The Summer Classic Film Series Is Nearly Here!

Today we are excited to announce the entire schedule for the 2013 Summer Classic Film Series at the Paramount and Stateside Theatres, which starts next Thursday May 23!

We’ve got it all, from Radio Days and Daniel Day-Lewis nights to celebrations of the Marx Bros. AND the Warner Bros. Whether you want to study the shadows in Film Noir 101 or study abroad from the East to the Wild West, you’ll find exhilarating new discoveries along with your beloved favorites playing 6 days a week all summer long.

We’ll see you next week for the Opening Night Film Fan Party (are you a Film Fan yet? It’s a crazy good deal!) and Casablanca/Annie Hall double feature on May 23 followed by a one-of-a-kind evening with Leonard Maltin presenting an incredibly rare 35mm screening of Frank Capra’s Lady for a Day on May 24. Remember those exciting new discoveries we were talking about? Lady for a Day is one of them. Check out the video below featuring Maltin’s thoughts on the film, and don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see him present the film in person followed by a lively conversation!

You can come to this blog to find exciting previews and tidbits about our films throughout the summer, but for now, you can download the full schedule here or grab a free printed copy in the Austin Chronicle that hits newsstands today. Start marking those calendars!

Michel Gondry’s Newest Film at Stateside

Ask anyone born in the last 30-50 years for a list of their ten favorite movies, and more often than not you’ll see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind somewhere on that list. This modern classic announced two things to the world: Jim Carrey could really act, and Michel Gondry could REALLY direct.

Though Gondry had already made a decent name for himself by directing Human Nature, which was another Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine) script, as well as popular music videos for Bjork, Foo Fighters, and The White Stripes, Eternal Sunshine made him a household name for indie film lovers everywhere. Since then his whimsical style and boundless imagination have brought us movies that always seem to spark creativity in others; films like The Science of Sleep and Be Kind Rewind have inspired young people across the globe to pick up a camera.

Well, Michel Gondry is back with a new film called The We and the I, which premiered at Cannes last May and will make its Austin premiere at Stateside Independent this Monday April 15 at 7:00pm, and just about everyone is falling in love with this one. As A.O. Scott of The New York Times says in his Critics’ Pick review, “To call this thrillingly original, deeply felt movie a coming-of-age story would be to insult it with cliché.”

Forgoing his usual camera tricks, Gondry focuses his attention this time on a group of high school students, played not by professional actors but by actual honest-to-goodness high school students from the Bronx. Rather than relying once again on the visual adventurousness that has brought life to so many of his previous films, this time Gondry leaves it to the kids to invigorate the film with the effervescence of youth and the boundless energy of New Yorkers. And they don’t let him, or us, down.

The one thing this film does have in common with Gondry’s past work is that it is truly one of a kind. Don’t miss your only opportunity to see it in a movie theater in Austin! Check out the trailer below:

War Witch Comes to Austin

War Witch is the reason we launched Stateside Independent; well, War Witch AND  hundreds of other films like it that may not have otherwise found a home in Austin.

This is a film that rose above entries from around the world to nab one of five coveted Oscar nominations for Best Foreign Film, and yet most people in cities like Austin will have to settle for VOD or DVD, missing out on the opportunity to see it in a movie theater. As our fair city continues to improve its status in the filmmaking community, playing host to more film shoots and sending more movies to Sundance and other major festivals with each passing year, the filmgoing community deserves some love, too.

Kim Jones at the Austin Chronicle has already done a fine job of defining where Austin stands in the film release landscape. The only way we’re going to bring more films to Austin, and at the same time as larger cities like Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, etc., is for our theaters to continue taking chances on these films, and, more importantly, for those of us who love movies in Austin to go out and support them when they do come to town.

So, this Monday April 1, you have a chance to show distributors everywhere that Austin deserves the chance to see films like War Witch on the big screen, and it’s certainly a film that earns every ounce of support it gets. Though the story of a 12 year old girl kidnapped by rebel soldiers and enslaved to a life of guerrilla warfare in the African jungle may sound brutal, as Matt Odam of the Austin American-Statesman wrote today, “writer-director Kim Nguyen shows a restrained and artful hand in rendering his heartbreaking tale.”

Take a look at the trailer below, and then buy your tickets here. You’ll not only be treating yourself to an eye-opening night at the movies, but you’ll be also be laying supportive groundwork for Stateside Independent and Austin’s moviegoing culture in general.

Cinema Six

Now that the annual post-SXSW week of healing is at an end, it’s time for you to get out of the house once more and come see a movie set in a movie theater…in a movie theater. Cinema Six, the next screening in our Stateside Independent, is a film as generous with its quotable one-liners as it is with its relatable characters, and members of the cast will be joining us for a Q&A this Monday, March 25 at 7:00pm!

