September 12th 2014. Pick of the Day.
New York City's premiere resource for classic film screenings in the metropolitan area. Offering reviews, recommendations, venues and a host of links keeping classic film and the silver screens alive.
Continuing series today include 1939 - Hollywood's Golden Year at IFC Center, Nonesuch Records on Film at BAM Cinématek, The Great War: A Cinematic Legacy at MoMA, and The 10th Dimension: Edward D. Wood Jr. at Anthology Film Archives. My friends, can your hearts stand the shocking facts?
IFC Center
1939 - Hollywood's Golden Year
GUNGA DIN (1939) Dir; George Stevens
TAXI DRIVER (1976) Dir; Martin Scorsese
Film Forum
ROME OPEN CITY (1946) Dir; Roberto Rossellini
THE CONFORMIST (1971) Dir; Bernardo Bertolucci
BAM Cinématek
JULES AND JIM (1961) Dir; François Truffaut
MoMA
The Great War: A Cinematic Legacy
THE LOST SQUADRON (1932) Dir; George Archainbaud
HELL'S ANGELS (1930) Dir; Howard Hughes
Anthology Film Archives
The 10th Dimension: Edward D. Wood Jr.
PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1956) Dir; Edward D. Wood, Jr.
NIGHT OF THE GHOULS (1958) Dir; Edward D. Wood, Jr.
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
LABYRINTH (1986) Dir; Jim Henson
Today's Pick? He's seemingly become a tired trope of independently-minded madness, a weathered emblem of unintentional cinematic bad taste turned cause célèbre for the fledgling filmmaker. He went from ingored auteur to laughing stock to embraced cult icon, sadly experiencing firsthand only two of those phases in his brief lifetime. Since then he's been the subject of onetime-wunderkind Tim Burton's best film, ironically enough himself a now-bloated wreck, albeit financially viable, who has meantime far surpassed the subject of his celebration and condescention in terms of crimes most heinous committed against celluloid. You tell me; rather watch 2010's ALICE IN WONDERLAND 3D or GLEN OR GLENDA? The simple answer is thus; the 1994 Tim Burton would've chosen the latter. Something tells me the bloated wreck of 2014, though never brave enough to vocally admit it, silently agrees.
But enough of my Tim Burton excoriation, I could go on all day! What's being celebrated here is a buoyant talent, however misguided, who created perhaps the film world's first awful auteur CV. Lord knows I've never been fond enough of the man's work to defned it against all criticism, but I have made the case, on multiple occasions since my formative teen years, that David Lynch needs to own up to his appreciation of today's filmmaker in question. I'm serious. Watch the nightmare sequence in GLENDA again, or the sequences in tonight's Pick featuring eerie star-specked backdrops with naught but the whooshing noise of wind against them, and tell me ERASERHEAD and DUNE owe nothing to the man once crowned the worst director who ever lived. It says something about the power of the medium, if not just the lure of luridly wacko frivolity, that we are still poring over the man's films, studying them, discovering new points of interest. If you think we'll be saying the same thing 50 years from now about Brian de Palma, Robert Zemeckis and Joel Schumacher, I have some waterfront property on the Brooklyn Bridge you might be interested in. And remember, future events like these will affect you in the future.
Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE and NIGHT OF THE GHOULS unspool tonight at Anthology Film Archives as part of the series The 10th Dimension! The incidents, the places, my friends we cannot keep this a secret any longer!
For more info on these and all NYC's classic film screenings in September '14 click on the interactive calendar on the upper right hand side of the page. For the monthly overview and other audio tomfoolery check out the podcast, and follow me on SoundCloud! For reviews of contemporary cinema and my streaming habits (keep it clean!) check out my Letterboxd page. And be sure to follow me on both Facebook, where I provide further info and esoterica on the rep film circuit and star birthdays, and Twitter, where I provide a daily feed for the day's screenings and other blathery. Back tomorrow with a brand new Pick, til then, my friends, let us reward the innocent, let us punish the guilty.
-Joe Walsh
