January 10th 2013. Pick Of The Day.

The Archers' nuns must abandon their missionary work at the one time Himalayan brothel as surely as BLACK NARCISSUS must leave the Film Forum after today. If you haven't caught the new DCP restoration on display at that cinematic seraglio on West Houston I can't implore you enough to attend a screening while you can. I can't implore you enough because this is not my Pick today. That was last week and tough if ya didn't read the column that day. Keep up, suckahz.

B-Noir auteur Phil Karlson's THE BROTHERS RICO, co-scripted by a still blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, unspools today at MOMA. If you've ever experienced true family tsuris will this tale of a gangster gone straight tormented by the siblings who have not make you plotz. Oy vey. Why am I invoking Yiddish?

Lastly but far from least the Clearview Chelsea continues to bring the classic bitchy film goodness with a screening of Vincente Minelli and Arthur Freed's arguably last great collaboration, the Leslie Caron vehicle GIGI. One of the great examles of a creative team plundering its own vault, Lerner and Lowe were prodded by MGM to create a dupe of their then current Broadway hit MY FAIR LADY. This is why we have Maurice chevalier singing the praises of pedophilia. I'm just sayin'.

All worthy, none my Pick. No a late announcement from one of our coolest independent movie houses snares that honor today, and just as I was arguing the merits of a little thesp that could by the name of De Niro...

Martin Scorsese is today Dean Emeritus of all things cinematic. This wasn't neccesarily a forgone turnout. At one point this most daring of American auteurs from the storied New Hollywood of the 70's found himself stumbling badly. The intoxicating heights reached by what may still be his masterpiece TAXI DRIVER gave way to the critical and commercial Icarus freefall of NEW YORK, NEW YORK. Rebounding at least with the critics with his brutal masterpiece RAGING BULL and the accompanying Best Actor Oscar for star Robert De Niro, he still found himself in the cold stark light of an unwelcoming L.A. that no longer, come the 80's, cared that he'd helped define a decade in the industry subject suddenly to willful amnesia. What to do?

Enter fledgling producer with deep pockets Arnon Milchan, a man who was looking to make a splash on the Hollywood scene in the early 80's after earning his fortune in various ventures non-cinematic. Speculation still abounds. His enthusiasm for cinema and even more enthusiastic checkbook brought him into contact with the first of the great autuers he would find himself financing over the following 30 plus years. Sergio Leone had pitched his dream project about Jewish gangsters for the better part of a decade with no takers. The great man had not directed a film in that same timespan. Milchan dove at the chance to team up with this giant of the film industry, and while ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA sank at the BO whence released it has come to be regarded as perhaps Leone's finest film. What's more it accomplished Milchan's main goal; he was now an established player on the producing scene.

De Niro first brought what he termed a comedy script to Scorsese's attention post-BULL, when the director was still trying to mount his adap of LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. Uninterested the director read the screenplay out of respect for his great star. Unconvinced, Milchan then stepped forth to offer financing for a NYC shoot, perhaps suspecting that what this Little Italy native really needed was a temporary escape from L.A. and its attendant sycophants and drugs and Robbie Robertson in order to recharge the battery. What resulted didn't exactly light up the box office charts but one can't deny that every other goal was well accomplished. A masterpiece that stands the test of time and was perhaps even more prescient that the director's TAXI DRIVER in predicting the cult of personality.

Speaking of cult of personality this is also one of the few examples in cinema, like Jean Renoir directing Erich Von Stroheim, Steven Speilberg directing Francois Truffaut, and Carol Reed directing Orson Welles, where one genius filmmaker directed another in an iconic perf. In this case that perf belongs to genius director Jerry Lewis. Try me cinemtic heathens and I will civilize thee! Foin laben!

Enough. Martin Scorsese's caustic seminal take on the culture of American celebrity and our particular fear of obscurity, THE KING OF COMEDY, screens tonight at the IFC Center on 6th avenue @ 7pm. They really gotta let me know about these things sooner.

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-Joe Walsh