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Obit

FINAL WEEKEND.
93% Fresh Rating on rottentomatoes.com

It’s a shame no one wants to talk to them at parties, because obituary writers are a surprisingly funny bunch!

Ten hours before newspapers hit neighborhood doorsteps — and these days, ten minutes before news hits the web — an obit writer is racing against deadline to sum up a long and newsworthy life in under 1000 words.

The details of these lives are then deposited into the cultural memory amid the daily beat of war, politics, and football scores.

Obit. is the first documentary to explore the world of these writers and their subjects, focusing on the legendary team at The New York Times, who approach their daily work with journalistic rigor and narrative flair.

Going beyond the byline and into the minds of those chronicling life after death on the freshly inked front lines of history, the film invites some of the most essential questions we ask ourselves about life, memory, and the inevitable passage of time.

What do we choose to remember? What never dies?

Like Crazy (La pazza gioia)

Beatrice is a motor-mouthed fantasist, a self-styled billionaire countess who likes to believe she’s on intimate terms with world leaders. Donatella is a tattooed introvert, a fragile young woman locked in her own mystery.

They are both patients at the Villa Biondi, a progressive but secure psychiatric clinic.

Paolo Virzì’s new film tells the story of the unpredictable and moving friendship that develops between the two women as they flee the mental institution in search of love and happiness in the open-air nuthouse –  the world of sane people.

RISK

Laura Poitras, Academy Award winning director of CITIZENFOUR, has created her most personal and intimate film to date. Filmed over six years, RISK is a complex and volatile character study that collides with a high stakes election year and its controversial aftermath.

Cornered in a tiny building for half a decade, Julian Assange is undeterred even as the legal jeopardy he faces threatens to undermine the organization he leads and fracture the movement he inspired. Capturing this story with unprecedented access, Poitras finds herself caught between the motives and contradictions of Assange and his inner circle.

In a new world order where a single keystroke can alter history, RISK is a portrait of power, betrayal, truth, and sacrifice. Executive Produced by Sam Esmail, creator of Mr. Robot.

Science on Screen: How to Regulate a Robot?

Science on Screen® features creative pairings of current, classic, cult, and documentary films with lively introductions by notable figures from the world of science, technology, and medicine.

The film is Ex Machina, the 2014 science fiction/drama/mystery from director Alex Garland, the writer of 28 Days Later and Sunshine.

Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson), a programmer at an internet-search giant, wins a competition to spend a week at the private mountain estate of the company’s brilliant and reclusive CEO, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac). Upon his arrival, Caleb learns that Nathan has chosen him to be the human component in a Turing Test–charging him with evaluating the capabilities, and ultimately the consciousness, of Nathan’s latest experiment in artificial intelligence. That experiment is Ava (Alicia Vikander), a breathtaking A.I. whose emotional intelligence proves more sophisticated–and more deceptive–than the two men could have imagined.

Pre-film presentation:  New challenges lie ahead as we invite robots into our homes. Do we owe rights and protections to the robots? Who is liable if a robot injures us? And is there a future for privacy in a world where robots and other appliances are always listening?

About the Speaker: BJ Ard’s research focuses on the law’s response to technological change, with particular interests in intellectual property, privacy, and e-commerce. He is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at Yale Law School and Resident Fellow at the Yale Information Society Project. This fall he will join the faculty at the University of Arizona.

Science on Screen

Tomorrow

In 2012 Nature published a study led by more than 20 researchers from the top scientific institutions in the world predicting that humankind could disappear between 2040 and 2100. It also said that it could be avoided by drastically changing our way of life and take appropriate measures.

Shortly after giving birth to her first child, French actress and director Mélanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds) became increasingly aware of the dangers and the state of urgency that her son will face in the future. Along with friend and activist Cyril Dion and their crew, she decided to travel the world in search of solutions that can help save the next generations. The result is Tomorrow, an inspiring documentary that presents concrete solutions implemented throughout the world by hundred of communities.

From the US to the UK and through Finland and India, together they traveled to 10 countries to visit permaculture farms, urban agriculture projects and community-owned renewable initiatives to highlight people making a difference in the fields of food, energy, finance, democracy, and education.

Their common ideas and examples make Tomorrow one of the most essential and unexpectedly inspirational viewing experiences of our time.

