PAN’S LABYRINTH This Weekend at Midnight – Reel Late at the Tivoli

“Hi! Are you a fairy?”

PAN’S LABYRINTH is one of the few fantasy films ever nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards. It lost that prize to THE LIVES OF OTHERS in 2006 but won Oscars for Art Direction, Cinematography, and Make-up.

Director Guillermo del Toro’s film is a gorgeous , charming , bloody and deadly fairy tale . It’s set in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and is a highly original combination of war drama and pure phantasmagorical fantasy. Its central character is a young girl named Ofelia. She follows her mother to a remote outpost where she joins her new husband, sadistic army Capitán Vidal. Ofelia, a shy bookish girl who loves fairy stories, discovers a parallel reality; an underground labyrinth presided over by a huge faun. This strange world is contrasted with her grim reality, a joyless world full of violence and hopelessness. Both realities merge for Ofelia and the fantasy world provides answers for her to take back to her real life.

PAN’S LABYRINTH is an exceptional picture for its inventive visuals, imagination and fantasy. It features sensational acting, especially by Sergi Lopez as the cruel, unforgiving idealist Capitán Vidal, bringing real menace to what might have been an absurd caricature. The film contains wonderful and imaginative visual effects, many old school. For example, the faun’s legs were not computer-generated. Guillermo del Toro created a special system in which the actor’s legs puppeteer the faun’s fake ones, the actor’s legs were later digitally removed. With an imaginative musical score by Javier Navarrete , colorful and evocative cinematography by Guillermo Navarro , PAN’S LABYRINTH is a real treat on the big screen. Lucky St. Louis audiences will have a chance to revisit it when it plays at midnights this weekend (July 19th and 20th) as part of The Tivoli’s Reel Late Midnight series.

I will be there with trivia and prizes so bone up on your faun knowledge!

The Tivoli is located at 6350 Delmar in The Loop.

Visit Landmark’s The Tivoli’s website HERE

http://www.landmarktheatres.com/market/st.louis/tivolitheatre.htm

And here’s the midnight line-up for the next few weeks:
July 26-27  THE ROOM
Aug. 2-3      SPICE WORLD
Aug. 9-10    KICK-ASS
Aug. 16-17   ALIEN: DIRECTOR’S CUT