The Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, now in its 19th year, runs Friday, October 25, through Sunday, November 3, at City North 14; Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton; and the Vittum Theater, 1012 N. Noble. Tickets are $6 for children and adults, $4.50 for Facets members; various discounts are available for ten or more tickets. Professional actors will be on hand to read subtitled films. For more information call 773-281-9075 or 773-281-2166. Programs marked with a 4 are highly recommended. The full festival schedule for October 25 through 31 follows; a complete schedule through November 3 is available on-line at www.chicagoreader.com.
True Colors–Seeing the Person Within
A pivotal episode in the U.S. space program is recast as a high school adventure in this 2001 family drama, set at Cape Canaveral during the early 1960s. Billy (Alex D. Linz) is harassed at school and neglected by his father (James Woods), a German rocket scientist loosely based on Wernher von Braun who’s preoccupied with sending an American into space. After stumbling onto a training laboratory, Billy bonds with a chimpanzee who’s been recruited as a pilot. The script, by Eric Gardner and Steven H. Wilson, uneasily mixes fiction with historical incidents, inventing a friendship between Billy and astronaut Alan Shepard and a subplot about a greedy industrialist trying to sabotage the chimp’s flight. Director Sean McNamara, who specializes in kids’ stories, gives this quintessential Spielberg material (crises fortifying a suburban nuclear family) the quintessential Spielberg treatment (bright cinematography, soaring music), yet the film is too formulaic to provide any emotional uplift. With Annabeth Gish and William Atherton. 104 min. (TS) (City North 14, 10:15 am)
Believe It or Not–When Reality and Fantasy Collide
Cartoon Capers
Short films and videos, many of them about accepting or overcoming obstacles. In Nils Skapans’s Latvian Spring (2001) several angry and confused snowmen witness their own demise as winter winds down, while a bemused rabbit swipes their carrot noses for a quick snack. From Canada, Magic in the Air is the latest installment of Co Hoedeman’s “Ludovic” series, inspired by his childhood teddy bear. While playing at a park, the fuzzy fellow is harassed by a bully and then becomes smitten with a female teddy bear; Hoedeman’s puppet animation sometimes threatens to become cloying, but he has some notion when to pull back on the more maudlin aspects of his story. Dace Riduze’s Latvian Up and Down (2001) is a hilarious bit about a tiger desperately trying to tend its carrot garden while an irascible mole wreaks havoc from below ground. When the garden finally collapses from the mole’s furtive tunnel digging, a posse of rabbits makes off with the carrots. And Johnnie Semerad’s quirky Josh W. (2001), about a bicycle-riding boy who accidentally swallows a bug and then develops a voracious appetite for insects, uses swatches of shadow and light to portend a bit of bad luck for the hero. Five shorts from Sweden, Canada, and Germany complete the program. 69 min. (Joshua Katzman) (Facets Cinematheque, 11:00 am)
