It's Tom Schmidt!

Watch Janus Films’ trailer for their upcoming theatrical tour of Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy

Two decades after its original negatives were burned in a fire, Satyajit Ray’s breathtaking milestone of world cinema rises from the ashes in a meticulously reconstructed new 4K restoration. The Apu Trilogy brought India into the golden age of international art-house film, following one indelible character, a free-spirited child in rural Bengal who matures into an adolescent urban student and finally a sensitive man of the world. These delicate masterworks—Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished), and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)—based on two books by Bibhutibhusan Banerjee—were shot over the course of five years, and each stands on its own as a tender, visually radiant journey. They are among the most achingly beautiful, richly humane movies ever made—essential works for any film lover.

After drawing a set of Christopher Nolan-themed gag comics for a zine a few years ago, I have, for some reason, wanted to revisit cartoon Nolan. For the next week, I’ll be sharing pages from my tribute to (my ambivalence about) the work of this director. Here’s the cover:

That Was Then…This Is Now

With the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival in full swing, we’ve got our minds on movies—movies filmed in the Twin Cities, to be exact!

The stills above are part of a press packet from the movie “That Was Then…This Is Now”, which was filmed in Minneapolis and St. Paul in 1984. The movie, based on the best-selling young adult novel by S.E. Hinton and starring Emilio Estevez, Craig Sheffer, Kim Delaney, and Morgan Freeman, among others, was shot using a wide variety of locations from Washington High School in St. Paul, to the river flats at the University of Minnesota.

Facts from the press packet (available in the Special Collections vertical files):

Shooting began August 20, 1984 and was to be completed in 6 weeks.

A bit of Hollywood magic was needed to transform Nicollet Island’s Marvel Foods Warehouse into an abandoned crash pad for bums and other unsavory characters.

The Minnesota Historical Society doubled for the State Reformatory.

A popular St. Paul bar, Spanky’s Saloon, was dressed to become “Charlie’s Bar”. Following the shooting, the owner nicknamed the saloon “Spanky’s of Hollywood.”

For high school dance sequences, over 300 students volunteered as extras to dance in a Wednesday night shooting—they were asked to return Thursday and Friday, undaunted and ready to keep dancing, even without music (so as not to interfere with dialogue). They were rewarded with a live band brought in to set the tone for the break and slam dancers.

The cast experienced a true Minnesota summer, with daytime highs of 95 degrees and late night lows of 33.

Check out the movie from HCL to see what other local sights you can spot. For recent films made and/or filmed in Minnesota, check out the MN Made lineup at MSPIFF, April 3-19, 2014