May 17th 2013. Pick Of The Day.

Claude Chabrol's early shot fired in the French New Wave THE COUSINS ends its three-day run as part of MOMA's ongoing Auteurist History of Film series, which is sorta remarkable to anyone who's ever asked visiting relations to depart on time. The culture clash between city dweller and rural relative expands into moral quandaries immediately recognizable to a Europe drifting through a postwar malaise, but which also speaks clearly to the modern audience. Shame I never made it my Pick but it is worth discovering if you've never seen it.

Jerry Schatzberg's criminally underappreciated gem from the New Hollywood of the 70's gets a DCP restoration and some love from NYC's premiere rep house. SCARECROW stars Al Pacino and Gene Hackman, sadly in their only joint effort, as dreaming drifters canvassing rural America in search of their personal El Dorado; a car wash in Pittsburgh. Inconvenient reality, in the form of malevolent characters and misfortune found, continually keep their dreams from their grasp, but never erase them entirely. Tonight's 7:30pm screening at the Film Forum will be attended by the director who will conduct a post-screenig discussion. VERY tempting, but I got a week to choose this flick, and a different pair of iconic thesps team up for their only co-starrer tonight, so I must pass.

The big dog film retrospective this month kicks off today at Lincoln Center, as the Film Society's 13-movie trib to the legendary Burt Lancaster gets underway with screenings of Fred Zinneman's FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, Alexander MacKendrick's SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, and two from noir master Robert Siodmak; Lancaster's screen debut THE KILLERS and his follow-up with the director CRISS-CROSS. I'm tempted to make this the site's first QUADRUPLE feature Pick, but I must resist, if only because I have my plans. Mwah ha ha. Cough.

And midnight fare about our classic film metropolis includes Gary Goddard's MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE at the Landmark Sunshine and Hitch's final film FAMILY PLOT at the Nitehawk Cinema, which amounts to a veritable Duel of the Tater Tots (I know my fave!). But if we're takling Masters of the Universe there are two on display tonight that have few if any equal. Put it this way; one was the original 007 and the other the original ALFIE. And you're not.

John Huston. He drinks your milkshake. And he's been DEAD for twenty-six years! After a lengthy career as screenwriter and ultimately as one of America's premier directors that was only 1/3 of the way done he landed on a story in the 50's that became a passion project, an adap of a Rudyard Kipling novella that he esteemed would make one of the finest adventure films the screen had ever seen. He initially wanted Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable in the leads, as soldiers from the White Man's civilization seeking gold and glory through the deception of an antiquated tribal people, and they wanted in as well. Unfortunately the dragging of studio feet and the passing of his two leads, in 1957 an 1960 respectively, forever kept that version from movie lovers, so we'll just have to dream about that flick. Huston, however, was nothing if not tenacious. Further attempts at launching the production paired routine co-stars Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, then Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, and then Robert Redford and Paul Newman. It was Newman, apparently, who suggested Brits MUST be cast as the leads, and suggested Huston inquire of Sean Connery and Michael Caine as to their availability. Before you could say "Shaken not stirred? You're only supposed to blow the BLOODY doors off!", the stars agreed and production was underway.

Wanna hear something that'll seem nuts once you read it? Sean Connery and Michael Caine, over their 50+ years on screen begun at about the same mark, have made exactly ONE movie together. Today's Pick. Which was met upon release favorably by the critics. The audience would be another matter entirely. Occupying a middle ground between the adventure flicks of the early 60's and the revival of such accomplished by Spielberg and Lucas' 1981 smash RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, which ironicaly had a lotta Huston in its DNA, KING was percieved as declasse whence released, a relic of a bygone Hollywood that was by then consumed with stark, European influenced cinema that strove for reality and not escapism, at least of the sort Huston had perfected. It wallowed in anonymity for a spell before rediscovery befell it on the rep circuit. It has come to be regarded as not just one of the finest of its filmmaker's career but, as he had long suspected, one of the greatest adventure flicks the medium ever produced. The real shame is that Connery and Caine never teamed up onscreen again, and had this movie found its audience back in the day both men's CV may have overlapped a few more times. As it is, let's celebrate their lone cinematic collaboration, the chemistry conjured by the two men, and one of the big screen's greatest and most enduring friendships.

John Huston's THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING is presented tonight at 9:30pm in the Rubin Museum's screening lounge as part of their Cabaret Cinema series. The price of a drink gains you admission to the movie, and the combo of stars, director and booze proves impossible to pass up. Mebbe I see you there.

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Be safe and sound and make sure the next knucklehead is too! Back tomorrow with the last Pick of the week. Fellow NY'ers, enjoy the weather.

-Joe Walsh