UW Cinematheque rolls out fall 2016 calendar

The series will feature female anime heroes, Brian De Palma, and a few highly promising documentaries. 

UW Cinematheque’s fall 2016 calendar is now live for the browsing, and the 60-film season kicks off the last weekend in August with a couple of inspired double-headers at the program’s Vilas Hall screening room. On August 26, Brian De Palma’s Dressed To Kill and Blow Out (consider the latter, starring John Travolta as a sound engineer who stumbles upon a murder plot, highly recommended) launch both the season and an extensive tribute to the stylish and enduring thriller director. That series also includes a September 2 screening of De Palma, a deep-reaching documentary by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow. On August 27, Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg’s new documentary Weiner—chronicling former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s attempt to run for mayor of New York City and recover from his notorious sexting scandal—will be paired with Weiner-Dog, the latest from mercilessly dark-humored writer-director Todd Solondz.

Ctek’s fall calendar is always a lot to dig through and this time it’s divided into nine separate series, but I’ll pick out a few highlights here. The proudly trash-sploitative Marquee Mondays series at Union South is back for three screenings: De Palma’s Scarface (Sept. 19), John Waters’ early film Multiple Maniacs (Oct. 17), and the Richie Havens-starring Catch My Soul (Santa Fe Satan) (Nov. 7). A four-film anime series will focus on classics with strong female leads, from 1973’s Belladonna Of Sadness (Sept. 3) to 2006’s Paprika (Sept. 24). The Special Presentations series includes Tad Nakamura’s new documentary about young street artists in Hawaii, Mele Murals (Oct. 8), and Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (Dec. 9; this also ties in a with a series honoring Kirk Douglas and Olivia de Havilland.)

A few things these season are just delightfully off the wall. UW-Madison alum and screenwriter Andrew Bergman will visit on October 20 for a special screening of 1979’s The In-Laws (“Serpentine! Serpentine!”), which stars Peter Falk and Alan Arkin as a wacked-out CIA agent and a dentist who get wrapped up in a near-deadly, farcical escapade in Central America. Screenings on November 10 and 17 at the Chazen will thematically link the 1948 Laurence Olivier-starring and -directed version of Hamlet with Strange Brew, which turns Elsinore into a brewery and two guys who say “eh” and “hoser” a lot (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas) into the hapless Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.