June 22nd 2013. Pick Of The Day.
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The Nitehawk Cinema in bubbly, bustling B-Burg gets things started on this impossibly gorgeous June day with a screening of the Mel Brooks' masterpiece YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, which paradoxically screens quite often and not frequently enough in our film-mad metropolis. Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle lead the merry march, which includes troupers Terri Garr, Marty Feldman, and the screen chewing antics of the great Cloris Leachmen and Madeline Khan! Not to mention the work of the great Kenneth Strickfaeden, who designed the effects for James Whale's original in 1931 and happily dusted off his gear to display his Tesla coil magickery some 40 plus years later. Hard to choose against this flick but I made it my Pick not too long ago, so I'll let a little time pass. And make espresso in the meantime.
Yasujiro Ozu's career-defining masterpiece TOKYO STORY screens for the second of its 4-day booking as part of Film Forum's exhaustive 3-week retrospective dedicated to the master's CV. Somber, elegiac, but full of moments so defining of our capacity for sympathy and empathy you'll swear he captured the human soul itself on celluloid. Chose it yesterday, so rules dictate I look elsewhere today.
Astoria's Cinegeek church Museum of the Moving Image presents Roberto Rossellini's Neorealist classic VOYAGE TO ITALY as part of its See It Big! series. This tale of a seemingly happy marriage cracking under scrutiny was a flop whence initially released but has since managed to climb the ranks of the BFI's list and currently sits at #41 all-time. I'm sure the luminous Ingrid Bergman, the director's then-wife, had something to do with the film's ascent. Chose it just last month, so again I gotta let some time pass. Scandale!
Midnight movie fare about town includes James Cameron's ALIENS at IFC Center and Dario Argento's FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET at the Nitehawk Cinema. One gots tots, the other has nots. I'm just sayin'. But neither can sway me from an important, colossal, pretty kinda fairly darn important series unspooling today. Every now and then I get to make a double- or even triple-bill my weekend Pick, and today, partly because I simply can't choose between the three but mostly because it's Saturday and the cinematically obsessed have the whole day to indulge, I'm going with a three-fer that trumps the competition. Anybody who ever wanted to spend the day with Allan Dwan, MoMA has answered your prayers.
The Museum of Modern Art's comprehensive tribute to the contract director who both preceded and outlived that term, Allan Dwan and the Rise and Decline of the Hollywood Studios, offers up a trio of the man's best. Actually a quartet, as the 8pm slot combines a pair of his 6-reelers. BREWSTER'S MILLIONS, screening at 2pm, tells the oft-filmed tale of a lucky bum who must spend a million dollars of his inheritence in order to collect the remaining 7. RENDEVOUZ WITH ANNIE, his most Preston Sturges-like effort, follows the controversy of an enlisted airman during WWII who goes AWOL for a night with his stateside wife and then must explain, at war's end 6-months later, her pregnancy. The evening's offerings, 1931's WICKED an 1936's MAIDEN LANE, concern respectively a woman who gives birth behind bars (a musical no less!) and Claire Trevor's attempts to trap jewel thief Cesar Romero, which ultimately lead to yeah I'm not even gonna say it.
My choosing today of the Dwan retropsective as today's Pick makes the month-long grudge match between his trib at MoMA and Ozu's at Film Forum an even 5-all at this point. E-mail me to let me know who you think's gonna take the crown at month's end, Stockahz!
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Be safe and sound and make sure the next palooka is too! July's calendar in the works! So are my naptimes! Enjoy the weekend Knuckleheads, back on Wednesday with the last of June 2013's Picks. Follow the Twitter acc't and/or the Facebook page to keep apprised of my daily Picks til then. And someone make Summer slow down already?!? At least until it fully gets here?!? C'MON!!!
-Joe Walsh
