As any regular reader of The Range knows, I am quite the fan of Christian film, so clearly I'm super psyched for the Nicolas Cage-fronted remake of Left Behind, opening this Thursday at several local theaters. Not super-psyched enough to actually pay for a ticket to the film which will likely offend both my cinematic and theological sensibilities, but at least somewhat happy for the comic relief this film will provide someday when I use a promo-code to rent it for free from Redbox.

The people behind the film are going all out to convince Christians that the movie isn't just an opportunity to cough up $10 for a few hours of entertainment, but actually an opportunity to keep your friends and family from having to experience the post-Christian hellscape shown in the film. Heck, they even got the Duck Dynasty guy to speak on its behalf:

Nice Nicolae Carpathia reference, guy who is inexplicably famous!

However, considering the spiritual importance of this film, it's clearly not enough to hope that a reality show star convinces the nation's faithful to bring the heathens they know to the theater. Sometimes you have to bring out the big guns...like the Prince of Darkness:

Well, if that doesn't convince you, I'm not sure what will. I just only hope God gives us until the end of the weekend to separate the wheat from the chaff. It would be a cruel turn of events to rapture the true believers on Wednesday before the movie comes out, after all.

Please grab this week's Tucson Weekly when it lands in our stands Thursday. The cover, a story that recently ran in our sister alt-weekly, the Sacramento News and Review, is on the late journalist Gary Webb. Narcos News has been steadfast in writing about Webb, his work, his association with Narco News' School of Authentic Journalism and helping to promote the movie Kill the Messenger, a film starring Jeremy Renner as Webb.

The movie opens Oct. 10 across the county, and to further help promote Webb's work, Narco News is running a series of videos, interviews of Webb back in 2003's School of Authentic Journalism. Webb's story in his own words seems worth your time and more.

Inherent Vice, the new film from Paul Thomas Anderson, isn't coming out until Dec. 12 (although it may not get to Tucson until the wide release date on January 9, 2015), but the hype is starting to kick into top gear, mostly because it's directed by one of American film's greatest artists and based on a novel by reclusive genius Thomas Pynchon, whose work, including Inherent Vice, is largely unadaptable. It's a perfect storm of nerdish enthusiasm.

Thankfully, at least based on the trailer, the film seems like it'll be amazing.

Grantland had a blog post yesterday about the "Particular Anticipation" surrounding the film:

[Paul Thomas Anderson] is different. It’s impossible to guess what he’ll do with a film visually, narratively, or substantively. His reimaginings have only proven that point: There Will Be Blood was an adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s Oil! like a 747 is an adaptation of a biplane. And Inherent Vice is no Oil! The most screen-ready of Thomas Pynchon’s novels simply in that it isn’t 800 pages long, Inherent Vice is a meandering and phantasmagoric detective story that features very little detective work or story; most of what passes for plot is a sequence of conspiracy theories stacked up one on top of the other, until they begin to congeal. For that reason alone, it’s a classically American story — few other novels so closely resemble the million-car pileup that is our cultural consciousness — but it’s also written by one of the greatest stylists in postwar literature. Turning it into a movie requires two big decisions: (1) what of that stew-like story can be ironed into a “plot,” and (2) how to render the prose into something physical.

The Loft Cinema is back with the fifth annual Loft Film Fest in just a few weeks. In additional to dozens of films over four days—you can find a complete program for the festival here—the Loft will bring a lot of filmmakers to discuss their work between Thursday, Oct. 16, and Sunday, Oct. 19.

This year's special guests include Bruce Dern, who will receive the Lee Marvin Maverick Award; Stacy Keach, who will receive the Bob Shelton Award; and novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry, who will receive the Lofty Lifetime Achievement Award. McMurtry will be on hand opening night, Thursday, Oct. 16, for a screening of The Last Picture Show, while Keach and Dern will attend a screening of Nebraska on Saturday, Oct. 18, and a talk about their careers on Sunday, Oct. 19.

A few that I'm looking forward to include Fort Tilden, an indie flick that took home the Grand Jury Award winner at this year’s SXSW Film Festival; Dinosaur 13, a documentary about the strange legal struggle that followed the discovery of a 65-million-old T Rex fossil discovered in South Dakota; and The Babadook, a low-budget horror flick that has been getting great buzz online. And TW editor Dan Gibson has been talking up The Winding Stream, a documentary about the Carter family's remarkable career in country-western music. Check out the whole list. If you like movies, there's something in there for you. And a big round of applause for the crew at the Loft for giving Tucson this gift every year.

