Hello Film Lovers!
This week’s Chlotrudis Monday Night Movie of the Week picked up two Awards last year at the 9th Annual Chlotrudis Awards. Join us at the Brattle Theatre, Monday, September 6 (Labor Day), 7:00 p.m. for DONNIE DARKO: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT. Jake Gyllenhaal, last year’s winner of the Best Actor Chlotrudis Award in a breakthrough performance, leads a cast of such terrific participants as Mary McDonnell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, Katharine Ross, James Duval, and the delightful Beth Grant in this cult-favorite film that’s part science fiction apocalyptic nightmare, part dead-on John Hughes-style teen flick. Writer/director Richard Kelly took home the Chlotrudis Award for Best Original Screenplay, and here’s you chance to see the film he intended to make. Don’t miss it!
DONNIE DARKO: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT
dir. Richard Kelly w/ Jake Gyllenhaal, Mary McDonnell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, Katharine Ross, and Noah Wylie, 133m
‘My original vision was always a kind of epic science fiction take but it had to be condensed to come in under two hours. Ultimately, I found it impossible to fully communicate the story in under two hours but now I don’t have a restriction on running time, hopefully audiences will be able to re-experience the film in a completely new way. With the new visual effects and new sound design I think it’s something the fans will really want to see on the big screen.’ ‘ Richard Kelly
When DONNIE DARKO was released in late 2001 it was considered a box office flop. With the events of 9/11 in the forefront of the American consciousness, the film’s stylized violence and mindtrip premise made it a difficult sell. In fact, the Brattle’s January 2002 premiere of the film locally was considered one of its more successful runs’ and we only played the film for three days! However, through extremely positive buzz and word-of-mouth, midnight screenings began to spring up across the country, DVD sales began to soar, and the cult of DONNIE DARKO was born. In light of the film becoming a contemporary cult hit and the fact that its star Jake Gyllenhaal is fast on the way to becoming a bona-fide Hollywood Star, writer/director Richard Kelly was given the rare opportunity to revisit his original film with an expanded budget and truly realize his vision of the story. The result is a director’s cut that boasts 20 minutes of additional footage, enhanced sound, more special effects and an expanded soundtrack featuring songs initially too expensive for the original release.
If you really need to see an indie film released in 2004 this weekend, there are a couple of new releases. I really want to get excited about Mira Nair’s VANITY FAIR. Nair was last in the Chlotrudis eye with the sumptuous and delightful MONSOON WEDDING. But her film interpretation of William Makepeace Thackery’s Vanity Fair looks like a rather limp Merchant/Ivory film. I hope to see it at some point, but I’m in no realy hurry, despite, or perhaps because of Reese Witherspoon in the lead role. Another new release that engenders even less enthusiasm in my film sensibilities is Vincent Gallo’s THE BROWN BUNNY. Sure, BUFFALO 66, Gallo’s first directorial effort held my interest, but everything I read and hear about THE BROWN BUNNY makes me want to see it less and less. So he gets an unsimulated, on-screen blow job from Chloe Sevigny; it sounds like the only thing that happens in the entire movie. Still, stranger things have happened, and perhaps I’ll catch this if it takes off and lasts more than a week… but I’m not holding my breath.
There are a handful of new documentaries you may want to catch. The Coolidge Corner leads the way with NINA SIMONE: LOVE SORCERESS, which was a smash earlier in the summer during the Monday night blues series. The Kendall opens a couple of docs this week, FESTIVAL EXPRESS and END OF THE CENTURY: THE STORY OF THE RAMONES, both looking at the music scene, which given my luck with music docs so far this year (DIG!; METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER) should tell me to rush right out and see them!
See you at the movies!
Playing this week, September 2 – 9.
Brattle Theatre, Cambridge
Exclusive Area Premiere!
Donnie Darko: the Director’s Cut
Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline
Hero
Vanity Fair
Nina Simone: Love Sorceress (starts Fri.)
The Corporation
Tom Dowd and the Language of Music (Thu.)
Midnites!
Anderson Comedy Live Sketch Comedy! (Fri.)
Midnites! Kung Fu Encores!
Black Voltage (Sat.)
Classic Summer Movies
JaWS (Mon.)
Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge
No Screenings… See you on September 10!
Hollywood Hits Theatre, Danvers
We Don’t Live Here Anymore (starts Fri.)
Riding Giants (starts Fri.)
Garden State
Maria Full of Grace
The Door in the Floor
De-Lovely
Napoleon Dynamite
Landmark Theatres
Kendall Square, Cambridge
Festival Express (starts Fri.)
The Brown Bunny (starts Fri.)
End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones (starts Fri.)
Open Water
Garden State
The Door in the Floor Maria Full of Grace
A Home at the End of the World
Napoleon Dynamite
Zhou Yu’s Train (Thu.)
Bang Rajan (Thu.)
Rosenstrasse (Thu.)
Embassy Cinema, Waltham
Vanity Fair (starts Fri.)
Mean Creek
We Don’t Live Here Anymore
Maria Full of Grace
Garden State
Before Sunset
Napoleon Dynamite
Loews Theatres Copley Place, Boston
Festival Express (starts Fri.)
Rosenstrasse (starts Fri.)
Mean Creek (starts Fri.)
Danny Deckchair
SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2
Fahrenheit 9/11
Uncovered: The War in Iraq
Maria Full of Grace
Riding Giants
Before Sunset
De-Lovely
Napoleon Dynamite
L. A. Twister (Thu.)
Zatoichi, The Blind Swordsman (Thu.)
Harvard Square, Cambridge
Vanity Fair (starts Fri.)
