April 26th 2013. Pick Of the Day.

Film Forum selects a newly restored SAFETY LAST, Harold Lloyd's iconic silent effort, as its rep screening of the week, although it only unspools til Tuesday so maybe that band was onto something. Already chose it this month and it plays on a fairly routine basis in our film loving city, so I grudgingly pass.

MOMA's excellent retrospective dedicated to Weimar cinema's influence on Hollywood both immediate and enduring winds into its last days. Today The Weimar Touch offers John Brahm's remake of Hitchcock's THE LODGER, featuring Merle Oberon, Laird Cregar and George Sanders in an atmospheric thriller centering on Jack the Ripper. The evening offering, Michael Curtiz's CASABLANCA, is Michael Curtiz's CASABLANCA. The latter was yesterday's Pick, the former I sorta kinda yeah ain't gonna happen. True greatness lies ahead this day. Hie on, my loyal legions! Hie sez me!

Anthology Film Archives' series dedicated to the Middle Ages on Film offers the most expensive epic ever produced in the Middle East, centering on the Musilm hero of the Crusades SALADIN, and presenting the Holy Wars through the Islamic viewpoint. Damn intriguing, if only to see if what their version of a 60's Charlton Heston epic looks like, but I pass it up in favor of another holy quest. No, Jake and Elwood have the day off. But close. Read on.

Speaking of wars of futility the Landmark Jersey Loews offers a weekend dedicated to that same theme, beginning tonight with the classic Lewis Milestone anti-war flick ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. Lew Ayres stars in this still potent treatise on war's beginnings and its regrettable ends, set during WWI but universal to just about any war, any conflict. Objective, sobering, tragic. Not for nothing did it snag the little gold guy for Best Picture 1930. Tempts, as the Jersey Loews always does, but I favor a different conflict this day. One that always leaves me a little happier in its wake.

Big Al's VERTIGO is afforded the BluRay projection treatment tonight at the Rubin Museum as part of their excellent Cabaret Cinema series. Yeah, the BFI can blow me. Not my Pick, although the cinegeek experience at the Rubin is always a delight and fully endorsed by this here website. Plus I hear there's a museum attached to the screening lounge, which I realy should check out one of these days. Price of a drink procures your admittance to the screening, and that's really damn cool, but I'm skipping this until Sight & Sound in particular and the world in general admits it's wrong. I'm waiting.

And the Nitehawk Cinema ofers root beer, tater tots, and David Lynch's adap of Frank Herbert's DUNE as your midnight fare this eve. Lord knows I've defended this flick as one of the most fascinating of the costly train wrecks the cinema ever produced, and without a trace of irony in my speech or text. Mock it if you will, you'll still see every dollar and ounce of sweat up on the movie screen as this ambitious mess unfiolds, and that's a hell of a lot more than I can say for anything Michael Bay has done in his career. However much I stand at the ready to defend this movie I again choose a different holy quest as tonight's Pick, simply because a.) I haven't in this site's past, b.) I love this flick like some people love Jesus, and c.) the world just generally needs a decent cathartic fucking laugh considering the jackassery of the last couple of weeks. And who better to deliver on that set of demands than the cats who brought us Spiny Norman, the Argument Clinic and the Fish-Slapping Dance?

MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL screens tonight at 12:20am at IFC Center. SO, brave knights, if you do doubt your courage or your strength come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty big pointy teeth. I always wanted to say that.

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Be safe and sound and make sure the next guy is too. Back tomorow with a new Pick, Stockers! GO KNICKS!!!

-Joe Walsh