As of today, Wesleyan will be on its most proper and traditional behavior for the remainder of the weekend. With the homecoming football game, a Presidential inauguration, the Douglas Cannon (?), and a boatload of parents on our hands, we have a bevy of things to be apathetic about or inconspicuously absent from. The Film Series, on the other hand, is a great way to spend time with your parents. And, with President Roth’s picks rounding out this week, there’s nothing on the series to make your Baby Boomer quake in hir uggs. I’m going as often as possible, because my grandmother is going to be here and I don’t want to give her the chance to comment on the number of free prophylactics on campus before asking me if I own one.

BRINGING UP BABY
USA, Dir: Howard Hawks, 1938
TONIGHT, Nov. 2, 7:30 p.m. FREE!

Roth on “Bringing Up Baby:” “It’s a happy week, so let’s have more comedy! Kate Hepburn is trying to lure research professor Cary Grant away from his dinosaur, and what better way to do it than by babysitting a leopard! No man wears women’s clothing (or eyeglasses) better than Grant, and that combined with not one, but two wild animals makes this among the finest of screwball comedies.”

Roth calls her Kate. Cute. Maybe they dated or something.

HORSE FEATHERS
USA, Dir: Norman Z MacLeod, 1932
SATURDAY, Nov. 3, 7:30 p.m. FREE!

Roth’s take on “Horse Feathers:” “I thought I should have at least one film with a college president, and what better example than Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, the president of Huxley College? Groucho Marx plays the role, and his goal is to win a football game. Perfect for homecoming? Well, the contest may not be a model for us, but it will keep us cheering!”

Groucho plays a college president named Wagstaff? Doesn’t he already have a cigar for that kind of thing?

RESCUE DAWN
USA, Dir: Warner Herzog, 2007
WEDNESDAY, Nov. 7, 7:30 p.m. $4

Countless people, myself included, have commented on Herzog’s astonishingly Hollywood approach to this, his most recent, film. What is often overlooked, though, is that “Rescue Dawn” is a quintessential Herzog film. It concerns the primordial jungle struggle of man against nature, it is taken from a nonfictional source, and it is promoting, reflecting upon, and celebrating of Herzog’s entire oeuvre. The film stars Christian Bale as Dieter—a German American pilot in the US Air force who is shot down and imprisoned in Vietnam—and is based on Herzog’s own documentary called “Little Dieter Needs To Fly.” This film proved to me personally that Herzog can apply his thematic signature, and knack for uncovering extraordinary stories, to traditional, satisfying Hollywood filmmaking.

SYNDROMES & A CENTURY
THAILAND, Dir: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006
THURSDAY, Nov. 8, 7:30 p.m. FREE!

Weerasethakul, the director of 2004’s “A Tropical Malady” returns with an experimental semi-autobiographical story about two physicians, a hospital, and the life of memory. The doctors are based on his parents, who must have been known as Dr. and Dr. Weerasethakul, and the film plays out in snippets and glances with humor and grace. Weerasethakul’s film has been unfortunately censored in Thailand for depressingly obtuse reasons, and he has said in response, “I…treat my works as I do my own sons or daughters” (Little Weerasethakuls). “If these offspring of mine cannot live in their own country for whatever reason, let them be free. There is no reason to mutilate them in fear of the system. Otherwise there is no reason for one to continue making art.” Well said. Dr. and Dr. Weerasethakul would be proud.