Hopkins Center for the Arts

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2007 Telluride at Dartmouth Program


Friday 9/21 @ 5:00/7:00/9:00 pm

MARGOT AT THE WEDDING

With SQUID AND THE WHALE, writer-director Noah Baumbach drew comparisons to Woody Allen by depicting neurotically self-aware, New York literary types. In his new film, Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh are both superlative as Margot and Pauline, sisters who are alternately volatile and cerebral, as well as sexually provocative. When Pauline gets married (to an unexpectedly subtle Jack Black), Margot compulsively criticizes everyone and everything around her. And Pauline barely keeps it together, hardly containing her resentments despite the New Age theories she spouts. Their meticulously rendered sibling dynamic—with its half-spoken accusations, memories both nostalgic and bitter, and all-consuming need—is alternately hilarious and painful. (U.S., 2007, 100m) Courtesy of Paramount Vantage

Saturday 9/22 @ 3:00/6:00/9:00 pm

INTO THE WILD

Upon his graduation from Emory in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave all his money to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska. With WILD, Sean Penn adapts Jon Krakauer's nonfiction bestseller about McCandless's journey in the remote wilderness. A classic tragic hero, McCandless stubbornly keeps to a path of spiritual purity, having the audacity to take transcendence seriously. Penn stays scrupulously with the most quotidian facts of his story, refusing to add an ounce of fake grandiosity and trusting the poetic value of the landscape. Employing a superlative cast (Catherine Keener, William Hurt, Vince Vaughn), stunning imagery and heartbreaking songs, Penn has crafted an instant American classic. (U.S., 2007, 140m) Courtesy of Paramount Vantage

Sunday 9/23 @ 2:00/5:00/8:00 pm

I'M NOT THERE

In his poetic treatment of the iconic Bob Dylan, Todd Haynes (FAR FROM HEAVEN) provides a Finnegan's Wake-like meditation on 1960s film culture, subtly probing the political-cultural reality essential to Dylan's career. Haynes's astonishingly original concept features six avatars, each embodying a different aspect of Dylan's life story and music: among them are aging outlaw Richard Gere, Cate Blanchett as the androgynous early rock star Dylan, Christian Bale as the late-'70s born-again Dylan, and Heath Ledger as a movie star haunted by the burden of Dylan's enormous legacy. The first biographical feature project to secure the approval of Dylan himself, I'M NOT THERE is unlike anything you've ever seen: it is ironic, audacious and beautiful, and the music's cool, too. (U.S., 2007, 135m)
Courtesy of The Weinstein Company

Monday 9/24 @ 4:00/6:30/9:00 pm

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY

Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of Elle France, leads a charmed life until a sudden accident leaves him paralyzed from head to toe. It's impossible to read even a sentence of Bauby's miraculous 1997 memoir without an awareness of the monumental effort it must have taken him to write it. Painstakingly dictated, one letter and one blink at a time (his eyelid being the only muscle he could control), it's the work of a fantastically keen and witty mind, trapped in a vegetative state. With DIVING, Julian Schnabel (BEFORE NIGHT FALLS) celebrates his hero's two remaining assets: imagination and memory. The film, which won Schnabel the Best Director prize at Cannes, provides all the uplift you'd expect, along with cognitive science, unexpected bursts of lyrical imagery and giddy black humor. (France, 2007, 112m) In French with subtitles. Courtesy of Miramax

Tuesday 9/25 @ 5:00/7:00/9:00 pm

THE BAND'S VISIT

VISIT was the audience-pleasing sensation at Cannes and for good reason. The Alexandrian Police Orchestra—eight slightly bewildered Egyptian policemen, their powder-blue uniforms stark against the desert backgrounds—lug their instruments, lose their way and end up in a remote, nearly-empty village in the Israeli desert. Luckily for them, Dina, a ballsy, sexy café owner, helps them find lodging for the night. That's all that happens and it turns out to be more than enough. Writer-director Elan Kolrin displays a mastery of low-key deadpan visual humor but goes surprisingly further as several characters unexpectedly confront “tons of loneliness.” VISIT has the exact amount of tact and irony needed to make its sweetness work, and gives humanist cinema a good name. (Israel, 2007, 85m) Various with subtitles. Courtesy of Sony Classics

Thursday 9/27 @ 6:00/8:00/10:00 pm

PERSEPOLIS

Marjane Satrapi turned her family's life under Ayatollah Khomeni's tyrannical theocracy into both high art and pop culture with her graphic novel Persepolis, a gripping, bittersweet and surprisingly funny female coming-of-age tale. From the Shah to religious fundamentalism, and from adolescence, exile, sexual awakening and marriage, Satrapi revealed her life in compact, elegant frames. Here she adapts her drawings, her words and, with unforgettable honesty—her life story into an assured and original animated experience. At turns agonizing, sardonic and amusing, Satrapi's cinematic autobiography won the Cannes Jury Prize this year. (France-U.S., 2007, 96m) Various with subtitles. Courtesy of Sony Classics

Special $5 Price for Dartmouth Students
10 pm Show Only, 2 Ticket Limit