Mason, Dennis, and Gabe have worked at the Stanton Family Cinemas for longer than they want to remember, but long enough they don’t want to leave. Most of their time is spent messing with customers, watching fellow employees work out their relationship issues and basically just slacking off, but at a cost. Will they work out their problems? Maybe, but first they have some customers to ignore.

With a great cast including beloved Austin actors John Merriman, Byron Brown, Chris Doubek, and many others, Cinema Six is another fine example of the wonderful films being shot in and around Austin. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll wonder if this movie kisses its mother with that mouth. Don’t believe me? Check out the trailer below.

Seven Up!

This is the first in a series of UP recaps, moving through the films from SEVEN UP through 49 UP in anticipation of the Texas Premiere of 56 UP at Stateside at the Paramount, screening Monday February 18 and Tuesday February 19. If you did your homework and watched SEVEN UP last night, scroll to the bottom of this post and be the first to correctly answer three trivia questions about the film to win two free tickets to 56 UP!

In the context of the entire UP Series, the first film SEVEN UP! serves as a foundational set of brief, frequently insightful interviews with the young people we will follow into adulthood. Viewing it with the knowledge that the kids’ entire lives are well-documented in the films that follow, you can’t help but be excited about the series and hopeful that the kids will achieve their dreams, erase their prejudices, and live happy lives.

As a film viewed by itself, SEVEN UP is somewhat different from all the films that followed. It’s less about the ongoing journey of life and more about the childrens’ views on race, class, and gender. Each of the kids has developed a unique personality all their own, and you can’t help but assume that, in the making of this half-hour televised documentary short, the filmmakers realized they had cobbled together quite an interesting bunch of youths, interesting enough to continue following long into the future.

Because the film was made with the class system in mind, the kids are essentially lumped into two groups, upper class or working class, at least until they are more individually fleshed out in the later films. Andrew, Charles, and John all attend the same pre-prep school for upper-class children in Kensington, while Suzy’s wealthy parents have sent her to boarding school. We see, in one sequence, the stark contrast between the classes as shots of Suzy gracefully practicing ballet are intercut with the working-class children rough-housing on a playground.

One of the more rambunctious rough-housers is Tony, who attends school in the historically poor East End of London, with the instantly recognizable accent to prove it. Tony will prove to be one of the more lovable subjects of the series, while Neil from Liverpool leads one of the more interesting, up-and-down lives that we will see.

You can see that the kids, despite being raised under some very rigid circumstances, are already well on their way to becoming adults with opinions and the ability to speak their minds. Although they sometimes simply echo what they’ve clearly been told by their parents (“I’m going to Cambridge.” “I’m going to Africa to help the uncivilized become more or less good.” “I think the Beatles make too much noise.”), you can see them processing the questions they are asked before they answer.

One of the wonderful things about this series is that Apted continues to refer back to clips from the previous films to provide context, so we’ll be reminded of these smiling faces frequently as we watch the kids grow old, for better or worse. All this to say: bring on 14 UP (aka 7 Plus Seven)! But why stop at 14? We have a whole weekend ahead of us, how many UP films can you watch?

Trivia: Did you watch SEVEN UP last night? If so, try your hand at the three trivia questions below. The first person to answer all 3 questions correctly in the comments section below will win two free tickets to 56 UP! (Stumped? Remember, all of the films in the UP Series are streaming on Netflix, and SEVEN UP is only 30 minutes long! So by all means, go cheat!)

1. Who has a girlfriend named Michelle who calls him a monkey?

2. What song do we see some of the children singing in Latin?

3. What career will Neil pursue if he can’t be an astronaut?

56 Up at Stateside Independent

This week, we announced a brand new film series taking place every Monday night at Stateside at the Paramount called Stateside Independent, which will bring arthouse hits, festival favorites, and local premieres to Austin audiences on a weekly basis. I couldn’t be more excited about providing a fresh new platform for independent filmmakers to showcase their work, and my greatest hope is that this series proves to be a valuable addition for the growing community of Austin film lovers.

We’re particularly proud to be kicking this series off with 56 UP, the latest entry in the legendary documentary series from director Michael Apted. In 1964, a group of seven-year-olds in England were chosen to be interviewed about their hopes and dreams for their futures; in other words, what did they want to be when they grew up? Every seven years since then, Apted has gathered these individuals together to see where they are in life.

As you can imagine, each entry carries great emotional heft, as you witness dreams realized, shattered, or still to be determined. The most remarkable thing about watching the films is how they reflect on your own life and its ups and downs.

