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Movie Blog: This Week's Best Bets

Most of you have probably put away your costumes for another year, but there are officially still a few days left before Halloween, so most of this week's best bets deal in the macabre. Here are five suggestions for the next seven days:

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Monday, Oct. 29: Some Like It Hot (Riverview Theater)

Take-Up Productions and the Riverview Theater kick off a month-long Marilyn Monroe series with her most enduring hit, Some Like It Hot. Billy Wilder's hysterical, ribald riff on gender roles squeezed both Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon into constrictive gowns decades before RuPaul coronated America's next top drag queen on a seasonal basis. Though neither obviously hold a candle to Monroe's curvaceous form, the spectacle still allows for some of the snappiest dialogue Wilder has ever committed to film, culminating in probably the finest closing couplet in comedy history.

Marilyn Monroe-Some Like it Hot Trailer by hideseek124 on YouTube

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Monday, Oct. 29 through Wednesday, Oct. 31: Hausu (Trylon Microcinema)

This movie ... is unwell. In the best possible way. Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi, a surrealist well-versed in the language of glossy, Japanese commercials, House is a one of a kind genre mixtape that resists predictability at each turn. Seriously, Tim Burton dropping acid inside Bugs Bunny's worst nightmare only begins to suggest how bugged out this horror-comedy-musical-adventure is. Go figure, the free associative script was written by the director's young daughter.

HOUSE (1977) Trailer - The Criterion Collection by criterioncollection on YouTube

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Tuesday, Oct. 30: Halloween (Lagoon Theater)

The urtext of modern day slasher movies (though many have pointed out that it, ahem, "borrowed" some of its best ideas from the earlier Black Christmas, not to mention a number of other Italian giallo thrillers), John Carpenter's Halloween is, for better and for worse, the official movie companion piece to every spooky, withdrawn child's favorite holiday. Most of its scares seem pretty quaint now, but that's perhaps a big part of the nostalgic spell it continues to cast over its fans. Carpenter may have gone on to bigger and better horrors (The Thing, the severely underrated Christine), but none so eternally iconic.

John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN-Trailer by George Salazar on YouTube

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Wednesday, Oct. 31: Trouble Every Day(Walker Art Center)

The Walker Art Center's Regis dialogue and retrospective this season focuses on the films of French director Claire Denis, arguably one of the most exciting auteurs currently working (and one who has been at a creative peak for longer than most other directors can even manage to stay relevant). The retrospective series begins on Tuesday with a screening of I Can't Sleep, but cannily programs Denis's experiment in horror Trouble Every Day on Halloween night. My fellow movie blogger Jonathon Sharp and I will post capsule reviews of the retrospective's highlights tomorrow, so check back then.

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Joel Hodgson
(credit: Parkway Theater)

Saturday, Nov. 3: Joel Hodgson: The Gizmocrat (Parkway Theater)

I don't know too many movie geeks who don't hold a special place in their hearts for the Twin Cities' own cult phenomenon Mystery Science Theater 3000. Count me among the legion of fans who are excited to see show creator Joel Hodgson, who played the original MST3K host Joel Robinson, taking the Parkway Theater stage this Saturday to present his one-man show, the bullet points of which include a discussion of the art of movie riffing (yesterday's live-blogging), some of his side projects, a Q&A and, following the talk, a screening of a secret MST3K episode.

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