Cinematically, Yours
This Week’s Movie Reviews
CAFS 2.0

Community Arts Film Series 2.0. After three successful seasons of the CAFS, I'm deconstructing it and reinventing it. The once-a-month, eight-month format now feels cumbersome and an impediment to the pleasure of film programming. The art films will continue play at the Rose - and perhaps at the Starlight - but with greater frequency and with more than one showing per film.

     CAFS 2.0 begins anew next weekend - August 17th & 18th - with BARBARA RUBIN AND THE EXPLODING NY UNDERGROUND. Made when she was just 18 years old, Barbara Rubin's art-porn CHRISTMAS ON EARTH shocked NYC's experimental film scene and inspired a thriving underground. For the next four years her filmmaking and irrepressible energy helped shatter artistic and sexist boundaries. A mythical "Zelig" of the sixties, Rubin introduced Andy Warhol to the Velvet Underground and Bob Dylan to the Kabbalah. But beyond shaping the spirit of the sixties, she was seeking the deeper meaning of life. After retiring to a farm with Allen Ginsberg, she shocked everyone by converting to Hasidic Judaism, marrying and moving to France to live an anonymous life. Barbara Rubin was a woman who truly believed that film could change the world. "Minute for minute, there are few biographical documentaries more impressive than this." -Criterioncast

     Also coming soon: PAT STEIR: ARTIST, WALKING ON WATER, WITKIN & WITKIN.

     About six years ago Port Townsend High School graduate Ben Medina (class of 2001) returned to PT for a visit and asked me what I thought of his plan to form a film production company, and to produce, write and direct his own features. If memory serves, I suggested that perhaps he should think about starting small. Ha! So much for advice from the older film guy. In impressive multi-hyphenate fashion, Medina returns to the Rose this Friday with his debut feature ECCO, a thriller about a former assassin living a new life in the shadows. Ben will be at the Rose Friday evening to introduce his film and take questions afterwards.

   KINKY BOOTS was a hit when it played at the Rose in 2005, and the appeal of this musical has never abated. Almost 200 tickets have already been sold for our two presentations of the London stage version: Sunday, August 11th and Saturday, August 17th.

     Also playing this weekend and next weekend,  THE LEHMAN TRILOGY, the transfixing saga of family and finance from the great director Sam Mendes. "What makes this work a ticket worth cashing in your gilt-edged securities for are its three extraordinary actors...they are Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley. Behold them with wonder, humble theatregoer, for they are multitudes." -The New York Times

     SOME LIKE IT HOT - one of the greatest comedies of all time - is sold out tonight in the Starlight Room, and tickets are selling fast for THE KILLERS (8/21).

--Rocky