TODAY, we sometimes feel powerless in front of the various crises of our times.

TODAY, we know that answers lie in a wide mobilization of the human race. Over the course of a century, our dream of progress commonly called “the American Dream”, fundamentally changed the way we live and continues to inspire many developing countries. We are now aware of the setbacks and limits of such development policies. We urgently need to focus our efforts on changing our dreams before something irreversible happens to our planet.

TODAY, we need a new direction, objective… A new dream! The documentary Tomorrow sets out to showcase alternative and creative ways of viewing agriculture, economics, energy and education. It offers constructive solutions to act on a local level to make a difference on a global level. So far, no other documentary has gone down such an optimistic road…

TOMORROW is not just a film, it is the beginning of a movement seeking to encourage local communities around the world to change the way they live for the sake of our planet.

Start small to grow big, and write a new story for the generations to come.

Tomorrow is also a book: http://www.chelseagreen.com/tomorrow

Science on Screen: Is Laughter the Best Medicine?

Experience the unique combination of a feature film and a relevant talk from a notable local figure in science.

Pre-film presentation: “Is Laughter the Best Medicine?” by Sara Tabtabai, M.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine, Pat and Jim Calhoun Cardiology Center, UConn Health.  Dr. Tabtabai will discuss the effects of laughter on the cardiovascular system and overall health as well as the proven negative effects of emotional stress on cardiac function.

About the Speaker
Dr. Sara Tabtabai is a graduate of Northeastern University and the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. She trained in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She then completed a fellowship in cardiovascular disease followed by an advanced clinical and research fellowship in heart failure and transplantation at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

The film is 3 Idiots, a 2009 comedy from Director Rajkumar Hirani, one of the most successful Indian films of all time.
Cast: Aamir Khan, Javed Jaffrey, Sharman Joshi, R. Madhavan

“Years after graduating from engineering school, Farhan (Madhavan) and Raju (Joshi) go off in search of their disappeared best friend and classmate, Rancho (Khan). The trio — the three idiots of the title — give the movie all the elements that make a Bollywood film so great to watch: a heavy dose of comedy, complex father-son relationships and class-defying friendships…No wonder it’s one of Bollywood’s highest-grossing films of all time.” – Miral Sattar, TIME Magazine

Science on Screen® is a film series that features “creative pairings of classic, cult, and documentary films with lively introductions by notable figures from the world of science, technology, and medicine.” Real Art Ways was one of the eight original theaters chosen nationally to curate our own series.

Science on Screen® is an initiative of the COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE. With major support from the ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION

Science on Screen

The General – with Live Musical Accompaniment

See a classic silent film with a captivating live original score by cellist Gideon Freudmann. This is a memorable way for the whole family to experience one of the greatest films of all time.

One of the most revered comedies of the silent era, this film finds hapless Southern railroad engineer Johnny Gray (Buster Keaton) facing off against Union soldiers during the American Civil War.

Numerous comic action scenes highlight Keaton’s boundless wit and dexterity. Dangerous physical stunts were part of many of Keaton’s films and The General is no exception. He jumps from the engine to a tender to a boxcar, rides the cow-catcher of the train while holding a railroad tie, he runs along the train car roof and sits on the coupling rods.

Gideon Freudmann’s electric cello score is truly distinctive, capturing the energy and poignancy of this Civil War comedy and adding rhythm, sound effects, suspense and humor. Silent film and live music is a very special experience, for adults and kids alike.

“Truly a musical innovator, cellist Gideon Freudmann is a musician with a tremendously creative, genre-bending outlook toward his compositions… Part classical, part Beatle-esque pop, part pickin’ and grinnin’.” – The Valley Advocate

“Freudmann sounds like nothing less than a cutting-edge, avant-garde musician, whose genre-bending exploits combine aspects of performance art, new-classical, psychedelia and comedy, a sort of cross between Kronos Quartet and Leo Kottke.” – Berkshire Eagle

About Gideon Freudmann
Innovative cellist/composer Gideon Freudmann’s original scores for silent films incorporate classical, jazz, folk, and world music elements. Working with an electric cello and real-time electronic effects, he creates elaborate sound textures, haunting melodies, and driving rhythms that beautifully enhance and energize the imagery of silent films.
More at his website.

