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SUMMARY:Sonata (2021) at Union South Marquee
DESCRIPTION:Grzegorz Płonka (Michal Sikorski) plays the piano in his father’s study. \nComing-of-age biopic Sonata (2021) closes out the Polish Film Festival at the Union South Marquee\, which begins on Sunday\, November 13\, with Illusion (2022)\, and then continues the following Sunday\, November 20\, with a triple feature of Fucking Bornholm (2022)\, Black Sheep (2022) and Sonata. \nBartosz Blaschke’s film is based on the true story of Grzegorz Płonka (Michal Sikorski)\, who is misdiagnosed with autism as a child in the mid-1990s\, only to discover at age 14 that he actually suffers from hearing loss that prevented him from processing the upper registers necessary to understand speech. When Grzegorz finally gets fitted with a hearing aid thanks to the insistence of a home caregiver\, he’s set upon a difficult road toward a meaningful life: learning to speak and read in his teens\, and obsessively devoting himself to becoming a concert pianist\, with his ultimate goal to perform Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” (which lends the film its name).  \nThe film uses similar audio effects to Sound Of Metal (2020) in the scene where Grzegorz finally hears clearly for the first time\, allowing the audience to perceive as he does. Previously\, his relationship with music consisted of pounding on a piano to feel the vibrations. Sonata also shares Sound Of Metal‘s more nuanced take on a disability narrative rather than standing as a simple triumph-over-adversity tale: much emphasis is put on Grzegorz’s early life being left to languish due to sheer institutional indifference despite the efforts of his exasperated parents (Małgorzata Foremniak and Lukasz Simlat) to get someone to respond on a human level instead of just enforcing the rules and their own expectations. \nWhen Grzegorz finally speaks\, he often has a frustratingly black-and-white interpretation of social interactions\, and a megalomaniac focus on his life goal of becoming a pianist. At every turn\, he’s met by people who qualify his talent as “playing well for a deaf person.” Grzegorz doesn’t so much want to prove them all wrong as he gets stuck on not fully grasping why someone would want to keep him from fully expressing himself. Understandably\, he lashes out when clashing once again with the harshness of those more concerned with checking boxes than letting him release his pent-up emotions.  \n—Lewis Peterson
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/sonata-2021-at-union-south-marquee/
LOCATION:The Marquee Cinema\, 1308 W Dayton St #245\, Madison\, WI\, 53715\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/02125222/sonata2021-eventhed.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20221130T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20221130T201500
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20221126T225031Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221126T225209Z
UID:16385-1669834800-1669839300@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Mills Folly Microcinema: Seeing Pink\, videos by Ariel Teal at Arts + Literature Laboratory
DESCRIPTION:A still from “Becoming” (2018)\, borrowed from “Buffy The Vampire Slayer\,” of Teal’s favorite character Faith (Eliza Dushku) dancing at a club. \nFilm MFA and former instructor at UW-Milwaukee Ariel Teal\, who now studies social work in Madison\, will appear in person at this Mills Folly Microcinema event. While Teal is bringing three films that have made the rounds at experimental festivals in recent years\, they will also be premiering two new works\, Seeing and Pink Movie. \nTeal’s dual professional backgrounds have had an impact on their work in the exploration of personal trauma channeled through techniques from found footage and essay film. Difficult and direct as their practice may be\, it also has a sort of interior tenderness related to Teal dealing with their own trauma on their own terms. These films aren’t tailor-made for audiences so much as they embody a unique form of therapy to serve as a reminder for others of how their own lives may be fragmented in memory. \nAs on-screen texts in films like Becoming (2018)\, Monday Night (2018)\, and Romantic Getaway (2020) alternate between blunt descriptive statements and cut-up abstractions\, Teal shows a poetic control of their words at the sentence-level. Monday Night particularly highlights this\, with the language revealing entendres as it circles back on itself in fragments. “I hate that I didn’t see it coming” is shortened to “I hate that I\,” which is further simplified to an evocative “I hate.” \nThis trauma-informed cinema breaks with the clichés one might associate with the idea. Teal reads between the lines of the narratives we create for ourselves. Intertextual readings stand out here\, and the filmmaker intuitively understands the way our self-narratives are shaped by our aspirations toward beloved characters and forms (Buffy The Vampire Slayer and sitcom “special episodes” are central to Becoming and Romantic Getaway\, respectively). \nIf the existing work is any indication\, viewers can expect further developments in this direction from Teal’s new shorts that explore intersections of culture and the self with bracing clarity.  \n(Viewer’s note: the program features flashing lights and printed descriptions of sexual assault.) \n—Maxwell Courtright
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/mills-folly-microcinema-seeing-pink-videos-by-ariel-teal-at-arts-literature-laboratory/
LOCATION:Arts + Literature Laboratory\, 111 South Livingston Street\, Madison\, WI\, 53703\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/02125204/becoming-arielteal.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20221202T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20221202T205000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20221126T214255Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221128T062423Z
UID:16384-1670007600-1670014200@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:When You Read This Letter at UW Cinematheque
DESCRIPTION:Nightclub dancer Lola (Claude Borelli) stands ready to remove her clothes in front of the rakish Max (Philippe Lemaire)\, who regards her with smug indifference. \nExcerpt from Jason Fuhrman’s review: \nDirector Jean-Pierre Melville’s overlooked existential noir melodrama presents a counterpoint to his more popular crime films and period pieces—such as the underworld comedy of manners\, Bob Le Flambeur (1956)\, the elegant character study of an impossibly cool contract killer\, Le Samouraï (1967)\, and the gripping thriller about the French Resistance\, Army Of Shadows (1969). \nTaken at face value\, the film may appear to lack the cool precision\, calculated restraint\, and mood of contemplative ennui that define Melville’s subsequent output. However\, its atmospheric cinematography\, stylistic complexity\, and haunting ambiguities bring When You Read This Letter (1953) into alignment with the director’s most sophisticated creations. \nFilmed largely on location in Cannes\, France\, with ravishing black-and-white photography by Henri Alekan\, it holds up as a vivid panorama of a bygone time and place. The implausible\, somewhat bizarre plot of the film—which involves con artists\, blackmail\, a sadomasochistic novitiate\, sexual violence\, tragic car accidents\, an unsuccessful suicide attempt\, grand larceny\, and a tangled love triangle—feels surprisingly lurid for what was supposed to be a very “conventional” and “sensible” picture. With its many twists\, turns\, and abrupt tonal shifts\, the narrative sometimes veers toward the surreal.
