A few things I learned today about The Devil's Rain, made in 1975 and showing at the Loft tonight at 8 pm as part of their Mondo Mondays series (only $3 and apparently there's some sort of $1 snack bucket available!):

1. The film stars William Shatner (between the Star Trek series and the movies), Ernest Borgnine, Keenan Wynn, Tom Skerritt, Eddie Albert and John Travolta, who makes his film debut as "Danny the Melting Satanist."

2. Anton LaVey is credited as the movie's technical advisor.

3. The poster promised "absolutely the most incredible ending of any motion picture!"

4. The film's universal panning was considered the end of English director Robert Fuest's promising film career, forcing him to work in television until he returned to the screen with Aphrodite, which Wikipedia describes as a "1982 French soft-core exploitation film".

The very strange musical Hedwig & the Angry Inch is one of my favorite things ever, so even the announcement of a first draft of a sequel is just about the most exciting news I've heard in awhile. Sure, it'll probably be another decade or so before I actually see it live (and based on the limited box office success of the film version, I doubt it'll be on the big screen), but any Hedwig news is good news:

BREAKING CULTURAL NEWS: I’m not sure if this has been announced anywhere or not. I had coffee-and-conversation this morning here in Greenwich Village with my old friend John Cameron Mitchell, the creator of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. He is busy putting the finishing touches on his first draft of a Hedwig sequel and will be doing a reading and recreating the role of Hedwig on September 16th at a special performance at this year’s Afterglow Festival in Provincetown. “We spend so much of our early lives trying to figure out who we really are,” he said as a way to enigmatically sum up the new Hedwig plot line. “And we spend the rest of our lives preparing ourselves to let it go.”

He then went on to tell me in detail the narrative of the sequel for which Hedwig’s original composer Stephen Trask will write the music once more. There was such sweet excitement in his voice as he told me scene after scene, much like the sweetness and excitement he first had when so many years ago we sat in another coffee shop and he shyly admitted he was writing the role of a transgendered rock’n’roller so he could play it himself...

As for the sequel? Let’s just say it’s something that could only happen to Hedwig - a phantasmagoria with dollops of brutal reality interwoven into its multi-media narrative.

Hedwig lives!

Yes, I will go see Somebody Up There Likes Me. I don't need to know what it's about after seeing this 90 second promo. This is enough to convince me that the film is worth my time.

My series of posts asking the Loft Cinema to bring films I'm particularly interested in to town has had mixed results so far (YES: the Muppet film festival and Jiro Dreams of Sushi; NOT YET: the Replacements documentary), but where else can we count on for the weird and off-mainstream stuff to show in Tucson, right? So, where else could I possible turn to in order to see the Irish monster film Grabbers on the big screen?

Loft Cinema people, can y'all help a guy who wants to see a movie about people getting drunk to fight off squid attacks out? Thanks in advance.

If you're in the mood for an outdoor movie tonight, Raiders of the Lost Ark is playing at Cinema La Placita. As summer popcorn fun goes, it doesn't get much better than that. It starts at 7:30 p.m. at downtown's La Placita complex and will only set you back $3. (And the popcorn is free!). Details here.

In the past 17 years, Disney and Pixar have released films that go straight to the heart, beginning with Toy Story and concluding with the most recent, Brave.

I'm excited about the long-awaited—12 years, to be exact—release of the Monsters, Inc. prequel coming out next year and I'm even more thrilled that Finding Nemo might get a sequel.

But why we have to wait at least 10 years for these movies to get a sequel when it only took five years for a follow-up to Cars?

From last night's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, here's either Pee-wee Herman or a remarkably adept impersonator re-dubbing the Dark Knight Rises trailer. A warning: this is the most amazing thing you'd see all day, so hold on to your hat, assuming you wore a hat to work today.

Update: It was Fallon doing a remarkable impression. Wow.

The desire to create a truly immersive movie-going experience in nothing particularly new (a movie theater in 1929 tried spraying perfume during a film and John Waters added Odorama, a scratch and sniff card to showings of Polyester in 1982, among many other smell-based cinema gimmicks), but now, movie theater owners looking for a way to push the cost of a movie ticket into the realm of what we're used to playing for a ticket to an amusement park might get their wish with (wildly inaccurately named) 4-D movies:

In the latest bid to attract moviegoers back to multiplexes, where 3-D — featured in hits such as "The Avengers" and"Men in Black 3"— is already the norm, technology and entertainment companies are pushing a new system known as 4-D....

