Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 4 May 2012 - 10 May 2012

I'm not going to get cutesy over what the main event is this weekend; I've been psyched about the idea for too long - that's why it's especially hilarious that I probably won't get to see it until at least Monday!

• That main event is, of course, Marvel's The Avengers, which is like if you decided that Iron Man 3 should also be Thor 2 and Captain America 2 and guest-star the Hulk. Oh, and have the guy behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, arguably the last really successful new superhero, direct. It's already opened huge internationally and will likely do the same stateside. It plays at the Arlington Capitol, Fresh Pond, Harvard Square, Boston Common (including the Imax-branded screen), and Fenway (including the RPX screen). Each actually has a full day's worth of screenings in both 2D and 3D.
  
  It's not the only movie opening with a packed cast, although there's likely little overlap between it and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which features Bill Nighy, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, and Maggie Smith as English retirees in India. That's a pretty exceptional cast for what appears to be a feel-good comedy. It plays Kendall Square and Boston Common.


• If you want big action and quintessentially British people, the Somerville Theatre has their second James Bond Weekend, with four more 007 films playing on the big screen in 35mm. Diamonds Are Forever and Live & Let Die play Friday night and Saturday afternoon, while The Man with the Golden Gun and The Spy Who Loved Me run Saturday night. $10 per, $20 for a weekend pass.
  
  Now that IFFBoston is over, they have to restock their screen, so they pick up Damsels in Distress from the Kendall and both The Hunger Games and The Cabin in the Woods from the Capitol (the latter actually returning after vacating the premises for nine days).


• If you haven't gotten enough film festival time in from IFFBoston, the Boston LGBT Film Festival will be taking place at a number of venues, taking over the entire schedule for the Brattle Theatre and Museum of Fine Arts while also playing a number of shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art and Coolidge Corner Theatre.
  
  (Okay, not quite the entire schedule at the MFA; there's a free screening on Thursday 10 May at 5pm of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design's 2012 Animation Senior Show, with 22 shorts from graduating MassArt students!)


• The Boston LGBT Film Festival has single shows at the Coolidge from Tuesday the 8th to Thursday the 10th, and this midnight show on the 4th and 5th (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, with a special pre-show drag performance) is also co-presented by the festival.
  
  There are also a few other special screenings: Talk Cinema finishes their season at 10am on Sunday with 2 Days in New York, so those of us that missed it at IFFBoston have a second chance (albeit without Julie Delpy in person). Monday evening is the latest "Sounds of Silents" presentation - 1929's Picadilly, featuring Anna May Wong and a new score from the Berklee College of Music's Department of Film Scoring. On Wednesday, they'll be playing George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Martin Scorcese's epic new documentary on the late Beatle.
  
  They also pick up a couple of movies leaving Kendall Square: Ewan MacGregor and Emily Blunt in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen on film and Turn Me On, Dammit! in the video rooms.


• All those movies moving away from Kendall Square are making room for more than just a couple screens of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The one-week booking is This Is Not a Film, a documentary that follows famed Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has been sentenced to six years of imprisonment and banned from making films for twenty years, shot by a friend on a phone and small DV camera and smuggled out of the country. They also get The Skinny, a story of five friends (all black and gay, one female) meeting up in New York one year after graduating from college. Life lessons ahoy! There's also a single screening of Joffrey: Marvericks of American Dance at 7pm on Wednesday the 9th, documenting the first truly American ballet company.


• ArtsEmerson's Bright Screening Room at the Paramount Theater has two restoration prints on tap. The final "Gotta Dance" selection plays Friday at 6:30pm, Saturday at 8:30pm, and Sunday at 2pm, and it's a good one: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell playing beautiful gold-diggers on a transatlantic cruise for director Howard Hawks. The same period also produces The River, the first film in their "Renoir in Technicolor" series, with Jean Renoir and his nephew/cinematographer Claude capturing India at the end of the colonial period. It plays Friday at 8:30pm and Saturday at 2pm & 6:30pm.


• Yellow Submarine has apparently had a painstaking 4K digital restoration, and that new print/digital file will pop up at the Regent Theatre in Arlington on Thursday the 10th for the first of ten shows over the next week and a half. It's... odd, but it's still the Beatles. Well, sort of (others voice the Fab Four outside of the songs).


• The Harvard Film Archive is running the final weekend of Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Cinema Novo and Beyond, with Senhor dos Santos appearing in person at 7pm on Friday (for Rio, Northern Zone), Saturday (How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman), and Sunday (Music According to Tom Jobim, his latest). Two other dos Santos films do not have an appearance scheduled - Hunger for Love: Have You Ever Sunbathed Completely Nude? on Sunday afternoon and The Third Bank of the River on Monday evening.

My plans? Bond Friday and Saturday night, 2 Days in New York and baseball on Sunday, Picadilly Monday, and The Avengers on Tuesday (I mean, I've got to see it before hitting the comic shop on Wednesday, right)? And that's probably enough!