Homecoming weekend has come and gone and it was a little bit awkward, was it not? I think so. Having your parents meet that guy who talks too much in class and you don’t really like and that gal whose unwanted pregnancy is mostly your fault. It’s some sort of uncomfortable social experiment. This is why many took refuge in the sanctuary of film. Those who came to “The Last Waltz” will attest that it was not just a film screening, it was an extravaganza. There were old people there! It was so great it almost made up for showing “Broken Flowers.” But then again nothing can make up for that. Maybe “The Brave Little Toaster.” Probably not though. Only because I have a blankie and “Toaster” prominently features a blankie character would that even be possible for me. “Broken Flowers” is dullsville.
FRIDAY (11/11): ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW. 8 p.m.
All the kids on the block have been telling me this film is all funny and heartfelt and other good stuff. I like funny. And I haven’t had my heart felt in years, not since way back when John Travolta played the Clapton guitar solo from “Layla” on my heart strings in “Phenomenon.” There are oodles of quirky characters like a performance artist and a shoe salesman who lights his hand on fire and a seven-year-old boy who cybers with much older women and a pubescent tween who acts as a lab rat for two hypersexual female peers out to undertake an oral sex experiment. Touching, in more ways than one. “Me and You” is one of those films that allows us to show “Wedding Crashers” early on so we can afford to treat you to it later. Bring me and you and everyone we know to see the film. And by everyone we know, I mean everyone you know. I don’t know anybody. I am only a theory, nay, a mere vibration that quells your desire to do anything but sit at the buffet table we call the Film Series. Yeah, so come.
SATURDAY (11/12): TO BE OR NOT TO BE. 8 p.m. FREE.
Way too often have I made fun of the Holocaust in this column. See a master of cinema do it far better than I ever could (except for perhaps when I said that for Halloween people should dress up as “The Holocaust from Schindler’s List.” Tee hee. I’m bad). Ernst Lubitsch, he of the celebrated “Lubitsch Touch,” takes a crowbar to your funny bone. He makes Hitler funny, he makes concentration camps really funny, and he makes the threat of imminent death a stellar backdrop for screwball comedy that’s a hoot.
SPECIAL MIDNIGHT SHOW: HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH.
The best musical since ever bar none. The best rock opera since ever bar none. The best songs. The best transvestites. The best botched sex change. The angriest inch since that guy you settled for last weekend. “If you’ve got some sugar for me, Sugar Daddy, bring it home”:
COME IN DRAG! THE BEST DRESSED WINS A PRIZE!
WEDNESDAY (11/16): THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED. 8 p.m.
(This film was guest Blurb-erized by Film Board Jewperstar Dan Janvey)
And now…in Mr. Janvey’s own words: I was having Pho (Vietnamese soup) with Wes alum Lana Wilson in the Capitol Hill district of the very fine city of Seattle, when she went completely ape nuts over a movie she had just seen. “The Beat that My Heart Skipped” had been playing in New York for a couple of weeks, and I just didn’t want to see it. Lana spat in my soup when I told her that. We had fought earlier in the day about the charming and lovely “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” which she despised like a canker sore. I managed to catch “The Beat that My Heart Skipped” on its final day playing in Seattle. It was an 11 a.m. screening and there were four people in the audience: me and three other losers without jobs.
The film was so friggin’ great I left the theater and hugged the usher. He looked at me and said, “I know, dude. I know.” I shook his han—inematic solidarity. One of the old women there hated it, but I think she was partially blind. So be it. And, don’t worry; Lana and I are friends again.
Romain Duris gives a rousing performance as Tom, a young man headed on the same sleazy path of his property shark father in a seedy and violent Paris until he rediscovers his amour for classical piano. While the premise sounds hokey, the film is anything but. Jaques Audiard proves himself a brilliantly controlled filmmaker—the movie is riveting, and even as you want to avert your eyes from the sometimes brutal violence you can’t.
“Beat” received very little distribution in the United States, and many of you missed it as it played limited engagements in a few cities. The Film Series is offering you a chance to catch up on one of the most exciting releases of the year. If you’ve got class, cut it. If you think you have something better to do, you don’t. Only cowards will skip this one. Be there and get punched in the face by a motion picture. It’ll be fun.
(There is a hella bangin’ trailer available on: thebeat-movie.com/)
THURSDAY (11/17): TRUE STORIES. 8pm. FREE.
Directed by David Byrne. Starring David Byrne and John Goodman.
If you shook your stuff in the aisles at “Stop Making Sense,” rev up that shaking motor for True Stories. But stay in your seats this time because, though the soundtrack is loaded with Talking Heads and David Byrne commands this ship, it is a strangely gripping film as well. Come check out some weird-ass people like the woman who won’t leave her bed, the happily married man (Spalding Gray), a wife who haven’t spoken in fifteen years, and more than fifty sets of twins! Slake your thirst for tabloid-esque, Lynch-esque, Coen-esque Southern mayhem by coming on down to the Film Series watering hole.
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