The Ivy Film Festival’s advanced screenings for 2013 kick off tonight with a free showing of The Way Way Backat the Avon tonight at 7 p.m. The film is the directorial debut of Jim Rash and Nat Faxon, the Oscar-award winning screenwriters of The Descendants, and is due for official release July 5. Fox Searchlight bought distribution for a cool $10 million, which is the most spent on a Sundance film since the studio bought Little Miss Sunshine in 2006.
The movie reunites Sunshine alum Steve Carell and Toni Collette, and also stars Sam Rockwell, Maya Rudolph, and Amanda Peet. The plot follows teen Dunan (Liam James) as he deals with summer at his mom’s douchey boyfriend’s beach house. Unsurprisingly, Collette plays the struggling single mom in the relationship with a man who is both cheating on her and hazing her son; very surprisingly, it is Carrell portraying said bad-guy. Sam Rockwell stars as the cool waterpark owner who gives Duncan a secret job and helps with the coming-of-age side of this dysfunctional family comedy. As far as Sundance movies go, this is as summer blockbuster-y as you can get. Plus, this is a good reason to go to the Avon for the first time — we love free things!
For this week only, the Avon is showing Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a documentary about Jiro Ono, a famous japanese sushi chef. We have been salivating over this trailer for months and could not be happier that the documentary is showing at the Avon. Conveniently playing at 4:40 p.m. daily, the film can serve as a perfect break between afternoon and nighttime cram-fests. I would not, however, go on an empty stomach.
Avon: Site
Academy Award nominated filmmaker Charles Ferguson brings us Inside Job, a shocking new documentary tracing the roots of the economic crisis of 2008.
Trailer:
Reviews. 108 minutes. Rated PG-13. FRI through TUES EVENINGS AT 6:30 & 8:45, SAT & SUN MATINEES AT 1:15
Happy Fall Weekend! Here’s what’s looking good on campus:
Never Let Me Go, Avon Cinema 6:30, 8:40
Based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go tells the story of three adolescents straight out of an English boarding school. As they try to navigate the testy waters of their love triangle, they’re faced with a whole new set of problems: THEY’RE CLONES! Designed to be organ donors for people out in the real world, the three friends are forced to come to terms with their mortality a tad on the early side. And you were expecting a run of the mill coming-of-age story. Kiera Knightley, Andrew Garfield and Carey Mulligan star.
Boe Titla, Apache Balladeer, List 120, 5:30-8:00
Boe Titla is a singer, songwriter, and artist from the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona. His performance serves as the opening convocation for the Native American Heritage Series at Brown. Check out a preview here.
Megabus, Kennedy Plaza
It’s rained every day this week. We have Monday off. Tell Providence to stick it where the sun don’t shine (very convenient, considering Providence is already in Providence) and get outta here.
Last week, the Avon was playing “Get Low.” To me, “Get Low” sounded like the name of an end-of-summer schmaltzy dance flick, maybe about a hip-hop dancer and a ballerina who fall in love against the odds. Oh, how wrong I was. “Get Low” was about a hermit living alone in the woods. “Mao’s Last Dancer,” on the other hand, seems to actually be about a dancer!
Smoked Salomon
Salomon 101, 8:00 p.m.
What’s that you say? Somehow you managed to miss all of the singing, a cappella delight around campus last night? I know you’re probably feeling really bad about that right now, but don’t worry: the Derbies and the Chattertocks are getting together to sing those regrets away!
Neon Night II: The Afterglow
Delta Tau, 10:00 p.m.
$3 door, $1 drinks
If you like your $1 drinks glowing, if you like black lights and glowsticks, if you just wanna dance with a beautiful stranger who’ll leave their neon body paint all over your clothes by the end of the night, if this is what you want from your night, get thee to Delta Tau!
“Restrepo,” the companion documentary to Sebastian Junger’s best-selling book War, diligently follows a US platoon during their 15 month deployment in the Korangal Valley, which had been considered as perhaps the most dangerous posting in the US military. Fittingly so, Restrepo is ugly. Yes, the cinematography is nothing short of beautiful, especially considering the circumstances. One can almost feel the pull of the choppers taking off, the pulse of the guns as they fire. But sharing the hell that these soldiers underwent daily for 15 months, and the contrivances they had created to distract themselves, indeed fills one with awe at just how human war can be; it’s the moments in-between the fighting – somberly strumming a guitar, shuffling through pictures of family, swapping stories about old friends who won’t make it home – that are when the real struggle takes place.
It’s difficult to walk out of Restrepo with much hope for our situation in Afghanistan. [Read more →]
A documentary co-directed by Professor of International Studies James Der Derian, David Udris ’90 and Michael Udris ’91 opens at 4:15 Saturday at Avon Cinema, with proceeds going to a fund named for a fourth collaborator, Michael Bhatia ’99, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2008. It’s the Providence premiere for Human Terrain, which takes its name from the “Human Terrain System” in which the military has employed social scientists like Bhatia.
Bhatia, a former Watson Institute fellow, was a member of an Army Human Terrain Team at the time of his death. Since then, his family donated a collection of his books to the Brown library. Of course, the Human Terrain System, and the broader role of scholars in war is not uncontroversial at Brown and elsewhere. Trailer for Human Terrain below.
Originally, I thought this was an outer-space themed party. It is not. Twist! SPACE stands for Space in Prison for the Arts and Creative Expression and Brown students involved in the organization help facilitate arts workshops in R.I. state prisons. So, while there will be no aliens or awkward planet-themed pick-up lines, there will be some very cool pieces of art. And free snacks. And we love free snacks.
BABIES
7:00 & 8:45
Avon Cinema
Yes, finals period is a stressful time, and for some of you, our recent post on adorable baby animals just might not have been enough to help take your mind off all that work. Fortunately, tonight marks the opening of “Babies,” a movie which seems to have been entirely based on the thought, “Hey babies are cute, I bet some people might pay to look at them for two hours…” As far as I can tell, there is nothing going on in this movie besides four babies being really cute, but that seems kind of perfect for this week. It’ll take you back to a simpler time in your life.
Wind Symphony Concert
8:00 – 10:00 P.M.
Salomon 101
Trust me on this one, the kids in the wind symphony know how to put on a good show. There probably won’t be any Lady Gaga medleys, but surely you can survive without them for one night.
Believe it or not, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is STILL playing. Thankfully, our friends at the Avon have also added the German mystery/thriller The White Ribbon into the mix. As a series of bizarre incidents (including some unfortunate cases of torture and a fire or two) rock a Northern Germany town in the years preceding WWI, the local schoolteacher finds himself looking in the oddest of places for the culprit. If you’re still recouping from Spring Weekend, this might just be a good alternative to a good ol’ Thirsty Thursday.
If you haven’t heard of Stieg Larsson’s best-selling trilogy, I’m afraid to say you’re slightly behind on your novel know-how. Thankfully, the Avon is offering you a quick fix – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is playing this weekend. Based on the first installment in Larsson’s series, the movie follows the story of Henrik Vanger’s search for his niece who disappeared 40 years ago. Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander are called into investigate. A couple of grizzly murders and some dark family secrets later and…you’re going to have to go to the movies to find out the rest. Or read the book. And remember, the book’s almost always better.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is playing at 6 and 9 P.M. on Fri. and Sat., with a 2 P.M. matinee on Sat. and Sun.
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