Star City Blog / Theatre & Film

'The Met: Live in HD' Kicks Off at The Ross

Tickets for the fourth season of The Met: Live in HD, the Metropolitan Opera’s popular, award-winning series of live transmissions in movie theaters around the world, are now on sale to the general public in the U.S. 

The 2009-10 season, featuring nine live opera transmissions, kicks off on Saturday, October 10 at 1:00 p.m. ET with a new production of Puccini’s Tosca starring Karita Mattila. 

'American Casino' @ The Ross

Opening at The Ross on Friday, October 9, AMERICAN CASINO is a powerful and shocking look at the subprime lending scandal that helps viewers understand how the US financial system failed and how mortgage companies ripped off the poor.
 
New Yorker film critic David Denby writes, “[AMERICAN CASINO is a] fascinating [and] terrific documentary chronicling the subprime-mortgage mess and the financial collapse of the past two years…”  He continues, “With a rare cohesive power, the Cockburns fill in the lines of connection. They function a little like Raymond Chandler as he traces the corruption that produces, at the end of a long chain of circumstances, the lady in the lake... The movie is a lucid and comprehensive picture of a rotten system.”

'The Laramie Project, 10 Years Later ' to Be Performed October 12th at the Lied for One Night Only

By Ladd Wendelin

In the past decade, fewer names have been synonymous with the struggle for gay civil rights and equality than Matthew Shepard, a 19 year-old college student from Laramie, Wyoming, who died October 12th, 1999, having been brutalized, tied to a fence in a rural area and left for dead by two men who confronted him in a local bar days before.

Fewer names have been as divisive or controversial, and fewer have been as inspiring. When director/playwright Moisés Kaufman and the members of the Tectonic Theatre Project arrived in Laramie shortly after Shepard’s passing, their interviews with those who experienced the aftermath gave context to a tragedy and shed light on a nationwide epidemic. What resulted is quite possibly one of the most affecting dramas of the last decade, The Laramie Project.

London National Theatre Live Performance of 'All's Well That Ends Well' at The Ross

Shakespeare’s ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, in a highly acclaimed production by Marianne Elliott, will be filmed live at the National Theatre in London on 1st October and broadcast by satellite to cinemas worldwide. 
 
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL is showing at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center on Thursday, October 1 at 7 p.m. and on Sunday, October 4 at 1 p.m.  Admission is $22 for General Admission, $20 for Seniors, and $15 for Students and Members of the Friends of the Ross.  Please consult www.theross.org for further information.

Screenwriter Barry Sandler in Person at The Ross

Renowned screenwriter Barry Sandler will be appearing at 7:30 p.m. during the screenings of two of his movies, Making Love and Crimes of Passion, for Q&As with the audiences on Friday, October 2 and Saturday, October 3, respectively, at The Ross. 
 
At the Ross on Saturday, October 3 beginning at 2 p.m., Mr. Sandler will conduct a seminar titled “The Evolution of Gay and Lesbian Images in American Film.”

'American Harmony' @ The Ross

From director Aengus James, AMERICAN HARMONY is an award-winning portrait of modern America that shines a light on the obsessive subculture of Barbershop music, opening at The Ross on Friday, October 2.
 
“Most people associate barbershop quartets with that era, famously portrayed by the candy-stripe-vested quartet of Meredith Wilson's The Music Man, and the grainy cinematography reinforces that relation,” opines RaeAnne Marsh, film critic for Moving Pictures Magazine. She continues, “But with an abrupt change to contemporary cinematography and current couture, James confronts the audience with the reality that this music genre is alive and well today.”

Review: 'Paranormal Activity'

By Ladd Wendelin

The Blair Witch Project. The Ring. Cloverfield. Every few years a horror flick rises through the murky depths, rattles some industry chains, and breathes new life into the festering corpse of a very American film genre. 

Consider then this year’s entry, just in time for Halloween, Paranormal Activity: Evidence of a Haunting, which opens at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center on Sept. 25th with a special midnight showing and continues through October 3rd.

Helmed by first-time director Oren Peli, Paranormal Activity follows a young couple, Micah (Micah Sloat) and Katie (Katie Featherston) as they confront the strange goings-on that seem to ruthlessly plague their quiet suburban home.

Theatrix to open 2009-2010 Season with 'Shipwrecked!'

Theatrix, the student-run theatre organization under the auspices of the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film (JCSTF) opens its 2009-2010 season with Donald Margulies’ Shipwrecked!: An Entertainment, The Amazing Story of Louis de Rougement (as told by himself), a show perfect for imaginations of all ages.

SHIPWRECKED takes the audience on an adventure with the narrator and subject of the epic tale, Louis de Rougement. Along the way they will explore themes including but not limited to, discovery, adventure, love, loss, and determination.

Midnight Sneaks of Supernatural Thriller 'Paranormal Activity' Begin at The Ross September 25

Paramount Pictures will host special midnight sneaks of the Slamdance and Telluride Film Festival favorite PARANORMAL ACTIVITY on September 25 at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center at 313 N. 13th Street in Lincoln.
Additional midnight previews will follow on September 26, October 1st, 2nd and 3rd.  Advance tickets go on sale at The Ross box office beginning at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, September 21.  For further information, please consult www.theross.org.

The International Experimental Cinema Exposition @ The Ross September 24-25

Since 2000, the world-renowned TIE (The International Experimental Cinema Exposition) festival has been a leading champion of artists still working in the medium of film, with a particular focus on both new and historical avant-garde cinema.

In contrast to their predecessors, like Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, and Andy Warhol, the younger generations of experimental cinema are perhaps defined by new cultural and geographical alliances.