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City

In 1960 Jane Jacobs’s book The Death and Life of Great American Cities sent shockwaves through the architecture and planning worlds, with its exploration of the consequences of modern planners’ and architects’ reconfiguration of cities.

Jacobs was also an activist, who was involved in many fights in mid-century New York, to stop “master builder” Robert Moses from running roughshod over the city.

This film retraces the battles for the city as personified by Jacobs and Moses, as urbanization moves to the very front of the global agenda.

Many of the clues for formulating solutions to the dizzying array of urban issues can be found in Jacobs’s prescient text, and a close second look at her thinking and writing about cities is very much in order.

This film sets out to examine the city of today though the lens of one of its greatest champions.


SPECIAL EVENT – Tuesday, May 9, after the 6:30 PM screening.

Panel Discussion
“Jane Jacobs Today: Hartford & Beyond”
The panel will explore how/why Hartford’s urban renewal projects have changed and how this affects us today. 

Moderator

Sara Bronin – Thomas F. Gallivan Chair in Real Property Law and Faculty Director, Center for Energy and Environmental Law at the University of Connecticut. Her research examines property, land use, historic preservation, green building, and renewable energy law.

Panel Members

Xiangming Chen – Dean and Director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Global Urban Studies and Sociology at Trinity College

Norman W. Garrick – Associate Professor at University of Connecticut. His research focuses on sustainable transportation, urban planning, transit planning, bicyclist and pedestrian facility design and planning and urban street networks, urban streets and shared spaces.

Tyler Smith, FAIA – urban and historic preservation architect, Managing Principal of Smith Edwards McCoy Architects

Renee Tribert – Project Manager: Making Places: Connecticut Mills Survey at Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation


A Quiet Passion

Cynthia Nixon delivers a triumphant performance as Emily Dickinson as she personifies the wit, intellectual independence and pathos of the poet whose genius only came to be recognized after her death.

Director Terence Davies (House of MirthThe Deep Blue Sea) exquisitely evokes Dickinson’s deep attachment to her close knit family along with the manners, mores and spiritual convictions of her time that she struggled with and transcended in her poetry.

NOTE that the Cinema will be closed on Wednesday, May 3 and will reopen on Thursday, May 4.

Frantz

Set in Germany and France in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, (1914-1918), Frantz recalls the mourning period that follows great national tragedies as seen through the eyes of the war’s “lost generation”: Anna (21 year-old Paula Beer in a breakthrough performance), a bereft young German woman whose fiancé, Frantz, was killed during trench warfare, and Adrien (Pierre Niney, Yves Saint Laurent), a French veteran of the war who shows up mysteriously in her town, placing flowers on Frantz’s grave.

Adrien’s presence is met with resistance by the small community still reeling from Germany’s defeat, yet Anna gradually gets closer to the handsome and melancholy young man, as she learns of his deep friendship with Frantz, conjured up in evocative flashbacks.

What follows is a surprising exploration of how Ozon’s characters’ wrestle with their conflicting feelings – survivor’s guilt, anger at one’s losses, the overriding desire for happiness despite everything that has come before, and the longing for sexual, romantic and familial attachments.

Ozon drew his inspiration from a post-WWI play by Maurice Rostand that inspired the 1932 film adaption by Ernst Lubitsch under the title Broken Lullaby.

1984 – National Screening Day

On April 4, 2017, almost 90 art house movie theatres across the country in 79 cities and in 34 states, plus one location in Canada, will be participating collectively in a NATIONAL EVENT DAY screening of the 80’s movie 1984 starring John Hurt, who sadly died last month.

This date was chosen because it’s the day George Orwell’s protagonist Winston Smith begins rebelling against his oppressive government by keeping a forbidden diary. These theaters owners also strongly believe in supporting the National Endowment for the Arts and see any attempt to scuttle that program as an attack on free speech and creative expression through entertainment. This event provides a chance for communities around the country to show their unity and have their voices heard.

Orwell’s novel begins with the sentence, “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Less than one month into the new presidential administration, theater owners collectively believe the clock is already striking thirteen. Orwell’s portrait of a government that manufactures their own facts, demands total obedience, and demonizes foreign enemies, has never been timelier.

The endeavor encourages theaters to take a stand for our most basic values: freedom of speech, respect for our fellow human beings, and the simple truth that there are no such things as ‘alternative facts.’ By doing what they do best – showing a movie – the goal is that cinemas can initiate a much-needed community conversation at a time when the existence of facts, and basic human rights are under attack.

