The return of plunging temperatures and snow and gales more typical of late winter in the Upper Valley is mercifully coinciding with an eclectic parade of movie specials over the next couple of weekends.
The procession begins on Saturday night at 7 at Dartmouth College’s Spaulding Auditorium in Hanover, with an HD recording of The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of The Tempest in London. This three-hour adaptation features the use of motion-capture technology to stage the sequences of magic in the Bard’s reality-bending tale of sorcerer Prospero’s revenge on the men who robbed and exiled him to a desert island. Shakespearean stage legend Simon Russell Beale plays the aggrieved wizard. Sydney Stowe, director of film at the Hopkins Center, wrote in a recent email that she jumped at the chance to screen it here while it’s available to theaters in the United States in March.
“We just added this show to our program,” Stowe wrote. “We couldn’t miss the chance to play it on the big screen.”
To reserve tickets ($23) and see the trailer, visit hop.dartmouth.edu or call 603-727-3304.
Next Friday night at 7, the organizers of the White River Indie Film Festival will screen avant-garde director Michel Gondry’s new feature, Microbe and Gasoline, at the Briggs Opera House in White River Junction. The tale of two adolescent outcasts who build a small house around a car for a road trip across France, played at the Vermont International Film Festival (VTIFF) in Burlington last fall. It marks a shift from Gondry’s run of magical realism (think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind and The Science of Sleep during the first decade of the new century) to a borderline conventional coming-of-age tale, albeit full of Gondry-esque quirks.
Orly Yadin, executive director of the VTIFF, will introduce the film. Admission is $5. To reserve seats, see a trailer and learn more, visit wrif.org. WRIF also will screen the acclaimed new documentary about James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, at the Briggs on March 25.
In the next installment of the Woodstock Vermont Film Series on March 11, Billings Farm and Museum screens the 2012 documentary Mona Lisa Is Missing: The True Story of the Man Who Stole the Masterpiece.
Director Joe Medeiros spent more than 30 years assembling this account of the 1911 theft of Leonardo DaVinci’s masterpiece from the Louvre in Paris. Medeiros examines the hows and whys of the incident with a mix of historical photos, animation and interviews with descendants of Vincenzo Peruggia, who stole the famous painting in what is widely considered the greatest art heist of the 20th century.
To reserve tickets ($6 for museum members, $11 for others) for afternoon shows at 3 and 5, call 802-457-2355.
More Coming Attractions
If you missed the first, pre-Oscars passage of Moonlight through the Upper Valley, Pentangle Arts will be screening the Academy Award-winning movie at the Woodstock Town Hall Theatre four times starting next Friday night. Advance tickets go on sale on Monday.
In addition to best-picture honors — conferred after the infamous mix-up with the announcement of the culminating award last Sunday night — Moonlight earned statues for best adapted screenplay (director Barry Jenkins and co-writer Tarell McCraney) and for best supporting actor (Mahershala Ali). Jenkins’ film follows a gay, black resident of a rough neighborhood in Miami on a painful and lyrical journey through childhood, adolescence and early adulthood.
After next Friday night’s showing at 7:30, screenings are scheduled for March 11 at 7:30 p.m., March 12 at 3 and March 13 at 7:30. Tickets at the door cost $7 for members of Pentangle Arts, and $8 to $9 for others. To learn more, visit pentanglearts.org.
Flashbacks
The “Cine Salon at 20” celebration resumes at Hanover’s Howe Library on Monday night at 7, with curator Bruce Posner screening Leonard Bernstein at Harvard: The Unanswered Question, the recording of the composer’s 1973 disquisition on how composers make complicated ideas accessible to general audiences.
The screening starts at 7 in the library’s Mayer Room. Admission is free. To learn more about the spring series, visit thehowe.org.
The Chandler Film Society will show Shane in the Upper Gallery of Randolph’s Chandler Center for the Arts on March 19. The 1952 Western by George Stevens stars Alan Ladd as a former gunfighter who reluctantly helps a family of homesteaders fight off a team of cattle rustlers led by a gleefully villainous Jack Palance.
Admission is $9. The doors open at 6 for light refreshments before the film. To learn more call 802-431-0204.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.