David Fincher's Gone Girl looks pretty great, mostly because David Fincher is generally awesome, and opens this Friday nationwide, but if you don't mind coughing up a few extra bucks, you can see the film Thursday night at the Loft and enjoy a few extra bonuses in the process:

Acclaimed filmmaker David Fincher’s highly-anticipated new thriller Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck, comes to The Loft Cinema prior its national theatrical release at this special New York Film Critics Series preview screening featuring a captured-live post-film discussion with best-selling Gone Girl novelist and screenwriter Gillian Flynn, moderated by Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers! The New York Film Critics Series, broadcast from Manhattan to 50 selected major markets, takes place exclusively in cinemas and is never available on TV or online. The Loft Cinema is the EXCLUSIVE Southern Arizona venue for the series.

The much-buzzed-about film version of Gillian Flynn’s phenomenally successful best-seller Gone Girl, directed by David Fincher (The Social Network, Fight Club), is one wild cinematic ride — a perfectly cast and intensely compressed portrait of a recession-era marriage contained within a devastating depiction of celebrity/media culture, shifting gears as smoothly as a Maserati 250F.

Ben Affleck is Nick Dunne, whose wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) goes missing on the day of their fifth anniversary. Things only get worse when the intense media circus surrounding the case casts a spotlight on Nick as a prime suspect in the case. Neil Patrick Harris is Amy’s old boyfriend Desi, Carrie Coon is Nick’s sister Margo, Kim Dickens is Detective Rhonda Boney, and Tyler Perry is Nick’s superstar lawyer Tanner Bolt. At once a grand panoramic vision of middle America, a uniquely disturbing exploration of the fault lines in a marriage, and a comedy that starts black and keeps getting blacker, Gone Girl is a gripping work of popular art by one of our best filmmakers.

Tickets for the preview screening are $12 for general admission, $10 for Loft members and will almost certainly sell out, so it would probably be worth your time to get them in advance. More info at the Loft's website.

Narco News, which has been loyally persistent in getting word out about their friend Gary Webb, his work and the upcoming movie starring Jeremy Renner as Webb, Kill the Messenger, has a new story by Bill Conroy out today, which allows his family to explain what happened and how they feel about the movie.

It's another great read on Webb from Narco News that's worth your time. Also seems worth noting, too, is that Nick Schou's book the movie is based on, "Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb," is on Audible and read by Chuck Bowden.

Now that's got to be a damn gift right there, right?

From Conroy:

Also important to the family is the fact hat the people involved in making the movie are invested in the project, and care about the events portrayed in the movie. It wasn’t just a money grab for them, the family says.

“When we were at the filming in Atlanta, they were talking about how the actors and actresses, and everyone involved in the movie, were doing it because they care about it, not just for the money,” Christine says. “Someone said we’re basically calling up actors and actresses on family vacation asking them if they want to come to hot, humid Atlanta for $8 to film a movie.”

“They’re not getting paid much,” Sue adds, “and Oliver Platt cancelled his vacation to do the part because he really wanted to play [Mercury News Executive Editor] Jerry Ceppos so much.”

She says it was clear to her that Jeremy Renner also has put his heart into the project. “He spent so much time with us in Atlanta [where the film was shot], had lunch with us, warmed up to us, gave us hugs, and he was so excited about it, and moved by it too,” she says.

Sue is particularly impressed with another aspect of Kill the Messenger: The fact that it gets the story right.

“We’re just so happy Gary’s going to be vindicated, and he is in the movie. The core of the movie is right. The truth is there.

“I think Gary would have liked it. I think he would have really liked the movie, and been so excited about it,” Sue adds.

“It just feels right,” Ian says. “It makes everybody who was bad look bad, and everyone who was good look good. It just serves everyone a little bit of justice.”

It's possible that the number of people who believe that the Val Kilmer film Real Genius is one of the great movies of the 1980's is fewer than I would hope or suspect, however, I would imagine that most people might agree that a TV show reboot of the film by Adam Sandler's production company might not be the best idea:

NBC is developing Real Genius, a single-camera comedy based on the 1985 movie starring Val Kilmer. The project, which has received a script commitment plus penalty, hails from Sony TV, whose sibling label TriStar Pictures produced the movie; Adam Sandler’s Sony-based company Happy Madison; and 3 Arts Entertainment.

