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100 DAYS Q&A’s this Weekend at the Playhouse

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When a cold fish telecommunications executive returns to his small island town for his estranged mother’s burial, he learns about the Taiwanese tradition that mandates him to marry within 100 DAYS so that the parent’s spirit can transition peacefully. When a typhoon leaves him stranded for three days, he rekindles a romance with his free spirited childhood sweetheart, who is engaged to marry a local villager.

100 DAYS director Henry Chan, and Emmy winner for A to Z, Scrubs and Moesha, along with the 100 DAYS producers, will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:30 and 9:55 PM screenings on Friday, December 12 and after all screenings on Saturday and Sunday, December 13 and 14.

http://vimeo.com/108748331

A “Lost-and-Found Delight,” THE KING AND THE MOCKINGBIRD Finally Restored and on U.S. Movie Screens

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A animated classic, Paul Grimault’s THE KING AND THE MOCKINGBIRD, written by Grimault and legendary poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert, has been restored and after many decades finally getting a theatrical release in the United States. Based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, this wildly satirical film follows a chimney sweep and shepherdess on the run from a tyrannical king. A masterpiece of traditional hand-drawn cell animation, THE KING AND THE MOCKINGBIRD is credited by celebrated Japanese animators Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata as inspiring the creation of their own studio, the now world-famous Studio Ghibli. Its influence can also be felt in such films as Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant.

Read Ben Kenigsberg’s recent New York Times review of the restoration:

The French animated film “The King and the Mockingbird” has been more influential than known or seeable, at least in the United States. The movie is belatedly opening here in a subtitled restoration, with special dubbed showings for children.

Released in France in the 1950s in a version that the animator Paul Grimault called “an impostor” and completed, after an overhaul, in 1979, “The King and the Mockingbird” is commonly cited as an influence on Studio Ghibli, from Japan. Yet in its humor, its fairy tale origins and the characters’ rounded features, it plays more like a vintage Disney work, only nimbler and freer.

Adapting a Hans Christian Andersen story, Mr. Grimault wrote the screenplay with Jacques Prévert (“Children of Paradise”). The film takes place in Tachycardia, where King Charles XVI — the numbers are tallied aloud whenever his name is spoken — is an avid if inept hunter. That hunting makes him a nemesis of the hero, a showman of a mockingbird.

With its muted rose and yellows, the angular animation is classical but inventive, even surreal. Tachycardia collapses periods, combining an ostensibly medieval setting with a futurist streak. When the king rides a rocket-­shaped elevator to his secret apartment on the 296th floor, you could easily see it as a gag on “The Jetsons.” A giant automaton with spotlight eyes seems the source of the key design in “The Iron Giant.”

Still, a catalog of the movie’s pleasures barely does justice to this lost-­and-found delight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMnV6KCfOqQ&feature=youtu.be

TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER Q&A’s this Weekend at the Playhouse

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Angelino Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested in July 2010 after a 25-year killing spree in which it is thought he could have killed over a 100 victims, potentially making him the worst serial killer in history. Significantly his arrest was not the product of painstaking detective work but completely accidental, the result of a computer DNA match that linked him to a possible 20 victims. Franklin now awaits trial. TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER looks into how it was possible for all this to happen.

TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER filmmaker Nick Broomfield, cinematographer Barney Broomfield and subject Pam Brooks will participate in Q&A’s at the Playhouse after the 7:20 PM screenings on Friday and Saturday, December 12 and 13 and after the 4:40 screening on Sunday, December 14. Nana Gyamfi, attorney, subject of the film, activist and member of the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders, will join them for the Friday Q&A. KPFK’s Margaret Prescod, subject and founder of the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders, will join them for the Saturday screening.

THE COLOR OF TIME Q&A with James Franco Saturday Night at the Music Hall

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James Franco, Mila Kunis, Jessica Chastain, and Zach Braff star in THE COLOR OF TIME, a dramatic and riveting look at the life and work of iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning poet C.K. Williams. Williams (Franco) has a beautiful, adoring wife (Kunis) and a young son. But as he prepares for a reading in New York City and struggles to create new work, he is haunted by memories of his past—from his first sexual encounter to a later tragic loss.

James Franco will participate in a Q&A after the 7:20 PM screening of THE COLOR OF TIME at the Music Hall on Saturday, December 13.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWtiOUq7rRk

THE IMMORTALIST Q&A’s at the NoHo

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THE IMMORTALISTS is the story of two eccentric scientists struggling to discover medical breakthroughs to create eternal youth. And yet they fight to gain support for their cause in our world, which they call a world “blind to the tragedy of old age.” Bill Andrews is a lab biologist and famed long-distance runner racing against the ultimate clock. Aubrey de Grey is a genius theoretical biologist who conducts his research with a beer in hand. They differ in style and substance, but are united in their common crusade: to cure aging or die trying. They publicly brawl with the old guard of biology who argue that curing aging is neither possible nor desirable. As Andrews and de Grey battle their own aging and suffer the loss of loved ones, their journeys toward life without end ultimately become personal.

THE IMMORTALISTS filmmakers David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg and subjects Bill Andrews and Molly Sheridan will participate in Q&A’s at the NoHo after the 7:30 PM screenings Thursday-Saturday, December 11-13. Executive producer Chuck Braverman will join them for the Thursday screening.

http://vimeo.com/43515949

BEFORE I DISAPPEAR Q&A’s at the NoHo 7

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A troubled young man and his straight-laced niece embark on a thrilling odyssey through New York City in the heartrending drama BEFORE I DISAPPEAR, based on an Oscar-winning short. As his life hits rock bottom, twenty-something Richie decides to end it all, only to have his half-hearted suicide attempt interrupted by an urgent request from his sister to baby-sit her precocious daughter. So begins a madcap tour of Manhattan after dark, as uncle and niece find unexpected bonds in the unlikeliest of places.

BEFORE I DISAPPEAR actor Paul Wesley will participate in a Q&A after the 1 PM screening at the NoHo on Sunday, December 7. Producer Terry Leonard will participate in Q&A’s after the 8 PM screenings on Friday, December 5 and Sunday, December 7.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bosMzZh916I

MISTAKEN FOR STRANGERS Q&A’s with Filmmaker Tom Berninger and His Brother, Matt of The National

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MISTAKEN FOR STRANGERS is a truly hilarious, unusual, and moving film about two brothers, Matt and Tom Berninger.  Matt, the lead singer of the critically acclaimed rock band The National, finally finds himself flush with success. His younger brother, Tom, is a lovable slacker – a filmmaker and metal-head still living with his parents in Cincinnati. On the eve of The National’s biggest tour to date, Matt invites Tom to work for the band as a roadie, unaware of Tom’s plan to film the entire adventure.

MISTAKEN FOR STRANGERS subject-filmmaker Tom Berninger and his brother Matt will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:10 and 9:30 screenings at the Music Hall on Friday and Saturday, December 5 and 6.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OeSAUNvpvY

REMOTE AREA MEDICAL Q&A’s Opening Weekend at the Music Hall

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A debate over health care has been raging nationwide, but what’s been lost in the discussion of mandates, payers, pre-existing conditions and deficits are the American citizens who live day after day, year after year without solutions for their most basic needs, afraid of injury and suffering through illness and injury because for them there is no alternative. REMOTE AREA MEDICAL documents the annual three-day “pop-up” medical clinic put on by the non-profit Remote Area Medical (RAM) in the NASCAR speedway in Bristol, Tennessee.

REMOTE AREA MEDICAL co-director Farihah Zaman will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:20 screenings at the Music Hall on Friday and Saturday, December 5 and 6.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l71S9goU37A