On Wednesday, September 3rd, The Aero Theater on Montana will be doing a sneak peak of Aaron Eckhart, Toni Collette, Maria Bello, Peter Macdissi and Summer Bishi’s new movie, Towelhead. The movie, adapted from Alicia Erian’s novel, was made for the screen and directed by oscar-winning writer Alan Ball (American Beauty and “Six Feet Under”).

The film is dark and shockingly funny story about a 13-year-old, Arab-American girl named Jasira who is finding her way through adolsescnese. If you want to see Aason Echhart play someone two-faced, this is where he really does it. So creepy! Not to mention the amazing actors that are in this cast.

So if you’re like me and can’t wait for September 12th, then come to the screening on September 3rd at 7:30 at the Aero.

• Where: The Areo Theater – 1328 Montana Ave, Santa Monica (Map)
• How Much: $7 for Members, $8 for Students/Seniors, $10 for General Admission – Buy Now before they sell out!

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Céline and Julie Go Boating is the best-known film by Cahiers du cinéma alumnus Jacques Rivette, master of slender, ghostly narratives and serious cinematic high-jinks (his best film is 12½ hours long and doesn’t really have a story..) This one does, although it’s unusual to read an introductory title card “Sometimes it begins like this..” We see Julie first, with giant curly red hair and big round spectacles; she’s reading a book on magic on a slow afternoon in the park when as it were a magical gust of wind blows in a gangly sprite, all flowing boa and skirt and scarf trotting by. It’s Céline. She drops a handkerchief and Julie follows. The hunt is on and the games begin, prowling all over Paris and checking each other out like a pair of cats.

Céline is a teller of tall tales it turns out, one of which is having been chased from a house where she worked, on the wonderfully named Rue du Nadir des Pommes. It’s an imposing pile in a bit of acreage, covered in ivy behind a wall, and Julie pays it a visit. Having entered the house, one is ejected sometime later remembering nothing of the visit. Julie finds a boiled sweet on her tongue and replacing it there later, remembers what went on.

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Ever watch a film and wonder what the Director was thinking about that show, what they think about the end result, or how in the hell they made that happen? Directors commentary on a DVD is one thing, having them sit in a room with you where you got to ask them questions is another. Director Nicholas Meyer of Time After Time and Director Jon Favreau of Iron Man will be going just that next Friday and Saturday at the Aero Theater on Montana.

Friday, September 5 – 7:30 PM -Director Nicholas Meyer will comment on the making of Time After Time while it screens.

• TIME AFTER TIME, 1979, Warner Bros. One of his most popular and engaging films finds Malcolm McDowell as Victorian era writer H.G. Wells, time-traveling to contemporary San Francisco in pursuit of Jack the Ripper (David Warner). He finds help and romance from shy modern girl Mary Steenburgen.
  

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• Spider-Man 4 auctions off meet and greet with potential cast – Stand Up To Cancer in partnership with Sony is auctioning off a visit to the set of the future Spider-Man 4, along with a meet and greet with the cast, a walk-on/extra role and designer outfits to be worn at the premiere ( p.s. you get to keep the outfits). The current bid is at $5,100. If you’re interested, it might be time to break your piggy bank.
• Facebook movie? – Aaron Sorkin, creator of “The West Wing” is in negotiations to write an untitled film project about the founders of Facebook, the popular social networking site that we’ve all come to know and love, that Scott Rudin will produce for Columbia. If you think it’s too good to be true, head on over to Sorkin’s newly created Facebook profile. “I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I’ve started this page,” Sorkin said.  “Actually it was started by my researcher, Ian Reichbach, because my grandmother has more Internet savvy than I do and she’s been dead for 33 years.”

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The Aero:

• Fri 29 at 7.30: Patti Smith: Dream of Life (2008)

Patti Smith is now an American rock institution and so naturally she has a documentary. I feel a bit churlish to have gone off her since she stopped sounding like an androgynous angry young thing (right before the Springsteen collaboration) but even if her songs no longer cut like a rusty razor, she’s still a damned cool high priestess of punk. Made over the last twelve years, this promises to be a revealing portrait of the abiding poet and musician.

Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre:

• Fri 29 at 7.30: Ratcatcher (1999)

A lovely downbeat poem of a film, the first feature from Scottish film-maker Lynne Ramsey, who’s gotten criminally little work since. Once again a Scot shows how to make something captivating and moving from the austere reworking of personal reminiscence, economic deprivation, familial discord and the blighted state of the 1970s nation, all with lovely semi-abstract black and white photography.

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The good thing is last week had so many great releases you could not have seen them all yet! (I’m working on my back-handed compliments, how is it going?) Although this week may look like slim pickings I have a feeling there are goodies that have yet to be exploited.

I would recommend Traitor, it definitely stands out among the rest as a solid film with two amazing actors leading it (featured right). Or maybe you prefer a western for those who love kung foo? Then check out Sukiyaki Western Django. There was no way Tarantino could resist that. Ballet Shoes has Emma Watson (Aka Hermione) and was released in 2007 as a TV film which makes me a bit nervous, but it definitely has potential! As for Babylon A.D., Disaster Movie, and College, I know they have built in audiences that will love them, they’re just not quite my thing.

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This is a noir-tinged melodrama from the Japanese post-war master, Kurosawa Akira. Takeshi Shimura plays alcoholic Doctor Sanada, living and working in a slum area of Tokyo dominated by a yakuza-run market district and a noxious bubbling swamp. One humid mosquito-ridden night, young gangster Matsunaga comes in to have a hand wound repaired; Sanada has no trouble diagnosing TB, despite the gangster’s denials. The advance of the disease and the return of the old neighborhood boss from jail spell trouble for Matsunaga’s career.

This was Kurosawa’s eighth film and the first in which he felt that his own style really emerged, and the hand of the master is evident in the superb evocation of the sweltering, festering summer heat around the swamp (even though the film was shot in winter); the integral use of music to heighten both dramatic tension within scenes and sense of character; the photography filled with ambiguous shadows; his ability to elicit superb performances that bring so much more to the relationships between characters than the script alone could manage; and a morally-anchored protagonist who is nonetheless an irascible old grouch.

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• ‘Professional’ actor Jean Reno suffers heart attack – French actor Jean Reno, who was vacationing in St. Bart’s with his wife, was taken to intensive care after suffering a heart attack on Wednesday. Reno, who is 60-years-old, is widely known for his role in “The Professional” opposite Natalie Portman, Mission: Impossible, Pink Panther and The Da Vinci Code. The couple had been staying at the home of French singer Johnny Hallyday.
• For better or worse, Poltergeist is getting remade – Brace yourselves, Hollywood is getting ready to remake (or ruin) yet another classic. MGM has plans to remake “Poltergeist” in hopes of making it a blockbuster hit that will bring in the big bucks. Juliet Snowden and Stiles White have been commissioned to write the script. No director or cast or release date for that matter has been announced. Let’s hope they never get announced.
• Ben Affleck finds work again – Affleck, who is expecting his second child with actress Jennifer Garner has signed on to play an ambulance-chasing attorney in “Extract,” a new film in the works by Office Space genius Mike Judge. Affleck’s last roles were in 2006, where he starred in “Hollywoodland” and “Smokin’ Aces.” Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis and Clifton Collins Jr. are set to co-star with Affleck in this comedy, which is set to be a workplace comedy with a twist – this time around, the audience might be rooting for the management, a step back from “Office Space.”

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The Aero:

• Thu 21 at 7.30: The Last Picture Show (1971)

Peter Bogdanovich may have gone seriously off the boil with a series of movies too in love with his own film history scholarship or the belief that Ryan O’Neal was a good actor, but his reputation was justifiably made with this elegy for a time when the movie theatre was a gathering place for communal dreams, and an escape from the harsh realities of the world outside. As such, he channels the spirit of his beloved John Ford through a coming-of-age story that coincides with the passing of an era, set in small-town ’50s Texas; that it manages to be touching and unselfconscious is thanks mainly to direction that gives ample room to a fantastic ensemble cast including young Jeff Bridges and Timothy Bottoms, grizzled Ben Johnson, vacuous Cybill Shepherd (well-cast), and roles that actually provide some substance for Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Brennan and the wonderful, desperate Cloris Leachman.

• Fri 22 at approx.10.45: A Boy And His Dog (1975)

A post-apocalyptic fable starring young Don Johnson and a talking dog. That seems to say it all really (plus it’s pretty funny).

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