From Boop to Bollywood: Madison's early 2010 cinema highlights

Downtown Madison might be the hardest part of the city to catch a new movie, but it makes up for that with a cheap grab-bag of restorations, international films, and avant-garde offerings that multiplex customers miss out on. Since these things range from Charlie Chaplin to contemporary Japanese cinema, The A.V. Club took a quick survey of upcoming art-cinema offerings. Expect to see more information on many of the individual screenings in our weekly calendars and on our Film page.

The masterpiece racket
One of the things that really seems to unite Madison folks behind art in a healthy way, the Wisconsin Film Festival is set to return to multiple downtown venues April 15 through 18. Look for the lineup announcement on Thursday, March 18, and then of course be prepared to pounce on tickets quickly. The fest has already revealed a couple of titles: Waking Sleeping Beauty, a documentary about Disney's animation studio, and South Korean director Bong Joon-ho's uncomfortable-looking noir Mother. Until then, we'll do pretty well on some hearty scraps of prestige, and not all of them from the Beloit International Film Festival (Feb. 18-21, Beloit). The annual Sundance Film Festival will let one of its filmmakers, writer-director Floria Sigismondi, stray from Park City for a screening of her feature The Runaways (Jan. 28, Sundance Cinemas Madison), which stars Kristen Stewart as a young Joan Jett. We're also waiting to hear whether Sundance will also be bringing back Oscar Shorts, a brief run of the live-action and animated short films nominated for 2010 Academy Awards. The animated ones especially tend to make a case that shorts can bring out a rare combination of inventiveness and emotional directness.

UW's free Cinematheque program, always a trophy case of international films and exciting revivals, might outdo itself this year with such Hollywood restorations as Howard Hawks' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Jan. 22) and a special screening of John Ford's 7 Women (March 26), which will also feature an introduction from Ford biographer Joseph McBride.

Freaks and miscreants
Lest things get too dignified in local screening rooms, take the following as reminders that film is for the weirdoes, too. If anything can be whimsical and backward at once, it's a Betty Boop cartoon, and Cinematheque will be celebrating that with "Boop-Oop-A-Doop: Some Of Betty's Best" (Feb. 5), a 30-minute look back to the character's golden period in the early 1930s. Even when Betty's in danger, she might not bring the suspense like the chapters of 1941's Adventures Of Captain Marvel, which Cinematheque will be screening in old-fashioned serial installments starting with the season kickoff on Jan. 22 (you'll have to come back April 9, 10, 24, 30, and May 7 to see how things turn out).

Not that real heroism requires clearly defined gender roles, as this Saturday's midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Saturday, Majestic Theatre) will prove with all the usual cultish trappings. Lovers of wacky theatrics can escape into a more wholesome setting when Overture Center's Duck Soup Cinema returns with a screening of Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush (Feb. 20, Capitol Theater) which will feature live accompaniment from the Capitol Theater's historic organ and a family-friendly assortment of vaudeville-type entertainers.

The Memorial Union's Real To Reel Cinema series embraces the outsiders as well, with such selections as the DIY art documentary Beautiful Losers (Jan. 28, Frederic March Play Circle) and 2008's beloved metal-band comeback tale Anvil! The Story Of Anvil (March 11, Play Circle). No word yet on what the Union's ever-inventive Starlight Cinema series has planned, but count on a chaotic mix of video art and live performance art. The Willy Street Co-Op's Film Nights serve up some fresh liberal docu-guilt courtesy of international prankster-activists The Yes Men in Yes Men Fix The World (Jan. 23) and a less-daring family that attempts to live an environmentally neutral lifestyle in No Impact Man (Feb. 6).

Starlight Cinema has yet to nail down its entire lineup, but the Union series' reliably chaotic mix of video art and live performance is set to return with a visit from New York's Nao Bustamante (Feb. 14, Play Circle), whose "filmformance," entitled "Silver And Gold," will be fresh from a showcase at the Sundance Film Festival.

Assorted travels
As always, you'll just have to hop around a bit to get into Madison's various tidbits of international cinema. The annual LACIS Festival De Cine (March 5, 6, Vilas Hall) ties in with Cinematheque's Brazilian Films Of The 1950s series. Highlights include 1959's satirical oddity The Sputnik Man, in which the Sputnik satellite lands on a peasant's chicken coop. Cinematheque will also be commemorating Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine, starting a series with the short 1991 documentary "Cairo As Seen By Chahine" and the 1958 drama Cairo Station (Jan. 23, Vilas Hall). Cinematheque launches its Kings Of Bollywood series on Feb. 6 with Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, whose 189 minutes come packed with the genre's characteristically sweeping musical numbers and flowing garments. Taking a relatively compact trip through European cinema, the Union's holding a Classic International Film Festival (Jan. 29-30, Play Circle), featurinig Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal and Frederico Fellini's 8 1/2, among others.

Keeping up a more contemporary pulse, the Romanian Film Festival is set to return March 18-20, but has not announced yet which selections it will be pulling from recent Romanian cinema. Though short, the festival often spans from historical dramas to wry satires on post-Soviet burnout. Cinematheque will also offer a taste of what Japanese filmmakers have been up to over the past decade with the four-film Tokyo Now series. Always: Sunset On Third Street (Jan. 29, Vilas) starts it off with a frank portrayal of working-class life in late-1950s Tokyo. I Just Did Not Do It (Feb. 19) closes the series on a grave note, questioning Japan's legal system through the tale of a man wrongfully charged with a sex crime. In case you don't watch other countries' films just to get scared shitless of visiting said countries, the Wisconsin Union Theater's Travel Adventure Film Series resumes later this month with the more National Geographic-friendly cruise Italian Lakes Adventure (Jan. 25-26).