If you, like Roger Ebert, have heard about the intensely indie oddball feature-length animation Sita Sings the Blues, then you don’t need me to tell you what “the greatest breakup story ever told” is all about or why it’s such a phenomenon.

And if you’ve been sighing over the unfortunate copyright circumstances that make this film the most intriguing piece of Flash cinema you’ll never get to see, rejoice! Nina Paley has a plan to give her astonishing cartoon gem the distribution it deserves, the upshot of which is, you get to see at the Starz Film Center.

This isn’t its first time playing at the little theater under the Tivoli smokestack on Auraria. But it’ll definitely be my first time seeing it. I’ll be there tonight at the 7:00 PM showing. Say hi if you’re there!

If you can’t make it tonight, you’ve got most of the nights of this week until the final showing on Thursday, July 2. Pick a date and buy your tickets online!

And, while you’re at it, if you’re so inclined, become a supporting member of the Denver Film Society. Members get discounted tickets to any film ($6.00), occasional opportunities to attend free screenings ($0.00), and the warm fuzzies of knowing that you’re playing a part in keeping independent cinema alive in Denver (priceless).

Besides, Starz got beer! Mmm, beer. Can yer ol’ AMC and Century Theaters say that? Didn’t think so.

A cool new locally made movie premiers this weekend! It is called “Standards of Ethical Conduct“!

The trailer has some hysterical bits about stupid company regulations, useless security clearance questions and bad things at a company party!!! Sounds like a movie I can relate to!

Chuck Roy is in it! I love Chuck Roy! I love his comedy routine about the gates of hell and highlands ranch!!!

The Synopsis:

For those who work in big corporations, the antics that occur at FCT, a recently acquired subsidiary of URBM, will be all too familiar.  In “Standards of Ethical Conduct”, you’ll follow the story of Heff, a cubicle-dweller who finds himself in conflict with FCT’s nightmarish code of conduct after an unfortunate incident at the annual company Halloween party. Last Comic Standing semi-finalist Chuck Roy co-stars as Heff’s stoner roommate, a man pursuing a very different sort of American Dream.

See you at the Bug Theater this saturday June 6th at 8pm!!

Order your tickets early!!

I know, I know, I’m turning into a one-note blogger here. But how cool is this? How often do you get to see a local, independent film do so well, thanks almost entirely to a monstrous neighborhood buzz, that its run is extended three weeks past its original closing date?

Denver is showing all kinds of love for this Double Edge Films production, and “Ink” will now run through April 16th. So you’ve got a whole week more to see this fantastic film.

In celebration of the film and all the support it’s received, Double Edge Films and the Starz FilmCenter are hosting a special Fan Appreciation Event at the 7:00 PM screening on Saturday, April 11th.

The movie will show as normal, after which there’ll be a 5-minute exclusive behind-the-scenes feature and a Q&A session with the film’s creators. I’m told that, in addition to Jamin and Kiowa Winans of DEF, actor Jeremy Make (“Jacob”) and director of photography Jeff Pointer will be there. There’ll also be a special show-and-tell of props and costumes; if the idea of, say, trying on Ink’s costume tickles your funny-bone, you’ll get your chance Saturday.

(Featured photo: my husband, John, posing with his favoritest Ink prop ever, “Jacob’s box”. Cool, huh? I would not be surprised if this item also put in an appearance Saturday.)

Anyway, this flyer has all the details. Print it out and present it at the box office, and you’ll receive two tickets for the price of one. And as always you can buy tickets online here.

I had the extreme good fortune last night to attend a prescreening of “Ink”, a locally produced urban fantasy film that opens next week Friday at the Starz Filmcenter in Denver

Ink is the latest offering from indy producer Double Edge Films. Previous films include “Spin” and “11:59”, which I haven’t yet had the pleasure to see. This movie sounded designed to hit me right where I live. As I said to friends beforehand, “It sounds like it’s about Good and Evil having epic battles for your soul inside of your dreams.” What’s not to like? I’m there, man.

So I was not surprised that I loved every minute of it. What I wasn’t prepared for was how breathtakingly beautiful this movie was. From start to finish, it was a thing of exquisite loveliness. It made me happy, heart and soul.

