JANUARY 2013! Paul Williams, Dirty Cartoons and the Mekas Inherits the Film Forum!

Welcome to the New Year, Stockers! Here's hoping the holidays found you fit, feisty and surrounded by yer fave peeps. December 2012 was packed to the brim not just with classic film imperatives but the other distractions, like fundraisers, two pretty important days of observance and what promised to be the end of the world, all of which demanded get-togethers and quality time spent with those we love and those we need appease for reasons corporate. It was an arduous journey through social gatherings fraught with various peril for your humble author, so I can only imagine how dicey things may have gotten for you, my precious audience. Hopefully you made it through the cacophanous jollification with a shred of respect tucked away unblemished. In any event the good news is nothing stands in your way this awful, dead and deeply freezing reminder of our mortality that is January, Ingmar Bergman month, and fittingly he is repped at MOMA thrice these next thirty days. But let's get our ducks in a row. January is not quite the busy month the rest of the year sees but there is treasure aplenty for classic film geeks to plunder. Let's start with the big guns rolling out this month!

Once again Film Forum wins the MVP of the month award for its impersonation of the Anthology Film Archives, its eccentric yet comprehensive tribute to postwar independent and experimental cinema from the NYC underground scene. NEW YAWK NEW WAVE celebrates the works integral from the city's maverick filmmakers starting with prick-kicker Shirley Clarke, who inveighed against the state's obscenity laws for a decade, continuing with John Cassavetes and Micheal Roemer, invoking Kubrick's first cohesive effort, Norman Mailer's disastrous entry into the cinematic counter-culture fray, Scorsese's assimilation of the European New Wave with his city's own junk art culture, Warhol's shepherding of Paul Morrissey, Robert Downey making his name before the addendum Senior would be necessary, and ending with a tribute to the AFA's founder and perhaps the greatest champion the cinematic avant garde has ever seen, Jonas Mekas himself. Catching every film in this series may turn you into a trannie heroin addict turning tricks to pay for its habit. Then again you may think that's a small price to pay. There is fix aplenty to be had during this series, so get your outsider card punched as often as you can during this fest. Ten flicks gets you a free coffee at Starbucks. That's a joke, Starbucks.

Also at the FF the brilliant new 35mm print of Ernst Lubitsch's classic NINOTCHKA screens for two more days. Saw it last night and it's never looked better. I think Garbo may have something to do with that...

Next up for a week's viewing at the Forum is the absolutely fucking great BLACK NARCISSUS in a new DCP restoration. Overseen by genius editor and widow of director Michael Powell, I'm sure Thelma Schoonmaker wouldn't allow an inferior DCP of this film to reach screens anywhere, so it goes wthout saying I'm DYING to see this in a theater!

Finally the Forum's Douglas Fairbanks retrospective winds down with screenings of one of his last comedies, THE MOLLYCODDLE, and one of hs first swsshbucklers, THE THREE MUSKETEERS. Very few if any did it better than Fairbanks, who pretty much single-handedly invented the modern action film, so ovrcome your bias against title cards in particular and Mondays in general and drag your movie lovin' ass to one of these screenings!

Over the pond that venerable institution known as Museum of the Moving Image cobbles together a fitting tribute to a sadly underappreciated pop culture titan, who seems to now be recieving the career re-evaluation he so sorely deserves! MOMI's tribute, simply titled PAUL WILLIAMS, includes cult film gems scored by the songsmith including PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE and ISHTAR, and the universally beloved THE MUPPET MOVIE. The only glaring omission seems to be BUGSY MALONE. But quibble I shan't. I'm glad this unlikely hero of countless Tonight Show appearances is receiving a late career round of applause. Dearly earned.

