October 5th 2012. Today's Pick.

Let's talk about the Megaflop, that narrow film niche of budgets gargantuan, productions troubled, and box office results DefCon 5 for the studios that produced them. And this is a love letter, mind you.

My fascination with the box office Megaflop and the crucial and sometimes fatal damage it may incur on the parent studio began with a little guilty pleasure I still watch every 4 years or so, the fascinating train wreck from 1984 DUNE. This was a long gestating project that bounced around several studios, multiple rights owners and the occasional lawsuit, all the while riding years of hype that promised a SciFi LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, an Epic that would dwarf STAR WARS, nothing less than the GONE WITH THE WIND of the space fantasy genre. Fans clutched copies of their Starlog coverage and eagerly awaited what would surely be the most sense-altering star-scape adventure experience ever to grace celluloid. And then we attended our first screening.

And we still watch it every four years or so. It remains among my generation's most beloved guilty pleasures. And Dino De Laurentiis and Universal studios indeed had some accounting jockeying to do after their insulting for the time $60 million budget saw a pitiful return of, well, numbers negligible. But this isn't about DUNE. Lynch's fever dream sparked my interest in the Megaflop, and I ventured out into the film world to explore these ticking time bombs that were born not long after the medium itself saw the light of day. Well, I ventured out to my local Mr. Movie, the tack-on video rental service that offered extra income to my local barber, laundromat, candy store and church. Okay I'm making up the last part, but easily believable, no? For the price of a $20 deposit you were afforded the right to rent any VHS tape in the pizzeria's library for two bucks a day. Keep it ten days and there were penalties. Sometimes physical. I grew up in the Bronx.

In this video rental milieu I somehow managed to check off the titles on my list, everything from Stroheim's GREED, believe it or not, to the Joseph L. Mankiewicz iteration of Cleopatra. Which sucks. Trust.

But one film eluded me. And I pestered and badgered for months in response to promises of copies in Mr. Movie outlets in the next town, in the next borough, in a cousin's VCR. And I waited. And waited. And then one day the Holy Grail of the Megaflop was laid into my eager hands, the film renowned as tail that wagged UA's dog, the film guilty of petulance and pretension in a storied and unassuming and venerated genre, a film ultimately blamed for the ruination of the studio that had chosen it and nurtured it, and apparently from all reliable sources been utterly betrayed by it. As the synapses fired I imagined how awful it could truly be, or how surprised I'd be at the quality of this cinematic pinata.

And I loved it.

I mean I REALLY loved it.

To the extent that I wasn't sure how to articulate my love for this flick in an atmosphere of such agreed-upon hatred regarding it.

So I decided how. I raved about it. I championed it. I gave what was then and probably remains an inarticulate argument in its defense, but was and is a passionate one. I found it deep, layered, emotionally involving, nostalgic, melancholic, elegiac, brutally violent in moments, with acts of heroism and utter cowardice sharing equal weight, and actually and ultimately profound. And its crime was that it did all these things while posing as a western. I mean God forbid.

I've made the suggestion as both a joke with Cinegeek pals and wishful thinking to the ether that Criterion would release a definitive BluRay of this movie, never daring imagine the possibility existed. So it was with jaw dropping through my apartment floor that I greeted Criterion's announcement that this movie would be part of its November slate, complete with the involvement of its now legendarily eccentric director. Not only that, but it would be featured as part of the NYFF's 50th anniversary Masterworks series. When did this reappraisal occur? Why was I not part of this e-mail chain? Actually I couldn't care less; my Pick Of The Day, I am proud to say, has found a level of critical re-evaluation and rehabilitation that has brought it to the Walter Reade Theater for the cinephile bearhug it's been waiting for since 1980.

Michael Cimino's HEAVEN'S GATE screens tonight at 6:30pm at the Walter Reade Theater, and director Cimino and star Kris Kristofferson will be on hand to express sheer puzzlement at why it took the world 30 plus years to catch up with this masterpiece. Borrowing themes that went back to Hawks and RIO BRAVO and wended its way through the genre to its immediate antecedent MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER, it remains among the handful of the traditional western genre where the villain is not the "red man", but the white. Based on a true story from the immigrant influx post Civil War, the film features characters already world-weary but compelled to defend their definition of the American Dream against powerful corporate concerns bent on proving a patriotism that flouts the Constitution. Sound timely? An impeccable cast, featuring the American debut of Isabelle Huppert. Gorgeous widescreen work from Vilmos Zsigmond, who adored the American landscape like few other DP's. And lovingly if excessively overseen by the once-promising but deserving of 30 years of late applause and back pats Micheal Cimino, I IMPLORE you to attend this screening if you can. I feel redeemed, and any lover of any art form will tell you that once a cause celebre finds what they believe is its deserved general huzzah, there are few pleasures as gratifying. Or smug.

For the general overview of the month of October '12 check out the last post. Also be sure to join the Facebook group for last minute updates and whatnot. I'm a big fan of tha whatnot. For all other info click on the interactive calendar. Huzzah, Suckahz!