To all our Film Society members and supporters,
As we are approaching this holiday of giving thanks the entire staff,
volunteer and board of Salt Lake Film Society reflects on a wonderful
season of film, community programming and film fostering to give
appreciation for you, our supporters.
_*You*_ make the difference in film in your community.
*_Y__our_* support throughout our seven-year history that has made Salt
Lake Film Society a film organization that other film society
organizations turn to for ideas and inspiration.
Quite simply.
_*We thank you*_.
And wish you and yours the most happy of holidays.
And now to our upcoming week of programming...
As a small not-for-profit we are proud to help ensure that all our staff
have the time to spend their holidays with their own families and
friends. On Thanksgiving Day we will open at 330 p.m. to accommodate
schedules. Movies open Wednesday instead of Friday this week. See you at
the theaters!
Sing with Maria....
SOUND OF MUSIC special holiday screening.
Including local cast and gift bags full of keepsakes!
Tower Theatre
Friday, December 12 at 6:00 p.m.
Saturday, December 13 at 2:30 p.m.
$15
Tickets on sale now at any SLFS venue
Proceeds to Film Society youth programs
Details:
Salt Lake Film Society is proud to present a very special holiday
screening of SOUND OF MUSIC. Complete with prizes for creative and
character costumes, gift bags, complimentary cookies & tea as well as a
pre-show with local talent. So, you know the words...come sing with us
all and bring the entire family young and old. Limited to two shows
only! All ticket proceeds go to Salt Lake Film Society's family programs
like Big Pictures Little People which brings low-income and shelter
youth to artistic family films.
Wassail & Waffles Holiday Film Series!
As we approach our holiday season with wishes and thanks, we are also
proud to announce our free programming for the forth annual Wassail &
Waffles Holiday Film Series. This program, now being expanded through a
collaboration with SLC Film Center includes repertory screenings, family
programming, a film festival week, and a very special free screening of
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve. Details are
below this weeks schedule in this email.
This Week!
Starting Tomorrow 11/26
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
A welcome antidote to the trifling fare that's filling up today's
theaters and bookshelves, this highly-acclaimed new film from Sweden
challenges the modern blueprint of the "vampire story".
A CHRISTMAS TALE
Starring Catherine Deneuve
**** The New York Times- "A movie that is almost indecently satisfying
and at the same time elusive, at once intellectually lofty -- marked by
allusions to Emerson, Shakespeare and Seamus Heaney as well as Nietzsche
-- and as earthy as the passionate provincial family that is its heart
and cosmos and reason for being."
Ticket Details
Wassail & Waffles Holiday Film Series
Dec. 10
WHAT WOULD JESUS BUY?
Free screening
Sorenson Unity Center
Tickets available day of show
Dec. 12-18
AZUR & ASMAR
JOYEUX NOEL
TOKYO GODFATHERS
Tower Theater
$10 for all three films or regular admission for one.
Dec. 13
MUPPETS CHRISTMAS CAROL
Saturday
Free screening
Broadway Centre Cinemas
10:00 a.m.
Tickets available day of show.
Bring the kids to build a waffle for breakfast and to meet Santa before
the screening.
This has sold out for three years running, so arrive early as it is
first-come first-served.
and...
Dec. 24 - 3:00 p.m.
Dec. 25 - 7:30 p.m.
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
Free Screenings
This too has sold out for years. Please arrive early first-come
first-served.
Held Over...
SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK **** New York Times "To say that Charlie Kaufman's
Synecdoche, New York is one of the best films of the year or even one
closest to my heart is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition
that I might as well pack it in right now."
THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY The one movie this fall that will put a smile on your face!
RACHEL GETTING MARRIED **** Roger Ebert " 'Rachel Getting Married' is
like the theme music for an evolving new age."
Moving to the Tower...
ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO
RELIGULOUS
============================================================
QUICK LOOK at SHOWTIMES -
THIS WEEK
WED 11/26 - THU 12/4
Broadway
A Christmas Tale 01:10*, 4:10, 7:15
Let The Right One In 01:10*, 4:15, 7:10, 9:40
Rachel Getting Married 01:15*, 4:05, 7:05**, 9:25 ** NO 7:05 SHOW THURS 12/4
Synecdoche, New York 01:00*, 4:00, 7:00, 9:30
Happy-Go-Lucky 01:05*, 4:00, 7:05, 9:35
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The 01:20*, 3:20*, 5:20, 7:20, 9:20
* Thanksgiving Day THU 11/27, doors open at 3:30 so no early shows on
that day
Tower Theatre
Zack and Miri Make A Porno (2:30 FRI thru SUN only), 9:30
Religulous 4:30, 7:00
MIDNIGHT FILMS will return with special
Summer of 35mm programming (email us your requests!)
Announced in April!
============================================================
TELL ME MORE...PLEASE!
(all star ratings are based on 4 star rating systems)
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
Directed by: Tomas Alfredson . Written by: John Ajvide Lindqvist .
Starring: Kare Hedebrant, and Lina Leandersson
A fragile, anxious boy, 12-year-old Oskar is regularly bullied by his
stronger classmates but never strikes back. The lonely boy's wish for a
friend seems to come true when he meets Eli, also 12, who moves in next
door to him with her father. A pale, serious young girl, she only comes
out at night and doesn't seem affected by the freezing temperatures.
Coinciding with Eli's arrival is a series of inexplicable disappearances
and murders. One man is found tied to a tree, another frozen in the
lake, a woman bitten in the neck. Blood seems to be the common
denominator. But by now a subtle romance has blossomed between Oskar and
Eli, and she gives him the strength to fight back against his aggressors.
**** Washington Post
In the basest of terms, a horror flick. But it's also a spectacularly
moving and elegant movie, and to dismiss it into genre-hood, to mentally
stuff it into the horror pigeonhole, is to overlook a remarkable film.
**** Chicago Tribune
This is one of the real finds of 2008.
***1/2 Roger Ebert
The young actors are powerful in draining roles. We care for them more
than they care for themselves. Alfredson's palette is so drained of warm
colors that even fresh blood is black.
A CHRISTMAS TALE
Written and directed by: Arnaud Desplechin . Starring: Catherine
Deneuve, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Anne Consigny, Hippolyte Girardot, and
Emile Berling
Abel and Junon had two children, Joseph and Elizabeth. Victim of a rare
genetic condition, Joseph's only hope was a bone marrow transplant. As
they and Elizabeth were incompatible, his parents conceived a third
child in the hope of saving their son. But little Henri too was unable
to help his brother, and Joseph died at the age of seven. The Vuillard
family has never recovered. Many years have passed, and family
relationships are more strained than ever. In particular, those between
Elizabeth, authoritarian head of the family and Henri, a cynical drop
out who divides his time between women and drink. After a violent
argument, Elizabeth banishes her feckless brother, cutting him off from
his nephew, her son Paul - a tortured adolescent beset by serious mental
problems. Masterfully directed and acted, by turns savage, bittersweet,
darkly comic and unbearably moving, A Christmas Tale shows
internationally acclaimed Desplechin at the height of his powers.
**** The New York Times
A movie that is almost indecently satisfying and at the same time
elusive, at once intellectually lofty -- marked by allusions to Emerson,
Shakespeare and Seamus Heaney as well as Nietzsche -- and as earthy as
the passionate provincial family that is its heart and cosmos and reason
for being.
**** Los Angeles Times
A captivating portrait of the most gorgeously fractious dysfunctional
family.
**** Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The most emotionally rich and cinematically thrilling film I've seen all
year, a film that pulses with human life in all its terrible and
beautiful irrationality.
**** Wall Street Journal
Density of detail and intensity of experience are the twin distinctions
of A Christmas Tale, a long, improbably funny and very beautiful film.
THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS
Written and directed by: Mark Herman . Starring: David Thewlis, Vera
Farmiga, Rupert Friend, Asa Butterfield, and Jack Scalon
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a powerful fictional story that offers
a unique perspective on how prejudice, hatred and violence affect
innocent people, particularly children, during wartime. Through the eyes
of an eight-year-old boy largely shielded from the reality of World War
II, we witness a forbidden friendship that forms between Bruno, the son
of Nazi commandant, and Shmuel, a Jewish boy held captive in a
concentration camp. Though the two are separated physically by a barbed
wire fence, their lives become inescapably intertwined. The imagined
story of Bruno and Shmuel sheds light on the brutality, senselessness
and devastating consequences of war from an unusual point of view.
Together, their tragic journey helps recall the millions of innocent
victims of the Holocaust.
**** Christian Science Monitor
And yet the great conundrum of the Holocaust is that it was perpetrated
by human beings, not monsters. Few movies have rendered this puzzle so
powerfully.
***1/2 Roger Ebert
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is not only about Germany during the war,
although the story it tells is heartbreaking in more than one way.
SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK
Written and directed by: Charlie Kaufman . Starring: Philip Seymour
Hoffman, Dianne Wiest, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Michelle
Williams, Emily Watson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Hope Davis, and Tom Noonan
Theater director Caden Cotard is mounting a new play. His life catering
to suburban blue-hairs at the local regional theater in Schenectady, New
York is looking bleak. His wife Adele has left him to pursue her
painting in Berlin, taking their young daughter Olive with her. His
therapist, Madeleine Gravis, is better at plugging her best-seller than
she is at counseling him. A new relationship with the alluringly candid
Hazel has prematurely run aground. And a mysterious condition is
systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by
one. Worried about the transience of his life, he leaves his home
behind. He gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in New York City,
hoping to create a work of brutal honesty. He directs them in a
celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their
constructed lives in a growing mockup of the city outside.
**** The New York Times
To say that Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York is one of the best
films of the year or even one closest to my heart is such a pathetic
response to its soaring ambition that I might as well pack it in right now.
**** Roger Ebert
I think you have to see Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York twice. I
watched it the first time and knew it was a great film and that I had
not mastered it. The second time because I needed to. The third time
because I will want to.
**** Time
No film with an ambition this large, and achievement this impressive,
can be anything but exhilarating, a vital affirmation of the creative
process.
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
Written and directed by Mike Leigh . Starring: Sally Hawkins, Alexis
Zegerman, Andrea Riseborough, Samuel Roukin, Sinead Matthews, Kate
O'Flynn, Sarah Niles, and Eddie Marsan
Just how hard is it to be happy? Poppy is an irrepressibly free-spirited
school teacher who brings an infectious laugh and an unsinkable sense of
optimism to every situation she encounters, offering us a touching,
truthful and deeply life-affirming exploration of one of the most
mysterious and often the most elusive of all human qualities: happiness.
Poppy's ability to maintain her perspective is tested as the story
begins and her commuter bike is stolen. However, she enthusiastically
signs up for driving lessons with Scott, who turns out to be her nemesis
– a fuming, uptight cynic. As the tension of their weekly lessons
builds, Poppy encounters even more challenges to her positive state of
mind: a fiery flamenco instructor, her bitter pregnant sister, a
troubled homeless man and a young bully in her class, not to mention
that she has also thrown out her back. How this affects not only Poppy's
world view but also the outlook of those around her begs the question
"glass half full or half empty"?
**** Wall Street Journal
I thought "Topsy-Turvy" was perfection, a spirited evocation of the
partnership of Gilbert and Sullivan, plus a blithely definitive
depiction of the artistic process. Happy-Go-Lucky is perfection too,
assuming you go along with its leisurely pace, which I did quite happily.
**** Washington Post
Won't break your heart -- it will make it soar.
**** Roger Ebert
This is Mike Leigh's funniest film since "Life Is Sweet" (1991). Of
course he hasn't ever made a completely funny film, and Happy-Go-Lucky
has scenes that are not funny, not at all.
**** Baltimore Sun
British director Mike Leigh has made the first great comedy for our new
depression.
