Music Box Theatre to Host a Variety of Screenings, Interactive Productions this Fall

Chicago's Music Box Theatre will host a variety of screenings throughout the fall, as well as interactive productions. This will included the return of native son Nick Offerman reading from and signing his new memoir Paddle Your Own Canoe. After the signing, Nick will come back to introduce a favorite film he watched at Music Box during its first run: Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man.

Fall festivals at Music Box include Closing Day of Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival on September 8, Found Footage Festival on October 5, the Music Box debut ofReeling: The Chicago LGBT International Film Festival starting November 7 and more. The entire Music Box Fall Calendar is accessible at www.musicboxtheatre.com.

Fall highlights include:

25th Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival: Closing Day (*director Gabe Klinger in person)
Sunday, Sept. 8

2 pm: Scott Stark's short The Realist is an experimental and highly abstracted "love story" located in the visually heightened universe of clothing displays, fashion islands and storefront windows. Shows with Phil Solomon's 48-minute Empire, a digital re-make of Andy Warhol's Empire from high atop the Manhattan Island of Grand Theft Auto IV ("Liberty City"). $10

4pm: James Benning's Nightfall (2012, US, 97 min, digital) a study of real time - light changing from day to night - filmed in a forest, high up in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains. $10

7pm: The Closing Night feature of the 25th Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festivalis a special advance screening of Gabe Klinger's Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater, fresh off its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Chicago film programmer, teacher, writer and filmmaker Klinger will be in person to present this lively and fascinating portrait of two unlikely longtime friends, independent maverick Linklater and experimental film legend Benning, filtered through their mutual love of film and sports. $12

The Book Cellar presents Alice McDermott (*author Alice McDermott in person)
Thursday, Sept. 26, 7:30pm, $5 (through Book Cellar)

National Book Award recipient Alice McDermott makes her extraordinary return, seven years after the publication of After This. McDermott will share her new novel, Someone - sold at a $5 discount - and sign.

Unabridged Bookstore presents Nick Offerman (*author/actor Nick Offerman in person)
Friday, Oct. 4, 6-9pm

Parks and Recreation star Nick Offerman shares his humorous musings on life, manliness, meat and much more in his firstmemoir Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Principles for Delicious Living. Offerman will autograph copies of his book(included in the ticket price) and share his wisdom on such topics as growing a perfect moustache, grilling red meat and wooing a woman.

Nick's Pick: Dead Man (*actor/author Nick Offerman in person)
Friday, Oct. 4, 11pm, $10

As an actor and theatrical renaissance man in Chicago in the 1990's Nick Offerman made his way to the Music Box Theatre quite often; one of his favorite films was Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man (1995), so Music Box has gotten him to introduce this masterpiece. Only Jarmusch could direct a Western with a poetry-loving American Indian who mistakes accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp) for the English writer by the same name, while bounty hunters take Blake for a murderer. Jarmusch packs his independent-minded film with an unlikely collection of castmates, including Iggy Pop, Gabriel Byrne, John Hurt - and Robert Mitchum, in one of his final big-screen roles.

Found Footage Festival: Best of the Midwest
Saturday, Oct. 5, 9:30pm ($12 advance/$13 door)

The Found Footage Festival is a one-of-a-kind live event celebrating unintentionally hilarious VHS footage that was found in thrift stores, dumpsters and garage sales across the country. Back in Chicago for a "Best of the Midwest" show, this edition features all footage found in Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, with some special guests and surprises as well. Presented by Brooklyn Brewery. A portion of proceeds from ticket sales will go to benefit Slow Foods Chicago.

National Theatre Live
Live captured performances beamed to the Music Box from London's revered National Theatre include Othello on Sunday, Oct. 13, Macbeth, starring Kenneth Branagh in his first Shakespeare performance in more than a decade on Saturday, October 26, and an encore of NT LIVE's popular 2010 Hamlet on Wednesday, November 20.

MusicEmotion: Symphony In Cinema
Music Box Theatre shows off the full power of its newly remodeled, state-of-the-art second screening room ("The Mini-Music Box") with MusicEmotion, a series of captured live musical matinees broadcast from Milan's renowned La Scala opera house for an Old World musical experience in high definition. Each MusicEmotion program captures the nuances of the FilarMonica Della Scala, its conductors and soloists. October 20: Daniel Hardingconducts Mozart's Mauerische Trauermusik. November 10: Georges Prêtre conducts Franck'sSymphony in D Minor.