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/when-you-read-this-letter-at-uw-cinematheque/
LOCATION:UW Cinematheque\, 821 University Ave / 4070 Vilas Hall\, Madison\, WI\, 53706\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/02125209/whenyoureadthisletter-hed.jpeg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20221203T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20221203T201000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20221126T213544Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221202T033907Z
UID:16383-1670092200-1670098200@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:After Yang at Union South Marquee
DESCRIPTION:Techno-sapien Yang (right) sets a camera timer to take a photo of his foster family\, then moves into frame with the rest of them (father Jake\, mother Kyra\, and daughter Mika)\, all smiling. \nKogonada retools futuristic technological conventions into a poignant tale of connection in After Yang (2021)\, a filmic tone poem\, a metaphysical chamber play on the virtues of our differences\, between the multicultural and the human and nonhuman. \nBased on a short story by Alexander Weinstein\, the film moves through an unspecified future time when couple Jake and Kyra (Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith) are raising an adopted Chinese daughter\, Mika “Mei Mei” (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) with the aid of android or “techno-sapien” Yang (Justin H. Min). Yang’s presence as a surrogate sibling to Mika not only offers peace of mind but fosters both a subliminal and plainspoken bond to her heritage. However\, this is momentarily severed when Yang inexplicably shuts down one night\, forcing Jake to repair him and familial unity by extension. \nFrom his background in video essays\, Kogonada lends the film a soft\, appealing precision\, the same that infused the architectural contours and paths of 2017’s low-key masterpiece Columbus. Where that film was mindfully fixated on symmetry\, After Yang is aglow with geomancy or feng shui principles that are conceptualized in the family’s Joseph Eichler house as a grand tea room and literally harmonized in fragmented song (Mitski’s faithful cover of Lily Chou-Chou’s “Glide”) throughout. The off-screen ring of wind chimes and Aska Matsumiya and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s score\, suspended in pianissimo\, further lend the film the feeling of a visual meditation tape. \nAfter Yang meshes memorial themes explored in other sci-fi dramas like Marjorie Prime (2017) and A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)\, as it’s perennially attuned to loss and the struggle between despair and hope. Ultimately\, the richly edited tapestry of quotidian\, Malickian moments\, sporadically captured and later witnessed through clips in first-person perspective from Yang’s memory bank\, reveal to the characters their collective strengths and soul—a sort of extension of the Buddhist philosophy on layers of consciousness. \nKudos to WUD Film for providing a space for a belated first-time local theatrical screening. \n—Grant Phipps
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/after-yang-at-union-south-marquee/
LOCATION:The Marquee Cinema\, 1308 W Dayton St #245\, Madison\, WI\, 53715\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/02125204/afteryang-hed.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20221210T174000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20221215T145000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20221210T204502Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221214T054148Z
UID:16506-1670694000-1671115800@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:White Noise at Marcus Point Cinema
DESCRIPTION:Babette Gladney (Greta Gerwig)\, Jack Gladney (Adam Driver)\, and their three children scream while in their red station wagon. The youngest Wilder (Henry Moore) sits masked between Jack and Babette in the front seat looking amused. \nAs a follow-up to his septupuly Oscar-nominated Marriage Story (2019)\, Noah Baumbach has used approximately $80 million of the money Netflix seems to be hemorrhaging lately to do a “one for me” movie—a project that greatly expands his visual ambitions while addressing the only subject that’s a universal concern for our species burdened with sapience. We are going to die. Yes\, you\, the person reading this\, will die someday. That fact and the various complications we create to avoid confronting it is what White Noise (2022) is more or less about. With such a lofty subject to motivate him\, Baumbach has created something sprawling\, messy and totally fascinating\, his analogue to One From The Heart (1981) or Under The Silver Lake (2018). \nAdapted from Don DeLillo’s ’80s satirical novel of the same name\, White Noise follows Jack Gladney (Adam Driver)\, a college professor who has pioneered the field of “Hitler studies\,” and his wife Babette (Greta Gerwig\, in her first acting role since 2018). They’re accompanied by four children from various previous marriages (including Raffey Cassidy of Vox Lux who plays the eldest)\, as well as Jack’s friend and fellow professor Murray (Don Cheadle)\, who hopes to popularize an academic discipline centered on Elvis Presley similar to Jack’s “Hitler studies.” \nThe group navigates a constant Altmanesque cacophony of unending information\, and naturally gravitates toward the biggest spectacle. It can be reasonably assumed that whatever commands the most attention is most important (Jack makes his living from the well of a historical spectacle that will never run dry\, after all)\, while they’re all firmly entrenched in the certainty that whatever disasters are on TV are removed from anything that could happen to them. Of course they are proven wrong\, and history intrudes on day-to-day life in the form of “The Airborne Toxic Event.” The exact nature of the danger is unclear\, but the mere fact that danger is present is enough to disturb the routine. \nThe plot is somewhat of an exaggeration of themes Baumbach has explored for his whole career\, namely the anxiety of trying to place yourself within society. He expands his palette past the character studies he’s made his name on\, incorporating visual references to Brian De Palma’s films\, to Jean-Luc Godard’s Week-end (1967) and Tout Va Bien (1972). Baumbach even casts Fassbinder regular Barbara Sukowa in a cameo toward the end of the film. \nConsumerism at once creates distraction and meaning\, and Baumbach takes care to include a corporate logo in the frame for most of the film’s running time. This ubiquity of branding culminates in an end-credits sequence scored by a new LCD Soundsystem track written especially for the movie. After all\, once you accept you’re going to die\, you might as well get on with your life.  \n—Lewis Peterson
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/white-noise-at-marcus-point-cinema/
LOCATION:Marcus Point Cinema\, 7825 Big Sky Drive\, Madison\, WI\, 53719\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/02125139/whitenoise22-hed.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20221210T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20221210T200500
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20221202T210909Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221210T043627Z
UID:16432-1670697000-1670702700@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Tokyo Godfathers at Union South Marquee
DESCRIPTION:Gin\, Miyuki\, and Hana debate what to do next in their quest to return an abandoned child they found on the streets of Tokyo on Christmas Eve. \nSatoshi Kon may be best known for his animated\, surrealistic\, psychological thrillers\, so Tokyo Godfathers (2003) may stand out in writer-director-character designer’s oeuvre as a rollicking buddy adventure that just happens to be Christmas-themed. But it’s quite a natural follow-up to Kon’s postmodernist masterpiece Millennium Actress (2001)\, about a reclusive movie star modeled after the real-life Setsuko Hara (of Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story). \nTokyo Godfathers boasts a restless pacing and zany energy contained in the dynamic between its trio of drifters—the gruff drunkard Gin (voiced by Tōru Emori)\, boisterous trans woman Hana (Yoshiaki Umegaki)\, and penitent teen runaway Miyuki (Aya Okamoto)—who find an abandoned newborn baby on Christmas Eve and collectively set out to locate her parents based on a mere photograph left at the scene. Through their rag-tag detective work\, the trio uncover truths of their own characters and shortcomings in tragicomic fashion\, realizing they may not be radically different from the struggling parents who saw themselves as incapable of caring for a child. \nWhile something about the film’s developments may feel curbed in its concise 92-minute running time\, Kon’s compellingly larger-than-life staging and beautifully diverse visual flourishes elevate its dramatic rushes through the snowy streets and alleys of Tokyo. Miyuki’s fantastical dream and Hana’s reflective haiku\, in particular\, both offer ruminative respites that showcase the miraculous depths of Kon’s talent that’s deeply missed today. \nWUD Film will be screening the Japanese language version with English subtitles. \n—Grant Phipps
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/tokyo-godfathers-at-union-south-marquee/
LOCATION:The Marquee Cinema\, 1308 W Dayton St #245\, Madison\, WI\, 53715\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/02125150/tokyogodfathers-hed.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20221221T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20221221T230000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20221216T184246Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221219T133111Z
UID:16547-1671649200-1671663600@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:"Or… (night)" Solstice Celebration at Common Sage