Through nationwide participation and strength in numbers, these screenings are intended to galvanize people at the crossroads of cinema and community, and bring us together to foster communication and resistance against current efforts to undermine the most basic tenets of our society.

Deconstructing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is one of the most influential albums of our time. Rolling Stone described it as “the most important rock & roll album ever made, an unsurpassed adventure in concept, sound, songwriting, cover art and studio technology by the greatest rock & roll group of all time.”

In Deconstructing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, composer, musician, and Beatles expert Scott Freiman looks at Sgt. Pepper from multiple angles, exploring the history behind the music. Mr. Freiman conducts an educational journey into the creative process of The Beatles performances and recording sessions. You are guaranteed to leave amazed at The Beatles’ innovation in the studio and have a newfound appreciation for the talents of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr.

On the Radio
Scott Freiman, along with music critic Steve Metcalf, appeared on the Colin McEnroe Show on WNPR on Tuesday, April 4. They discussed Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Band and its musical and cultural impact. Listen to the show at this link.

My Life as a Zucchini

2017 Academy Award Nominee, Best Animated Feature

“Zucchini” is befriended by a police officer, Raymond, who accompanies him to his new foster home, filled with other orphans his age.

At first he struggles to find his place in this strange environment. But with Raymond’s help and his newfound friends, Zucchini eventually learns to trust and love, as he searches for a new family of his own.

From its debut in Director’s Fortnight at Cannes to winning audience awards at festivals around the world, this accomplished debut feature from director Claude Barras, based on a script from acclaimed writer/director Céline Sciamma (GirlhoodTomboy), was nominated for both an Academy Award® and Golden Globe Award® for Best Animated Feature.

Brought to life through memorable character designs and expressive stop-motion animation, the story soars with laughter, sorrow, and joy, and stands as a testament to the resilience of the human heart.

Voices by Will Forte, Nick Offerman, Ellen Page, and Amy Sedaris.

Film 101: The Purple Rose of Cairo

Woody Allen blurs the the boundaries between the real and unreal in this unique comic fantasy.

The scene is a small town in the mid-1930s. Trapped in a dead-end job and an abusive marriage, Cecelia (Mia Farrow) regularly seeks refuge in the local movie house. She becomes so enraptured by the latest attraction, an RKO screwball comedy called The Purple Rose of Cairo, that she returns to the theatre day after day.

During one of these visits, the film’s main character Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), pauses in his dialogue, turns towards the audience, and says to Cecelia, “My God, how you must love this picture.” Then he climbs out of the movie, much to the consternation of the rest of the audience and the other characters on screen.

Liberated from his customary black-and-white environs, he accompanies Cecelia on a tour of the town, eventually falling in love with her. Meanwhile, the other Purple Rose characters, unable to proceed with the film, carry on a discussion with themselves.

Desperately, the RKO executives seek out Gil Shepherd, the actor who played the hero of Purple Rose. Shepherd (also played by Daniels), is sent to Cecelia’s hometown to see if he can repair the damage.

Film 101: M*A*S*H

Although he was not the first choice to direct it, the hit black comedy MASH established Robert Altman as one of the leading figures of Hollywood’s 1970s generation of innovative and irreverent young filmmakers.

Scripted by Hollywood veteran Ring Lardner, Jr., this war comedy details the exploits of military doctors and nurses at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in the Korean War.

Between exceptionally gory hospital shifts and countless rounds of martinis, wisecracking surgeons Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and Trapper John McIntyre (Elliott Gould) make it their business to undercut the smug, moralistic pretensions of Bible-thumper Maj. Frank Burns (Robert Duvall) and Army true-believer Maj. “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Sally Kellerman).

Abetted by such other hedonists as Duke Forrest (Tom Skerritt) and Painless Pole (John Schuck), as well as such (relative) innocents as Radar O’Reilly (Gary Burghoff), Hawkeye and Trapper John drive Burns and Houlihan crazy while engaging in such additional blasphemies as taking a medical trip to Japan to play golf, staging a mock Last Supper to cure Painless’s momentary erectile dysfunction, and using any means necessary to win an inter-MASH football game.