"Theaters need to find new ways to bring people back to the multiplex and away from their couches, and this is one way of doing that," said Theodore Kim, chief operating officer for the Los Angeles lab of CJ 4DPlex, operator of the specialty theaters....

In one nighttime scene in "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," when vampire-like mermaids launch an attack on pirates in rowboats, the seats rocked back and forth to simulate the movement of the boats, a fan stirred a gentle breeze, fog filled the theater and a faint smell of the ocean wafted across the audience. When the mermaids shot strands of seaweed at the hapless pirates, moviegoers were sprayed with water. In "Prometheus," water sprays simulate something entirely different: the innards of an alien.

CJ 4DPlex, which debuted in 2009, now screens about 20 major Hollywood titles a year for the international market and works with several big studios on international releases.

"We've done a number of films with them, and they've been very successful," said Chris Aronson, head of domestic distribution for 20th Century Fox. "It's certainly something that's unique to the theater environment."

It costs about $2 million to design and outfit a 4-D theater, with exhibitors covering half the costs. CJ Group says circuits quickly recoup their investment because the theaters are so popular.

I'm clearly the wrong person for this concept, since I think I've already decided that I'm done with the extra cost and hassle of wearing glasses during 3-D movies, but it's hard for me to imagine why someone would want to be squirted with water during a movie. It's proven to be possible to make big budget movies that people actually want to see that aren't ridiculously stupid (the Christopher Nolan Batman films, in particular), but this summer's The Avengers wasn't missing the smell of burnt aliens empowered by space energy, even if it might make another few million dollars for the studio. Keep the amusement park rides at the theme park, ok?

Thank you, Loft Cinema. Thank you so much. Tickets and passes go on sale tomorrow.

MUPPETS™, MUSIC & MAGIC: JIM HENSON'S LEGACY / A Month-Long Celebration!
Jim Henson and the Muppets!

All through the month of August!
Starts Thursday, August 2nd
Individual screening admission: $8.00 general; $6.00 Loft members & Children 12 and under.
Series pass: $40.00 general; $35.00 Loft members & Children 12 and under (series pass DOES NOT INCLUDE admission to the three feature films: The Muppet Movie, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth - separate admission is required).

It's time to play the music, it's time to light the lights, it's time to meet the Muppets ... because August is Muppets Month here at The Loft Cinema! We’ve partnered with The Jim Henson Legacy and Brooklyn Academy of Music to present a very special series celebrating the best of Jim Henson and the Muppets! All throughout the month of August, you’ll see some of the greatest, most hilarious moments from the 50+ year history of The Muppets, rarely seen gems from the Sesame Street vaults, and even a collection of Henson’s experimental short films. We’ve also included the classic Henson feature films The Muppet Movie, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth in the mix!

The series begins with the MUPPET HISTORY 101 program, presented live by our very special guest, Jim Henson Company puppeteer DAVE GOELZ, creator of Beauregard the Janitor, Zoot (the saxophonist of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem) and the one-and-only Gonzo the Great!

This series is produced by The Jim Henson Legacy and Brooklyn Academy of Music. Tour Executive Producer Irena Kovarova. Please visit: www.JimHensonLegacy.org / www.BAM.org

The (amazing) schedule is below the cut.

While somehow Colin Boyd's review of Magic Mike didn't make into one of our two featured movie review spots this week, I don't personally recall a film discussed quite as much at the Weekly offices during my time with the paper. So in case you're wondering what Colin thought of Steven Soderbergh's take on male stripping, here's his take:

More Boogie Nights than Showgirls, Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike showcases the dark side of the high life, in this case, the nonstop party of a male strip club in Tampa, Fla. Taken (one assumes somewhat liberally) from star Channing Tatum’s own background as an exotic dancer, Magic Mike has a few stripping sequences, but Soderbergh always manages to make each dance less about strippers getting tips and more about the emotional content of the film in that moment. It’s a tricky way to go about showing Tatum and Matthew McConaughey in thongs, but by and large, the sequences in the club act in the service of a film that is a lot darker below the surface than its opening moments suggest. Tatum has found his mark; McConaughey is solid in what may or may not be self-parody; and Soderbergh again demonstrates his skill when he’s deeply invested in a project.