DESCRIPTION:A handbill features a negative image of a sprig of sage with all the relevant event information. \nThere’s uncommon hospitality at Common Sage\, Tim Russell and Liz Sexe’s avant-garde-focused but distinctly cozy house venue. The music-dance power duo welcomed friends into their recreation of La Monte Young’s “Dream House” to mark the composer’s October birthday. As Russell and Sexe continue to get back into the swing of more regular hosting\, they’re planning a send-off to 2022 in the form of a winter solstice celebration\, “Or… (night)\,” as a tribute to another boundary-pushing composer\, James Tenney (and to the longest night). \nRussell and Sexe have gathered an inspiring crew of local talent\, including noisemakers Emili Earhart\, David Henry\, and Ari Smith\, to interpret Tenney’s 1970-1971 piece of indeterminacy\, “For Percussion Perhaps\, Or…” While there are a number of recorded performances that elicit the piece’s nuanced drone via prepared hurdy-gurdy\, trombone\, and electronics\, and even solo keyboard (you like Julia Holter\, right?)\, the instrumental configurations for this house show will remain a surprise. \nBeyond that\, most beckoning about this special event is the union of artistic mediums\, with short film projection by Barry Paul Clark and dancers Sexe and Mauriah Donegan Kraker\, who will all add further visual flair through their kinetic chemistry. \nFor those relatively unfamiliar with Tenney’s history\, take it from writer Bradford Bailey\, who asserts that Tenney’s work encompassed “nearly all of the central conceits used by avant-garde composers during the second half of the twentieth century.” Perhaps there’s no better way to find your way in than through the doors of Common Sage. \nPotluck begins at 7 p.m.\, with performances to follow at 8 p.m. And\, if it’s temperate enough outdoors\, Common Sage will start a fire pit in their backyard. \n—Grant Phipps
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/or-night-solstice-celebration-at-common-sage/
LOCATION:Common Sage\, 934 Drake St\, Madison\, WI\, 53715\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film,Music
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/02125126/ornight-commonsage-scaled.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230105T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230105T233000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230101T214225Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230101T214647Z
UID:16607-1672948800-1672961400@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Sex Ed Disco Dance Party at Crucible
DESCRIPTION:A cropped version of Sruti Mohan and Elliot Jewell’s very late ’70s-designed event flyer with a prominent disco ball and rainbow. \nThe first couple weeks of the new year after the holidays can often feel muted\, introspective\, and distinctively less cheery by comparison. But consider the colorful cure for those midwinter blues at the Crucible’s Sex Ed Disco Dance Party this Thursday night\, which unites a number of Madison creatives in a fundraiser for a new\, vital documentary by videographer and filmmaker Gracie K Wallner. \nSince last year\, Wallner (Winter Is Alive\, Blood Runs Out) has been assembling a work that champions queer and inclusive sex education in our community. Not only have they gathered friends to help spread the word\, including Docx\, French Jessica\, as well as DJs Sarah Akawa\, Avalon\, and Coop there it is\, but also arranged for this event to offer safe sex supplies (courtesy of OutReach LGBTQ+ Community Center)\, paper resources\, themed cookies (confections by Blue Bedroom Records founder Cam Davis)\, and even a runway costume contest. \nWhile the doc is still in production\, it features LGBTQ+ AODA Advocate Linda Lenzke and many other active members specific to the Madison community\, including educators\, therapists\, and historians\, who shed a light on the hidden history\, changing landscape\, and universal need for queer sex education. \nAcknowledging the superlative character of Wallner’s past work\, which has oscillated between narrative and documentary modes\, their current project will undoubtedly carry a similarly sophisticated visual style and conscientious eye. Funds raised at this groovy 18+ danceathon will support all of Wallner’s efforts with interviews\, clearing image copyrights\, and commissioning original artwork. \n—Grant Phipps
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/sex-ed-disco-dance-party-at-crucible/
LOCATION:Crucible\, 3116 Commercial Avenue\, Madison\, WI\, 53714\, United States
CATEGORIES:Culture,Film,Music
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/02125116/sexeddisco-tonehed.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230106T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230106T210000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230101T220353Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230103T011845Z
UID:16608-1673035200-1673038800@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Ghost Wars at MMSD Planetarium
DESCRIPTION:A mockup by Thomas Ferrella from “Ghost Wars\,” featuring a US dollar scorched in bright red and etched with atom bomb symbols over its Federal Reserve seals. \nEach winter seems to facilitate a new live multimedia collaboration between video artist and cinematographer Aaron Granat and multi-hyphenate BlueStem Jazz curator and co-founder Thomas Ferrella. From Mindstorm at the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) Planetarium in March 2020 to Shadowlands at Garver Feed Mill in February 2021\, the two have been concocting psychedelic whirlwinds of ecstatic digital visuals and and jazz-inspired electroacoustic soundscapes (led by Ferrella’s “sonic frontiers collective” You Of All People). \nTheir newest project\, Ghost Wars\, premiered at Gallery Marzen in May 2022\, but now returns to the MMSD Planetarium here\, on the nights of January 6 and 7 (both starting at 8 p.m.)\, with a decidedly incendiary political angle. If Shadowlands (part of the Winter Is Alive cooler world carnival of 2021) delved into changing wetland ecosystems in both the abstract and on vividly literal terms\, Ghost Wars pushes boundaries further in its rippling raze of the personal and public desolations of late capitalism and endless war. Its imagery\, crafted or shot by Ferrella and manipulated by Granat in real time\, draws upon familiar totems and symbols (Ferrella’s art prints\, for one) to metamorphose a tapestry of American avarice and strife. As evidenced in a short preview below\, some of the stark visual components permeating the frame involve the atom bomb-etched American dollar bills sewn into the national flag. \nAlong with You Of All People’s extended technique and effects-laden spoken word providing the melodies and textures to this live brew under the Planetarium dome\, Granat and Ferrella have enlisted other local allies to enhance the breadth of the live spectacle—including Kit Caldwell (costume design)\, Ian Van D. (sculptural performance)\, and Lauren Lynch (choreography). \nAll proceeds from both unique hour-long performances will benefit the Madison chapter of Friends Of Ukraine. \n—Grant Phipps
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/ghost-wars-at-mmsd-planetarium/
LOCATION:MMSD Planetarium\, 201 South Gammon Road\, Madison\, WI\, 53717\, United States
CATEGORIES:Culture,Film,Music
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/02125116/ghostwars-tonehed.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230107T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230107T210000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230102T201532Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230103T011925Z
UID:16610-1673121600-1673125200@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Ghost Wars at MMSD Planetarium
DESCRIPTION:A mockup by Thomas Ferrella from “Ghost Wars\,” featuring a US dollar scorched in bright red and etched with atom bomb symbols over its Federal Reserve seals. \nEach winter seems to facilitate a new live multimedia collaboration between video artist and cinematographer Aaron Granat and multi-hyphenate BlueStem Jazz curator and co-founder Thomas Ferrella. From Mindstorm at the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) Planetarium in March 2020 to Shadowlands at Garver Feed Mill in February 2021\, the two have been concocting psychedelic whirlwinds of ecstatic digital visuals and and jazz-inspired electroacoustic soundscapes (led by Ferrella’s “sonic frontiers collective” You Of All People). \nTheir newest project\, Ghost Wars\, premiered at Gallery Marzen in May 2022\, but now returns to the MMSD Planetarium here\, on the nights of January 6 and 7 (both starting at 8 p.m.)\, with a decidedly incendiary political angle. If Shadowlands (part of the Winter Is Alive cooler world carnival of 2021) delved into changing wetland ecosystems in both the abstract and on vividly literal terms\, Ghost Wars pushes boundaries further in its rippling raze of the personal and public desolations of late capitalism and endless war. Its imagery\, crafted or shot by Ferrella and manipulated by Granat in real time\, draws upon familiar totems and symbols (Ferrella’s art prints\, for one) to metamorphose a tapestry of American avarice and strife. As evidenced in a short preview below\, some of the stark visual components permeating the frame involve the atom bomb-etched American dollar bills sewn into the national flag. \nAlong with You Of All People’s extended technique and effects-laden spoken word providing the melodies and textures to this live brew under the Planetarium dome\, Granat and Ferrella have enlisted other local allies to enhance the breadth of the live spectacle—including Kit Caldwell (costume design)\, Ian Van D. (sculptural performance)\, and Lauren Lynch (choreography). \nAll proceeds from both unique hour-long performances will benefit the Madison chapter of Friends Of Ukraine. \n—Grant Phipps
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/ghost-wars-at-mmsd-planetarium-2/
LOCATION:MMSD Planetarium\, 201 South Gammon Road\, Madison\, WI\, 53717\, United States
CATEGORIES:Culture,Film,Music
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/02125116/ghostwars-tonehed.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230118T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230124T211500
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230114T212706Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230118T213132Z
UID:16643-1674068400-1674594900@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Skinamarink at Marcus Point Cinema
