This week’s new theatrical releases for documentary include some interesting connections between urbanization, design and extravagant celebrities of yore. There’s a good lot of them, too, opening to doc fans who can’t be out at Sundance during this time. Of course, there’s also the films from last year’s festival still in theaters, such as Being Elmo, The Interrupters, Senna, Sing Your Song, Hell and Back Again and Granito: How to Nail a Dictator.
If you’re in NYC, there’s also a good ongoing program on The Compilation Film at Anthology Film Archives. Titles screening over the next week include Loznitsa’s Blockade and Revue, Marker’s Grin Without a Cat, Ujica’s The Autobiography of Nicolaes Ceausescu, de Antonio’s Point of Order and many others. Anthology is also showing Vertov films, including The Man With a Movie Camera and Kino-Eye this week.
Here are your five new theatrical releases followed by the weekly list of docs still in cinemas:
Carol Channing: Larger Than Life
The simple way to put this one is that it’s about Broadway legend Carol Channing, just as the title suggests. What a biography of Channing offers, though, is showbiz history, a contemporary love story and a look at one of the most distinct personalities on the planet. The film was directed by Dori Berinstein, who also helmed ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway and was a producer on Unzipped and Dirty Dancing. Interviewees include Loni Anderson, Rich Little, Lily Tomlin, Angela Lansbury, Phyllis Diller, Barbara Walters, Bruce Vilanch, Debbie Reynolds and Tippi Hedren.
Winner of the Audience Award at the 2011 St. Louis International Film Festival.
Now playing at the NuAart Theatre in Los Angeles. Opens in NYC and San Francisco February 3.
Somehow I missed that this was opening already (it was released on Wednesday). Directed by Ian Cheney, co-producer of King Corn and Big River, the doc explores something we take for granted: artificial light, and how it affects our environment, ecology and health. Here’s what I had to say in my review from SXSW last year:
Compared to ‘King Corn,’ ‘The City Dark’ is a less informative and seemingly less crucial doc, but on an aesthetic level I enjoyed it a lot more. It has a kind of abstract and new age-y tone, rendered by the jangly ambient techno score by The Fishermen Three and Cheney’s quiet, contemplative voice-over narration. In ways it’s vibe reminded me as much of Michael Madsen’s sci-fi-like ‘Into Eternity’ as it does an innocently inquisitive film like Josh Fox’s ‘Gasland’ (though ‘The City Dark’ has none of the scares of those recent doc favorites).
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Score/Music at the 2011 SXSW Film Festival. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature at the 2011 Environmental Film Fest at Yale.
Now playing at the IFC Center in NYC.
How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?
That title is a doozy, but hopefully it adequately informs you that this is a doc about the British architect Norman Foster (NYC’s Hearst Tower; London’s “Gherkin” building), who seeks to improve life and bring back buildings and bridges that are as aesthetically pleasing as they are practical.
Winner of the First Jury Award for Best Documentary at the 2010 Docville Film Festival. Winner of the TCM Audience Award for Best European Award at the 2010 San Sebastian Film Festival.
Opens on Wednesday, January 25, at the IFC Center in NYC. For upcoming openings in other cities, see the film’s playdates page.
Contrasting quite deeply with the Foster doc is this moving film about the rise and fall of a public housing development in St. Louis. Director Chad Freidrichs and co-writer Jaime Friedrichs track a chronology from the hope and change of post-war America through the dark urban despair of the ’70s. In a recap of last year’s Silverdocs festival, I said it’s “like a sequel to a sequel to the classic 1935 doc Housing Problems,” and lumped it with a group of films that seemed to be giving biographies to places. I noted that it “features interviews with people mourning the death of the government-born buildings, tears and all.”
Winner of Best Documentary in the Heartland program at the 2011 Kansas City FilmFest.
Now playing at the IFC Center in NYC. For upcoming openings in other cities, see the film’s playdates page.
Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston
A film about iconic ’70s fashion designer Halston should be something of a party, and that’s the tone that comes out here thanks to the very amateur yet appropriately informal approach by director Whitney Smith. Some of its success may be thanks to producer/editor Anne Goursaud, who used to cut many of Francis Ford Coppola’s features. Also, anybody who was anybody during the Halston era (still alive that is) is interviewed, including Liza Minnelli, Angelica Huston, Diane von Furstenberg and Billy Joel. If you can get past Smith’s self-indulgent first-person antics, the doc is a lot of fun and a fine memorial for the little-remembered fashion legend.
