[Reel Pizza] schedule May 7 - 27

What a week!  I surely meant this to go out long before now...anyhow, you are getting it before the website!

Here is the May schedule for Reel Pizza; this goes right up to Memorial Day weekend.  Hope you find something of interest, there seems to be a wide variety this time around.  Before I get to films, there is both new art and another special program to tell you about.  Also, Saturday May 8th is the Bar Harbor Merchant's Association big SALE'BRATION downtown yard sale day.  If you have some things to sell, sign up for a table, as all table proceeds will benefit Island Connections.  If not, come buy something (for Mom? or yourself?).    Have a great weekend, and I will be back with times for next week's films on Tuesday. 
-Lisa

ART IN THE LOBBY  KATHY VANGORDER  West Tremont
     As a professional gardener on Mount Desert Island, it is my pleasure and privilege to spend much of the summer immersed in a wonderous array of botanical exuberance.  I especially enjoy the up-close, intimate images as a way to slow down, savor details and the essential magic of light and color celebrated through flowers.
    I offer this particular selection of flower portraits as color therapy for winter-weary eyes, along with a selection of favorite quotes, as reminders and encouragement, especially at this time of year,
    "...walk out, like someone suddenly born into color... "    -RUMI

SPECIAL PROGRAMMING:  Film and Panel Discussion SUNDAY MAY 16  1pm 
TAPPED (NR)  76min  FREE
Sponsored by the Lamoine and the Bar Harbor Conservation Commissions, and the Union River Watershed Coalition, the film will be followed with a panel discussion with professors, activists, and attorneys, moderated by Ken Cline, COA Environmental Policy & Law professor.
An unflinching examination of the big business of bottled water, this inspiring film is a timely documentary that trails the path of the bottled water industry and the unwitting communities.  This is a powerful portrait of the lives affected by this unregulated and unseen industry that aims to privatize and sell back the one resource that ought never to have become a commodity: our water.


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Fri May 7 - Mon May 10
THE SECRET OF KELLS  (NR)  75min
Full of striking Celtic artistry, this beautifully hand-drawn, colorful, magical adventure was an obscure Irish Production until it became an unexpected but not undeserved Oscar nominee this past winter.  Set in a medieval age of early Christianity, the delightful story follows a young orphan in the care of his uncle the Abbot of Kells (Brendan Gleeson, Mad-Eye Moody from Harry Potter) who is fortifying his abbey against an anticipated Viking attack.  But when an elderly monk arrives with the news that the enemy is headed their way and carries an unfinished illuminated manuscript, the boy is glad to help even as he must enter the forbidden forest where he will find special berries to make ink.  There he meets mythical creatures that help him on his quest, and his dedication lights his way even as he faces down his deepest fears. 
 
Tues May 11 - Thurs May 13
A PROPHET  (NR)  150min  [in FRENCH with subtitles]
This Oscar-nominated and Cannes Grand Prix winning film combines a haunting prison drama, a gripping gangster saga and a powerful personal portrait into an extraordinary entertainment.  Filmmaker Jacques Audiard (Read My Lips, The Beat that My Heart Skipped) has made a bold film that uses crime as a metaphor for power and life.  New actor Tahar Rahim plays a young French-Arab petty crook who enters prison as a nervous, illiterate, and vulnerable kid, and, using his intelligence and attentiveness, is transformed during his lengthy stay into a savvy master criminal and a mob kingpin.  He is taken under the wing of an older Corsican boss (Niels Arestrup, Bourne Ultimatum) who rules the prison, but only if he will attend to some dirty work, otherwise he is a dead man.  Thus begins his education.

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Fri May 14 - Mon May 17
THE RUNAWAYS  (R)  105min
Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart nail their roles as Cherie Currie and Joan Jett, two of the founding members of the seventies band The Runaways.  Discovered by their manager Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) who manipulates their image with drill sergeant precision, he turns these rock-obsessed highschool misfits into successful stars by exploiting their youth and sexuality.  Based on Currie's memoir Neon Angel and the feature debut of music video director Floria Sigismondi, this gritty, spirited story of the rise and fall of these teenaged rock-n-roll rebels, and the unlikely friendship that developed between the two main bandmates is authentic with rich, period details. 
 