Videology, technically a video store with a popcorn machine, nevertheless ofers a pretty cool retrospective of edgy 70's animation, budgeted large but inspired by the very fringe cinema on display at the Forum this month! The criminally underrated Ralph Bakshi is repped by screenings of the underperforming HEY GOOD LOOKIN' and the insanely controversial COONSKIN. The man was never boring, that much can be said. And the enormously popular HEAVY METAL, also screening at the little-rental-shop-that-could, would be unthinkable without Bakshi's pioneering efforts. This is an opportunity to view the anarchic possibilities film animation may provide, a bridge between the excesses of the Fleischer Brothers and the revival kicked off by John Kricfalusi. But dirtier. And with popcorn.

92YTribeca brings the neon lit seamy with their L.A. LAW series, which offers screenings of box office hits like BEVERLY HILLS COP and FACE/OFF, controversial hits like COLORS, and obscure but tremendous West Coast noir spanning the 40's with HE WALKED BY NIGHT to the 80's with James B. Harris' early Ellroy adap COP.

The 92YT also offers a rare believe it or not screening of Don Coscarelli's seminal horror debut PHANTASM. And you're thinking of missing this why?

MOMA's excellent and important Autuerist History of Film series preoceeds apace with unspoolings of Elia Kazan's EAST OF EDEN, Phil Karlson's THE BROTHERS RICO, Ingmar Bergman's WILD STRAWBERRIES, Doulgas Sirk's THE TARNISHED ANGELS, and a little cat named Billy Wilder and his screen adap of Agatha Christie's WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION. There is a common theme here, I'll just leave it to you to instruct me as to what it is...

The Film Society of Lincoln Center devotes a day to two relativley mediocre Hitchcock films under the potentially intriguing banner HITCHCOCK RETURNS TO LONDON. First up is the clunky but still interesting STAGE FRIGHT, The Mahstah's lone collaboration with Marlene Dietrich, which is kinda sad cause these two seemed destined to point the cameras at some really distrunbing shit. Next and last is arguably Big Al's last interesting suspenser, FRENZY, a procedural/character study revolving around a serial killer in early 70's London. It has moments, and if that's enough to entice you I won't argue.

The Rubin Museum has quite the sked for its January Cabaret Cinema slate. Steering mostly toward Italian Neo-Realism and New Wave, Rossellini's ROME OPEN CITY is first up, and fits this bleak month and all the despair implied by such to a T. Unlike Bergman however, you will empathize with the hellish treatment of the central characters. The rest of the month is dedicated to two collaborations between Michaelangelo Antonioni and muse Monica Vitti, L'ECLISSE and RED DESERT, and Alan Resnais' beautiful but baffling LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD. Look, not only do you get to drink at these screenings it's the price of admission! How cool are them monks?!?!?

That wonderful old Building & Loan across the pond known as the Nitehawk Cinema, my new fave screening space in the five boroughs, continues its eclectic brunch and midnight retro screening sked this month. Noon screenings include James Whale's THE INVISIBLE MAN, the perennial cinematic miracle known as THE MUPPET MOVIE, and something called E. T. Directed by a guy named Spielberg. What Hell would follow is permanent record.

Nitehawk midnights offer the proto-punk QUADROPHENIA and the fully punk REPO MAN. Tater tots optional. Nah, optional bullshit! Tater tots are never optional.

Closing out the month's activities in classic film the Clearview Chelsea continues to provide the best efforts from the studio era celebrating the best in female protagonists and male dancers. I don't see a trend. Strong female lead perfs seems to be the theme this month as they offer ALL ABOUT EVE, GIGI, SWEET CHARITY, THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE, and THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL

Finally the Landmark Sunshine Cinemas brings the cult midnight love with Friday and Saturday screenings of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and BACK TO THE FUTURE! One out of two ain't bad!

There it be Stockahz! I hope you dig yourself out of your respective priest holes to brave frostbite this month and celebrate cinema in its native format. I'll be back with various updates and musings, and I hope this new year treats us all better than 2012 did. Yer that goods, Stockahz, and let's hit the revival cinemas hard in the new year! Excelsior!

-Joe Walsh