Copious Notes

Edwin Schiff stars as Frank-N-Furter in Berea College Theatre Labaratory's "The Rocky Horror Show." Photos by Aaron Gilmour | Berea College.

Fans of Rocky Horror have two ways to see the show this Halloween weekend which as Mr. Tunis reminds us, is an hour longer on Halloween night.

The kids at the Berea College Theatre Laboratory are presenting The Rocky Horror Show, the original 1973 Richard O’Brien musical that started it all. Like it’s cinematic incarnation — we’ll get to that in a few sentences — audience participation is encouraged, and members of the Berea audience will actually receive participation bags with things like confetti for the audience to throw. Please do remember there are live people playing Dr. Frank and company, so don’t try to go and upstage them like you do at the movie. Tonight and Saturday, the students will put up two shows nightly at 8 and midnight at Berea’s McGaw Theatre. Tickets are $5-$10 and can be reserved by calling (859) 985-3300 from 1-5 p.m. Friday and one hour prior to curtain. Berea students get in free, but must present a valid Berea ID.

Anyone know if Transylvania University ever did Rocky Horror? Seems like it would be a lot of fun there.

Of course, the annual party at the Kentucky Theatre reconvenes at midnight tonight and Saturday for 1975’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show starring Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Meat Loaf and all the rest. Feel free to try to upstage Curry — just try. According to the Kentucky’s blog, Lexington ranked Numero Tres (I am probably phrasing that as competently as Chad Ochocinco says 85) behind only Chicago and San Francisco in Rocky Horror Halloween attendence last year.

So, there it is: Live from Berea or on film in Lexington. But really, there should be time to get from Berea after the 8 p.m. show to Lexington for the midnight movie. I mean, if you’re not going to Time Warp twice on Halloween weekend, when are you going to Time Warp twice.

Don’t forget: The Thriller dance marches through Downtown Lexington again, tonight.

Would you like to have your film shown at the Kentucky Theatre over and over? 2007 photo by Janet Worne.

Several interesting film opportunities floated across the culture desk late last week:

What’s your policy?: How would you tell people to silence their cell phones and pagers and take their trash to the nearest receptacle? The films movie theaters use to convey these little housekeeping items are called policy trailers, and LexArts is sponsoring a contest to make a new policy trailer for the Kentucky Theatre.

The competition is open to any filmmaker 18 or older. There’s a $1,000 award for the winner, but the real prize will probably be having your film converted to 35mm and shown before every feature at the Kentucky Theatre. News of the contest reminded me of seeing some contest-winner policy trailers at the Toronto International Film Festival that were amusing, inventive, and a lot more fun than cheesy music or Front Row Joe.

Proposal submissions, including script and storyboard, must be sent to LexArts postmarked no later than Oct. 30. The winning film is expected to begin showing in January. Click here for complete information and forms.

Do-ers profile: The Lexington Film League is also looking for short films, these about people doing interesting things in their communities around Kentucky. The contest is open to filmmakers and non-filmmakers. Submissions should be no more than five-minutes in length and are due by Jan. 15. Click here for complete submission details. The contest is in conjunction with Make Yourself Necessary.

Larry Barnes. Photo courtesy of Transylvania University.

Barnes scores: This isn’t a contest, but it is a chance to hear the work of a Transylvania University artist on a film at the Kentucky. Transy music professor Larry Barnes scored the documentary Euphoria, which will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 12. Tickets will be $6 general admission, $5 students. The documentary by Lee Boot, is described as an out-of-the-box art and science film that asks, is the American Dream working?

Barnes composed the score after the film had already been completed and won a gold medal at the Houston Film Festival. Boot had heard Barnes’ work and asked him to compose a score. CDs of the score and DVDs of the film will be available at the screening.

Paul Newman in an iconic role as Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler.

The impetus for showing The Hustler now is, of course, showing the late Paul Newman in his prime.

In 1961, Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats was probably as big an attraction, but the movie was the story of Newman’s “Fast Eddie” Felson, a pool hustler who loses big in the beginning and struggles to get back at great personal expense. It shows at 1:30 p.m. and 7:15 p.m. Wednesday as part of the Kentucky Theatre’s Summer Classics Series. Admission is $4.

The story actually visits the Kentucky Derby as the setting for a key match for Eddie, though Louisville is not listed as a filming location. Most of the action takes place in New York City.

The Hustler is considered by many to be an American classic and Fast Eddie became an iconic American film character, though it took 25 years for Newman to win an Oscar for the part. He did that when he reprised the role in The Color of Money (1986), a  sequel that finds aging Eddie trying to nurture a talented-but-cocky young Hustler played by Tom Cruise. The Martin Scorsese film featured Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Cruise’s girfriend and a soundtrack highlight by some solid Eric Clapton tunes.

But the original remains the classic.

The robot, Gort, attends to a fallen Klaatu (Michael Rennie) as Helen (Patricia Neal) looks on.