Tues May 18 - Thurs May 20
MID-AUGUST LUNCH (NR)  74min  [in ITALIAN with subtitles]
With delectable scenes of food preparation, this delightful and perfectly executed farce follows a middle-aged man who is forced by financial circumstance to spend the biggest summer holiday weekend entertaining his elderly mother and three other feisty mammas.   Starring Italian screenwriter (of the totally different film Gomorrah) and first time director Gianni di Gregorio, working with several first-time senior citizen actresses who are so good it is hard to be sure they are acting and not in a documentary, this warm-hearted tale of good food and unlikely friendship is a vibrant family drama and charming comedy of manners.
 
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Fri May 21 - Mon May 24
HOT TUB TIME MACHINE  (R)  93min
The title says it all!  John Cusack, Craig Robinson and Rob Corddry star in this raunchily funny homage to so-bad-they-are-classic 1980's movies.  They play 40-something buddies who are each having trouble with life.  After a particularly bad episode with one of them, they, with one of their grown nephews in tow, decide to recapture the magic of a glorious day they spent 25 years ago at a now decrepit ski resort.  After many drinks, a mysterious incident sets off a chain of events with the hot tub of the title, and these four are sent back to 1986 and must actually relive the day, which is before the nephew is born.  It's politically incorrect, but spot-on hilarious, quite clever and a whole lot of fun.
 
Tues May 25 - Thurs May 27
VINCERE  (NR)  128min  [in ITALIAN with subtitles]
This amazing and gorgeous historical biography tells the tragic and unknown story of Ida Dasler (Giovanna Mezzogiorno).  She falls madly, irrationally in love with a young handsome Socialist Benito Mussolini (Filippo Tami), continuing her affections through his transformation to his new Fascist ideology and selling all her belongings to bankroll his newspaper; they are married and have a child.  After the start of WWI, he goes to war and she loses track of him.  When she finds him, she discovers that he has married another and rejects both her and their son.  She continues to seek him out, to demand he recognize his child, but in his rise to power, he has all the documentation of their relationship destroyed, eventually ordering her institutionalized, with the boy going to a Catholic boarding school.  But Ida will not give up without a fight.  Master Italian director Marco Bellocchio (Fists in the Pocket) blends newsreel and other archival footage with reenactments, making an epic treatise with emotional power.

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COMING ON OUR SECOND SCREEN?

IRON MAN 2  (PG-13)  125min 
The highly anticipated sequel to director Jon Favreau's superhero blockbuster starring Robert Downey , Jr. (Sherlock Holmes) is sure to be fun and action-packed.  As the world knows that billionaire Tony Stark leads a dual life, he is under pressure from the government, the press and the public to share his inventions with the military; but Tony is unwilling to divulge his secrets for fear the information will end up in the wrong hands.   With Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and James Rhodes (now Don Cheadle) at his side, Tony forges new alliances and confronts powerful new enemies.  Samuel Jackson re-turns as Nick Fury.
 
OCEANS  (G)  74min
With few words (minimal narration is by actor Pierce Brosnan), symphonic music, and exquisite cinematography using cutting edge underwater photography, filmmakers Jacques Perrin (Winged Migration, Microcosmos) and Jacques Cluzaud present both the bizarre, otherworldly species and common critters that inhabit various niches of the Earth's ocean's ecosystems for our viewing pleasure.  From the Great Barrier Reef to the Arctic Ocean, to the Mediterranean and Caribbean Seas, discover a part of the life of a blanket octopus, mobula ray, marine iguana, sea nettle, stonefish, blue whale, walrus, garden eel, spinner dolphin, sea lion, baby sea turtle, penguin, sea urchin larva, horseshoe crab, and much more, all of whose mysterious existences combine to keep life in the balance in the watery realm beneath the waves.  Also included are the unfortunate effects that humans continue to make on this forgiving but fragile habitat.
 
DATE NIGHT  (PG-13)  88min
In New York City, a case of mistaken identity turns a bored married couple's attempt at a glamorous and romantic evening into something more thrilling and dangerous.  Claire and Phil Foster (Tina Fey and Steve Carell) are a typical suburban couple whose lives – including their weekly date nights of dinner and a movie – have become routine. To reignite the marital spark, they visit a trendy Manhattan bistro where a case of mistaken identity turns their evening into the ultimate date night-gone-awry.  But as Claire and Phil take their unexpected walk on the wild side, they begin to remember what made them so special together.  The early word (from Variety) on this new action romantic comedy from director Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) is that it is "uncommonly engaging" and "hits a home run." 

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Coming Next Schedule?
ROBIN HOOD
LETTERS TO JULIET
GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
GREENBERG
BLUEBEARD
SHREK FOREVER AFTER
SEX AND THE CITY 2

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