Chapman Brings Up ‘Baby’

There’s a good weekend ahead for moviegoers who want to step out of the mainstream for a while.

Films nominated for best foreign-film and documentary Oscars are playing locally. They are both about dance.

An African folk tale with themes of modern dictatorship will screen at UC Irvine.

And the film some believe to be the greatest of all screwball comedies will be shown at Chapman University. At UC Irvine, a movie about environmental pollution, but really about the evils of society, will be presented.

Tonight Chapman University will show “Bringing Up Baby” (1938), another of Cary Grant’s great comedy performances but Katharine Hepburn’s first and only in the purely screwball genre.

How do you get screwier than this? A super-straight paleontologist (Grant), on the eve of his marriage, encounters an eccentric heiress (Hepburn) and her pet leopard. She wishes to be helpful; he wishes she’d go away. They wind up in jail. We all know how things will wind up after they get out.

“Not a hit when first released, this is now considered the definitive screwball comedy and one of the fastest, funniest films ever made,” wrote critic Leonard Maltin.

* Tonight at 7 in Chapman University’s Argyros Forum, Room 208, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange. Running time: 101 minutes. Not rated. Free. (714) 997-6765.

‘Tango’ Is Short on Plot, Heavy on Rich Dance

“Tango,” which has received rave reviews and a best-foreign-film Oscar nomination, is showing at two theaters in Orange County and will open in three theaters Friday.

The Argentine film’s thin plot stands respectfully aside to make way for the “smoky, lush blend of muted light and color, of intoxicating dance and the richest tango music you could ever imagine,” according to Kevin Thomas of The Times. The San Francisco Chronicle described it as “one of the most purely joyful pieces of cinema in years.”

* Now playing at Edwards Rancho Niguel, 25471 Ranch Niguel Road, Laguna Niguel, (949) 831-0446, and Edwards South Coast Village 3, 1561 W. Sunflower Ave., Santa Ana, (714) 540-0594. Opening Friday at Edwards Brea Plaza, 453 S. Associated Road, Brea, (714) 529-5339; at Edwards University, 4245 Campus Drive, Irvine, (949) 854-8811; and at Art Theatre, 2025 E. 4th St., Long Beach (562) 438-5435. Running time: 105 minutes. Rated PG-13.

‘Dancemaker’ Examines Troupe, Its Director

“Dancemaker,” another film about the power of dance opening Friday at Edwards University in Irvine, has also received an Oscar nomination: best documentary.

It is a feature-length examination of the Paul Taylor Dance Company but most particularly of Taylor himself as loving, prodding artist-autocrat as he conceives, rehearses and opens “Piazzolla Caldera” at New York’s City Center.

“Sometimes I think if I asked them to jump out the window they actually would,” he tells us, and his expression says that he’s pleased.

The film makes the point that an artist must be a tyrant to achieve his vision, the ruthless “flip side of the triumphs seen onstage,” observed the New York Times.

* Opens Friday at Edwards University, 4245 Campus Drive, Irvine. Running time: 98 minutes. Not rated. (949) 854-881.

‘Safe’ Offers Various Possible Lessons

“Safe” was released in 1995 and has been on TV locally at least once, but the UCI Film Society considers it important enough to warrant a fresh, one-night screening Friday on campus.

The story of a suburban woman who seems to be allergic to everything in her supposed paradise at first appears to be an indictment of environmental pollution.

But the film maneuvers to different levels. It examines her resort to an expensive cult for help and hints that the problem may really lie within her. Has she grown allergic as a means of rebellion against her empty, pointless life?

You’ll have to figure it out yourself, because “ ‘Safe’ never declares itself for any of these possibilities,” wrote critic Roger Ebert. That is “another of the movie’s intriguing aspects.”

* Friday at 7 and 9 p.m. in UCI’s Student Center Crystal Cove auditorium. $4.50-$2.50. Running time: 119. Rated R. (949) 824-5588.

‘Six Ways,’ ‘Harmonists’ Tell Unusual Stories

Edwards opens two other unusual films Friday.

“Six Ways to Sunday” is about as dark as a comedy can get. It abounds with incest, beatings, murder, suicide, schizophrenic gangsters and corrupt cops. If you think such a mixture cannot have a love-conquers-all happy ending, you’re wrong. All in all, the New York Times concluded, the film is “rather grand.”

“The Harmonists,” a 1997 German film, packed German movie theaters for a year and won Bavaria’s top film festival prize.

Originally titled “The Comedian Harmonists,” the film portrays--sometimes accurately, sometimes not--the fate of an actual German comedy singing group founded in 1927. The group rises to immense popularity throughout Europe, but in the 1930s they are suppressed by German authorities because half of the group’s members are Jewish.

The film uses music and voices from actual recordings of the original group.

* “Six Ways to Sunday” and “The Harmonists” open Friday at Edwards Town Center, 3199 Park Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Running time: 97 minutes for “Six Ways,” 156 minutes for “Harmonists.” Both rated R. (714) 751-4184.

‘Guimba’ Is Insightful Tale of Dictatorship

On Tuesday, Chapman’s African Film Series shows a 1995 film from Mali that has attracted unusual attention.

“Guimba the Tyrant” seems to be a folk tale about a cruel village tyrant training his spoiled, dwarfish son to succeed him.

But in Mali it was recognized as a reference to by-then deposed dictator Moussa Traore. Others, however, will see in “Guimba” an indictment of their own dictators.

“ ‘Guimba’ is hard to follow, but it is worth the effort,” wrote Kevin Thomas of The Times. The meaning becomes clear at the end, and in the meantime viewers will have experienced “a beautiful, poetic film, rich in traditional costumes and music and shot through with earthy humor.”

* Tuesday at 8 p.m. in Chapman University’s Argyros Forum, Room 208, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange. Running time: 95 minutes. Not rated. Free. (714) 997-6765.