The Kentucky Theatre has made a good habit of bringing in summer classics shortly after remakes have come out, and usually the result is reminding us how much better the original was.

Such is the case with this week’s summer classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still.

The 1951 sci-fi classic stars Kentucky’s own Patricia Neal as a woman who unwittingly takes an alien in as a boarder and later helps him in his mission to learn about and save earth.

Neal has admitted over the years that while working on the movie, she thought it was just a throw-away movie about flying saucers, and she did not realize the Robert Wise film would go on to be really good and regarded as one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time.

No one will be saying the same thing about last year’s Day the Earth Stood Still remake starring Keanu Reeves as Klaatu, the role originally made famous by Michael Rennie. According the Internet Movie Database, Rennie was selected because the London stage actor was unfamiliar to American audiences and would be easier for viewers to accept as “alien.” By contrast, many viewers just find Reeves hard to accept.

But he actually was one of the better things about a movie that just didn’t get its source material.

The original Day the Earth Stood Still was an engaging cautionary tale about mankind’s over reliance on violence in the Cold War Era, while the new one tried unsuccessfully to be an action film and graft an environmental message onto the plot.

Check out the original at 1:30 and 7:15 p.m. at the Kentucky. Admission is $4, and don’t forget, “Klaatu barada nikto.”

Groucho Marx in 'Duck Soup.'

So, you think that a win-at-all-costs attitude is a new phenomenon in college sports? Ha! Has the Kentucky Theatre got a 1932 Marx Bros. movie for you.

Horse Feathers is part of a Marx double feature at 1:30 and 7:15 p.m. Wednesday, this week’s installment of the theatre’s summer classics series. The other feature is Duck Soup (1933), one of those movies that was considered a near bomb when it premiered, but is now regarded as a comedy classic.

Duck Soup is the one where Grouch Marx is appointed the leader of fictional Fredonia by a rich widow, played by Margaret Dumont. Harpo and Chico play spies from the rival state of Sylvania, and Zeppo is Groucho’s advisor who inadvertently helps him start a war — as only war can be waged in a Marx Bros. movie.

And in Horse Feathers, they play football as it can only be played in a Marx Bros. movie. Watch for the final touchdown. The film is about a football game between Darwin and Huxley colleges, and a lot of humor focuses on colleges stretching eligibility requirements to be competitive.

Of course, we relay all of this like people care about the plots of Marx Bros. movies.

Yes, Duck Soup has a pretty serious satire of war, and both movies poke fun at the new film censorship board of the day. But the real point of these films is classic comedy, like Duck Soup’s mirror scene and the speakeasy joke in Horse Feathers.

With these, the brothers’ last two films for Paramount, the quartet made Depression-era audiences howl with laughter. And today, the same thing will happen at the Kentucky.

Some things never change.

If you have ever been creeped out seeing a solid line of birds sitting on a power line or hearing a deafening squawk of a flock of birds during migration season, it’s probably because you’ve seen a certain Alfred Hitchcock flick.

That squawk can be particularly unnerving because Hitch made it the soundtrack of his 1963 hit, The Birds, which shows at 1:30 and 7:15 p.m. today as part of the Kentucky Theatre’s Summer Classics series. Tickets are $4 at the door.

Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, and Jessica Tandy in The Birds.

Leave it to Hitchcock to take creatures normally associated with peace, love, and tranquility and turn them into murderous monsters.

It actually is a pair of love birds that Melanie (Tippi Hedren) buys for Mitch (Rod Taylor) that gets the drama started on Bodega Bay. Melanie buys the birds after a contentious encounter with Mitch as an excuse to get close to Mitch again, and maybe endear herself to him.

Soon after she arrives, massive flocks of birds begin staging gruesome attacks on the maritime village, including an unnerving assault on school children. One of the classic scenes of The Birds, where Mitch, Melanie and others walk among thousands of quiet birds in an attempt to escape, was brilliantly parodied by The Simpsons in the episode A Streetcar Named Marge (one of the best Simpsons episodes ever).

In the scene, set at the Ayn Rand School for Tots, Maggie has just retrieved pacifiers that were taken from her and all her friends. When Homer, Bart, and Lisa arrive to pick Maggie up, they must step gingerly through hundreds of babies to the deafening sound of pacifier sucking.

Part of the creepiness of the movie is it doesn’t answer questions. Was it the love birds? Was it Melanie? Was it just a freak of nature? Hitch seems to provide one possible explanation in the trailer, above.

Lexington horror and fantasy filmmaker and author Stephen Zimmer brings his new DVD project to the Kentucky Theatre tonight, and by project, we don’t just mean his new film.

Stephen Zimmer. Photo from myspace.com/sgzimmer

The first titles in the Indie Movie Masters series came out on home video in late January, but that DVD is getting a big screen showing at 7:30 p.m. tonight (April 9) along with some indie trailers and a music video.