I first caught up with the series when I was 21, so 21 UP was particularly affecting for me while 28 UP was a little scary to watch. Would I wind up as unhappy or unsettled as some of these interviewees, or would I be exactly where I hoped I would be? Now, watching 28 UP again at the age of 27, I imagine I’ll see things differently. Perhaps what I perceived as failure at 21 I’ll now recognize as simply making the best of what life gives you.

With that in mind, I intend to re-watch all seven of the previous films and write about them here in the coming days, both as a prelude to our Texas premiere of 56 UP and also as a sort of Cliffs Notes for those of you who aren’t yet familiar with the series. But don’t take my word for it: all seven of the UP films are streaming on Netflix and available to rent at I Luv Video and Vulcan Video. So, why not join me on the journey with these remarkable subjects, culminating Monday February 18 at Stateside at the Paramount with 56 UP (with an added second screening on Tuesday February 19)?

I’ll see you back here tomorrow for a look back at the one that started it all, SEVEN UP! In the meantime, have a look at what critics are saying about 56 UP and take a peek at the trailer:

 - “Critics’ Pick! Remarkable, poignant, fascinating. An analogous project in print or even still photographs wouldn’t be as powerful, because what gives the “Up” series its punch is not so much its longevity or the human spectacle it offers, but that these are moving images of touchingly vibrant lives at certain moments in time and space. The more you watch, the more the movies transform from mirrors into memory machines, ones that inevitably summon reflections of your own life.”

 - “Grade: A! Awe-inducing. Apted has created a series of films as profound as they are straightforward: here is a chronicle of real human souls evolving in real time, a longitudinal study unique to the medium of moving images — and a documentary masterpiece.  With each passing calendar leap, the experience of watching has only become more soul-stirring. ”

 - “This is a series about us as much as it is a series about the individual fates of the children…It insists that we care, deeply, as we watch Apted and his subjects grow up, and as we follow them down.”

- “Critics’ Pick! The Up series will have to go down in history as one of the more touching and ambitious cinematic and televisual experiments of our — or anyone else’s — time.”

Texas Chainsaw Massacred

Why is it important for cinemas like the Paramount and Stateside to continue screening classic films? For one, in this era of countless remakes, reboots, sequels, and prequels, we should remind ourselves of the original film’s intent and remember the reasons why it has been declared a classic. This appears to have been a low priority for the filmmakers behind Texas Chainsaw 3D (in theaters today).

Though TC3D is being promoted as a “direct sequel” to Tobe Hooper’s original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from 1974, seeing it immediately after Hooper’s landmark film doesn’t do the new one any favors. Unfortunately, that’s exactly how I experienced it last night as part of the Alamo South Lamar’s (temporary) Closing Night.

First, we were treated to the classic (a fine treat indeed, in 35mm) with Hooper in attendance for a Q&A. Remarkably humble for someone who has directed not one but two horror classics (Poltergeist being the other one), Hooper regaled us with stories about shooting the film in the miserable Texas heat and how the cast and crew ultimately came to hate one another until the film was finally in the can.

Whatever happened on that set, the outcome proved to be not only one of the finest horror films ever made but also one of the lasting artistic reflections on the prevailing mood in America in the early 1970s. More than just a band of crazies, the burly, grotesque Leatherface and his cannibalistic family represented the dissolution of the American domestic ideal and the awakening of repressed anger and violence that followed the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. For a change, a horror film had a lot to say.

Which is why I was surprised to hear Hooper himself praise Texas Chainsaw 3D for “not trying to reinvent the wheel,” an odd statement from a man who, with his own film, got rid of the wheel entirely and made the horror genre soar. But it was certainly an accurate statement. TC3D feels like every other horror remake we’ve seen in the past several years. Gone is the visual and aural experimentation of the original (how about those opening photo flash sounds? I shudder…). Sure, Leatherface and the family concerns are all still there, but they’ve been entirely stripped of their meaning, leaving nothing but a bloody mess behind.

The original Massacre ends with a favorite shot of mine, a visual summation of everything the film represented. As the only surviving girl jumps into a fleeing truck, Leatherface gives up the chase and begins spinning around madly, hurling his chainsaw in all directions as the sunlight reflects off the blade. The shot reminds us that, even though this particular girl has gotten away, we as viewers cannot escape the fact that Leatherface (or, rather, what Leatherface represents) is here to stay – a terrifying, breathtaking image of triumph. I was hoping for just a single moment as effortlessly and thrillingly effective as this in the new film. I didn’t get it. That’s why we keep showing the classics.

Suggestion: Revisit the original 1974 Massacre, then skip TC3D and head over to Vulcan Video or I Luv Video for Hooper’s own followup The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, a wild and woolly film (starring Dennis Hopper!) that probably needs its own blog post…