December 4th 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.
I'm wholly against inviting or invoking political discourse into this platform, but there are certain instances when I feel avoidance of comment is tantamount to cowardice, especially as a proud New Yorker, who both loves and fears every one of his other New Yorkers. Respectfully so. So I'll simply offer this; film has often been defined as a medium that lies, once upon an antiquated time as one that lied at 24-frames per sec. It manipulates context. It manipulates actuality. It manipulates to the point that any objectivity is impossible.
Sometimes though, film, in whatever form it has technologically morphed into, provides enough information to count as evidence, evidence enough to warrant a trial. Not a conviction, not a lynching. A trial. By our peers. In the best attempt to divine the truth from the unreliable muck that is our collective witness testimony, the forensic evidence, the dead man who should still be breathing. Film, even the kind recordable and accessible by the average smartphone, can still nudge our pessimism and our apathy toward a desire for justice. Today I am more convinced than ever that film, the kind we record with our point & shoot cameras, with our iPhones and Androids, with whatever device we routinely employ to freeze time indelibly, that film should put the system on trial, and not the other way around.
Polemic finished.
Continuing series this day include the Mario Monicelli trib at Film Forum, the dual fawn for actress Joan Bennett and filmmaker Robert Altman at MoMA, Sunshine Noir at BAM Cinématek, Celluloid Dreams at IFC Center, Screenwriters and the Blacklist; Before, During and After at Anthology Film Archives, and Chelsea Classics at the BowTie Chelsea Cinemas. The repertory rambunctiousness be thus;
Film Forum
CARO MICHELE (1976) Dir; Mario Monicelli
THE ORGANIZER (1963) Dir; Mario Monicelli
WE WANT THE COLONELS (1973) Dir; Mario Monicelli
LA GRANDE GUERRA (1959) Dir; Mario Monicelli
MoMA
WILD GIRL (1932) Dir; Raoul Walsh
COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN (1982) Dir; Robert Altman
BAM Cinématek
BREATHLESS (1983) Dir; Jim McBride
M (1951) Dir; Joseph Losey
IFC Center
FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982) Dir; Ingmar Bergman
Post-screening Q&A with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker.
Anthology Film Archives
Screenwriters and the Blacklist; Before, During and After
HE RAN ALL THE WAY (1951) Dir; John Berry
CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY (1951) Dir; Zoltan Korda
BowTie Chelsea Cinemas
AUNTIE MAME (1958) Dir; Morton da Costa
Today's Pick? BAM Cinématek's Sunshine Noir series offers two intriguing remakes, attempts to update two of the most indelible works of cinema, both laudable for their ambitions lofty, but ultimately unappealing in comparison to the day's other baubles. The Mario Monicelli love at Film Forum offers 4-count-'em-4 of the filmmaker's choice cuts today. Aside from his calling card-flick, BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET, I'm woefully unversed in the director's oeuvre, amd while that would normally be enough to make this sked my Pick today, I defer to what I believe a more compelling screening. Altman? Like that's gonna happen. No, today I fully endorse a special screening of a director I find at best mercurial and at worst a dismal hackneyed fraud. In other words, one of the most exciting and inspiring filmmakers the postwar era was gifted. I boast a devotion nowhere near the breath and depth of his most fervent devotees, yet I will defend what I believe his best and most influential works to any and all comers. He can be irritating, maddening, infuriating even, but he is able to be so at both his best and his worst. For this reason alone he is adored, replicated, even parodied. The latter action being the highest compliment. There is and was only one Ingmar Bergman, and I am thankful for that.For a myraid of reasons.
Bergman's late masterpiece FANNY AND ALEXANDER unspools tonight as part of IFC Center's tribute to the beauty of 35mm film, plainly but poetically titled Celluloid Dreams. Pulitzer-winning playwright Annie Baker, the author of Body Awareness, The Alien, and The Flick, the latter of which won her the braggin'- rights brass, will be in attendance to discuss the film during a post-screening discussion/Q&A. I cannot think of a more desirable place to be tonight than in the warm glow of a childhood, even if it isn't mine.
For more info on these and all NYC's classic film screenings in December '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 (December edition soon to come), 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 safe, sound, make sure the next knucklehead is too!
P. S. We're fully entwined in winter's embrace, and believe it or not some of our fellow NY'ers have still yet to be made whole in the wake of the 2012 storm. Should you be feeling charitable please visit the folks at OccupySandy.net, follow their hammer-in-hand efforts to restore people's lives, and donate/volunteer if you have the inclination and availability. Be a collective mensch, Stockahz!