Hero
Mean Creek
We Don’t Live Here Anymore
Fahrenheit 9/11
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Spanish Cinema
My Mother Likes Women (Thu. – Sun.)
Russian Cinema: A Tribute to Lenfilm Studios
The New Babylon (Thu.)
Twenty Days without the War (Thu.)
A Long Happy Life (Sat. & Wed.)
In That Land (Sat.)
King Lear (Sun. & Thu.)
The Second Circle (Wed. & Thu.)
Irish Cinema
Goldfish Memory (Thu. – Sun., Wed. & Thu.)
New England Film Artists Present
Monkey Dance (Thu.)
The Newburyport Screening Room, Newburyport
The Story of the Weeping Camel (Thu.)
A Touch of Pink (starts Fri.)
Boston Jewish Film Festival Events
Rosenstrasse by Margarethe von Trotta at the West Newton Cinema and the Kendall Square Cinema.’
If you missed the BJFF’s sold-out sneak preview of Rosenstrasse, or if you want to encourage others to see it, you can still do so at two area theatres.
Michael R. Colford
Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film, President
The other film that’s returning to the big screen is across the river at the Brattle Theatre. It has a particular resonance with Chlotrudis members, and many of you may recall how it was cited as the top film of 2002 at the 9th Annual Chlotrudis Awards Ceremony. That film is 
THE GIRL FROM MONDAY stars “Sport’s Night’s” Sabrina Lloyd (right), Tatiana Abracos, and Hartley-alum Bill Sage. Hal has called the film “a fake sci-fi about the way we live now.”
A much celebrated young writer, actor, and director, Wadlow’s films have shown in festivals throughout the world. TOWER OF BABBLE, a short film which he wrote, directed, and acted in, won prizes at several festivals in addition to CSIF’s. This inventive film featured three radically different storylines in different genres, each using the same dialogue.
Chlotrudis Award winner Patricia Rozema joins international award-winning writer Michael Ondaatje, and independent producer and former head of United Artists, Bingham Ray as governors and creative mentors for the inaugural Talent Lab Toronto. Rozema attended the 
But before that, if you need a strong quotient of shlocky camp… or just an amazing bad movie that I love… come to the Midnight Cult Screening of Menahem Golan’s THE APPLE! I saw this movie on Cinemax in 1981, a mere youth (just starting college), a closeted gay man just taking his first tentative steps toward exploring his nature. The spectacle! The sappy songs! The sexuality! THE APPLE is a cornball story about Alphie and Bibi, two sweet, naive youths from Moose Jaw, Canada who come to America to enter a music contest. Although they are beaten, the are excited to learn that Mr. Boogalow, a diabolical recording agent who manages the winnding group, has taken a liking to them and wants to sign them to their label. As Alphie and Bibi are exposed to the dark, underbelly of the music biz, the costumes shimmer… the songs soar… and the inevitable arrival of space hippies keeps things lively. You’ve never seen anything like this… or maybe you have, but it’s still a heckuva lot of fun! Stay up late on Saturday, August 14, and join us for the midnight screening of THE APPLE at the Brattle!
Now, as many of you know, the originally planned Chlotrudis Monday Night Movie of the Week was the Philippine documentary 
SHAOLIN SOCCER is a Hong Kong film that has been in the can for quite a while. In fact, Miramax’s pathetic distribution plans has kept one of the country’s biggest films of 2001 languishing for three years. Almost makes me start another rant, but instead, let’s go see this film at the Brattle on Saturday, August 7 at 7:30 p.m. Here’s what the Brattle has to say about SHAOLIN SOCCER: “Let ‘s just put it out there ‘ Stephen Chow is hilarious!! He is one of the biggest comedy stars of Hong Kong and China ‘ if pressed one could describe him to the uninitiated as a bizarre combination of Jim Carrey, Bruce Lee, and Charlie Chaplin who often stars in Zucker-Brothers-level spoofs of popular genre films. His best-known film in the States is the kung-fu cooking flick, GOD OF COOKERY, which took the Iron Chef concept (already popular in Asia) to its ludicrously extended conclusion with master chefs competing in literal cooking battles. SHAOLIN SOCCER continues on a similar premise, but transplants the action to the soccer field. Chow plays Sing, a Shaolin monk who is trying to find a way to spread the word about kung fu. After meeting an embittered ex-player (known as The Golden Leg), he becomes convinced that the best way to do this is to become a soccer star and he dutifully gathers his Shaolin brothers to his side to form his team. Chow seamlessly melds together the silly conventions of not only the sports saga and martial arts epic but also the Spaghetti Western, WWII battlefield films and Jerry Lewis comedies, and applies them to a comic coming-of-age story. As with all of the best spoofs, SHAOLIN SOCCER both pokes fun at and pays homage to its sources ‘ what could be a better validation of the seemingly hokey story than to see in the uproarious final scene that the entire world has been gripped by kung fu fever!”
A couple other new releases this week include Zach Braff’s (TV’s “Scrubs”) GARDEN STATE, French fave Patrice Leconte’s INTIMATE STRANGERS, and the chilling 
Finally, for all of you who like to party in movie theatres (and who doesn’t) be sure to come to TRAILER TREATS at the Brattle on Thursday, August 5. Enjoy some beer and barbecue, while grooving to live music! Then catch a reel of some vintage and wacky movie trailers! It’s the perfect way to spend a hot summer night. Dress in your best trailer trash couture! Check out Brattle Executive Directors (and Chlotrudis members) Ned and Ivy at last year’s Trailer Treats in a photo taken by Brandon Constant. The festivities start at 9:30 p.m.!