DESCRIPTION:Kevin (Lucas Paul) sits on a carpeted floor facing a door in a darkened hallway. A plug-in nightlight glows to his right. \nStarting Thursday\, January 19\, “Skinamarink” also has show times at AMC Fitchburg. \nKyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink (2022) has to be in contention for the most experimental 21st century feature to be given a wide release (and kudos to Shudder for giving a big push to such a not-for-everyone film). As with many of the most enduring horror movies\, Skinamarink is more about cultivating a vibe\, dispensing with all but the barest trappings of a plot\, which could theoretically be described as what’s happening on the other side of the TV in Poltergeist (1982). Or it can be seen as a deconstruction of cheaply made found-footage horror films like The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Paranormal Activity (2007) that have been lucrative since the advent of digital cameras\, scooping out facets of conventional narrative (analogous to what this bit does to stand-up comedy). \nSet in 1995\, Skinamarink essentially concerns young brother and sister\, Kevin (Lucas Paul) and Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault)\, who are lured through a door (that only sometimes exists) to a version of their house that doesn’t have their parents (Jamie Hill and Ross Paul) in it. The voice toys with them\, tries to placate them with public domain cartoons (proving that even mysterious supernatural beings fear copyright infringement suits)\, and eventually gives them violent instructions for some nefarious but undefined purpose. \nBut again\, just to emphasize the experimental nature of Ball’s approach: human faces only appear on screen a total of three times in the 100-minute runtime\, and for no more than a few seconds each time. Most of the dialogue is both hushed and distorted enough that subtitles are intermittently provided\, and the camera’s point of view is firmly the two siblings. The lens mostly points up and the large house around them\, filtered through a VHS grain that gives the swathes of black a distorted\, abstract quality that invites the viewer to mentally fill in something lurking in the darkness like a sinister version of Ken Jacobs’ The Movie That Invites Pausing (2020). If you’re prepared to bring your imagination to those dark corners\, you’ll certainly freak yourself out. \n—Lewis Peterson
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/skinamarink-at-marcus-point-cinema/
LOCATION:Marcus Point Cinema\, 7825 Big Sky Drive\, Madison\, WI\, 53719\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/02125059/skinamarink-hed.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230126T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230126T203000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230117T210156Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230117T210156Z
UID:16647-1674759600-1674765000@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:EO at UW Cinematheque
DESCRIPTION:In the grass beyond a ribbon-cutting ceremony\, Eo stands calmly with a garland of carrots around his mane\, a subtle nod to the canonized wreath of flowers from “Au Hasard Balthazar.” \nSeveral films in recent years have centered the emotional experiences and points of view of our fellow mammals—Viktor Kossakovsky’s Gunda (2020) and Andrea Arnold’s Cow (2021)\, to name a couple—but Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO (2022) is perhaps the first to render the life of one\, a donkey\, with the sort of psychological flair typically reserved for a human or at least a fully anthropomorphized computer rendering. \nBorrowing liberally from one of the all-time cinematic touchstones\, Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)\, EO perseveres as a metaphysical and earthly narrative. Those disparate elements interact singularly throughout a tragic cross-country journey that begins at a Polish traveling circus where the titular donkey is adored by his ring-performance partner Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska\, analogous to Anne Wiazemsky’s Marie in Balthazar). In a way\, EO unfolds as a love story with Shakespearean shades\, as the two are inevitably separated\, and Eo’s journey becomes one of silent reconciliation. Skolimowski and cinematographer Michał Dymek visually manifest Eo’s desire for Kasandra’s warmth that’s missing through all his wandering far and near\, her hands caressing his muzzle and mane. \nSkolimowski amplifies Bresson’s spiritual and religious Dostoyevsky parable with an urgent sociological angle. This is partly due to the setting in modern times\, but also how the film represents the contrived separations of our kind from innocent observer Eo through its use of hyperlinked vignettes. It trades tones and genres as Eo escapes or moves between places in scenes that persistently showcase the contrast between fluorescence and natural light\, recalling Terence Malick’s predilections. \nBut it would all be somehow incomplete without the dramatic heft of Paweł Mykietyn’s score\, which is almost instantaneously overwhelming—its weeping strings conjuring a certain narrative artifice of old Hollywood\, and at once establishing Eo’s migration as one that sways between melodrama and magical realism. Like Arnold’s Cow\, EO would seem to be outlying in Skolimowski’s filmography\, and yet it carries a distinctive line of romantic drama that he cultivated more than a half-century ago. EO is perhaps the sum of the director’s innermost conflicts that emerges as hope for a world where love is essential and cruelty is incidental. \n—Grant Phipps
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/eo-at-uw-cinematheque/
LOCATION:UW Cinematheque\, 821 University Ave / 4070 Vilas Hall\, Madison\, WI\, 53706\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/02125056/eofilm-hed.jpeg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230127T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230127T210000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230114T080911Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T232320Z
UID:16640-1674846000-1674853200@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:The Good Boss at UW Cinematheque
DESCRIPTION:Blanco (Javier Bardem) smiles as he sits at a table in his office that overlooks the factory floor of Blanco Scales. \nIn Fernando León de Aranoa’s The Good Boss\, Blanco Scales is up for a regional business award. The owner (Javier Bardem) and the business that bears his name are one\, and he will stop at nothing to project the image of a benevolent\, civically minded pillar of the community. Manipulation\, intimidation\, bribery\, adultery\, and giving in to blackmail are all deemed necessary. \nBardem sports a shock of white hair reminiscent of his Skyfall (2012) antagonist Raoul Silva\, though Blanco is more practiced at hiding any potential villainous tendencies behind a smile\, a firm handshake\, and plenty of rhetoric about fairness and how his company is “like a family.” Of course\, he conveniently ignores both the rigid hierarchy implied by such a statement\, as well as the unique capacity family has to hurt and exploit its most vulnerable members\, as any manager who’s used that phrase does. \nCase in point: Miralles (Manolo Solo)\, Blanco’s shipping manager and childhood friend\, is continually ordering the wrong parts\, thus making it impossible for the factory to fulfill orders on time. Miralles confides in Blanco that he hasn’t been sleeping\, because he suspects his wife Aurora (Mara Guil) of cheating. Blanco takes it upon himself to ask her to stop the affair until at least the end of the week\, after the award inspection committee has stopped by. \nLeading up to the official inspection\, this is just one of many fires that Blanco tries to stomp out\, as he maintains his balance in a madcap comedy reminiscent of Billy Wilder’s One\, Two\, Three (1961). The Good Boss delivers laughs\, showing how far Blanco is willing to go to maintain the appearance of being upright while ultimately raising fair points about how modern capitalism has become more inclusive by giving the most craven of individuals the opportunity to rise by stepping on the necks of their fellow workers. \n—Lewis Peterson
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/the-good-boss-at-uw-cinematheque/
LOCATION:UW Cinematheque\, 821 University Ave / 4070 Vilas Hall\, Madison\, WI\, 53706\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/02125059/thegoodboss-hed.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230127T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230127T213000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230120T205610Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T232302Z
UID:16662-1674849600-1674855000@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Encore In Black And White at Mary Dupont Wahlers Theatre
DESCRIPTION:A still from “Elephant In The Room” features three actors. Rikki Christman (right) points a toy gun at Joe Wahlers (left\, seated). James Burreson stands cloaked in the shadows near the center of the frame in front of a vintage coffee shop backdrop. \nEncore Studio For The Performing Arts celebrates their 23rd year as Wisconsin’s premier theater company for people with disabilities with a four-film\, 75-minute suite that pays homage to silent and early sound era cinema. “Encore In Black And White” premieres at the Mary DuPont Wahlers Theatre (just off of Fish Hatchery Road) on Friday night\, January 27\, and continues across four additional days (January 28 and 29 at 2 p.m.\, February 3 at 8 p.m.\, and February 4 at 2 p.m.). Tickets are available directly through Encore as suggested donations of $15 per general patron\, and $5 for people with disabilities\, students\, and seniors. \nWorking with four different writers riffing on four archetypal genres from the dawn of modern cinema\, universal director Heather Renken has an exemplary opportunity under this program’s umbrella to exhibit her experience and insight with local actors\, not only in longstanding connections to Encore Studio (serving as artistic associate for over a decade)\, but with Broom Street Theater and Children’s Theater Of Madison as well. \nRenken contributed on the writing side to the third short\, a colorful spin on noir tropes titled Elephant In The Room. In her recent interview with Channel 3000‘s Doug Moe\, Renken graciously cites Encore actor James Burreson’s passion for detective stories as the catalyst to its realization. \nOther screenwriters who helped bring “Encore In Black In White” to fruition include Clarice Lafayette\, who wrote the zippy piece of horror that opens the night\, Redemption. Sarah Jo Schoenhaar’s take on century-old slapstick emerges in Bona Fide\, and KelsyAnne Schoenhaar’s witty musical comedy of To Heiress Human closes the screening event on a spirited note (literally). Stick around afterward for a Q&A with the cast and crew. \n—Grant Phipps
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/encore-in-black-and-white-at-mary-dupont-wahlers-theatre/
LOCATION:Mary Dupont Wahlers Theatre\, 1480 Martin St\, Madison\, WI\, 53713\, United States
CATEGORIES:Culture,Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/02125054/encore-elephantintheroom.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230128T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230129T153000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230120T210051Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T232242Z
UID:16663-1674914400-1675006200@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Encore In Black And White at Mary Dupont Wahlers Theatre
