Ever since that W cover with Meryl Streep and Lindsay Lohan, an unexpected amount of buzz around Robert Altman's new film Prairie Home Companion has been building. Maybe it's merely the oddity of combining Garrison Keillor's radio program, Altman's usual troop of amazing character actors and the teen starlet that has people intrigued but it finally hits general theatrical release. Besides a blonde LIndsay trying to hold her own with the likes of Lily Tomlin and Kevin Kline, it should be fun to see Streep behind the mic, as apparently she and many other cast members sing in the film.
Also with a major theatrical release this weekend is the newest Pixar animated film, Cars. While this premise (a race car learns to live life in the slow lane) doesn't have the instant appeal as a family of super heroes or monsters in a scream factory, for the genius of Pixar it'd be easy to fork over the necessary $10.75. If Julia Stiles bearing the son of Satan is more your speed, the remake of the horror classic Omen, which opened on Wednesday, the fitting date 06.06.06, continues this weekend. The reviews haven't been strong despite the smart cast (Liev Schreiber, Pete Postelthwaite, Mia Farrow) but for shlocky, summer screams who needs high art?
A documentary we've heard good things about, Heart of the Game starts this weekend. It follows the story of a determined basketball coach in Seattle and his team of talented high school girls as they make their way towards a championship showdown. It sounds a bit like a Hoop Dreams for chicks and apparently one of the main characters of the docu, Darnellia Russell really dominates the court.
The winner of Asian CineVision's Emerging Director Award, Steven E. Mallorca will be screening his 2004 film, Slow Jam King all next week at the ImaginAsian theater. Mallorca brings new meaning to the term "multi-tasker" as he wrote, directed, produced, photographed and edited his film, in addition to writing and performing music for it. Whew, that's tiring even just to think about. Following the 8 pm screening on Friday, Mallorca and the SJK band will perform.
The 9th annual Brooklyn International Film Festival wraps up this weekend out at the Brooklyn Museum, but there's still time to catch a few more of the international independent films in their competition.
Gothamist Pick:
Also out in Brooklyn this weekend, get a little classic Italian cinema into your moviegoing diet with the Michaelangelo Antonioni: The Vision That Changed Cinema series at BAM. The program starts out with a week long run of Blow Up, wherein David Hemmings thinks he may have capture a murder on film and gets to know the sexy, young Vanessa Redgrave. They'll also be showing such gems as L'Avventura, the Passenger and a grouping of Antonioni shorts. All items not to be missed.
