Commentary by Gregg Rickman (greggr1@mindspring.com). Times compiled from information available Tuesday; it"s always advisable to call for confirmation. Price given is standard adult admission; discounts often apply for students, seniors, and members.
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ACT ONE/TWO 4 2
2128 Center (at Shattuck), Berkeley, (510) 843-FILM, www.landmarktheatres.com. $6. This duplex offers a midnight movie series (plus "drawings for valuable and coveted prizes") starting this Saturday for 10 weeks. For additional screenings, see our Showtimes page.
SATURDAY (Sept. 6): Jack Nicholson sets the bar for writer"s block in The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) midnight.
ALLIANCE FRANAISE
345 Bush (at Polk), 775-7755, www.afsf.com. French-language films shown on projected video. $5 donation.
WEDNESDAY (Sept. 3): Christophe Gans" thriller Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001), involving a wild beast on the loose in the rural France of 1765 7 p.m.
SATURDAY (Sept. 6): Brotherhood of the Wolf 2 p.m.
ARTISTS' TELEVISION ACCESS 4
992 Valencia (at 21st Street), 824-3890, www.atasite.org for most programs, www.othercinema.com for Saturday evening programs. $5 save as noted. This venue offers all manner of strange and unusual video and film.
THURSDAY (Sept. 4): Lavender Diamond and the Long Armed Lady present Birdsongs of the Bauharoque, described as their "complete and literal rejection of the impotent cynicism of Post-Modernism" 8 p.m.
FRIDAY (Sept. 5): Michael "Super 8 Man" Smith presents "Dreamy Visions, Dreamy Music, Dreaming Live," a simultaneously screened mix of Athletic Muscle Guild movies from the "50s and "60s, straight porn, and gay porn. What, no Arnold? 8 p.m.
SATURDAY (Sept. 6): After a season"s hiatus, ATA"s Other Cinema returns with the San Francisco Video Activists" Network"s new compilation video of Iraq War protest, We Interrupt This Empire, screening with Norman Thomas" Why War? and other shorts 8:30 p.m.
CASTRO 3 4
429 Castro (near Market), 621-6120, www.thecastrotheatre.com, $8 save as noted. Short-run rep in a spectacular 1922 Greco-Roman-themed palace designed by Timothy L. Pflueger. Evening intermissions feature David Hegarty or Bill McCoy on the Mighty Wurlitzer.
DAILY: Party Monster (Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato, 2003) screens through Sept. 11. See Ongoing for review 7, 9:30 p.m.; also Sat, Sun, & Wed 1:30, 4:15 p.m.
CLAY 4 3
2261 Fillmore (at Clay), 267-4893, www.landmarktheatres.com; www.8tales.com for this series. A weekend midnight movie series starts this week. For the rest of the Clay"s schedule, see our Showtimes page. $5.
FRIDAY & SATURDAY (Sept. 5 & 6): The dreamy nightmare The City of Lost Children (Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, France, 1995) midnight.
FOREIGN CINEMA
2534 Mission (between 21st and 22nd streets), 648-7600, www.foreigncinema.com. Free with meal. This restaurant screens foreign films, usually in 35mm, on the back wall of its outdoor patio, with drive-in speakers available for the tables of those who want to watch while they dine.
WEDNESDAY THROUGH SUNDAY: Pedro Almodóvar"s engrossing weepie All About My Mother (Spain, 1999) screens through Sept. 7 8:15, 10 p.m.
MONDAY: Closed.
STARTS TUESDAY: Call for program.
JAZZHOUSE 4 2
3192 Adeline (between Ashby and Alcatraz, near Ashby BART), Berkeley, (510) 846-9432, www.verticalpool.com. $10 for either or both film.
SATURDAY (Sept. 6): Two video features by Berkeley artist Antero Alli, Hysteria (2002; 7:30 p.m. ), about a disturbed Croatian soldier, and Under a Shipwrecked Moon (2003; 9:30 p.m. ), about what happens when "the rituals of a self-made shamanic punk rocker lead him into the dreams of his Finnish grandfather who lies comatose and drifting through visions of his first love, a sorceress." Filmmaker in person.
PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE
2575 Bancroft (at Bowditch), Berkeley, (510) 642-1124, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $8, second show $2. The East Bay mecca for film scholars, part of UC"s Berkeley Art Museum, thrives at its on-campus location, up the steps on Bancroft between Telegraph Avenue and the Hearst Gym.
WEDNESDAY: An R.W. Fassbinder series continues with the ironic The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971; 7 p.m. ), and the compassionate Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1973; 8:50 p.m. ).
THURSDAY: Erle C. Kenton"s spirited and grisly adaptation of H.G. Wells" novel of genetic mutations Island of Lost Souls (1932) is the first in a weekly series of films on that topic 7:30 p.m.
FRIDAY: Fassbinder reviews the history of postwar Germany in The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978; 7 p.m. ) and coolly studies romantic obsession in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972; 9:20 p.m. ).
SATURDAY: Fassbinder"s debut feature, Love Is Colder Than Death (1969; 5, 9 p.m. ) -- but who is colder than Fassbinder? -- screens with his best early work, Katzelmacher (1969; 7 p.m. ), with R.W.F. a put-upon immigrant. Katzelmacher is paired with his early short City Tramp (1966).
SUNDAY: Fassbinder"s Katzelmacher (no short this program) screens at 5:30 p.m. followed by another of his early gangster films, Gods of the Plague (1969; 7:20 p.m. ), which like Love Is Colder Than Death and The American Soldier consists of Rainer and his buddies horsing around playing gangsters (kinda like early Godard and Tarantino).
MONDAY: Theater closed.
TUESDAY: Martina Kudlácek"s In the Mirror of Maya Deren (Austria, 2003) documents the life of the American surrealist and screens with Deren"s classic short film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) 7:30 p.m.
PARAMOUNT
2025 Broadway (at 20th Street), Oakland, (510) 465-6400, www.paramounttheatre.com. $5. This beautifully restored picture palace"s ongoing "Movie Classics Series" regularly includes a feature plus a newsreel, cartoon, previews, and a few spins of the Dec-O-Win prize wheel.
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