As the movie opens, we meet the little girl Emma: playful, imaginative, full of demands (as children are). Her father, John, is a high-powered executive trying to keep his company ahead of the competition. We’re not sure at first which opening scenes are present and which are flashbacks, but we get a sense that John’s life is a little empty, a little too corporate, that he’s uncomfortably distant from his family.

We are also soon introduced to the Storytellers and the Incubi. Up and down the suburban neighborhood where Emma lives with her grandparents, we watch lights going out and people falling asleep… and strange beings not quite of our world approaching their bedsides. As the Storytellers touch a sleeper’s forehead, beautiful dreams are born to uplift the spirit and soothe the soul. As the Incubi send shadows oozing over their victims, nightmares erupt to steal the dreamer’s peace, self-confidence, and sense of worth.

And someone else slips into Emma’s bedroom–the shaggy-cloaked, mishapen character known as “ink,” who steals the dreaming Emma away. In the waking world, her body remains in a coma. In the world of dreams, ink is taking her to the Incubi as a sacrificial offering, that they will condescend to lift him out of his suffering and into their ranks.

The Storytellers mobilize for a rescue. Emma’s life is at stake. So are questions of love and loss, despair and redemption, bravery and courage, for Emma and for her father and for ink himself.

Throughout, the movie does an incredible job of reproducing the distinctive sense of being in a dream: the way dreams repeat incidents with variations, the way they open hidden compartments and unfamiliar passageways in familiar houses, the way shapes and places change. When the Storytellers fight with ink in Emma’s grandmother’s house, smashed furniture puts itself back together and characters leap over walls that in waking life meet the ceiling. The fight itself proceeds according to an altered sense of time, as though partially a matter of stop-motion photography–watch the trailers to get a sense of it. I found particularly delightful how ink and the Storytellers traveled from one dream locale to another, the way they opened doorways of light or traveled through moving pictures by playing on small finger-drums that hung from their clothing like charms.

It was also fun to play “spot that location”. The entire movie was filmed in the Denver area, complete with RTD buses and trains, downtown highrises, aspen forests near Kebler Pass, and art buffalo lining the 16th Street Mall. During the Q&A session after the movie, someone asked about the hospital scenes; apparently these were filmed … I’m going to get this wrong … thanks to a fortuitous move in Brighton, I think it was? Staff were moving out of one hospital and into another, and Double Edge Films had about a week to use the just-abandoned building and what was left of its equipment.

Those of you who have seen “Spin” may recognize the earlier production’s spirit in a gorgeously choreographed scene midway through the movie, where a single wind-blown dollar is the first step in a complex chain reaction that brings Emma’s father to a life-changing crisis point. Music combines with rapidly alternating shots of the different players in the scene–and in the middle of it all, one of our main characters blissfully engineering it like an orchestra conductor–and this is the point when I started weeping for the sheer beauty of it all. I’m not sure I can explain it better than that. Just go see it.

I was reminded strongly of City of the Lost Children and Mirrormask what with the potential of dream reality to affect waking life. But the stakes are higher in ink. This movie doesn’t proceed according to fairy tale logic, for all that it borrows fairy tale elements.

And yet, though the story’s conflicts are of life-and-death importance, hope is stronger than despair, and no failure is forever. The blurb at the Starz FilmCenter tickets purchase page (go there, right now, buy tickets!) likens ink to, among other things, It’s A Wonderful Life; that’s not far off the mark, considering that a strong theme in the movie is that it’s never too late for redemption.

“This is who you’ve become,” the Storytellers whisper in the dreams of the broken. “This isn’t who you have to be.”

Have I mentioned that you need to go see this? You really, really do. And if you like it, go see it again with friends in tow. Double Edge Films is following an unorthodox path, compared to other indy productions. Instead of focusing on the film festival circuit, they’ve followed up their Santa Barbara debut with this two-week run at Starz FilmCenter (which is a wonderful venue, by the way, one of a seemingly dying breed of independent theaters with no before-show ads, lots of excellent indy films, and Mighty Leaf tea and bottles of microbrew at the concession stand). The better it performs here in Denver, the better distribution it’ll get worldwide in the megaplexes with the comfy seats and overpriced popcorn.

