Brand Upon The Brain! for those of you keeping score at home, isn't just a show -- it's a spectacle. I'm too young to remember the golden days of film, but Guy Maddin's photo-play brings new levels to black-and-white expressionism, and revives the exhibitionism of silent films with live scores. For this limited run, various "interlocutors" provide the sparse text of the movie (John Ashbury when I saw it, Isabelli Rosellini for the recorded one), while Ensemble Sospeso provides an excellent rendition of Jason Staczek's classical score. Plus: Foley artists, in all their white-coated glory. Oh, and the film is pretty good, too: a comically bleak semi-biography that uses exaggerated characters (like the tyrannical mom and professorial father) to explore childhood and adolescence between Guy and his Sis. There are so many lively shots and such charm that it's easy to forget the dark Grand Guignol of the story or the stark mise-en-scene, but it all ties together rather neatly. Not to be missed!
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