FOW: Films revive stage stories
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As we collected information for this week’s Calendar, we felt underwhelmed by the new offerings opening in MICRO-FILM Country. Our companion “Flickers of the Week” segment will therefore give props to slightly older entertainments we believe will be worth your while! If you happened to miss the controversial Spike Lee joint CHI-RAQ or the handsomely staged MACBETH during their back-to-back bookings at the Art Theater Co-op in December, fresh chances await you to take in these adaptations of famous playwrights from centuries ago. Directed by Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel and starring the equally great Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, MACBETH interprets with cinematic verve the legendary tragedy by William Shakespeare about the cursed efforts of a victorious general and his ambitious wife to gain the throne of Scotland for themselves; it plays the Normal Theater, 209 North St., Normal, at 7 p.m. later tonight, Saturday, January 30, and tomorrow night, Sunday, January 31, where its production values and sweep can be appreciated in full before the Radius-TWC release is relegated to a streaming afterlife through Amazon Prime. Moving from a timeless lesson in greed to a timely reflection of cultural unease in the United States, sister company Amazon Studios produced as their first big-screen foray CHI-RAQ, directed by Lee from a screenplay he wrote with Kevin Willmott that radically updates the Greek “war comedy” Lysistrada by Aristophanes. In this rambunctious iteration featuring Teyonah Parris as a sleek and modernized Lysistrada, the women living in Chicago’s South Side band together and launch a “sex strike” against men in a valiant attempt to curb gang violence and heal African-American neighborhoods. CHI-RAQ has moved through the distribution pipeline amazingly fast, from a too-brief theatrical launch via Roadside Attractions to its addition on Amazon Instant Video at year’s end to a DVD/Blu-ray berth courtesy Lionsgate this past Tuesday, January 26. Family Video now stocks the disc for rental if you still rely on physical media for your movie viewing at home.
~ Jason Pankoke
p.s. If we had filed our recommendations earlier, we might have instead sung praises for the Normal Theater’s Thursday night presentation of THRONE OF BLOOD (1957), the famous Macbeth retelling set in medieval Japan. How often in this day and age does one get to bask in the awesomeness of Akira Kurosawa filmmaking mastery or Toshiro Mifune acting prowess with an audience and outside a cinema studies class? Behold the black-and-white majesty of KUMONOSU-JÔ (SPIDER’S WEB CASTLE) in a vintage Toho Co. trailer shared on-line by Criterion Dungeon as well as the beautifully vivid gallery one can amass with a simple Google Image search.
p.s.2 Interested in picking and pontificating over the “Flicker of the Week” for the C-U community? Write us at cuconfidential [at] gmail [dot] com!
[Updated 1/30/16, 8:30 p.m. CST]
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