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A simple scrim, lightly dancing, a sheer of muslin, ripples across the screen at an acute angle, like a movie screen, but translucent, in the briefest instance of prestidigitation introducing the 3D element to Wim Wenders’ “Pina,” a film for his late friend, dance choreographer Pina Bausch. In its own fashion, it’s as revolutionary a way of introducing the rare, effective stereoscopic effect as James Cameron’s slow reveal of the far reaches of the highly active spaceship in the opening shot of “Avatar.” Wenders was extremely articulate about the low-budget experimentation that led to the form of “Pina” in a keynote address to June 2011′s Toronto International Stereoscopic 3D Conference, which is worth finding on his website.  Read the rest of this entry »

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New York-born, New York-talking actor Michael Rapaport first came to attention with 1992′s “Zebrahead,” a Detroit-set interracial love story; there’s an urban authenticity to his way of speech that can’t be fake, and it extends to his first feature as a director, the documentary “Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest.” It’s an impressive feat of observation, compression and empathy, briskly editing three decades in the life of four musicians from Queens who’ve known each other since they were teenagers, Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi White. While they broke up more mysteriously than acrimoniously in 1998, after five gold and platinum-selling albums in less than ten years, Rapaport catches the influential hip-hop band on their 2008 “Rock the Bells” tour, with a gratifying amount of access. While “Beats, Rhymes” collects stories from dozens of other New York hip-hop legends, the story always returns to the quartet, and most uncomfortably, and most importantly, Q-Tip and Phife Dawg. There are at least two revelations that open your eyes wide, the first involving one member’s sudden misfortune, the other a clash backstage of an intensity seldom captured by a first-time filmmaker who’s somehow allowed to be a fly in the soup at a career-changing moment. “Beats, Rhymes” was shot by former Chicagoan Rob Benavides. With DJ Red Alert, Monie Love, the Jungle Brothers, Busta Rhymes, De La Soul, and many more. (Ray Pride)

“Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest” opens Friday at Landmark Century.

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This lovely fare for the read-to-me set teaches a life lesson: illiteracy can lead you to needless fear, yet crafty arranging of the letters of the alphabet can build a ladder to freedom for your pals in peril. Walt Disney Animation Studios preserves the interplay between screen and storybook page found in 1977′s “The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh,” where the narrator intervened at one point to wake up the title’s dozing bear, a small-brainer with an endearing oral fixation on honey. This time the narrator (John Cleese) tilts the page to slide slumbering Winnie along the edges of paragraphs. One of the toy animals belonging to the boy Christopher Robin, whose misspelled and misread note triggers the plot, will ask what happens next. “If I told you that, I’d ruin the rest of the story, wouldn’t I?” chides the storyteller. Also reprised is the gentle hand-drawn style of animation. Instead of three episodes that comprised the earlier seventy-four-minute film, this fifty-four-minute morsel bears the heading “Chapter 1, In Which Winnie-the-Pooh Has a Very Important Thing to Do,” phrased in the manner of author A.A. Milne’s original chapters in 1926. Co-directors Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall share story credit with six others. Tender ears will detect the quaint imprecation “Oh, bother” during the winsome adventures of Tigger, Owl, Rabbit, Piglet, Kanga, Roo and Eeyore. With tunes by Zooey Deschanel and the voices of Jim Cummings, Craig Ferguson, Tom Kenny, Travis Oates, Bud Luckey. 74m. (Bill Stamets)

