[Reel Pizza] update

hi everyone

What a weekend!  The brave souls who turned their nose at Sunday evening's weather all seemed to have a grand time at our annual "Academy Night" which this year benefited both the Beth C. Wright Cancer Center and the Maine Sea Coast Mission  The food was divine, the gowns and tuxes and costumes were terrific and the decorations made Reel Pizza look ab-fab.  There were loads of door prizes, although I do not know who won the grand prize for the correctly choosing the most winners.  And the actual Oscar ceremony was fun too. Maybe we will see you here when we do it again next year. 

This Thursday's (2/26) senior matinee will be GRAN TORINO at 1:30.  Next week (3/5) it will be THE READER for which Kate Winslet won the best actress award at Sunday night's event.

A correction.  I have now twice said about FROST/NIXON that the man playing the David Frost character is Martin Sheen, when in fact it is MICHAEL SHEEN.  Yes, I do know the difference,. but I had the same problem last spring confusing Colin Farrell and Colin Firth.  I apologize for my aging, addled brain. 

Anyhow, here again are this coming week's films, Happy Mardi Gras, and let's all think SPRING!
-Lisa

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Friday Feb 27 - Thursday Mar 5
THE READER (R)  123min  6:00 and 8:30
This accomplished Oscar-nominee, including for Best Picture, directed by Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot) using a screenplay by David Hare, his collaborator on THE HOURS, is a complex film set in post-WW2 Germany based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Bernhard Schlink.  Oscar-WINNER Kate Winslet is haunting as Hanna, an older woman with more than one secret who has a brief, passionate affair with a teenaged boy Michael (David Kross) that includes both sex and literary read-alouds, until one day she is just gone.  Fast-forward ten years, and Michael comes across Hanna again.  He is a law student observing war-crimes trials and discovers to his horror one of Hanna's secrets, and has figured out another.  Ralph Feinnes plays the older adult Michael who years later still has not resolved his conflicting emotions about this woman. 
 
Friday Feb 27 - Monday Mar 2
FROST/NIXON  (R)  122min   5:30 and 8:00
Entertaining and riveting, this insightful and visually energetic film from Oscar-nominated director Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind) is a fascinating dual character study of two men whose careers were in the gutter, Richard Nixon (played by Tony award-winning and Oscar-nominated Frank Langella) three years after he had resigned the presidency after Watergate but had yet to confess or apologize for anything, and David Frost (played by Michael Sheen, The Queen), a fading British talk-show host who had been exiled to Australia. Frost wants to reignite his career, and using his own money, boldly persuades Richard Nixon, who needs to reshape his legacy, to sit for four televised interviews.  Screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen, Last King of Scotland) adapted his fictionalized Broadway play and Langella and Sheen deftly reprise their powerful stage roles.   A strong supporting cast includes Kevin Bacon, Sam Rockwell, Oliver Platt, Matthew Macfadyen and Rebecca Hall.
 
Tuesday Mar 3 - Thursday Mar 5
OSCAR-NOMINATED SHORT FILMS  (NR)  132min   5:30 and 8:15
The Academy Award nominated short films in the live-action and animated categories come from a world-wide group.  Many have already seen Pixar's PRESTO, which preceded WALL-E last summer.  Also in the animated group are OKTAPODI, a cute French octopus love story, Britain's THIS WAY UP about two undertakers trying desperately to transport a coffin to the graveyard after their hearse is destroyed, the impressionistic Japanese HOUSE OF SMALL CARDS (Oscar winner) where a man who is losing his house to a rising tide explores his memories, and the Russian LAVATORY LOVESTORY, a simple line drawn story about the romantic dreams of a public bathroom attendant.  The live-action offering include Germany's Holocaust story TOYLAND (Oscar winner), Ireland's immigrant story NEW BOY, Denmark's THE PIG, about an elderly man who bonds with the art on his hospital room wall, France's MANON ON THE ASPHALT, as the life of a bicyclist hit by a car flashes before her eyes, and ON THE LINE, a Swiss-German lovestory between a security guard and a bookshop employee.