RACHEL GETTING MARRIED
Directed by: Jonathan Demme . Written by: Jenny Lumet . Starring: Anne
Hathaway, Bill Irwin, Anna Deavere Smith, and Debra Winger
When Kym returns to the Buchman family home for the wedding of her
sister Rachel, she brings a long history of personal crisis, family
conflict and tragedy along with her. The wedding couple’s abundant party
of friends and relations have gathered for a joyful weekend of feasting,
music and love, but Kym—with her biting one-liners and flair for
bombshell drama—is a catalyst for long-simmering tensions in the family
dynamic.
**** Roger Ebert
A friend asked: "Wouldn't you love to attend a wedding like that?" In a
way, I felt I had. Yes, I began to feel absorbed in the experience. A
few movies can do that, can slip you out of your mind and into theirs.
**** The New York Times
It’s a small movie, and in some ways a very sad one, but it has an
undeniable and authentic vitality, an exuberance of spirit, that feels
welcome and rare.
**** New York Magazine
I've never seen a movie with this mixture of fullness and desolation.
Rachel Getting Married is a masterpiece.
**** Entertainment Weekly
A triumph -- Demme's finest work since "The Silence of the Lambs," and a
movie that tingles with life.
ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO
Written and directed by: Kevin Smith . Starring: Seth Rogen, Elizabeth
Banks, Craig Robinson, Traci Lords, Katie Morgan, Ricky Mabe, Jeff
Anderson, and Jason Mewes
Lifelong friends and roommates Zack and Miri are facing hard times and a
mountain of debt. When the electricity and plumbing get cut off, they
seize upon the idea of making a homegrown porno movie for some quick
cash, enlisting the help of their friends. The two vow that having sex
will not ruin their friendship. But as filming begins, what started out
as a business proposition between friends turns into something much more.
*** Variety
...funny and very energetic.
*** Hollywood Reporter
At 38, Kevin Smith is still making foul-mouthed adolescent comedies, but
a bit of adult sweetness and romance now creeps in.
RELIGULOUS
Directed by: Larry Charles . Starring: Bill Maher, Jose Luis De Jesus
Miranda, Steve Berg, and Andrew Newberg
Religulous follows political humorist and author Bill Maher as he
travels around the globe interviewing people about God and religion.
Known for his astute analytical skills, irreverent wit and commitment to
never pulling a punch, Maher brings his characteristic honesty to an
unusual spiritual journey.
*** 1/2 Roger Ebert
You may very well hate it, but at least you've been informed. Perhaps
you could enjoy the material about other religions, and tune out when
yours is being discussed. That's only human nature.
***1/2 Baltimore Sun
The results are often as surprising as they are funny.
*** Variety
To the film's credit, Maher never engages in Michael Moore-style gotcha
tactics, but rather asks questions that raise more questions, in the
form of a Socratic dialogue. To believers expecting a blind hatchet job,
this will prove both thought-provoking and a bit disarming; skeptics may
be surprised (as Maher is) by the occasionally smart replies to his queries.
=============================================================
FILMS TO COME
In no particular release order
I'VE LOVED YOU SO LONG
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
MILK
REPO: THE GENETIC OPERA
THE WRESTLER
BATTLE IN SEATTLE
JCVD
THE READER
DOUBT
And many more....
Our staff here at the Salt Lake Film Society thanks all our supporters.
SLFS takes great care in hiring a staff that has a film history or
knowledge, so feel free to talk with any staff member about up coming
releases and our video collection at the Tower Theatre. They are a
wealth of knowledge and I'm happy to take all e-mail correspondence.
If you would like to volunteer for the Film Society events and earn
passes, please contact Amy Beth Leber at 801-746-0037
We thank you for your continuing support.
Tori Baker
Executive Director
Salt Lake Film Society...film festival all year long!
We do not sell any personal lists or information to any third
party...ever! If you would like to be removed from this list, please
reply to this e-mail. If you could also let us know why we lost you, we
can better serve our community.
Salt Lake Film Society thanks Xmission for their donation of services.
Salt Lake Film Society thanks Zoo Arts and Parks and SL County.
--
Tori Baker
Executive Director
Salt Lake Film Society
tori_baker@???
(801) 364-1088