DESCRIPTION:A still from “Elephant In The Room” features three actors. Rikki Christman (right) points a toy gun at Joe Wahlers (left\, seated). James Burreson stands cloaked in the shadows near the center of the frame in front of a vintage coffee shop backdrop. \nEncore Studio For The Performing Arts celebrates their 23rd year as Wisconsin’s premier theater company for people with disabilities with a four-film\, 75-minute suite that pays homage to silent and early sound era cinema. “Encore In Black And White” premiered at the Mary DuPont Wahlers Theatre (just off of Fish Hatchery Road) on Friday night\, January 27. It continues across four additional days (January 28 and 29 at 2 p.m.\, February 3 at 8 p.m.\, and February 4 at 2 p.m.). Tickets are available directly through Encore as suggested donations of $15 per general patron\, and $5 for people with disabilities\, students\, and seniors. \nWorking with four different writers riffing on four archetypal genres from the dawn of modern cinema\, universal director Heather Renken has an exemplary opportunity under this program’s umbrella to exhibit her experience and insight with local actors\, not only in longstanding connections to Encore Studio (serving as artistic associate for over a decade)\, but with Broom Street Theater and Children’s Theater Of Madison as well. \nRenken contributed on the writing side to the third short\, a colorful spin on noir tropes titled Elephant In The Room. In her recent interview with Channel 3000‘s Doug Moe\, Renken graciously cites Encore actor James Burreson’s passion for detective stories as the catalyst to its realization. \nOther screenwriters who helped bring “Encore In Black In White” to fruition include Clarice Lafayette\, who wrote the zippy piece of horror that opens the night\, Redemption. Sarah Jo Schoenhaar’s take on century-old slapstick emerges in Bona Fide\, and KelsyAnne Schoenhaar’s witty musical comedy of To Heiress Human closes the screening event on a spirited note (literally). Stick around afterward for a Q&A with the cast and crew. \n—Grant Phipps
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/encore-in-black-and-white-at-mary-dupont-wahlers-theatre-2/
LOCATION:Mary Dupont Wahlers Theatre\, 1480 Martin St\, Madison\, WI\, 53713\, United States
CATEGORIES:Culture,Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/02125054/encore-elephantintheroom.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230202T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230202T204000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230126T195639Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T232228Z
UID:16687-1675364400-1675370400@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Aftersun at UW Cinematheque
DESCRIPTION:Sophie (Frankie Corio) hugs her father (Paul Mescal) as they dance together on the last night of their vacation in Turkey. \nKids never really know their parents as people. Of course\, as one gets older\, it’s a nearly universal experience to collect bits and pieces of adulthood’s realities\, family secrets\, and an awareness of mortality that ultimately bring one closer to understanding a caretaker as human. But before that transformative coming-of-age symptom makes itself felt\, mothers and fathers tend to be figures filtered through the pristine eyes of childhood. \nCharlotte Wells’ astonishing directorial debut\, Aftersun (2022)\, explores how to reconcile those hazy\, naïve memories and beliefs of adolescence with the hardened knowledge of maturity brought on by loss and aging. The film follows both the 11- and 31-year old versions of Sophie Paterson (Frankie Corio and Celia Rowlson-Hall\, respectively) as she recalls a vacation to Turkey with her father\, Calum (Paul Mescal)\, in the early 2000s. The trip marked Calum’s 31st birthday and\, fatefully\, the last time Sophie ever saw him.  \nWells gives her audience the same tools to grasp Calum’s humanity as the two iterations of Sophie: footage from an old camcorder\, recollections of instances where Calum’s carefree façade crumbles\, and a rave-like liminal space that serves as a touchpoint for Sophie to attempt to reconnect with her younger self and a father she hasn’t seen in 20 years. With this framework—and a breathtaking performance by Mescal that just earned him an Academy Award nomination for best actor—Aftersun easily earns its place among the best films of last year\, most appropriately featured here in UW Cinematheque’s “Best Of 2022″ series. \n—Alisyn Amant
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/aftersun-at-uw-cinematheque/
LOCATION:UW Cinematheque\, 821 University Ave / 4070 Vilas Hall\, Madison\, WI\, 53706\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/02125045/aftersunfilm-hed.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230203T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230203T213000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230130T083406Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T232157Z
UID:16697-1675454400-1675459800@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Encore In Black And White at Mary Dupont Wahlers Theatre
DESCRIPTION:A still from “Elephant In The Room” features three actors. Rikki Christman (right) points a toy gun at Joe Wahlers (left\, seated). James Burreson stands cloaked in the shadows near the center of the frame in front of a vintage coffee shop backdrop. \nEncore Studio For The Performing Arts celebrates their 23rd year as Wisconsin’s premier theater company for people with disabilities with a four-film\, 75-minute suite that pays homage to silent and early sound era cinema. “Encore In Black And White” premiered at the Mary DuPont Wahlers Theatre (just off of Fish Hatchery Road) on Friday night\, January 27. It continues across four additional days (January 28 and 29 at 2 p.m.\, February 3 at 8 p.m.\, and February 4 at 2 p.m.). Tickets are available directly through Encore as suggested donations of $15 per general patron\, and $5 for people with disabilities\, students\, and seniors. \nWorking with four different writers riffing on four archetypal genres from the dawn of modern cinema\, universal director Heather Renken has an exemplary opportunity under this program’s umbrella to exhibit her experience and insight with local actors\, not only in longstanding connections to Encore Studio (serving as artistic associate for over a decade)\, but with Broom Street Theater and Children’s Theater Of Madison as well. \nRenken contributed on the writing side to the third short\, a colorful spin on noir tropes titled Elephant In The Room. In her recent interview with Channel 3000‘s Doug Moe\, Renken graciously cites Encore actor James Burreson’s passion for detective stories as the catalyst to its realization. \nOther screenwriters who helped bring “Encore In Black In White” to fruition include Clarice Lafayette\, who wrote the zippy piece of horror that opens the night\, Redemption. Sarah Jo Schoenhaar’s take on century-old slapstick emerges in Bona Fide\, and KelsyAnne Schoenhaar’s witty musical comedy of To Heiress Human closes the screening event on a spirited note (literally). Stick around afterward for a Q&A with the cast and crew. \n—Grant Phipps
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/encore-in-black-and-white-at-mary-dupont-wahlers-theatre-3/
LOCATION:Mary Dupont Wahlers Theatre\, 1480 Martin St\, Madison\, WI\, 53713\, United States
CATEGORIES:Culture,Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/02125054/encore-elephantintheroom.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230204T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230204T153000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230130T083839Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T232152Z
UID:16698-1675519200-1675524600@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Encore In Black And White at Mary Dupont Wahlers Theatre
DESCRIPTION:A still from “Elephant In The Room” features three actors. Rikki Christman (right) points a toy gun at Joe Wahlers (left\, seated). James Burreson stands cloaked in the shadows near the center of the frame in front of a vintage coffee shop backdrop. \nEncore Studio For The Performing Arts celebrates their 23rd year as Wisconsin’s premier theater company for people with disabilities with a four-film\, 75-minute suite that pays homage to silent and early sound era cinema. “Encore In Black And White” premiered at the Mary DuPont Wahlers Theatre (just off of Fish Hatchery Road) on Friday night\, January 27. It continues across four additional days (January 28 and 29 at 2 p.m.\, February 3 at 8 p.m.\, and February 4 at 2 p.m.). Tickets are available directly through Encore as suggested donations of $15 per general patron\, and $5 for people with disabilities\, students\, and seniors. \nWorking with four different writers riffing on four archetypal genres from the dawn of modern cinema\, universal director Heather Renken has an exemplary opportunity under this program’s umbrella to exhibit her experience and insight with local actors\, not only in longstanding connections to Encore Studio (serving as artistic associate for over a decade)\, but with Broom Street Theater and Children’s Theater Of Madison as well. \nRenken contributed on the writing side to the third short\, a colorful spin on noir tropes titled Elephant In The Room. In her recent interview with Channel 3000‘s Doug Moe\, Renken graciously cites Encore actor James Burreson’s passion for detective stories as the catalyst to its realization. \nOther screenwriters who helped bring “Encore In Black In White” to fruition include Clarice Lafayette\, who wrote the zippy piece of horror that opens the night\, Redemption. Sarah Jo Schoenhaar’s take on century-old slapstick emerges in Bona Fide\, and KelsyAnne Schoenhaar’s witty musical comedy of To Heiress Human closes the screening event on a spirited note (literally). Stick around afterward for a Q&A with the cast and crew. \n—Grant Phipps
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/encore-in-black-and-white-at-mary-dupont-wahlers-theatre-4/
LOCATION:Mary Dupont Wahlers Theatre\, 1480 Martin St\, Madison\, WI\, 53713\, United States
CATEGORIES:Culture,Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/02125054/encore-elephantintheroom.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230204T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230204T205000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230128T050622Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T232142Z
UID:16695-1675533600-1675543800@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Big Brown Eyes & Hot Saturday at UW Cinematheque