The main feature is two shorts: writer and director Matthew Perry’s (not the Matthew Perry) Murderer, followed by Zimmer’s The Sirens. Murderer is about a serial killer locked in jail cell for life who attempts to kill himself, but supernatural forces make that harder than he thought. Zimmer’s The Sirens is about an escort service in which succumbing to the sirens’ song has bloody consequences.

Zimmer says the DVD is the start of a series that will include comedy, documentary and other titles. Producers say they are currently seeking film submissions for future releases. While the series is a Kentucky-based project, Zimmer says submissions are welcome from anywhere. The DVD of Murderer and The Sirens is currently available through the Indie Movie Masters website and online outlets such as Amazon and retailers such as Target.

OK, I don’t know how they left Samurai Delicatessen (above) out of the lineup, but the Kentucky Theatre does have a pretty cool Samurai film festival the week after next.

The four day festival of somewhat more serious samurai fare includes a movie some film buffs consider the best movie ever made: Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1954) at 4:30 and 8 p.m. April 20.

Zatoichi, or The Blind Swordsman of Zatoichi is the feature at 5:30, 7:40 and 9:40 p.m. April 21. The Takeshi Kitano film won the people’s choice award at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival.  Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), starring Forest Whitaker as a hitman who models himself after the Japanese warriors, is next at 5:15, 7:30 and 9:40 p.m. April 22.

Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) closes out the series at 5, 7:40 and 9:40 p.m. April 23. Judging by reviews, the English-language film starring mostly Japanese actors is a love-love-it-or-hate-it proposition.

"Autism: the Musical" is one of 11 films showing in this year's One World Film Festival.

The One World Film ­Festival has unveiled its lineup for this year.

The free series, designed to encourage cross-cultural understanding through film, will feature 11 movies at The Kentucky Theatre, 214 East Main Street, or the Lexington Public Library, 140 East Main Street, from Feb. 15 to March 22. Here’s the lineup:

Autism: The Musical (2007): The story of children with autism writing and performing a musical. 2 p.m. Feb. 15, library.
Pete Seeger: Power of Song (2007): Documentary about the legendary folk singer. 7 p.m. Feb. 19, Kentucky.
Moving Midway (2007): This film documents the physical relocation of an Antebellum plantation when development begins to encroach on its land. 2 p.m. Feb. 22, library.
A Walk to Beautiful (2007): Three ostracized Ethiopian women take an arduous journey to get medical treatment for a severe childbirth complication. 5 and 7:30 p.m. Feb. 26, Kentucky.
War Dance (2006): This 2008 Oscar nominee for best documentary shows Ugandan schoolchildren who use music and dance to forget their troubles. 2 and 4:30 p.m. March 1, library.
Up the Yangtze (2007): Documentary about a cruise up the river before a gigantic dam changes the landscape. 5 and 7:30 p.m. March 5, Kentucky.
Outsourced (2007): A romantic comedy about the outsourcing of a Seattle company to India. 2 and 4:30 p.m. March 8, library.
Arranged (2007): Two women, a Muslim and an Orthodox Jew, develop a friendship through shared experiences, including that they are both preparing for arranged marriages. 5 and 7:30 p.m. March 12, Kentucky.
Under the Same Moon (2007): A Mexican boy travels to the United States to find his mother, who is working in the country illegally. 2 p.m. March 15, library.
Amal (2007): A fable set in India that asks what really constitutes success. 5 and 7:30 p.m., Kentucky.
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (2007): The story of a boy sent to live with his grandfather while his parents try to escape political unrest in 1970s Brazil. 2 p.m. March 22, library.

All films are free. Go to the festival website or call (859) 266.6073 for more information.

During a chat with Kentucky Theatre manager Fred Mills Tuesday, we touched on the subject of the holiday classics series, which is not happening this year.

Fred Mills in the Kentucky Theatre projection booth in 2007. Copyrighted Herald-Leader photo by Pablo Alcala.

Mills said he had received a few calls about the series, an abbrevaited version of the summer classics series, which has been a huge hit for the Kentucky. The holiday classics series has not been as successful, Mills says, and it came at a bad time for the theater’s primary programming: prestige, arthouse moves that often end up being prime candidates for Oscars.

“From about Thanksgiving, through the end of the year, some of the bigger pictures are released by the studios, and you can’t really interrupt those pictures to show another film,” Mills says. “So the only time you have available to do it is early morning, and we tried that last year, and it just didn’t work.”

Contracts with distributors often stipulate that films must play at prime times such as Friday nights and weekends. This holiday season, The Kentucky is featuring Milk, a biopic of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the United States, starring Sean Penn. And Friday, Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle’s drama about a poor Indian teen who goes on the Hindi version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, opens. Slumdog was just nominated for a Golden Globe Award for best motion picture drama.

In summer classics news, Fred said the theater has secured the late Paul Newman’s The Hustler for next summer.

We’ll have more from our chat with Fred next week in the Herald-Leader and at LexGo.com.