MASH creates a casual, chaotic atmosphere emphasizing the constant noise and activity of a surgical unit near battle lines; it marked the beginning of Altman’s sustained formal experiments with widescreen photography, zoom lenses, and overlapping sound and dialogue, further enhancing the atmosphere with the improvisational ensemble acting for which Altman’s films quickly became known.

Although the on-screen war was not Vietnam, MASH’s satiric target was obvious in 1970, and Vietnam War-weary and counter-culturally hip audiences responded to Altman’s nose-thumbing attitude towards all kinds of authority and embraced the film’s frankly tasteless yet evocative humor and its anti-war, anti-Establishment, anti-religion stance.

MASH became the third most popular film of 1970 after Love Story and Airport, and it was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. As further evidence of the changes in Hollywood’s politics, blacklist survivor Lardner won the Oscar for his screenplay.

MASH began Altman’s systematic 1970s effort to revise classic Hollywood genres in light of contemporary American values, and it gave him the financial clout to make even more experimental and critical films like McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), California Split (1974), and Nashville (1975). It also inspired the long-running TV series starring Alan Alda as Hawkeye and Burghoff as Radar. With its formal and attitudinal impudence, and its great popularity, MASH was one more confirmation in 1970 that a Hollywood “New Wave” had arrived.

Film 101: Duck Soup

Arguably the Marx Brothers’ funniest film, this comedy masterpiece contains several famous scenes, including the hilarious mirror sequence. A wealthy widow offers financial aid to the bankrupt country of Freedonia on condition that Rufus T. Firefly be made leader. But his chaotic, inept regime bumbles into war with neighboring Sylvania.

Film 101: Some Like It Hot

The film was based on the German comedy Fanfaren der Liebe (1951), in which two musicians dress in drag to join an all-girls band and end up falling for the lead singer. But aside from the central plot elements, Some Like it Hot does not suffer from a lack of originality. Rather, it takes an already clever premise and injects some of the finest writing ever done.

This time, it’s 1929 Chicago, and saxophonist Joe (Tony Curtis) and bass-player Jerry (Jack Lemmon) are the only two eye-witnesses to the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Hunted by the tommy-gun gangsters of mob boss Spats Columbo (George Raft), the duo decides their only hope is to dress in drag as “Josephine” and “Daphne” and join an all-girl band on a train from Chicago to a Florida beach resort.

Hilarity ensues when: (a) both men fall for the band’s voluptuous singer, Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (Marilyn Monroe); (b) Jerry a.k.a. “Daphne” is courted by one of the resort’s elderly playboys, Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown); and (c) Spats and crew show up at the resort for a bloody gangster conference.

Sherlock, Jr.

This 1924 silent classic is not as well known as it should be. Keaton plays a young man who works as a projectionist and janitor in the local movie theater. (He’s also reading a book about how to become a detective.)

Wrongly accused of theft — his romantic rival stole a pocket watch from his girlfriend’s house and pawned it, then framed Keaton so her father sends him away in disgrace — he returns to his job and falls asleep during a screening. He dreams of stepping into the movie and becoming a great detective on the trail of stolen pearls.

Not only do all the other real people in his life turn up in the film, but he performs feats of detection and athletic skill: the film concludes with a thrilling chase in which Keaton rides a motorcycle’s handlebars, not knowing the driver has fallen off, and some split-second stunts. Both the stunts and the special effects were decades ahead of their time.

You’re Killing Me Susana

You’re Killing Me Susana centers on Eligio (Gael García Bernal), a narcissistic Mexico City soap actor whose wife Susana (Verónica Echegui) has left him without uttering a word. Discovering she’s enrolled in a writing program at an Iowa university, he decides to go after her and persuade her to return to him, but upon arriving soon discovers she’s already moved on. Eligio soon learns it’s going to take a lot more than his usual boyish charisma and sweet talk to win her back.

Based on the novel Deserted Cities (Ciudades Desiertas) by José Agustín, it’s directed by by Roberto Sneider (Tear This Heart Out) and cowritten by Sneider and Luis Camara. You’re Killing Me Susana also stars Ashley Grace, Jadyn Wong, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson and Adam Hurtig.

The Red Turtle

2017 Academy Award Nominee for Best Animated Feature Film

Through the story of a man shipwrecked on a tropical island inhabited by turtles, crabs and birds, The Red Turtle recounts the milestones in the life of a human being.