The Loft Cinema has put together an ambitious film festival that launches tonight with a showing of one of the Range's favorite films, After Hours, and a guest appearance by the film's star, Griffin Dunne. Who can forget the bagel-and-cream-cheese paperweights? Or the Mr. Softee Ice-Cream Truck Posse?

You can see the whole schedule here, and see what TW had to say in City Week here. If you love movies, you're gonna love this weekend at The Loft.

Gene Shalit, the movie critic for the Today show, announced his retirement today, saying through his PR representative: "It's enough already."

(Seriously.)

Admittedly, I might not be the target audience for the Today show or for a 78-year-old movie critic, but I assumed he had retired years ago, possibly replaced by a mustached robot who spits out puns based on movie titles. Shows what I know.

Shalit plans to pursue other opportunities, which hopefully means a reprise of his '70s era variety show, but probably means he'll start a website or something:

Local actor Brian Taraz, from Beowulf Alley and The Rogue Theatre, will be presenting the premiere of his new independent film starring himself, Foosball: The Movie.

The synopsis, per a press release:

Paul (Taraz) is a dorky math teacher whose sense of "style" is stuck in the 70's. He is an avid foosballer and believes he is God's gift to women. When he befriends a young beach stud (Andy Feld) while playing foosball at a bar - well there's no place to go but to the World Championships. Along the way there is (possibly) incest, bad disco dancing, foosball philosophy and an escaped crazed ex-boyfriend.

The movie will be shown at The Screening Room on Nov. 17 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $5. For more information, call 431-3003.

As someone who works in an ostensibly creative profession, I understand that coming up with ideas is hard, but I think if Disney hasn't hit the bottom of the conceptual barrel with a movie sort-of-not-really adapted from the Enchanted Tiki Room, the second take on The Haunted Mansion certainly is.

From the Los Angeles Times blog, 24 Frames:

"Pirates of the Caribbean" is one of the most successful franchises in the history of Disney. But when it comes to classic action-adventure, the company that Walt built isn't stopping with Jack Sparrow.

The studio is developing an adventure film from a script by Ahmet Zappa — yes, son of Frank — that's set against a Polynesian backdrop.

Sources close to the project said Zappa and writing partner Michael Wilson were inspired by Disneyland's Enchanted Tiki Room in writing the script. A Disney spokesperson, however, said the project is not an adaptation of the attraction and is merely an action-adventure that mixes in Polynesian mythology.

While not the first attraction one thinks of when one thinks of Disneyland, Enchanted Tiki Room does offer a colorful setting for a movie. The attraction, built in the early 1960s, has patrons entering a room filled with Disney musical ditties and animatronic macaws and other flora and fauna, a bit of Polynesia amid the hub-bub of the park. (It was one the first animatronic attractions, and one said to be close to Walt Disney's heart.) There's not much known mythology behind the Tiki Room — but then again, there wasn't much of one on "Pirates" either.

Personally, if I had my choice of video games based on Paul Thomas Anderson movies, I might choose Magnolia (Dodge the falling frogs! Try to get the money for your corrective oral surgery!), but this would do, I suppose.

Super There Will Be Blood from Tomfoolery Pictures on Vimeo.

My wife, who isn't (to her credit) a colossal nerd, doesn't really understand why I would be excited for a sequel to Tron.

I haven't even seen the original in a really long time, but I really was into the video game adaptation which included gripping interactive versions of the film's lightbikes and something with creepy digital spiders. I'm apparently wildly gripped by mistaken nostalgia and a love for French electro-dance-pop, so the new trailer/Daft Punk music video for Tron Legacy is an exciting development for a Tuesday.

Tron: Daft Punk Music Montage

Trailer Park Movies | Myspace Video

Tron Legacy hits theaters on December 17th.

A free advance screening of Fair Game takes place at 7 p.m., tonight, Oct. 13, at the Loft Cinema. The movie tells the real-life story of Valerie Plame Wilson and her fight against the threat of nuclear weapons.

A question-and-answer period with Susan Gordon, the director of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, follows the screening. More information here.

On Friday, Oct. 8, the Rialto Theatre will celebrate its 90th birthday (!) with one heck of an event.

Here are the details from a news release:

Join the Rialto Theatre and the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation for the Rialto’s 90th Birthday Bash!
This 1920s Red Carpet Night includes a prohibition parking lot cocktail party and an early 20thcentury Vintage -Rancho Tucsonia Fashion Show for VIP ticket holders,

Followed by a rare screening of the 1924 silent film The Mine With the Iron Door with new musical accompaniment prepared by native Tucsonan (now New York-based) conductor and composer Brian Hollman and performed by a live ensemble. Filmed in Tucson this picture originally premiered at the Rialto and was considered lost until a surviving print was discovered last year in the CNC - Archives françaises du film.

$50.00 VIP Ticket
6:30 pm. Cocktail Party & Fashion Show

$20.00 Ticket
8pm. Film screening with Free Popcorn

Dress in your 1920s best!

Harrod Blank will be touring the Southwest in his Camera Van—along with 10 to 20 other "art cars" and his new documentary Automorphosis. The film is a 77-minute tribute to art cars and the psychology behind what inspires creation.

On Friday, Oct. 8, the tour reaches Tucson, and the film will be played at The Screening Room, followed by an after-party from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. at the Candelabra Gallery.

On Oct 9, the art cars will be on display at Second Saturdays downtown from 5:30 p.m. to midnight, and the film will play again at 7 and 9 p.m. at The Screening Room.

This stylized, darkly comedic shoot-'em-up bristles with reverential allusions to edgy Western greats Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah, and offers nods to Stephen King's Dark Tower graphic novel and Jim Jarmusch for his 1995 hallucinatory cult Western Dead Man.

Last Rites is set in 1910, a waning period in the hyper-violent Wild West that intrigued director Tiller Russell, because, as he tells The Range, ".45 semi-automatics were being used in backroom gunfights alongside flint-lock pistols, just as horses were riding side by side with the same kind of Harley Davidsons the U.S. Army dispatched a fleet of into Mexico to hunt down Pancho Villa."

The film traces the story of a young, hot female gunslinger (Lizzy Caplan) who’s determined to risk all—and perhaps betray all—to undertake a perilous journey, culminating in a blood sacrifice trade with a Mexican bruja (witch) for the bullet-riddled corpse of her lover: a borderland desperado named Ransom Pride. She wants to bring him home for a proper burial.

One of the film’s standout performances is the understated yet riveting work of Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent), a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun-toting dwarf who’s indisputably a badass—although he has the mind and soul of a poet.

The movie also stars outlaw country-music legends Kris Kristofferson and Dwight Yoakam, and is based on a screenplay written by another, Texas country elder statesmen Ray Wylie Hubbard.

"When I met Kristofferson (to discuss the film), all he said to me was, 'I love it. I want to do it. What else you wanna talk about?' And I said, 'Peckinpah.' At which point (Kristofferson) regaled me with the story of making Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, with Peckinpah and (Bob) Dylan, in Durango, Mexico. He told me how Dylan came up with the lyrics for "Knocking on Heaven's Door" while Peckinpah was taking a piss in the screening room, 'cuz he was so pissed off about the dailies being out of focus. Apparently, the room went dark when Pecknipah was standing in front of the projector light, and Dylan just started writing. And I thought, 'Bury me ... this is as good it gets.'"

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride is scheduled to be screened at the Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W Congress St., on Friday, Sept. 24, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $7.50 at the door or at www.azundergroundfilmfest.com.

There's an after-party at Sky Bar with Acorn Bcorn