DESCRIPTION:In “Big Brown Eyes\,” Eve Fallon (Joan Bennett) hands detective Danny Barr (Cary Grant) his gun back. \nSophisticated and handsome but not afraid to get silly\, Cary Grant was one of Hollywood’s most beloved leading men. Before he became synonymous with Hitchcock thrillers and madcap romantic comedies\, he came up through Hollywood in the 1930s; and you can catch a 35mm double feature of Grant’s early starring roles at UW Cinematheque this Saturday starting at 6 p.m. \nPlayfully blending film noir and dialogue-driven comedy\, Big Brown Eyes (1936) features Grant and Joan Bennett as a police detective and his manicurist-turned-reporter girlfriend who’s trying to catch a gang of murderous jewel thieves. With its pulpy plot punctuated by Grant and Bennett trading rapid-fire wisecracks\, Big Brown Eyes is a charming warm-up for the screwball comedies Grant would make over the next few years. Director Raoul Walsh worked in seemingly every genre during his long career\, and he deftly balances the hard-boiled crime elements with colorful characters and snappy banter. \nA racy pre-Code romance with surprising sexual politics\, Hot Saturday (1932) stars Nancy Carroll as Ruth Brock\, a small-town bank teller who lives for weekend parties with her friends. Despite the drunken escapades\, Ruth has maintained her reputation\, but a rebuffed date decides to teach her a lesson by spreading a rumor about Ruth and big-city playboy Romer Sheffield (Grant). Ruth is branded a promiscuous hussy and loses her job overnight due to “loose morals.” Desperate to preserve her honor\, Ruth convinces her recently returned childhood flame Bill Fadden (Western regular Randolph Scott) to propose to her\, but finds the malicious gossip hard to escape. \nWhen William A. Seiter directed Hot Saturday\, Hollywood was increasingly under attack by conservative rural America\, who were outraged by the titillating films supposedly corrupting their youth. It’s easy to view the film as a rebuke of small-town America’s supposed moral high ground—Hot Saturday’s town of Marysville is populated by scowling\, puritanical gossips and their depraved\, horny sons. Compared to the yokels Ruth hangs out with\, Romer is a catch. Dressed in a white suit\, Grant portrays him as an urbane\, charming rogue\, a preface to the many redeemable cads he’d play later in life. \n—Ian Adcock
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/big-brown-eyes-hot-saturday-at-uw-cinematheque/
LOCATION:UW Cinematheque\, 821 University Ave / 4070 Vilas Hall\, Madison\, WI\, 53706\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/02125041/bigbrowneyesfilm-hed.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230212T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230212T223000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230206T155059Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T232114Z
UID:16734-1676232000-1676241000@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Inside A Dream: The Music Of David Lynch at High Noon Saloon
DESCRIPTION:Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) of “Twin Peaks” screams nightmarishly at the center of a surreal black-and-white collage. \n“It was a dream! We live inside a dream!” exclaims Phillip Jeffries\, the disturbed\, long-lost FBI Special Agent portrayed by David Bowie in David Lynch’s 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Jeffries inexplicably materializes in the Philadelphia FBI office and delivers a rambling\, incoherent speech\, only to mysteriously vanish once again as he did years ago on assignment in Argentina. \nInside A Dream: The Music of David Lynch\, a live tribute to the iconic surrealist filmmaker\, comes to the High Noon Saloon this Sunday. The show borrows its title from this bizarre scene\, while aiming to reproduce the otherworldly atmosphere of Lynch’s oeuvre. Featuring an eight-piece band that consists of talented musicians from Milwaukee and guest vocalist Kenzi Rayelle\, the project derives inspiration from all of Lynch’s work to present a unique multimedia experience. Aidan White\, Nicolas Buendia\, David Brady\, Paul Westfahl\, Allen Russell\, Ousia Moon\, Troy Leisemann\, and Luis Solis-Trinidad will all be performing live versions of songs and scores featured in Eraserhead\, Blue Velvet\, Mulholland Dr.\, Inland Empire\, and more\, along with “deconstructed” Twin Peaks Red Room stage design and projected visual accompaniment. \nInside A Dream was created by White\, a self-described “crazed Lynch fan.” In a 2022 interview for Milwaukee Record\, he says\, “Lynch is an incredibly visual director and is a craftsman at creating abstract stories\, but in my opinion the music he constructs for his work is just as iconic as the stories themselves.” (It should be noted that composer Angelo Badalamenti collaborated extensively with Lynch on the music for his films\, and so this is as much a celebration of him as Lynch.) \nWhile this marks the show’s third installment\, it is the debut performance in Madison. As for what to expect\, in the words of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan)\, the eccentric protagonist of Twin Peaks: “I have no idea where this will lead us\, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.” \n—Jason Fuhrman
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/inside-a-dream-the-music-of-david-lynch-at-high-noon-saloon/
LOCATION:High Noon Saloon\, 701 East Washington Avenue\, Madison\, WI\, 53703\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film,Music
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/02125028/insideadream-lynchshow.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230213T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230213T223000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230208T000550Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230208T002104Z
UID:16761-1676316600-1676327400@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Decision To Leave at Union South Marquee
DESCRIPTION:After a long night spent in the interrogation room\, Detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) offers Seo-rae (Tang Wei) a toothbrush to clean out some of the sushi they shared together. \nExcerpt from Alisyn Amant’s October 2022 review: \nGiven director Park Chan-wook’s propensity to subvert conventions of the mystery genre throughout his career\, however\, it makes sense that Decision To Leave follows its predecessors’ sensibilities. That is\, murder becomes the least mysterious part about the narrative he spins. Rather\, viewers will instead need to shift their focus on figuring out the tortuous tension between detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) and enigmatic widow Seo-rae (Tang Wei). \nThrough twitches of an eye or subtle movements of an arm\, Park Hae-il and Tang’s performances both succeed in saying what their director’s dialogue refuses to say outright\, for the sake of making viewers work for the answers. Tang’s performance as the seductive suspect\, who happens to be a Chinese immigrant facing intense discrimination and abuse within imbalanced marriages\, could have easily become another face to add to the annals of the “conniving but helpless woman” trope. Instead\, she molds an intensely emotional character that purposely rubs up against patriarchal power—what law enforcement agencies tend to represent in film and other art forms. When Seo-rae is questioned further about her role in her husband’s death\, she essentially and antagonistically asks\, “Shouldn’t you be pitying me because I’m a woman?” It shapes the idea that Decision To Leave is not just another cat-and-mouse thriller\, but a chilling romance of true equals. \nA 25-minute video conversation between Park Chan-wook and fellow South Korean director Bong Joon-ho will also follow this Marquee screening.
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/decision-to-leave-at-union-south-marquee/
LOCATION:The Marquee Cinema\, 1308 W Dayton St #245\, Madison\, WI\, 53715\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://d3hccd6dowbbba.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/02125317/decisiontoleave-hed.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230216T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230216T230000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230203T162112Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230203T165427Z
UID:16728-1676577600-1676588400@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Disaster Passport ("Koyaanisqatsi" screening with live score)\, Faux Fawn at Bur Oak
DESCRIPTION:Madison band Disaster Passport has built up a dedicated local following by doing something that looks downright absurd in theory: writing its own score to a film (Koyaanisqatsi) that already has a score (by Philip Glass)—one so iconic that it’s hard to separate the music from the core experience. Back in 2018\, the four-piece began playing live shows accompanying Godfrey Reggio’s experimental 1982 docu-portrait of a world barreling toward environmental collapse. \nRather than re-interpreting the towering choral themes and kinetic orchestration of Glass’ original score\, or even particularly taking cues from it\, Disaster Passport started from scratch. Banjos (Andy Moore and Colin Crowley)\, baritone guitar (Karl Christenson of Cribshitter)\, drums\, and loops (both from Luke Bassuener of Asumaya) offer viewers a more rambling\, ruminative path into the film. (Full disclosure: Moore is a Tone Madison contributor.) \nReggio’s editing style moves Koyaanisqatsi along at a nimble and at times fevered pace. Sure\, it was initially intended to go along with Glass’ music—but when a film is so packed with rhythmic cues and powerful\, wordless messages\, why shouldn’t other musicians offer a different kind of interplay entirely? Disaster Passport composed the score over the course of eight months\, but audiences can hear improvisational elements evolve and shift from one performance to the next\, as the musicians respond to  the film’s rich layers. \nAt this show\, Stoughton-based singer-songwriter Paul Otteson and his band Faux Fawn will open things up. Expect a set of tender\, poignant folk songs with their own kind of cinematic scope. \n—Scott Gordon \nScore by Disaster Passport \nPhoto by Audre Rae Photography.
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/disaster-passport-koyaanisqatsi-screening-with-live-score-faux-fawn-at-bur-oak/
LOCATION:Bur Oak\, 2262 Winnebago St\, Madison\, WI\, 53704\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film,Music
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230219T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230219T153000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230215T191059Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T232100Z
UID:16809-1676815200-1676820600@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Remembering Paolo Gioli at Chazen Museum Of Art
