Maroon Movies

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 4, 2005 2:52PM

You wouldn’t think blogging takes up all that much of your day but it does. Mostly because any time spent on the Internet eventually devolves into time spent reading stuff like this or playing with crap like this. But suffice it to say time gets away from us on occasion, which then causes us to miss a first-run film here and there. And we hate that. Luckily, we can catch the ones we miss as part of the University of Chicago’s Doc Films program, which just announced its winter quarter slate of second-run and classic films.

One of the oldest continuously running student film societies (New York’s Museum of Modern Art boasts the other), Doc Films is run completely by volunteers. And these kids know their shit. While we’re looking forward to filling our weekends with those second-run flicks like Sideways, The Motorcycle Diaries and Vera Drake before they win a few Oscars in March (and films like Alexander once we’ve had a chance to forget about how god-awful they are), the gold in them thar hills is in Doc Films’s daily themed offerings. The features this quarter are as follows:

Mondays: Nuclear Movies
Tuesdays: French Noir
Wednesdays: Woody Allen
Thursdays: Iranian Films and Zombies
Sundays: Anarchist Cinema

A few notes here: Thursday features two separate programs, so anyone hoping for films about Iranian zombies is going to be sorely disappointed. Also, we’re not quite sure why their Woody Allen films include Rear Window, Top Hat, La Strada and 8 ½ but we’re willing to keep an open mind. But we do like the sense of humor those U of C folks have: their nuclear films include the cinematic classic Godzilla (we’re assuming they wouldn’t torture us with the inferior 1998 bomb).

Films are shown at the Max Palevsky Cinema in Ida Noyes Hall on the sprawling U of C campus for the low, low, price of $4 (Sunday matinees are only $3).

Now if you’ll excuse us: we have some penguins to smack around.

Image: University of Chicago