At the Sinny

Will Wim Wenders' latest film, Don't Come Knocking, ever come to Madison? It was at either the Downer or Oriental in Milwaukee last month (or was it April?) but it never made its way here. I'll admit to not knowing all of the ins & outs of movie roadshowing but, according to the IMDB, The BigScreen Cinema Guide, and other webpages, the film is currently being shown at the Tivoli Theater in Stephenson, Michigan. Stephenson is a town in the UP (that's Michigan's Upper Peninsula, for anyone wondering) and it boasted a population of 875 people at the 2000 census.

You have got to be shitting me!

Here we are in Madison, a city of some 220,000+ people with a world-class university and a community of sophistos, yet the latest by Wim Wenders has completely passed us by. Wenders - you may know him as the director of such films as Paris, Texas, Until the End of the World, and Buena Vista Social Club. He was one of the leaders of New German Cinema. So a small town in the UP gets to catch the latest opus from Wim Wenders while we here in Madison have the privilege of being able to see the choicest cut of New Age bullshit in the form of What The Bleep!? Down The Rabbit Hole- Extended Director's Cut at the Barrymore. Someone explain this cruelty to me.

What are the odds of Beowulf & Grendel making its way here? It opens in Chicago on 14 July at the Landmark's Century Centre Cinema. (Now there's a mouthful.)

The Music Box Theatre in Chicago has posted its summer schedule. Three Times sounds interesting. It tells three love stories set in 1911, 1966, and 2005 with the two lead actors playing the main characaters in each story. David Lynch features in the July midnight movies with Eraserhead and a collection of his short films. There will be a new print of Terrence Malik's Days of Heaven showing the week of 28 July. And the weekend matinee on 22-23 July is a collection of Looney Toons! The rest of the matinee series is dedicated to Billy Wilder.

Down at the Gene Siskel Film Center, one can see the puppet animation of Kihachiro Kawamoto. It looks really friggin' cool to me. Plus there's a brief look at contemporary Syrian cinema.

Closer to home, Isthmus takes a look at Rooftop Cinema. Every Friday this month (why not longer?) there will be avant garde short films shown on the roof of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. The showing on the 16th, called "Unusual Landscapes", features work by UW prof J.J. Murphy and noted UK director Peter Greenaway, who gave us The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover and The Draughtman's Contract.