Now playing at the IFC Center in NYC. Opens February 10 at the Laemmle Music Hall 3 in Los Angeles.
Expanded releases this week (older films, new cities, some also still playing elsewhere). Links go to screening calendar listings:
American Teacher - Denver, CO [1/23]; Palm Coast, FL [1/23]; San Luis Obispo, CA [1/23]; Chattanooga, TN [1/24]; Tavernier, FL [1/24]; Waterloo, IA [1/24]; La Jolla, CA [1/25]; La Verne, CA [1/26]; San Diego, CA [1/26]
Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey - Seattle, WA [1/21, for Seattle International Film Festival]; Phoenix, AZ [1/24 and 1/31]
Blockade - New York, NY [1/20-1/26]
Crazy Wisdom - New York, NY [1/21-1/22]; Taos, NM [1/22-1/24]
Dragonslayer - Lake Worth, FL; Long Beach, CA [1/20]; Chicago, IL [1/25]; Albuquerque, NM [1/26-1/29]
Eames: The Architect and the Painter - San Francisco, CA; Bellingham, WA [1/20-1/26]; Toronto, ON [1/26]
El Sicario, Room 164 - Seattle, WA
El Velador (The Night Watchman) - Nashville, TN [1/26]
Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone - Culver City, CA [1/23]
Farmageddon - Yreka, CA [1/20]; Greenview, CA [1/21]; Cinncinati, OH [1/23]; Greenwich, CT [1/23]; Redding, CA [1/23]
Garbo The Spy - Hudson, NY
Granito: How to Nail a Dictator - Columbus, OH [1/20-1/21]; San Diego, CA [1/21]
A Grin Without a Cat - New York, NY [1/20-1/26]
Hell and Back Again - Spokane, WA; Santa Monica, CA [1/14-1/15]; Phoenixville, PA [opens 1/15]; Waitsfield, VT [1/16 and 1/19]
Inni - Dornbirn, Austria [1/24]; Helsinki, Finland [1/24-1/29, for DocPoint Festival]; Ogden, UT [1/26-1/30]
The Interrupters - Tallahassee, FL [1/20-1/22]; Phoenixville, PA [1/22]; Boston, MA [1/25]; Chicago, IL [1/25]; Williamsburg, VA [1/25]
Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life - Gloucester, MA; Landsdowne, PA; Nashville, TN; San Francisco, CA; Three Rivers, MI; Seattle, WA [1/20]; Montreal, QC [opens 1/22]; Rosendale, NY [opens 1/22]; Downers Grove, IL [opens 1/23]; Key West, FL [1/24]
Khodorkovsky - Hudson, NY [1/20-1/22]
The Man Nobody Knew - Philadelphia, PA; Ft. Worth, TX [1/20-1/22]; Portland, OR [1/20-1/26]; Spokane, WA [1/26-2/4]
Man on a Mission - Austin, TX; Lancaster, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Pasadena, CA; Claremont, CA [1/21-1/22]; Encino, CA [1/21-1/22]; Cleveland, OH [1/25]; Hudson, NY [1/26-1/29]; Spokane, WA [1/26-2/4]
My Reincarnation - Chicago, IL [1/20-2/2]
Nostalgia for the Light - New York, NY [1/22]
Paul Goodman Changed My Life - Hanover, NH [1/21]; Milwaukee, WI [1/25]
Pianomania - Cleveland, OH [1/20-1/22]
PINA - Boston, MA; Brooklyn, NY; Chicago, IL; Evanston, IL; New York, NY; Toronto, ON
Revenge of the Electric Car - Decorah, IA; Durango, CO; Yelm, WA [opens 1/21]; Tacoma, WA [opens 1/24]; Normal, IL [1/26-1/27]
Revue - New York, NY [1/20-1/26]
Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness - Fairfax, VA [1/22]
Sing Your Song - Santa Fe, NM; Charlottesville, VA [1/24]
Urbanized - Santa Fe, NM; Santa Barbara, CA [1/22]; Portland, ME [1/24]; Ottawa, ON [1/25]
Also still in theaters:
Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest
Born to Be Wild 3D (IMAX)
If you would like a film’s opening or expansion included in the weekly Docs In Theaters post, click the contact link on the right and send me an email.