DESCRIPTION:A photo of Caroline Kennedy as a child is layered with an image of a child wounded during the Vietnam War in Paolo Gioli’s “Children” (2008). \nFilmmaker Paolo Gioli (1942-2022) may not be a common reference for the movement of structural cinema. But his diverse and consistent body of work\, stretching from the late 1960s to the 2010s\, is a rich and varied exploration of celluloid that often asks the viewer to reconsider the mechanics of their own seeing. In observance of Gioli’s death in 2022\, the UW Cinematheque is hosting a career-spanning short film program of his work at the Chazen Museum Of Art\, which will be introduced by UW-Madison professor Patrick Rumble\, arguably the leading scholar on Gioli.  \nThe eight-film program begins with Traces Of Traces (1969)\, an animated film made with varied materials including the oil impressions from his own skin. As Gioli’s first film\, it is more deliberately abstract than many of his others\, exploring an on-cell animation style most commonly seen in Stan Brakhage’s films. Line patterns move between dense cross-hatches and looser\, globular forms. \nThe remainder of the program includes Gioli’s many experiments with found footage\, including Children (2008) which juxtaposes images of the privileged Kennedy family with photos of war-torn Vietnam\, as well as Faces Of An Unknown Photographer (2009)\, which mines the collection of an anonymous early 20th-century photographer to re-photograph the materials and create dense superimpositions at different shutter speeds. \nThis ability to study and recreate old work with new methods runs through Gioli’s filmography; he uses the medium to rediscover and reanimate lost materials\, and does this most extensively in Little Decomposed Film (1986) with a series of motion studies that echo Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering work. Borrowing only printed images from textbooks\, Gioli stitches together a series of short animations\, each simulating motion from as few as two or three still images with stroboscopic imaging and flicker effects. The dazzling effect calls the viewer’s attention to how\, and at what exact point\, we feel like we’ve seen a “moving” image. \nIf Gioli’s work possesses a psychotropic effect\, it’s a self-aware interrogation of the act of seeing itself. Face Caught In The Dark (1995) most evocatively achieves this as a piece similarly made from the leftover materials of a long-gone photographer. Here\, Gioli photographs the portrait photographer’s leftover glass plates (a pre-film era way to capture an image impression) and sequences them in a ghostly montage. Each thin impression is barely legible as a face on its own. Shots accumulate as a sort of all-face\, like watching a granular prototype of the now-ubiquitous face-generating AI. It’s an eerie effect\, and one that brings our awareness not only to the act of seeing but to film’s ability to trans-historically reanimate. \nIf all of this sounds heady and Frankensteinian\, the program also includes the palette-cleanser Natura Obscura (2013)\, one of Gioli’s most purely beautiful films. Using a “pinhole” style (shooting through a tube pin-pricked with small holes)\, Gioli reduces the frame and surrounds it with tiny streams of light. The experimentation feels most jubilant. Each image is covered in a staticky halo with the clear footage at the center of the frame like the tip of a sparkler. \nIn a varied career that restores meaning to the filmic term of “experimental\,” Gioli’s restless innovation made him a consistently interesting\, if not widely known\, filmmaker. His work reminds us that even the most conceptual work can have a potent psychological effect. \n—Maxwell Courtright
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/remembering-paolo-gioli-at-chazen-museum-of-art/
LOCATION:Chazen Museum Of Art\, 800 University Ave\, Madison\, WI\, 53706\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230224T213000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230224T234500
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230217T054124Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T231951Z
UID:16812-1677274200-1677282300@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Thirst (2009) at Union South Marquee
DESCRIPTION:In a white room\, Tae-Ju (Kim Ok-bin) feeds on an unsuspecting victim while her paralyzed mother-in-law (Kim Hae-sook) watches. \nBlending eroticism\, horror\, and black comedy\, Thirst (2009) is a twist-filled take on the vampire genre from South Korean director Park Chan-wook. Much like his recent Decision To Leave (2022)\, Park packs his thematic obsessions and ambitious visual style into a hallucinatory tale of doomed love. \nSuffering from a crisis of faith\, Catholic priest Sang-Hyun (Song Kang-ho) volunteers for a medical experiment in an effort to find a cure for a deadly virus. Miraculously surviving thanks to a blood transfusion\, Sang-Hyun becomes a faith-healer figure\, but he begins to experience mysterious symptoms—heightened senses\, carnal urges\, and an allergy to sunlight—that can only be eased by drinking human blood. \nLeaving the church\, Sang-Hyun begins a smoldering affair with Tae-Ju (Kim Ok-bin)\, the wife of a childhood friend. When Tae-Ju convinces him to murder her husband and turn her into a vampire\, the lovers find themselves in a hell of their own making\, tormented by guilt\, deception\, and the ghost of her husband. \nAvoiding the gothic genre trappings\, Park instead draws from his Catholic upbringing and Émile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin as source material. A halfway point between Park’s breakout Vengeance Trilogy (2002-2005) and his later\, more psychological works like The Handmaiden (2016)\, Thirst at times feels overstuffed with ideas. But it remains brimming with Park’s signature\, dazzling visuals\, tonal shifts\, and shocking violence. The film verges dramatically between blood-soaked supernatural horror\, torrid romance\, and moments of unexpected slapstick. Audacious and excessive\, it’s a bold genre experiment from one of modern cinema’s most idiosyncratic minds. \n—Ian Adcock
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/thirst-2009-at-union-south-marquee/
LOCATION:The Marquee Cinema\, 1308 W Dayton St #245\, Madison\, WI\, 53715\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230303T213000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230308T195000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230301T030050Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230301T030050Z
UID:16878-1677879000-1678305000@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:RRR at Marcus Point Cinema
DESCRIPTION:Rama Raju (Ram Charan) and Komaram Bheem (NTR Jr.) smile while in the midst of a choreographed dance move. \nNo prior knowledge of Indian historical figures Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem is necessary to appreciate as S.S. Rajamouli’s bombastic action film RRR (2022). This three-hour epic reimagines the two real life anti-Raj activists Bheem (N.T. Rama Rao Jr.\, often referred to as NTR Jr.) and Rama Raju (Ram Charan) as near-superhuman strongmen\, an analogue to Goku and Vegeta for 1920s India. It’s returning to theaters for just shy of a week\, on the strength of an Oscar nomination for best song and Rajamouli’s hobnobbing with the likes of James Cameron and Steven Spielberg since the film’s initial release last year. \nRajamouli’s infectious enthusiasm for over-the-top action set pieces have led to RRR becoming a crossover hit with audiences who aren’t usually tuned in to Indian cinema\, both in America and worldwide. (Of course\, having the highest production budget of any Indian film to date surely has something to do with it.) \nThe plot in brief: Bheem hopes to rescue a kidnapped child from cartoonishly evil British Colonialists. Rama Raju works for the British police. Both go undercover\, and the men become best friends without ever realizing each other’s true identity. Tension dramatically comes to head after the requisite dance number. \nRajamouli is clearly having a blast staging CGI-heavy action. Among 2022 action movies\, only Top Gun: Maverick‘s plane scenes come anywhere close to RRR’s level of excitement\, and the Indian production didn’t have to utilize taxpayer-funded fighter jets to do it. (That is not to say RRR doesn’t have its own problematic implications.) But at the end of the day\, it’s a giant spectacle that highlights the strengths of the theatrical experience. So please take the chance to see this film big and loud. \n—Lewis Peterson \n \nThis preview was slightly modified and republished from last September for this special re-release event.
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/rrr-at-marcus-point-cinema/
LOCATION:Marcus Point Cinema\, 7825 Big Sky Drive\, Madison\, WI\, 53719\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230311T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230311T233000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230224T152827Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230224T153041Z
UID:16861-1678561200-1678577400@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Four Star Video Subscriber Drive Celebration Party at Four Star Video
DESCRIPTION:Throughout February\, Madison movie-rental institution Four Star Video Rental has been calling on customers to sign up for subscription plans\, which enable customers to check out three or more titles at a time for a flat monthly rate. It’s a continuation of the good work co-owner Lewis Peterson has done to keep Four Star alive through multiple twists and turns\, including a move that happened just before the pandemic hit home. (Full disclosure\, Peterson writes for Tone Madison\, as do two of the DJs playing this event.) \nAnd Four Star—always Four Star Video Heaven in my heart\, though the “Heaven” dropped out of the official name when the store briefly became a cooperative—is not an endling in the streaming-fueled extinction of video stores. It survives because it’s dedicated to maintaining a deep selection of DVDs\, Blu-rays\, and even some VHS tapes\, embodying an infectious love for everything from prestige cinema to the most unhinged genre gems. \nIf the movie you were planning to watch suddenly vanished from one of your streaming services\, or was never available on streaming or VOD in the first place\, you can probably find it at Four Star. In the meantime\, you should probably go sign up and subscribe. \nOn Saturday\, March 11\, hang around after Four Star’s usual business hours as they wrap up the subscription drive with food\, music\, and movie conversation. A true home for local weirdos\, Four Star has brought in Madison DJs Destructo\, Emili Earhart\, Evan Woodward\, and Mu to spin throughout the evening. Their selections run from post-punk to techno to far-flung ambient. Whatever they play\, it’ll be a fitting sonic companion to an eclectic Four Star browsing experience. \n—Scott Gordon  \n\nIllustration by Shasya Sidebottom.
