By Tim Cuprisin Media Columnist Published Oct 21, 2011 at 11:00 AM

With the recent Milwaukee Film Festival, movie goers had many chances to see directors talking about the filmmaker's art, along with actors. But that's not the usual experience in a movie theater.

So movie buffs often search out such chances.

Brookfield's Marcus Ridge Cinema will host some big names tonight for the opening of the new comedy, "Balls to the Wall." Director Penelope Spheeris and actor Matthew Felker will introduce the film at tonight's 7 p.m. showing.

Probably more interesting will be the audience question-and-answer session planned for 8:45, when the moviegoers will get a chance to talk with the folks behind the movie.

An hour has been set aside for the q&a, and Spheeris will introduce the 9:45 screening.

Both Spheeris (who brought us "Wayne's World") and Felker have local ties – Felker's family still lives in Brookfield. That could make them warm up a little to the hometown crowd at the theater.

As for the movie, "Balls to the Wall" tells the story of a guy who's forced to take a side job as an exotic dancer to pay for his upcoming wedding.

Here's a trailer:

On TV: CBS is celebrating the 60th anniversity of its "eye" this week. It was launched less than a week after the premiere of "I Love Lucy."

  • President Barack Obama is making his second visit to Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" on Tuesday at 10:35 p.m. on Channel 4.
  • NBC has ordered a second season of its 'Love in the Wild' "reality" show.
  • I'm not planning on watching the World Series, but "New Girl" star Zooey Deschanel is singing the National Anthem on Sunday's Game 4 on Fox. That, I'll watch.

The power of sitcoms: Back in 1987, the long-forgotten Matthew Perry sitcom "Second Chance" predicted the 2011 death of Muammar Gaddafi, This Mediaite article explains the premise of the show – and maybe explains why you don't remember the show.

Here's the video:

Tim Cuprisin Media Columnist

Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.

A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.

In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.

When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.