June 14th 2013. Pick Of The Day.
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Film Forum's Kaiju-sized tribute to the career of master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu finishes up its first week, and is nowhere close to being over. Today the Forum unspools the filmmaker's THE END OF SUMMER and PASSING FANCY, the former concerning the efforts of a sake brewer in his later years to shut out his troubles with the help of his mistress, and the latter the tale of four of Japan's poorer denizens and the lengths they go to in order to aid each other, which itself is aided by Steve Sterner's piano acccompaniment. Ozu's a guy I gotta catch up on, but a more intimate tribute is on hand tonight so I pass these up. We got time.
The last of three chances to catch Jacques Rivette's debut feature, which brought up the rear amongst his Cahiers Du Cinema cohorts in 1962 even though it was begun first in 1958, unspools at MOMA this afternoon. PARIS BELONGS TO US, Rivette's kooky mystery centered on bohemian Parisian life in the late 50's, screens as part of the museum's excellent Auteurist History of Film series. I'm sure it's a delight and look forward to catching it sometime, just not today. Quel dommage.
MOMA's contender for career retrospective of the month, Allan Dwan and the Rise and Decline of the Hollywood Studios, goes toe to toe with the Forum's Ozu trib all month, today offering the Victor McLaglen starring WHILE PARIS SLEEPS, which finds his escaped convict tracking the whereabouts of a daughter who thinks him dead, and a pair of early Doug Fairbanks vehicles; THE HALF BREED and A MODERN MUSKETEER, the latter of which found Dwan helping to shape Mary Pickford's boyfriend's future career as America's fave swashbuckler. DIFFICULT to choose against these screenings today, but were a family member of Dwan's or McLaglen's or Fairbanks' on hand to intro either flick, my choice might well be different. But they ain't so I'm not.
Midnight about our bafflingly cold and wet metropolis brings us John Schlesinger's DAY OF THE LOCUST, an adap of Nathaniel West's scabrous indictment of Hollywood circa the 30's, and James Cameron's THEM! remake ALIENS, over at the Nitehawk Cinema in B-Burg. On the more civilized side of the East River at IFC Center on the patriotically monickered Avenue of the Americas Alejandro Jodorowsky's THE HOLY MOUNTAIN does the things it does. An enticing variety of head-spin that I choose not, and I could take another whole paragraph to explain in a more elaborate idiom why I'm choosing my Pick today but I won't waste your time or my finger tapping. It's quite simple.
Orson Welles' daughter Chris Welles Feder introduces her father's classic TOUCH OF EVIL tonight at 9:30pm, as part of the Rubin Museum's wonderful Cabaret Cinema series. As always the price of a drink at the museum's lounge serves as your ticket to the film. Aside from the fact that they never screen celluloid in this venue, GOD do I love what they do! Get there early for this event, seating is immeasurably cozy but just as limited.
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Be safe and sound and make sure the next guy/gal is too, Stockahz! Back tomorrow with the week's final Pick. Take an umbrella, don't take an umbrella, I just don't know. I just don't know anymore. Yay June. Whenever it gets here.
-Joe Walsh
