafelson's The King of Marvin Gardens with Nicholson, Dern and Ellen Burstyn; Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show; Jaglom's A Safe Place, with Tuesday Weld, Nicholson and Orson Welles; Rafelson's Head with The Monkees; and Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider. This is the R1 debut of both Drive, He Said and A Safe Place. Sony also has Fred Dekker's Night of the Creeps (20 October) and James Hill's A Study in Terror (10 November) premiering on DVD.

Strand is releasing Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau's Born in 68 [Nés en 68], with Laetitia Casta, Yannick Renier and Yann Trégouët, on 11 August. Facets' website has been doing a remodel for the past few weeks, so I've only been able to uncover one of their August releases, another Ning Ying film For Fun on the 25th. PeaceArch has the supposedly dreadful Mysteries of Pittsburgh on 4 August.

Water Bearer is releasing two films in July. Christian Moris Müller's Four Windows [Vier Fenster] and Alessandro Avellis' Ma saison super 8 premiered at the 2006 Berlinale and will street on the 7th. If 80s T&A is your cup-of-tea, Severin will have Screwballs out on 25 August on DVD and Blu-ray, and Anchor Bay is releasing Spring Break, which I talked about in a previous blog about the films available on iTunes.

And finally, here are a few Blu-ray titles coming soon: Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (28 July, Universal); John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China (4 August, Fox); Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (21 July, Sony); George A. Romero's Creepshow (8 September, Warner); Jim Henson and Franz Oz's The Dark Crystal (1 September, Sony); Phillip Noyce's Dead Calm (8 September, Warner); Peter Yates' The Deep (7 July, Sony); Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer (11 August, Tokyo Shock); Henson's Labyrinth (1 Septmber, Sony); Alan Parker's Midnight Express (21 July, Sony); Patty Jenkins' Monster (1 September, First Look); Jonathan Lynn's My Cousin Vinny (4 August, Fox); the director's cut of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (25 August, Warner); the extended cut of Terrence Malick's The New World (8 September, New Line); John Carpenter's Starman (11 August, Sony); Rob Reiner's This Is Spinal Tap (14 July, MGM); and Irwin Allen and John Guillermin's The Towering Inferno (14 July, Fox). The UK update should be coming at you later this week.