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/four-star-video-subscriber-drive-celebration-party-at-four-star-video/
LOCATION:Four Star Video Rental\, 459 West Gilman Street\, Madison\, WI\, 53703\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film,Music
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230315T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230315T203000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230310T175039Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T231855Z
UID:16925-1678906800-1678912200@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Project Projection: Spring 2023 at Arts + Literature Laboratory
DESCRIPTION:Alex T. Jacobs colorfully modifies the halo of a streetlamp (with outward-moving reds\, greens\, yellows\, and blues) on a snowy night in the short “snow light” (2023). \nThe Mills Folly Microcinema series returns this week at Arts + Literature Laboratory for 2023’s first installment of Project Projection\, its wide-ranging\, seasonal showcase of film and video shorts by Madison-based filmmakers. This program’s 14 films fall roughly into two categories; the first of these is music videos\, and any fan of Madison music will find something to love in the selections’ diversity of musical genres and visual styles. ViBRATiONLAND’s video for “Stabacab” (dir. Eric J. Nelson) may take the cake for most ingenious of the bunch\, using everyday objects like a CPAP tube and silly putty to make an alternately adorable and horrifying piece of stop-motion creature horror. \nMoving further into pure abstraction\, B. Hayes’ video for “Ovation” (dir. Max Wasinger and Peregrine Balas) is similarly visually voracious\, with its collaged and datamoshed black-and-white footage smearing into gorgeous swirls. The only non-contemporary piece on the program\, Gretta Wing Miller’s Man In Space (1981) splits the difference between the musical pieces and the rest of the video work\, editing spacewalk footage to Beatles songs and reveling in nostalgia for the late ’60s. \nFor the other half of the works\, experimental video like David Boffa’s A Due Remembrance Of Wolves (2021) takes the mantle. This minimalist nature doc trains its eye on two wolves at their leisure for most of its runtime; a narrator reads 19th century texts on the danger of the animal\, usually offering bounties for hunters to exterminate the “vermin.” This penchant for appropriated text is shared by another standout of the program\, Chloë Simmons’ Passing Through (2020)\, with its short GIF-like loops that are littered with digital detritus as scrolling words recite the textbook definitions of broad concepts like cause and effect\, truth\, and signs. Simmons’ piece is  dense and heady\, but also one that skillfully explores its title’s double entendres with a thoughtful reflection on queer identity. \nSome other videos are more abstract\, content to explore an aesthetic for its own sake like in Alex T. Jacobs’ serene snow light (2023). As ambient-treated piano rolls underneath the eight-minute shot of a streetlight under snowfall\, Jacobs manipulates the footage so that the light’s halo expands into a dazzling pixelated rainbows. It’s one of the simplest works on the program\, but one that ties it all together in highlighting both the natural beauty and artistic skill that can be found in Madison. \n—Maxwell Courtright
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/project-projection-spring-2023-at-arts-literature-laboratory/
LOCATION:Arts + Literature Laboratory\, 111 South Livingston Street\, Madison\, WI\, 53703\, United States
CATEGORIES:Culture,Film
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230317T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230317T202500
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230309T063401Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T231839Z
UID:16920-1679079600-1679084700@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:Invaders From Mars (1953) at UW Cinematheque
DESCRIPTION:The amphibious-looking Martians cradle an incapacitated David (back left) and Dr. Patricia Blake (center). \nInvaders From Mars (1953) follows one of the biggest trends of 1950s horror films\, reflecting the fears of Communist invasions and rampant McCarthyism of the era. Directed by William Cameron Menzies and distributed by Twentieth Century Fox\, it clocks in at just under 80 minutes\, which is a beautifully approachable length for a B-movie. \nPredating even The Twilight Zone series\, the film opens with narration over footage of the cosmos\, which declares that\, thanks to science\, we know more about the other planets in our solar system. Science is still breeding curiosity about the likelihood of other forms of life. \nFollowing this\, the camera follows young David (Jimmy Hunt) after he sees a flying saucer crash in a sandpit. The nameless town’s residents\, including his parents and classmates\, start acting strangely when they investigate the crash site. They all soon begin disappearing into a mysterious butthole in the sand. The multicolored backdrops here in the shots of the elusive sandpit evoke similar images of scenes of the Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard Of Oz\, while other sets use exaggerated proportions\, stark symmetry\, and geometric framing ripped from German Expressionism. Filmed with Eastmancolor stock\, initial prints of the film used SuperCinecolor\, which is showcased towards the end when the townies eventually explore underneath the sandpit. \nAfter David’s parents fall under the influence of the invaders\, David gets taken in by two scientists as his surrogate parents (Dr. Stuart Kelson and Dr. Patricia Blake\, played by Arthur Franz and Helena Carter)\, the only two adults who believe something funny is happening in their town. One of the scientists gets the U.S. Army on the horn and convinces them to send in the troops. \nDuring the climax of the film\, David and Dr. Blake plummet through one of the sand’s many buttholes and into the arms of the Martians\, whose costumes look more like frogs than creatures from another world\, only adding to the tonal whimsy. Luce Potter\, the actor playing the Martian inside the glass (as seen gracing the front cover of the latest paper edition of the spring Cinematheque calendar)\, had previously played a Munchkin in The Wizard Of Oz\, which perhaps implies the similarities to the classic film were intentional. \nSeeing the new restored 4K version of this film with all its vivacious colors and practical effects on the big screen is guaranteed to be a delight! \n—C Nelson-Lifson
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/invaders-from-mars-1953-at-uw-cinematheque/
LOCATION:UW Cinematheque\, 821 University Ave / 4070 Vilas Hall\, Madison\, WI\, 53706\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230323T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230325T221500
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230317T181455Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T231826Z
UID:16971-1679598000-1679782500@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:"Animation Is Film!" Festival at Union South Marquee
DESCRIPTION:In the black-and-white “Persepolis” (2007)\, a young Marjane Satrapi is reprimanded by two lanky Islamic fundamentalists for wearing a jacket emblazoned with the words “Punk is not ded.” \nAs a festival title\, “Animation Is Film!” reads like a resounding call to action. There’s an urgency embedded into its exclamatory nature\, as if the organizers are fighting an uphill battle for the medium to gain respect and recognition. They shouldn’t have to\, but the hierarchical structure of the film world continuously suggests—especially at the most visible levels—that animation isn’t worthy of the respect afforded to “traditional” film. Fortunately\, for the sake of discerning viewers everywhere\, events like Animation Is Film actively combat depressingly regressive viewpoints. \nFrom March 23 to March 25\, WUD Film will host five free screenings at Union South\, featuring modern or established animated classics. Leading things off on March 23 at 7 p.m. will be Don Hertzfeldt’s recent World Of Tomorrow trilogy\, which stands apart as both an existential masterpiece and one of the greatest short film runs in cinematic history. On March 24\, Brad Bird’s debut feature The Iron Giant will screen at 6:30 p.m. The Iron Giant‘s legacy\, impact\, and influence still resonates across today’s animation\, nearly 25 years after its release. Directly following The Iron Giant will be Fantastic Planet\, René Laloux’s experimental—and occasionally brutal—sci-fi parable for respectful coexistence. The film is also celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2023\, and its central plea for societal peace still carries weight. \nAnimation Is Film will close on the 25th with another double-feature\, starting at 6:30 p.m.: Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue. Both features are united by way of adaptation: Perfect Blue‘s source material is the novel Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis while Persepolis has Satrapi adapting her original graphic memoir of the same name (alongside co-director Vincent Parronaud). Both films share other commonalities but are visually and thematically distinct. Persepolis‘ wars are both literal and figurative\, while Perfect Blue‘s are cultural and internal. Each remains essential viewing more than a decade after their respective releases (Perfect Blue in ’97\, Persepolis in ’07). \nAll five films feature protagonists who undergo a coming-of-age—or\, in the case of World Of Tomorrow\, coming-to-age—and learn extraordinarily harsh lessons about the nature of their surrounding world. Through their trials\, an element of profound humanity emerges even in the most fantastical circumstances. Above all\, these are films about hope\, about perseverance\, and\, importantly\, about animation’s transcendental power. All of the screenings will impart instrumental lessons about what can be accomplished within the medium. It’s up to us to continue to champion and celebrate those accomplishments\, and Animation Is Film is a perfect means to do just that. \n—Steven Spoerl
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/animation-is-film-festival-at-union-south-marquee/
LOCATION:The Marquee Cinema\, 1308 W Dayton St #245\, Madison\, WI\, 53715\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230325T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230325T220000
DTSTAMP:20260404T071103
CREATED:20230315T201517Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T231740Z
UID:16959-1679770800-1679781600@tonemadison.com
SUMMARY:The Godfather at UW Cinematheque
DESCRIPTION:The Corleones pose for a photographer at the wedding of Constanzia “Connie” Corleone (Talia Shire) and Carlo Rizzi (Gianni Russo). Don Vito (Marlon Brando) stands in the middle. \nReviving cinematic magic is one of the many things UW Cinematheque does best. Not only do they bring rare screenings to our increasingly small film market\, but they present unique opportunities to see classics on the big screen—like Francis Ford Coppola’s seminal epic\, The Godfather (1972)\, screening here in a new 4K digital restoration. \nA cherubic Al Pacino stars as Michael Corleone\, the youngest son of the Corleone mafia in New York City in the mid-1940s. Having just returned home from WWII as a decorated vet\, Michael has rebuffed a great deal of his father Don Vito’s (the brilliant Marlon Brando) guidance through the years and never really considered himself the type to take over the family business. His oldest brother Sonny (James Caan) is next in line\, or so he believes\, to take over. But after an attempt on the Don’s life\, Michael is forced to show his gall and mettle\, and has a chance to run things his way for the extended crime family. \nCoppola adapts the essence of the Mario Puzo novel\, with its prevalent themes of loyalty\, love\, sibling rivalry\, and unfiltered violence. Watching Pacino struggle internally between his personal and family values demonstrates what Coppola saw in him after his daring performance in The Panic In Needle Park (1971). \nThe Godfather ended up garnering numerous nominations for its cast and crew\, and won Oscars for Best Actor\, Best Screenplay\, and Best Picture. Consistently in top-10 lists for the greatest films of all-time\, The Godfather is a masterstroke in the categories of writing\, editing\, acting\, and production. The film remains one of the most influential of the “gangster” genre\, spanning over 50 years. Once Upon A Time In America (1984)\, Goodfellas (1990)\, and The Sopranos (1999-2007) all imitated its exploration of how the business of la cosa nostra and big business in America are often two sides of the same coin. \n—Edwanike Harbour
URL:https://tonemadison.com/event/the-godfather-at-uw-cinematheque/
LOCATION:UW Cinematheque\, 821 University Ave / 4070 Vilas Hall\, Madison\, WI\, 53706\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film
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END:VCALENDAR