Movie Blog: WAC Outdoor Movies, Trylon's 'MNUnearthed'
There was something oddly poetic about the idea of the first movie in Walker Art Center's summer outdoor Music & Movies festival -- Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window -- being moved indoors.
Thanks to the monsoon-like weather that's been afflicting Minnesota recently, that's exactly what was announced.
But isn't it a strangely perfect change of venue? To force people who were looking forward to stretching out on a big lawn amid hundreds of friends and strangers to coop themselves up inside? That's exactly the predicament Jimmy Stewart, playing the hero of Hitchcock's thriller (which, by the way, is only just about the best movie ever made), found himself in following his little accident. Put up in a cast, he spends the entire movie spying on his neighbors until he sees what he thinks may have been a murder.
Spying is the central theme of (what remains left of) the Music & Movies series this summer. The WAC made some awesomely intelligent programming choices for the rest of August -- Two Fritz Lang capers and one Michelangelo Antonioni whatzit.
The latter, Blow Up, may strike some modern audiences at first like the granddaddy to Austin Powers, but gradually and inexorably it takes a turn toward the philosophical/existential grooviness of his earlier puzzlers L'avventura and L'eclisse. Blow Up will be preceded by a performance by dream-poppers Buffalo Moon. (August 15)
Next week, hip-hoppers No Bird Sing will perform before a screening of Lang's last movie, The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, the culmination of his surveillance-minded spy thrillers. (August 8)
But Walker may have saved the best for last, recruiting an outré live score accompaniment from Dark Dark Dark and the Modern Times Spychestra to Lang's silent epic Spies. Wear something inconspicuous like these Stasi agents. (August 22)
For more information, click here.
-------
Now that your August is planned out, now's probably also the time to tell you that the first Wednesday of every month on your movie geek calendar has been given a new addition, too.
Take-Up Productions announced a lineup of "Minnesota Unearthed" movies, curated by Dan Schneidkraut and Joseph Larsen.
The series presents a whole slew of largely unseen movies from homegrown filmmaking talents.
"As a filmmaker I've been fortunate to have success on a international level but I never really felt like my movies had an audience or a home in The Twin Cities until I started showing at The Trylon," said Schneidkraut. "I feel like some of the most incredible movies made here have encountered a similar lack of support so I'm really excited for the opportunity to pull my favorite Minnesota filmmakers into the warm embrace of The Trylon microcinema."
It kicks off with a screening of Mondo Collecto, a look at, well, people who are mondo into collecting things. (The word "Mondo" means world, but in the parlance of cult movies, has also come to mean gonzo, beefy, cheesecake. Or thereabouts.)
The series currently lists six entries. Check the full schedule and details here.
