Posts Tagged ‘dan kane’

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 4, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The 1991 film “Backdraft” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

Written by Gregory Widen and directed by Ron Howard, this action thriller stars Kurt Russell, William Baldwin, Scott Glenn, Donald Sutherland, Robert De Niro and J.T. Walsh.

Chicago firefighters cope with a serial arsonist who uses a fictional chemical substance (trychtichlorate) to set fires across the region. Rookie firefighter Brian McCaffrey (Baldwin) tries to earn the respect of his older brother, firefighter Stephen “Bull” (Russell), but Stephen is convinced his brother is not cut out for his line of work.

When Brian is transferred to a “safe” assignment, he helps an arson investigator, Donald Rimgale (De Niro), make sense of a series of fires involving an oxygen-induced ball of fire called a backdraft. The investigation reveals a link between corrupt Alderman Marty Swayzak (Walsh) and imprisoned pyromaniac Ronald Bartel (Sutherland). As more evidence is collected, Brian beings to suspect that his brother – a much-decorated hero – may be the “inside” man setting up the arsons.

Domestically the film grossed more than $77 million and more than $74 million from foreign markets making it the highest grossing film ever made about firefighters. The film received three Academy Awards nominations and grossed a total of more than $152 million worldwide.

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Heather Lindstrom at 708-386-4040.

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 6, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The 1989 film, “The Package,” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

Written by John Bishop and directed by Andrew Davis, this political thriller stars Gene Hackman, Joanna Cassidy and Tommy Lee Jones.

Thomas Boyette (Jones) is a prisoner in Germany during the Cold War placed under the supervision of Johnny Gallagher (Hackman), a U.S. sergeant responsible for bringing him back to the states. When Boyette escapes in the bathroom of the airport, it becomes Gallagher’s responsibility to find him.

With the help of his ex-wife and various old friends, Gallagher learns that his mission has gotten him involved in an assassination conspiracy involving both the U.S. and Soviet militaries.

He discovers that after a meeting with the U.S. president in Chicago, Boyette was hired to kill the leader of the Soviet Union in order to stop the signing of a disarmament treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons. Gallagher sets out to stop the plan.

The film earned more than $10 million at the box office and was awarded three stars out of four by Roger Ebert, who called it “smarter than most thrillers.”

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 9, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The 1996 film, “A Family Thing,” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

This drama was written by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson and directed by Richard Pearce. It stars Robert Duvall, James Earl Jones, Irma P. Hall and Michael Beach.

When the mother of a Scotch-Irish American Southerner, Earl Pilcher (Duvall), dies, she leaves behind a letter explaining how he is not her biological son but the son of a Black American maid who was raped by Earl’s (white) father and who died in childbirth.

The letter prompts Earl to visit his half-brother in Chicago, Raymond Murdoch (Jones). Ray blames the death their mother on Earl’s father and wants nothing to do with Earl when he shows up. As Earl is preparing to leave town his car is high jacked by street thugs, and he ends up in the hospital with nothing but Ray’s contact information in his pocket.

Ray, a veteran Chicago police officer, begrudgingly lets Earl recover in his home as the hospital is too crowded. It is there that Earl meets his Aunt T. (Hall), a loving and blind woman who eventually persuades the family to accept Earl and helps them all heal old wounds.

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, July 12, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The 1985 classic, “The Breakfast Club,” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

The film, written and directed by John Hughes, follows five high school students who find themselves stuck in detention together on a Saturday morning. With nothing but time to kill, these kids from different stereotypes find themselves exploring through typical teenage issues and baring their souls as the day wears on.

The movie stars Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy,

By the end of their Saturday sentence they had become good friends. The audience meets them as a Brain, an Athlete, a Basket Case, a Princess and a Criminal, and watches as they form the Breakfast Club.

Known as the “quintessential 1980s film,” the critical consensus touts the movie as a warm, insightful and very funny look into the inner lives of teenagers. Upon release in 1985 the film debuted as No. 3 at the box office and grossed $45 million domestically and $51 million worldwide.

