The semester is heating up and the film series is like a well-oiled machine, pumping out all the entertainment and excitement you need to keep on truckin’ through the trials and tribulations ahead. Amidst the sound and the fury of classes and kegstands, hookups and breakups, the Film Series is your rock, your emergency fire blanket, an old yeller who won’t go out and die on you from rabies. This week’s common theme is America: multi-faceted, awe-inspiring, vomit-inducing America in all its tarnished glory. An electrifying concert film, a beautiful war-time melodrama, a thought-provoking documentary—all fascinating, thoroughly entertaining movies that reflect the many faces of the red, white, and blue, and the Film Series itself.
“Dave Chappelle’s Block Party” FRIDAY, SEPT. 8 at 8 P.M. $4
Dave Chapelle’s “Block Party” will leave you buzzed, bursting with what may be the best kind of feeling you can have with your clothes on. The setup is blissfully simple: a free block party on a dead-end street in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn with a lineup of Dave Chapelle’s favorite musicians. Though documented by Michel Gondry, the genius director behind “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” the film soars on the wings of Chapelle’s magnetic humor and charisma, as well as electrifying performances from a genuine who’s who in rap music: Mos Def, Kanye West, the incendiary Dead Prez and, in the film’s biggest jolt, a newly reunited Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill and Pras Michel, pounding killer jams from their Fugees days. It’s a hilarious and wonderfully spontaneous documentary to kick-start the new semester and an essential rite of passage before dropping the first-Friday-of-the-semester party bomb.
“From Here to Eternity” SATURDAY, SEPT. 9 at 8 P.M. FREE
These choice words come from 50’s melodrama hype-woman and Film Series column partner-in-crime Anna Rabinovitch:
CRASH! A bursting wave explodes violently into the folds of the ocean’s surface. The resulting orgasmic flow of white froth cascades across the expanse of sand and collides into two intertwined bodies kissing passionately on the beach. Sound familiar? This scene, featuring strapping Burt Lancaster and blonde bombshell Deborah Kerr, has become one of the most famous film moments in popular culture. Now we’re giving you the chance to see the film that this iconic sex scene belongs this Saturday night.
“From Here To Eternity” centers on the public and private lives of military men stationed at the Oahu base that was to be attacked by the Japanese in WWII. In addition to Lancaster and Kerr, this classic film contains an all-star cast including Montgomery Clift, Donna Reed, and Frank Sinatra, along with topnotch director Fred Zinnemann (High Noon). This film garnered 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Director, and Supporting Actor to a very worthy Sinatra. As film historian Pauline Kael notes, Eternity was, “The movie of its year, as On the Waterfront was to be the next year, and not just because each swept the Academy Awards, but because these films brought new attitudes to the screen that touched a social nerve.” The film’s uncurbed portrayal of the military and sexual entanglements the characters find themselves in made “From Here to Eternity” the most audacious and risqué movie of 1953. Virtually everyone gets some drunken screen time and the illicit beach scene is as hot as Hollywood sexual passion gets.
“Why We Fight” WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 13 at 8 P.M. $4
We are at war, embroiled in a perpetual state of military flux that must be placed in a perspective even broader than the over 2500 U.S. military deaths and over 41,000 civilian casualties that haunt the nightmare of present-day Iraq. This is the idea powerfully illuminated by Eugene Jarecki’s “Why We Fight,” a thoughtful discussion of current U.S. foreign policy and lessons not learned. Just as the war in Iraq sputters on in the face of domestic inaction and ambivalence, this documentary powerfully illustrates how the “military-industrial complex” has seemingly become an accepted phenomenon, developing first as a reaction to the growth of Communism in the 1950’s and later propelled by the war on terrorism. Contrasting perspectives from neoconservatives making the case for preemptive warfare with the views of liberal stalwarts like Gore Vidal, then humanizing the average citizens engulfed in the war machine, Jarecki engages in a spirited investigation that cuts to the very core of the U.S. military beast. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, “Why We Fight” is a film that gains relevance by the day and is a vital point of reference and debate for students on a campus that professes to be politically conscious.
FILM STUDIES DEPARTMENT OPEN HOUSE THURS., SEPT. 14 at 8 P.M.
Enjoy a rare opportunity to view three award-winning Wes thesis films of yore, then stay to schmooze with the majors and profs. It also bears mentioning that the cookies at these events are of a consistently outstanding quality. The following films will be shown:
-“Bobble,” by Jen Lame ’04, a doc about Middletown eccentrics fighting The Man.
-“Every Day is a Beautiful Day,” by Miguel Arteta ’89, a musical about a self-help program. Arteta is one of the leading figures in independent film today and the creative powerhouse behind great films like “The Good Girl” and “Chuck and Buck.”
-“Los Angels,” by Jessica Sanders ’99, a narrative set among children on the Santa Monica pier. Sanders is an Oscar-nominated documentary director, and most recently made the acclaimed “After Innocence,” about wrongfully convicted men freed after decades in prison.
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