July 19th 2013. Pick Of The Day.
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You think Yasujiro Ozu's gone away? Yasujiro Ozu never goes away my friend. Never. Today Film Forum's reprisal of last month's trib to the Japanese auteur offers his Kinema Jumpo champ EARLY SUMMER, which is perhaps my fave title all-time. The Yaz man's recurring theme of traditional arranged marriage rejected by daughters with more modern sensibilities rears its head once more, with the usual brilliant results. I pass up Ozu-san once more, but only because I chose him 6 times last month, so my conscience is clear. CLEAR I say!
Also at the Forum Michelangelo Antonioni's breakout hit L'AVVENTURA, the narrative-tweaking work of world cinema that made his international rep, begins its second and last week. Chose it exactly one week ago when it opened, so Monica Vitti will forgive my overlooking her this day. I just know she will.
Audrey Hepburn's Holly Gollightly tsk's her last today as BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, Blake Edwards' classic adap of Truman Capote's novella, screens for the last of its three day booking as part of MoMA's ongoing Auteurist History of Film series. Delightful. Charming. A breezy look at a bustling NYC. Everything today's Pick is not. Read on...
BAM offers a pair of competing 70's classics tonight. John Cassavetes' HUSBANDS screens as part of the venue's month-long trib to the godfather of American indie cinema, while their newly renovated Harvey Theater presents Francis Ford Coppola's actual THE GODFATHER. Choosing between these two templates of guy-flick cinema would be folly, so I choose a third path, equally testosterone-fueled and set in more iconic NYC than the former offerings that both harkens to its recent past and its dystopian future. Once you go in, you don't come out, indeed.
Ken Loach's FAMILY LIFE and Bernardo Bertolucci's THE CONFORMIST screen tonight as part of Anthology Film Archives' series Agnes B. Selects, programmed by the fashion design icon and featuring cinematic works considered influential to her formative years. Just caught the BB, and Loach is a fave, but neither can best my choice today. Mabye if either flick featured Lee Van Cleef...
The Rubin Museum's ongoing and superb Cabaret Cinema series drags Sergio Corbucci's seminal Spaghetti Western DJANGO into town. Price of a drink gains you admittance to the Museum's swank screening lounge. This WAS my Pick until the last-minute scheduling of another titan of tough guy cinema, greatly influenced by Franco Nero's coffin-toting anti-hero, stole it away, as easily as he stole the tape that could kick off WW III. And who might that be?
Lastly, midnight fare about our movie-mad Metropolis includes George A. Romero's towering achievement of horror cinema NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD at Williamsburg's Nitehawk Cinema, and James Cameron's sequel to Ridley Scott's ALIEN and remake of 50's sci-fi/horror mash-up THEM!, 1986's ALIENS at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema. Both bring the creepy and the kooky, mysterious and ooky. However, a wholly unique mash-up in its own right, melding the Apocalypse flick, Spaghetti Westerns and the Men-On-A-Mission genre seamlessly, takes my Pick today. It also introduced one of the most iconic anti-heroes in film history. Maybe you thought he was dead. Big mistake.
Let's just say it. John Carpenter fucking rules. How different would our childhoods have been had we not been privy to the likes of ASSAULT ON PRECINT 13, HALLOWEEN and THE FOG? How much more joyless our youths without these films' ability to thrill, scare and downright amaze? Once he was as exalted as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, albeit with much smaller budgets. But with these scant budgets he concocted some of the finest genre fare the world's ever seen. Indeed, the 9-film run he rattled off between debut DARK STAR and Hong Kong homage BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA remains, I believe, unmatched since his time. One of the great joys I am routinely afforded, exclusive of controlled substances and hookers, is the ongoing debate over Carpenter's finest film. Most cats choose 1982's THE THING, his absolutely batshit rethink of his fave film, directed by his hero Howard Hawks. I continually vacillate, as each work from that run is so uniquely crafted, so perfect and so influential to the modern masters. Today however, to honor what has always been one of the purest cinematic heroin doses I've ever experienced on celluloid, featuring potentially the coolest motherfucking badass this side of Clint Eastwood's The Man With No Name, I will choose one of his films as his best. I may change my mind tomorrow or the next day, but tonight belongs to Plissken. Just call him Snake.
John Carpenter's prescription for Low-T, 1981's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, screens today all day at IFC Center in a brand spankin' new DCP presentation. You've only got 5 days to catch this. Then the arteries in your neck explode. As well they should if you pass this up.
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Be safe and sound and make sure the next guy/gal is too. Heat's breaking a bit today but keep that water bottle handy, and would it kill you to check in on some family and neighbors during this wave Mr. Big Shot? Back tomorrow with this week's last Pick. Where is this friggin' Summah going already? SLOW DOWN, AUGUST!!!THAT'S AN ORDER!!!
-Joe Walsh
