It is a new semester and the Film Series is already crackalackin’. We always hit the ground running. So many people came to “40 Year Old Virgin” and “A History of Violence” that we needed medics on site to treat flare-ups of claustrophobia. Just kidding! We have room for everybody, their grandmothers, their children out of wedlock, and their Tamagotchis! The Film Series Crib is spacious aaaaand commodious.
Which brings me to my first order of business: the Film Series Crib will no longer be called the Film Series Crib. It is now officially the Goldsmith Family Cinema. But do not fret. We ain’t going corporate. And we ain’t going family. Witness what is playing this Friday at the Sinema: “The Aristocrats,” which is dirrrrrtier than Christina Aguilera sexing it with a mudslide.
And brand new this semester: STUDENT ID CARD. You now have the option of charging the price of a Film Series ticket to your Wesleyan Student Identification Card. Your parents will finally be paying for something practical. Instead of ten grand for a class on Contemporary Issues in Mental Masturbation, spend four smackeroos on a Film Series ticket and/or come to the free shows. Every film you come to is a confident step towards fame, fortune and fornication in the business of show.
?FRIDAY (2/3). THE ARISTOCRATS. 8 p.m. GOLDSMITH FAMILY CINEMA.
Come see Jason Alexander, Hank Azaria, Lewis Black, Drew Carey, George Carlin, Carrot Top, Andy Dick, Phyllis Diller, Carrie Fisher, Whoopi Goldberg, Gilbert Gottfried, Eric Idle, Eddie Izzard, Richard Lewis, Bill Maher, Howie Mandel (Bobby’s World), The Onion, Trey Parker & Matt Stone, Penn & Teller, Paul Reiser, Andy Richter, Don Rickles, Chris Rock, Bob Saget, Jon Stewart, Robin Williams and Steven Wright tell the most infamous joke in comedy and generally be totally grody to the max! Pure comedic id on an unprecedented scale.
(I have my own version of the joke, needless to say, but I would not sully such an upstanding rag as this one with my brain queefs.)
SATURDAY (2/4). CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS. 8 p.m. FREE. GFC.
A young apprentice railroader botches his sack attempt with a pliable young conductress. Unsure in his adequacy as a man, he attempts suicide. But he botches that too. Friendly tips from skeevy old men, hypnotizing Nazis and a bodacious resistance fighter named Victoria ease the young man’s mind in a major way.
“Closely Watched Trains” is far from the horn dog, flute up the rectum, comedy we have come to expect from our tacky home country. The most tasteful, affecting, graceful sex romp of all time instead comes from the ultimate nation of lovemaking, Sexoslovakia.
WEDNESDAY (2/8). SHOPGIRL. 8 p.m. GFC.
Steve Martin plays a loaded lech, smoother than a silkworm’s butt, jockeying with immature slacker Jason Schwartzman (“Rushmore”) for Claire Danes’ affection. Will she go for the cradle robber or the cradle baby? Somebody should see the movie and tell me.
THURSDAY (2/9). TITICUT FOLLIES. 8 p.m. FREE. GFC.
Director Frederick Wiseman was granted full access to film at the upstanding State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Bridgewater, Mass. in 1966. State authorities, however, launched legal action against the movie after it was screened to great acclaim at the New York Film Festival in 1967. The Massachusetts Attorney General barred public screenings and the state’s Supreme Court ruled that the movie constituted an invasion of privacy of the Bridgewater guards and patients. This ban remained in place until 1991, almost a quarter of a century after the movie was made.
Nearly forgotten and damagingly stigmatized, “Titicut Follies” is too powerful to be suppressed forever. This ain’t your mother’s documentary. “Follies” is an indictment of mental asylums that makes “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” look like a cake walk. What you are seeing is all too real. Inmates are beaten, taunted, needlessly drugged, force-fed through tubes, degraded through nudity, and, most horrifyingly, made to do Ziegfield-style soft shoe routines. Wiseman’s objective camera (well… you decide) captures it all in the same extremely influential Direct Cinema style as his landmark documentary “High School.”
*I want to dispel any widely-held notions that Film Series workers are incompetent. “Rize” was not shown this past semester, to the dismay of many. This was not because of Film Series error. It was mistaken by a delivery person for a different film and whisked away into the night. Do not fret. “Rize” will rise again in the Spring. Until then, keep krumpin’.
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