July 17th 2013. Pick Of The Day.
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Film Forum's mini-reprise of last month's trib to Yasujiro Ozu today offers the auteur's THE END OF SUMMER, the tale of an aging sake brewer's kicking against the dying of the light. I know I have missed many an opportunity to indulge this fest both last month and in its current albeit short-lived reprieve, but it's July 17th, 95 degrees, my personal fave time of the year, and I refuse to endorse a film at this particular point whose title beckons the season's close. Sorry Yaz.
Also at the Forum Michelangelo Antonioni's breakout hit of world cinema L'AVVENTURA strolls throught the first of its two week booking. Monica Vitti's search for her missing best friend leads to an unfortunate attraction to the disappeared woman's main squeeze. It's complicated. Chose it when it opened on Friday, so mine own rules prevent a double dip. Monica doesn't share the same set of rules.
Bella Faccia extraordinaire Audrey Hepburn essayed perhaps her most iconic perf in Blake Edwards' adap of Truman Capote's BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, screening for three days as part of MoMA's ongoing Auteurist History of Film series. I rarely choose against Audz, but another pseudo-aristo ne'er-do-well takes over an institution far larger than an iconic 5th avenue jewelers this eve, and tonight he won't put a Rufus over your head.
BAM's tres cool month-long trib to American indie film godfather and all-around guy's guy John Cassavetes trods forth this day with a mighty entry in the director's CV, his 1967 return to independent finance and distribution FACES. The tale of an unravelling marriage and the equally unpleasant relationships produced by their respective infidelities contains some of the best work his "stock company", which included actors John Marley, Seymour Cassell and wife Gena Rowlands, ever committed to film. Gotta pass it up today in favor of a far more dysfunctional relationship, also involving a foursome, that also wrecks everything and everyone around them. Yet funny. Read on.
Also at BAM Francis Ford Coppola's THE GODFATHER, perhaps the seminal work of the New Hollywood of the 70's, screens at their awesome new Harvey Theater, the academy's state-of-the-art renovation of the Majestic movie palace. Caught my first flick in this new space last week, and it's a wonderful new film venue. Again, a different despot rules the roost today, and he also stands guys up against the wall and sez "Pop! goes the weasel!"
Luchino Visconti's ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS screens at Anthology Film Archives today as part of the series Agnes B. Selects, which features selections deemed instrumental to the fashion design icon and guest programmer's formative period. I'd gladly choose this ode to fraternal chaos would I not offend Julius, Adolph, Leonard and Herb in the doing. These guys can wreck a country when they're on their game, trust me.
Turning our attention to the true reward July offers lovers of both the cinema and summer, the outdoor movie, tonight Tim Burton's debut feature PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE screens in Brooklyn's McCarren Park at sunset. While I am an ardent fan of the anarchist tendencies a stunted adolescence may afford, I am a bigger fan of the anarchic results a stunted adolescence confused as competent mature authority can historically provide. In other words what better way to view the petulant state of our currently cracked government, indeed the unhinged state of the entire world at the moment, than with a set of brothers who only wanted to make you smile while you got wiser to all this nonsense? Plus it's Wednesday, there's no ball game, so fool Ambassador Trentino; show up.
Leo McCarey's masterpiece of politics, sex, war, anarchy and the absurdity of the whole damn megillah DUCK SOUP, featuring the irrepressible Marx Brothers, screens tonight at Riverside Park at sunset. If only things ran this smoothly in the House...
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Be safe and sound and make sure the next knucklehead is too! Back tomorrow with a new Pick. Til then spread the word, send me an e-mail, go to the movies! Enjoy yer Summah!
-Joe Walsh