It was released on DVD as part of the “High School Reunion Collection” and was ranked No. 369 by Empire magazine on their “The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time” list. In addition, it was placed on the “Best 1000 Movies Ever” list by The New York Times and ranked No. 1 on Entertainment Weekly’s list of the “50 Best High School Movies.”

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, June 14, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The 1987 film “The Father Clements Story” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

This television-movie produced by NBC was directed by Edwin Sherin and starred Lou Gossett, Jr., Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Carroll O’Connor.

Father George Clements (Gossett, Jr.), an African American Roman Catholic priest in Chicago, realized that if one family from each African American church in the city (more than 700 churches) adopted one troubled African American child in need of a permanent home (approximately 500 children), a serious problem would be eliminated in the community.

When no one responded to his One Church One Child concept, Fr. Clements led by example and became the first priest in history to legally adopt a child.

The provocative, Emmy-nominated television-movie is based on the true story of Father George Clements. It follows the first of four adoptions by Fr. Clements. His decision to fight for the right to save the troubled teen from a life on the streets created a lot of controversy in Holy Angels Church in Chicago, his home parish, and made front-page news in the Chicago Sun-Times.

The groundbreaking decision by the Vatican in 1981 resulted in clergy from numerous faiths delivering Fr. Clements’ adoption message. As a result of his efforts, the number of children needing permanent homes in Chicago dropped from 1,000 children in 1980 to 150 children by 1987.

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, April 12, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The 1980 film “Ordinary People” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

Robert Redford’s directorial debut stars Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland, Judd Hirsch and Timothy Hutton. Moore, Sutherland and Hutton depict an upper-middle class family in Lake Forest, IL. Hirsch plays a therapist.

When the older son of this affluent family dies, relationships between the bitter mother, Beth (Moore), good-natured father, Calvin (Sutherland) and guilt-ridden remaining son Conrad (Hutton) are strained. So much so, that Conrad attempts suicide shortly after his brother’s passing. Upon his return from a temporary stay in a psychiatric ward, the family tries to pick up the pieces and restore a sense of normalcy in their home.

Beth seems to have always preferred her dead son over Conrad, and Conrad’s suicide only drives her further away. This leaves Calvin stuck in the middle trying to reconnect with his son while holding everything else together.

Tensions continue to rise until a final outburst in which Calvin questions Beth’s ability to truly love anyone causes her to abandon her family. Calvin and Conrad are left in the wreckage to deal with what has become their new family situation.

A critical and commercial success, Ordinary People won four Oscars including an Academy Award for Best Picture. Roger Ebert gave it four stars, and it grossed $54 million at theaters and $23 million in rentals. In addition, many of the cast members received awards and recognition for their respective roles in the film.

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, March 8, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The film “Medium Cool” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

Written and directed by Haskell Wexler, this 1969 film stars Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill and Harold Blakenship. The film centers around a television news cameraman, John Cassellis (Forster), during a time of social and political upheaval in America.

For years Cassellis enjoyed filming gruesome and violent events with detachment and a blasé attitude, but when he discovers his tapes are being used by the FBI to find suspects of violence and racial tensions, he realizes the power of his camera. He protests to his network and gets fired.

Subsequently Cassellis attends the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Illinois where he meets and grows fond of the widow of a Vietnam veteran, Eileen, and her son Harold. When Harold goes missing during the convention, Cassellis’ help in the search for Eileen’s son takes him even deeper into the emotional pulls of human nature.

At one point Eileen is desperately searching through the rioting crowds and Cassellis is filming the convention, merging the fictional story and real-life brutality onscreen.

The film is best known for presenting the audience with powerful imagery through its documentary-style filmmaking techniques and combination of fictional and non-fictional content. Because Wexler funded the film partly out of his own resources, he had free reign during the film’s production.

Today “Medium Cool” is a vital late-‘60s film for its incisive narrative, formal dissection of the “truth” of visual politics and its awareness of the blurred lines of depicted violence received as entertainment, especially during a times of political upheaval.