9th annual Music Box of Horrors 24-Hour Horror Festival (* directors William Lustig and David Schmoeller in person)
Saturday-Sunday; Oct. 19-20. Festival pass: $30 before Sept. 15; $35 until Oct. 18; $40 day of

The Music Box's annual horror film festival is back and better than before with more vendors and a greater variety of food! Now in its ninth year, the ghoulish 24-hour movie marathon boasts an impressive survey of the horror genre, starting Saturday, October 19 at noon and unspooling all day and night through Sunday, October 20 at noon. Highlights include grindhouse director William Lustig (Maniac, Vigilante) presenting a new restoration of his 1990 cult hit Maniac Cop 2 (starring Robert Davi, Bruce Campbell and Claudia Christian) and director David Schmoeller(Puppetmaster, Tourist Trap) presenting his demented 1986 killer Klaus Kinski flick Crawlspace. Also on the schedule are Child's Play (terror in Lincoln Park), Night Monster (rare Bela Lugosi), Possession (about a woman who does what with an octopus?!) and Terrorvision (first screening ever of this vintage print). A portion of the proceeds benefits Vital Bridges Center on Chronic Care - at the forefront of helping men, women and children impacted by HIV and AIDS build healthier lives for more than 20 years.

Sound Opinions presents High Fidelity
Thursday, Oct. 24, 7:30pm; $10

Pop music critic Jim DeRogatis and Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot, invite you to come out and seeHigh Fidelity (2000) directed by Stephen Frears and staring John Cusack. When record store owner Rob Gordon gets dumped by his girlfriend because he hasn't changed since they met, he revisits his top five breakups of all time in an attempt to figure out what went wrong. High Fidelity features music by The Kinks, The Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Stereolab and Stevie Wonder.

Movies on Trial: To Kill a Mockingbird
Friday, Oct. 25, noon, free

Schopf & Weiss LLP and Music Box Theatre present the seventh installment of Movies on Trial, a CLE film series worth 1.5 hours of Continuing Legal Education credit. A screening of the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird is followed by a panel discussion presented by Schopf & Weiss LLP. Tickets are free, but you must RSVP in advance through www.sw.com. A special Pro Bono Week edition in cooperation with the Chicago Bar Foundation.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Friday, Oct. 25, midnight; Saturday, Oct. 26, midnight; and Halloween, Thursday, Oct. 31 10pm, $12

The pansexual, rock 'n' roll, sci-fi musical starring Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick and Meat Loaf returns for audience participation midnight screenings on. In addition to this being an annual sell-out event, every screening has a shadowcast of the film (that's actors acting in front of the screen during the film) and Midnight Madness running raucous pre-show activities.

Welles on the Radio & The War of the Worlds
Sunday, Oct. 27, 1pm

A screening of the 1953 film The War of the Worlds and a special radio treat from 1939! University of Chicago Professor and radio expert Neil Verma will present excerpts of Orson Welles' infamous "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast, which caused a nationwide panic 75 years ago this Halloween. What drove 1.2 million Americans from New Jersey to San Francisco to the brink of suicide - literally? Hear about the biggest hoax of all time from the author of Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics and American Radio Drama followed by a screening of the 1953 classic film.

Reeling Film Festival 2013
Thursday, Nov. 7-Thursday, Nov. 14

Reeling: The Chicago LGBT International Film Festival rolls out the red carpet for the 31st edition of the world's second oldest festival of its kind. The opening night gala on November 7 - the most anticipated night of the festival - kicks off eight days of a stellar line up of LGBT films. Past opening night titles have run the gamut from Beautiful Thing to Shelter to The Wise Kids. Check Reeling's website for titles and to order advance tickets.

Unabridged Bookstore presents Rob Delaney (*author-comedian Rob Delaney in person)
Thursday, Nov. 14, 7pm

Music Box plays host to comedian Rob Delaney in support of his new collection of insanely funny autobiographical essays, Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage. Tickets available through Unabridged Bookstore.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Friday, Nov. 15, midnight, $10

Cult classic Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Valerie a tyden divu) adapts the tricks of cinema to the art of the fairy tale to inscribe a young girl's passage from innocence to womanhood with eerie beauty. In a constantly surprising mixture of gentle eroticism and gothic nightmare, shot through with cobwebs and lace, 13-year-old Valerie (Jaroslava Schallerová) innocently turns the denizens of a turn-of-the-century village into the fairies and demons of childhood-a childhood that is at once distinctly female and ageless.Cathode Love presents a 35mm print from the Czech National Archive, Prague.

Clue
Saturday, Nov. 16, midnight, $10

The 1986 murder mystery Clue - starring Tim Curry, Lesley Ann Warren, Eileen Brennan, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean and Martin Mull - with audience interaction! Enjoy the classic film based on a board game with every possible ending and our friends from Midnight Madness performing a shadowcast during the film in the Rocky Horror style. Dress up for the show on and off the screen and be ready for an awesome time.

Sing-A-Long Sound of Music
Friday-Sunday, Nov. 29-Dec. 1; $12.50 in advance, $15 at the door

Sing-A-Long Sound of Music beckons turkey-stuffed friends and families to Chicago's Music Box Theatre for Thanksgiving weekend. The spirited audience-participation event includes a presentation of the 1962 Rogers & Hammerstein movie musical The Sound of Music in glorious Technicolor and full-screen Cinemascope. Lyrics are projected on the screen during the movie so that the audience can easily sing along to "Do-Re-Me," "Edelweiss" and, of course, "My Favorite Things." The film is preceded by a hosted warm-up and a "fancy-dress" costume contest.