March 20th 2013. Pick Of The Day.

BAM's trib to the perennially alluring Isabele Adjani screens its penultimate day with two examples of farce separated by uncommon languages. Jean-Paul Rappeneau's ALL FIRED UP sees our starlet's degenerate gambler of a father, or Yves Montand, return to soak up the last of the family's cash, until Adjani intervenes and then joins him to thwart his creditors' plans. Tres Francais. And I believe I've long had my say about the glory that is Elaine May's ISHTAR, which tempts as my Pick today, but I've chosen it in the past and anyway it's not being screened as the sing-a-long I've been holding my breath and turning blue for years over. One day, Stockers, one day...

Fritz Lang's prescient masterpiece and first sound effort M continues to haunt the conscience of the Film Forum as its two week booking unspools. The man rarely got better than this, and some would swap rarely for never, but I hold out making this my Pick because I can only do it once and I wanna make it special. That didn't sound right, but emotive expression over Lang never does.

The Mid-Manhattan Library's Three Auteurs series proceeds apace with this month's object of tribute, Andrei Tarkovsky, presenting his 70's masterpiece STALKER. A cool Dickian sci-fi about stimulation emotional and otherwise involving a set of characters desperately staving off oblivion without realizing the world's ended already, HOW could I pass this flick up as my Pick? Especially when a literal one-step journey outside your doorframe would present the same vision today. Okay, I'm kidding, I don't wanna take this long unending winter's brutality out on A-Tark, but I also choose not to award him my Pick today, if only because the title of the flick I've chosen and the bathing suit worn by its lead are SO much more appealing.

Here is the list of the talent that worked on this film I choose today; Liz Taylor, Katherine Hepburn, Monty Clift, Mercedes McCambridge, and Albert Dekker in front of the camera, Jospeh L. Mankiewicz, Sam Spiegel, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal behind it. Foolproof right? Guess so, because apparently there were a lot of fools butting heads on this project. Taylor fought for her friend Clift's casting, making a return to film after his notorious car accident, and his percieved mistreatment at Mankewicz's hands is rumored to have provoked Hepburn to spit on her director once the flick wrapped. All three contributors to the story, Williams, Vidal and Mank, blamed each other in turn for what they felt was an awful resulting effort, never mind the fact that it was a box office hit. Original composer Malcolm Arnold withdrew from the film over its themes Freudian and homosexual. As if he didn't see Tennessee Williams' name attached. All the tumult offscreen can be palpably felt onscreen, and I consider this one of the most surehandedly assembled postwar melodramas, reflective of times increasingly permissive culturally and decreasingly important in terms of studio influence. Plus, La Liz looks absolutely hubba in that bathing suit. Well she does.

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER screens for the first of its three day run as part of MOMA's Auteurist History of Film series. Wanna bring the warm weather on early, head to this screening sez me!

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