It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2003.

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 8, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The 1975 film “Cooley High” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

Based upon Cooley Vocational High School, the real high school located in Chicago (which is no longer standing), “Cooley High,” set in 1964, was directed by Michael Schultz and starred Glynn Turman and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs.

The movie is considered a classic of black cinema. It follows two teenagers, Preach (Turman) and Cochise (Jacobs), as their carefree lives take a turn for the worse when they wind up getting involved with street criminals.

After cutting class for a trip to the zoo and a party that goes bad, Preach and Cochise get mixed up with street thugs in connection to a stolen Cadillac. Although the two kids were let off the hook, they find themselves on the receiving end of vengeance from the street thugs who get arrested.

Following the high school seniors as they deal with girl, school and police troubles as they prepare for post-high school life, this movie ranked number 23 on Entertainment Weekly’s “50 Best High School Movies” list.

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.

The Oak Park Arms hosts a popular monthly movie series titled, “View and Review: You Be the Critic” at the retirement community located at 408 S. Oak Park Ave. Hosted by radio announcer Dan Kane and offered to the public at no cost, “Windy City Films” is the theme of the 2013 movie selections.

Chicago’s history of filmmaking is almost as old as the films themselves. Before the rise of Hollywood, Chicago was the central hub for the motion picture industry. In 1895 the first motion picture camera was manufactured, and just two years later former magician William Selig was producing and showing films in Chicago.

Chicago quickly became a leader in the industry in the early 1900s with innovative trailblazers and an interested and supportive public.

Each month at “You be the Critic” a different movie filmed in the Windy City between 1947 and 2000 will be featured and discussed.

“Dan has planned an extraordinary line-up of films,” said Desi Vasquez, social programming director at the Oak Park Arms. “It’s an enjoyable way to learn about Chicago’s movie industry.”

All films are shown at 3:30 p.m. on the first or second Friday of every month in the Terrace Room. The line-up for the year includes:

•    Jan. 11: “Call Northside 777” starring James Steward
•    Feb. 8: “Cooley High” with Glynn Turman and Garret Morris
•    March 8: “Medium Cool” starring Robert Forster and Verna Bloom
•    April 5: “Ordinary People,” Robert Redford’s directorial debut
•    May 10: “Sixteen Candles” starring Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall and Michael Schoeffling
•    June 14: “The Father Clements Story” with Louis Gossett Jr., Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Carroll O’Connor
•    July 12: “The Breakfast Club” directed by John Hughes
•    Aug. 9: “A Family Thing” starring Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones
•    Sept. 6: “The Package” directed by Chicago native Andrew Davis
•    Oct. 4: “Backdraft” starring Kurt Russell and William Baldwin
•    Nov. 8: “The Fugitive” starring Harrison Ford and directed by Andrew Davis
•    Dec. 6: “Return to Me” with David Duchovny and Minnie Driver

“Following each film, Dan leads a discussion that occasionally morphs into a spirited debate,” Vasquez said. “It’s all in good fun.”

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

See one, or see them all. Each movie is free and open to the public. For more information contact Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 16, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The 1960 film “The Alamo” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

Directed by John Wayne, who also starred in the film as Colonel Davy Crockett, the Alamo is a war film about the Battle of the Alamo, a pivotal event during the Texas Revolution.

When General Santa Anna and his Mexican army were sweeping through Texas in 1836, General Sam Houston (Richard Boone) bought time to arrange his troops by asking Colonel William Travis (Laurence Harvey) to defend a mission against the Mexican army at all costs. Davy Crockett and Colonel Jim Bowie (Richard Widmark) also joined the fight.

Mixed reviews have touted the film for its battle scenes and criticized it for its historical inaccuracies. The film’s production costs kept it from becoming an immediate success, despite a large box office take. The film won the Academy Award for Best Sound, and was nominated several times, including for Best Music, Best Film Editing and Best Cinematography.

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.