So. Support your local film artists and give your soul a tonic! Go see ink on its opening weekend, and tell everyone you know about it! And if you go to the Saturday March 14th 7:00 showing, say hi–my husband and I and a couple of friends will be coming down from Boulder for another viewing. We’ll be the ones bouncing in our seats and making little happy excited squeee noises.

Well, it’s over! I managed to get through 5 movies on Saturday with the help of Toby and Sarah. I’m still working on the written blog post, but I’ll post the six videos below so you can check ’em out if you wish.
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I’ll be at Westminster 24 doing to the AMC Theaters Oscar Showcase today from 9:00am to midnight.  I’ll be updating mostly through twitter and if I can some mobile stuff.  Lots of blogging, vlogging and whatever else I can manage will be going on.  If you’re going to be there, hit me up or seek me out.  Live Twitter Stream is below.  I’ll take this post out late tonight and replace with my layers upon layers of blog post and vlog posts.

See you there!

Follow my updates here.

Denver, are you ready to have some serious movie geektastic time for a good price?  A funktasticly freaky filmfest is going live nationwide this Saturday!

My favorite movie theatre chain is doing a Oscar Nominated Movie Showcase these Saturday all day at both Highlands Ranch 24 and Westminster 24.  When I say AMC rocks my house I’m not saying that because they’ve asked me to do some blogging, vlogging and twittering but because between the major movie houses in the area, they’ve won my heart.

As a blogger, I follow the sage advice that full disclosure makes baby Jesus giggle and coo.  And I’m all about the little guy being content and not throwing lightening bolts into my cranium.

Ever since I was in high school I would start drooling geek saliva when the chance to watch movies at HR 24.  How they have the seats setup, the overall feel and just the fact that I’ve never had too much trouble going to the moving pictures there cements it.  If I could marry AMC, I would.

So when they asked me to do some fun social media stuff, I said, “Oh hellz yea baabbyyy!”

I was a mite bit more controlled when speaking to the business woman on the phone, but inside my geek soul was a dancin’ the Charlie Brown dance.

So, I’m going to be at Westminster 24 doing some blogging and video blogging with a friend or two but I’d love to see you there.  I’ve not got details on where and if I’ll be able to setup as those are still under construction, but I foresee doing some video voting on what the big winners will be, some interviews about what movie is better and on and on.  I’ll update here and on my twitter as I know more.

Ticket information and times are below.
Highlands Ranch 24 Tickets and Westminster 24 Tickets

Movie start times a la local time
Milk 10:30 a.m.
The Reader 1:05 p.m.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 3:45 p.m.
Slumdog Millionaire 7:15 p.m.
Frost/Nixon 9:45 p.m.

I’m not sure I care. Harsh as that sounds, I think they executed poorly. Here’s why.

1. Cost. I tried to have Ignite Denver there, they wanted $2500 for the night, not counting any food or drink, that was just to secure the location. Other bars (including the one we ended up at) were free, relying (successfully I believe) on food and drink orders from the 100+ people to carry the night.

2. First run movies. Blah. There’s too many movie theatres already, if I want to just go see whatever is out, I’m not gonna do it at a place where I can eat and drink. I’ll find a showtime, and go. I’ll meet up with friends, or go out on a date with my wife before or after. Go for the niche stuff. Do a Planet of the Apes day/night. Star Trek marathon, Star Wars, B movie marathons, heck a Shermer Illinois marathon!

Go for the off beat, the “Brings back my childhood”, the “I want my kid to experience the wonder” type films. I don’t know and could be wrong, but I’m guessing it’s easier to get the rights to Planet of the Apes, than to Iron Man.

I hope the next owners of ‘Flix are better able to capitalize on the incredible library of past works. Shoot, show a “Movie remakes that were better the first time” marathon, there’s no end to what could be seen.

And advertise, set up a twitter account to let people know what’s playing, blog about what running the joint is like, get social. Don’t just expect people to show up, being next to Tattered Cover isn’t enough.

Maybe I should buy the place? LOL