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Live theater: it’s the latest niche in the still-evolving digital evolution in big-screen movie exhibition. Live productions broadcast in high definition from other climes, like recent showings of Danny Boyle’s “Frankenstein” from London at theaters like the Music Box join opera as a higher-ticket way to get grown-ups into the cinema. (And cheaper than getting to London.) Broadway’s just started to get into the act, careful not to spoil lucrative road company income. But a one-off like the New York Philharmonic’s “Company” at Lincoln Center, which brought together for only a few shows a diverse (and diversely talented) cast may be a model, with limited showings at 600 theaters across North America. Sondheim in Libertyville! 1971′s Tony Winner for Best Original Musical, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by George Furth, furthered the “plotless” musical with a collection of vignettes about marriage and relationships, with Bobby (Neil Patrick Harris) on his 35th birthday, the perennial third wheel to five couples. The busy, busy direction seems to deploy as many cameras as cast members, but it efficiently captures the quickly rehearsed production’s let’s-put-on-a-show energy. With Stephen Colbert, Patti LuPone, Jon Cryer, Martha Plimpton, Craig Bierko, Katie Finneran, Christina Hendricks, Aaron Lazar, Jill Paice, Anika Noni Rose, Jennifer Laura Thompson, Jim Walton, Chryssie Whitehead. (Ray Pride)

“Company” plays on June 15, 16, 19 and 21 at River East, Landmark Century, Evanston 18, Elk Grove, Ogden 6, York, Lincolnshire and Yorktown. Times and ticket information are here. A trailer is below. A PDF of the production’s program notes is here.

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Writer-director Shana Feste (“The Greatest”) follows a foursome of country western pros on the road in Texas: star Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow); her husband and manager James Canter, played by country star Tim McGraw (who does not sing here); young singer-songwriter Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund, “TRON: Legacy”); and young singer-songwriter Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester, “Gossip Girl”). Kelly gets out of rehab a month too soon. She takes along a box housing a baby quail she found that had fallen out of its nest. She’s been messing around with Beau, an attendant at the facility who performs at a local bar after work. James brings him along to monitor Kelly on her comeback tour. Kelly’s opening act is supposed to be Chiles, a former Miss Kilgore with stage fright. Kelly suspects she is messing around with James. “Love and fame can’t live in the same place,” as Kelly writes in a letter to Beau. Around this trite theme, Feste scripts far better characters and shapes moving performances. The interplay within the foursome is more original than the traditional backstage melodrama and the typical country lyric. Read the rest of this entry »

Can a film be so retro it’s new; so anachronistic it’s a thing of now? Harvard grad Damien Chazelle’s low-budget 16mm black-and-white hand-held, in-your-face jazz musical romance “Guy and Madeline On A Park Bench” pretty much finds (or loses) its audience under its opening credits. A light yet still brassy jazz number accompanies images of a couple in contemporary Boston: a jazz trumpeter and a shy girl. Dance will ensue, as well as breaking out into song. Much of the camerawork and editing feels more like a 1970s student film than a relic of the 1960s or a product of the 2000s, but Chazelle’s willingness to pastiche everyone from Demy to Cassavetes to Godard marks the film as of recent moment. Either its whimsy failed me or I failed it, dunno. When I tell friends about loving musicals, the way they sometimes recoil may be similar to my reaction here. But other reviewers are charmed, including the LA Weekly reviewer who found it “thrillingly innovative,” and the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis, who named it one of the thirty best of 2010. And the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman says it’s “a beautifully shot, rhythmically complex, wildly artistic, willfully eccentric quest for authenticity.” I could well be wrong, or I may just lack the ear for the music on screen. The Bratislava Symphony Orchestra performs Justin Hurwitz’s score. “Presented” by Stanley Tucci. 82m. HDCam video. (Ray Pride)

“Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench” plays Friday-Saturday, Monday-Tuesday and Thursday at Siskel.

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Limber young women in garters gyrate and scheme, live and love, hope and dream. That would include Ali (“short for Alice”), the small-town Iowa girl with large pipes, mom-less since the age of 7, played by Christina Aguilera as well as Cher’s fading boss of a Los Angeles burlesque palace called, fittingly enough, “The Burlesque Lounge.” They all came west in search of their own deeply felt sense of movie-musical cliché. Sex is indicated, but what’s the baddest threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of “Burlesque”? Money. Real estate. A large, wide Sunset Boulevard skyscraper in the making. That emblem of phallic consequence—and vast sums of fiscal investment—weirdly suits the second feature by writer-director Steven Antin, brother of Robin Antin, proprietress of The Pussycat Dolls, who founded that burlesque enterprise in 1995. Read the rest of this entry »