Even stranger, the film set at a slightly tweaked version of Cal Tech, will be turned into a workplace comedy, which is odd since the source material for this show is entirely based at a college, but hey, what do I know?:

Written by Workaholics co-executive producer Craig DiGregorio and David King (Parks And Recreation), Real Genius is a present-day reboot of the cult film, set as a workplace comedy. The show centers on the relationship between a rock star-like genius — the character Kilmer played in the movie — and a sheltered, naive co-worker.

Also, let's move the show up to the present day AND BASICALLY MAKE THIS SHOW NOTHING LIKE THE MOVIE AT ALL. Perhaps that's for the best. A show catching up with these characters in the present day would probably be depressing, but why not just pick up where the movie left off? Shows set in the 80's have done reasonably well: although I haven't actually seen The Goldbergs, it's on for a second season; The Americans keeps plugging away and more people love the late Freaks and Geeks by the day, it seems. Just taking the name and the most basic plot point from the film just seems strange, but then again, nearly every idea that Adam Sandler has been attached to in the last decade seems strange to me and I'm sure in the wake of The Big Bang Theory, everyone's trying to get in the nerd business, so I'm not sure why I'm surprised.

In the meantime, I'm going to crank up "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and eat some popcorn.

I think I've mentioned in a dozen times now, but I'm super excited for the David Bowie is documentary showing tomorrow night at the Loft. I've actually had a screener for the film for a few weeks, but I haven't wanted to watch it on my sad not-terribly-large work monitor, because I feel like I'd be missing something out of the experience.

Here's what I wrote in Cinema Showdown this week:

There are approximately one hundred films showing over the course of this forthcoming week at the Loft (two nights of "The Wrath of Khan," a week of "The Zero Theorem" and "To Be Takei," two more Tarantino flicks, etc.), but the highlight of this week in Tucson film for me is the David Bowie documentary "David Bowie is" showing on Tuesday, Sept. 23 at 7 p.m. A documentary accompanying an art exhibition created by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and currently travelling the world, the film looks at Bowie's magnificent career, explored through bits of the exhibition, including photographs, music videos, costumes and interviews with his collaborators and admirers. I guess your interest in this film would likely depend on your interest in Bowie himself, but if you care at all about rock 'n' roll, I'm not sure why you wouldn't be fascinated. Tickets are a little more than the regular Loft film, $12 for general admission, two bucks off for members, but as often happens with music-related film, Zia will be there giving stuff away.

For more info or to buy tickets in advance, head over to the Loft's website.

If you're into movies, whether that's emotional dramas, thrillers, comedies, documentaries or anything on a screen, if you take a few minutes to look through the schedule for the Arizona Underground Film Festival (opening Friday and running through Saturday, Sept. 27), you're bound to be impressed by the selections this year at the newly revamped Screening Room. No joke, there's some amazing work here, whether that's the dark Indonesian thriller Killers or the heartbreaking documentary Who Took Johnny?

Here's what's showing this weekend:

Friday, Sept. 19:

8 p.m.
Killers (Arizona premiere); 137 minutes

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Of course there’s plenty of (realistic) gore and torture here but what really fascinates is the cat-and-mouse game of sorts that develops between the two men, as their unusual online relationship, conducted in English, makes it possible for these two killers to externalize something of their attitudes toward their darkest secrets. The plot thickens considerably as the film winds its way toward a necessarily bloody yet also extremely well-plotted conclusion (the film was written by Tjahjanto in collaboration with producer Takuji Ushiyama), and along the way, even audiences might come to question whether perhaps there are good and bad uses of murder, especially after the separated Bayu’s young daughter (Ersya Aurelia) falls into the wrong hands. Remarkably, there’s not a single mention of religion, making the choice to kill or not to kill a purely moral and ethical one.

I don't have much context for what's happening in the trailer for Aagadu, the Telagu film showing at Oracle View on Monday, Sept. 22 at 7 p.m., but here's what I do know:

1. It stars Mahesh Babu, a spokesman for Thums Up soda (slogan: "Taste the Thunder!", the most desirable man in India, and most recently, the star of 1: Nenokkadine as a rock star with schizophrenia.

2. Lots of people get kicked in the face. LOTS.

3. They don't skimp on the costume changes during the dance scene.

4. I think Babu might say something about "what to do, what not to do?" at the end of the trailer. That could be a clue.

5. This movie looks amazing.

Tickets for the Tucson screening of Aagadu are $11 for adults, $9 for kids under 12 at the door. Hit the ATM beforehand, tickets are cash only for this event.