December 31st 2015! Last Pick of the Year!
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.
How the hell did we get here again so damn quick?!?
Oh criminy, Stockahz, I welcome this day with both bated breath and heavy heart, one which sees not the calendar's flip to a new page, but the calendar's replacing by a whole new calendar. We had some year on the rep circuit lo these last 365 days, and also a pretty nuts year beyond our small yet wonderful communal circuit. It was a year of great turmoil on our planet, which is saying nothing remotely new. It was a year of old and dangerous rivalries renewed, even escalated. A year of exodus, that saw refugees met with open arms and bitterly turned away. A year of intent misguided that turned tragically violent. God help us, it may go down as the year of Trump.
And yet it was a year that saw hopeful accords agreed upon, granting tenuous security but room to also focus on several of the world's ills ingored to this point. It was a year where women got to grab the world's attention on the soccer field. It was a year when Tony Stark himself got to present an armless child with his very own robotic arm. And, lest the power of The Force be taken for granted, it was the year Martin Shkreli was cuffed and indicted for running a Ponzi scheme on the day THE FORCE AWAKENS opened. Hooray, good guys!
On a personal note, it was the year I got to meet and interact with William Friedkin. The year I hosted the 1st annual Nitrate Stock Oscar Party. The year that new rep screens were announced at the under-renovation Quad Cinema and the newbie Metrograph. And finally, most importantly, it was the year that an idea I had to treat these movie marathons I regualrly attend like actual marathons, asking to be sponsored film-by-film and expecting very little reaction, helped raise a bunch of dough for such worthy causes as UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, relief for victims both local, like the 2nd avenue building collapse, and global, like the earthquake in Nepal, and my persoanl fave St. Jude's Children's Hospital. And once more, my eternal gratitude to all of you who gave and spread the word. You did good, Stockahz.
The year sped by so fast I feel like it'll take the whole of 2016 to allow it to unravel at a comprehensible pace in my memories. So let's get to today's selction and hurry to midnight! I wanna get the new year started already!
Film Forum
BALL OF FIRE (1941) Dir; Howard Hawks
MoMA
Modern Matinees: The Film Library Grows
THE PUBLIC ENEMY (1931) Dir; William A. Wellman
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Imitations of Life: The Films of Douglas Sirk
ALL I DESIRE (1953) Dir; Douglas Sirk
TAKE ME TO TOWN (1953) Dir; Douglas Sirk
Final Pick of '15? Wellman's PUBLIC ENEMY, a film that not only helped launch Warner Brother's venerated gangster cycle of the 30's, but cemented the staus popular and iconic of one James Cagney, without whose contributions the gangster film as we know it would have been well-nigh impossible. It unspools at MoMA as part of their spectacular series Modern Matinees, in a beautiful 35mm print! Does celebrating the flashy violent acts of a vicious criminal sound like an appropriate manner to welcome in a new and hopefully more peaceful new year? Does watching Ryan Seacrest and Jeny McCarthy sound like a more optimistic alternative? GO, Stockahz, and may this eve find you safe and sound and surrounded by friends and fam. I'll be back just after midnight with the brand-spankin' new first interactive repertory film calendar of 2016! Here's to the New Year!
-Joe Walsh
