March 16th 2013. Pick Of The Day.

Don't want St. Patrick's day coming one minute earlier than it must, let alone one whole day? TOUGH, sez Bloomberg, the parade's today so start drinking NOW! And God help the bartenders on either end of that parade, sez this once-bartender...

On the other hand, that may leave more and better seating for the Cinegeek amongst us, and there's a LOT of great classic film unspooling this day where Technicolor may refer to film stock or, to put it politely, a certain digetsive expulsion commonly found along the 5th Avenue set this day. Let's focus on the emulsive variety.

The Nitehawk Cinema in sunny B-Burg shows the 80's in general and Chicago in particular some love today with a brunch screening of John Hughes' WEIRD SCIENCE. Kelly Le Brock, breakfast tacos and The Girl On Fire cocktail. NOW you wanna brave the L train on parade day, don'tchya? Sultry sustenance in an exotic clime, but falls short as my Pick.

Museum of the Moving Image competes with Anthology Film Archives' Amos Vogel tribute with one of their own, offering the absurdist manifesto HORSE FEATHERS starring, of course, those most prized anarchists of American cinema the Brothers Marx. Tempts as my Pick just so I can say to all competing screenings "whatever it is I'm against it!" A more modern and lazy set of anti-heroes win me over today. We'll get to them.

Speaking of AFA their postponed from post-Sandy November 35mm screening of Bernardo Bertolucci's BEFORE THE REVOLUTION fulfils its rain check today. BB's debut drew from the postwar movements of neo-realism and new wave, in a conflicted ode to bourgeious beauty from a lefist protagonist. Essential. Not my Pick.

Fritz Lang's masterpiece of silent to sound transition M screens for a second of at least 14 days at Film Forum. Peter Lorre whistles past the graveyard indeed...

The Film Society's Pam Grier hot stone massage hmmm's into its second day, offering screenings of the 70's sex icon's seminal action flick COFFY and the far too rare straight turn as Richard Pryor's girl in GREASED LIGHTNING. Ooooooh yeah. Unfortunately included in the day's sked is the Steven Seagal vehicle ABOVE THE LAW, which co-starred the Foxy one as the mumbly one's partner, and would have been wholly improved by simply cutting his perf out from around Ms. Grier's. Alright, I'm a hater, but if you hadda choose between the greasy bully and COFFY? Hm? I thought so. Unfortunately Pam Grier took my Pick yesterday so's according to my rules I gotta pass. But you don't. Her Foxiness will be in attendance for the 9:30pm screening of COFFY. Nudge nudge say no more.

The Landmark Jersey Loews in beautiful downtown Journal Square pairs a couple of Frank Capra greats tonight in defense of the common citizen, the little guy, in his constant fight against corruptive influences for the soul of America. Jean Arthur essentially essays the same moxie as she joins Gary Cooper in MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN and Jimmy Stewart in MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON. She dug her Misters, yessir. This certainly would nab my Pick today were it not for a greater cinematic defense of a more local locale. We'll get there.

Midnight screenings include THE HOLY MOUNTAIN and THE OTHER at IFC Center, BODY DOUBLE and POLTERGEIST III at the Nitehawk. Yeah, nah.

And BAM's trib to the enduring artistry and pulchritude of screen icon Isabelle Adjani presents today her turn in the gloriously bugfuck Werner Herzog's remake of F. W. Murnau's NOSFERATU. I know, how could all these elements stable and otherwise elude as my Pick today? Because those same elements kinetic and potential bolster perhaps the greatest NYC film of all time. One of the greatest heist films of all time, that collected and combined all the tropes of the genre with a quintessential 70's New Yawk yeahwhocares? So quintessentially New Yawk is this flick that on my third or fourth viewing I was stunned to acknowledge that Sidney Lumet did NOT direct the film. It's THAT New Yawk.

A film that also boasts one of Walter Matthau's best and most fondly remebered perfs, and finds him aided by fixtures of the city's film and TV industry both friendly, like Jerry Stiller, Tony Roberts and Kenneth McMillan, and adversary, like Hector Elizondo and the perennially awesome Martin Balsam. Oh, and I must mention the unhinged Brit, the baddie who sets the plot in motion, one Robert Shaw, who gets to utter cinema villainies greatest last word. Literally. If ya don't know you'll just have to catch the movie, built around one of the most implausible hijack scenarios ever concocted for the big screen, and one that could only be plausible in the Big Apple. Bless its dysfuncytional heart.

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123, the ORIGINAL, screens tonight at the 92YTribeca. This would win my Pick tonight regardless but it's also just been announced that the 92YT hasn't long to live. Sometime this summer the doors are closing for good, and that breaks my heart, having experienced so many memorable screenings and Q&A's within it's confines. I hope they find a new home, but in the meantime catch as many events at this wonderful community cultural center as you can. As for tonight's Pick, gesundheit.

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Be safe and sound and make sure the next guy is too, Stockahz! Keep yer head up over Paddy's Day weekend! Back next week with more Picks! ERIN GO BRAGH, SUCKAHZ!!!

-Joe Walsh