July 27th 2013. Pick Of The Day.
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The Nitehawk Cinema in beautiful bustling B-Burg gets the day in rep cinema going with a brunchtime screening of D. W. Griffith's BROKEN BLOSSOMS. Lillian Gish's abused waif is first protected and then avenged by Richard Barthelmess' Chinese shopkeeper. Yeah, it falls short of cleansing David Wark's rascist rep, but considering it was made in 1919 cut the man some slack. I recommend you pair this flick with the Nitehawk's excellent Egg White Quiche. Still, misses as my Pick today.
The Film Forum offers a day of identity crises writ small and large with screenings of Joseph Losey's THE SERVANT and Michelangelo Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA. Dirk Bogarde organizes employer James Fox's life a little TOO neatly in the former, and Monica Vitti finds hersefl assuming the role left vacant by her girlfriend's disappearance in the latter. Both deserving of your time, but can't Pick 'em today, as my choice regards a journey of the physical and not the metaphysical. Actually that evaluation is entirely up to the audience, but I say my heroine of choice this day really and truly makes the trippiest of trips. Read on.
Robert Altman's NASHVILLE screens at Astoria's Museum of the Moving Image as part of the institute's See It Big! The American Epic series. I find this cat preposterously overrated. Still, the museum itself is worth a trip and the price of admission includes the film, so it's a worthwhile sweating out of 5 lbs. of water weight on the R platform for the rewards involved, but I can't in honest conscience recommend a film I find so drearily meh.
Midnight fare in our cinematically crazed city inlcude two indelible works of 70's cinema depicting vastly different views of my glorious NYC. Woody Allen's work of amour verklempt ANNIE HALL at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema, and John Carpenter's real-estate agent's nightmare ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK at IFC Center. Both iconic, both warmly loved by virtually every movie fan. Neither my Pick. I embrace an odyssey slightly less neurotic than Allen's romance and slightly less apocalyptic than Snake Plissken's dystopian travelogue. However its unique set of bugfuck shenanigans have always made this a childhood fave, and I cannot believe its cult status hasn't soared to heights Asgardian since its release. Maybe because it takes place in an entirely other mythological realm.
Back in 1980 the New Hollywood auteurs of the early 70's and the Holywood Brats who transformed the biz toward that decade's end still sat sorta comfortably beside each other. Walter Murch, the genius whose innovations had thus far been confined to behind the scenes departments such as sound design and editing, traversed both of these clans, equally at home working for or advising Coppola and Phil Kaufman as with Spielberg and Lucas. Around this same time Disney Studios found itself in decline, losing ground as a dream factory to the new Doug Trumbull and ILM enhanced visions of the Brats, and to our eternal good fortune they went swinging for the fences with bold experiments like Gary Nelson's THE BLACK HOLE and Steve Lisberger's TRON. Then-Disney production chief Tom Wilhite was willing to try anything to find a hit, a new voice for the company, and teased Murch with an offer to make his directorial debut. When Murch expressed a desire to film a new Oz movie, Wilhite's face went Wilhite. The studio owned the rights to a good many of L. Frank Baum's novels and were soon to lose the copyrights. A deal was struck, and no expense was spared in bringing Murch's vision of Dorothy Gale's adventures in Emerald City to the modern audience.
And here the troubles began. Murch's vision was exceedingly daring and ambitious, employing not merely the talents of top production designer Norman Reynolds and the purse to realize it, but every FX innovation up to that point, including blue screen (not yet green), stop-motion, animatronics and even Will Vinton's still jawdropping Claymation work. It was also a darker vision that MGM's 1939 classic musical. MUCH darker, which got the neophyte director in so much hot water at one point he was fired, and it took the intervention and personal involvement of friends Lucas and Coppola to get him rehired through to film's completion. The resulting effort was received poorly, to be kind, whence released in 1985, mostly due to comparisons with Ms. Gale's earlier, happier song and dance incarnation. Me personally, I never thought it was a masterpiece, but it was and is one of the goddamndest and most fascinating fantasy adventures to ever be funded by a major studio, and this was in the same decade as Univeral's DUNE! In fact it's so watchable, so unique that I champion it not as a guilty pleasure, but a mesmerizing mess, made with tons of heart, hard work and passion. It's also almost never aired on the tube, let alone screened, so today's 35mm offering is a spesh treat indeed. Murch never directed again, and some might snarkily chime about what a blessing that is in light of his lone directorial effort, but screw those jerks. His film remains a unequivocal trip over a dark rainbow indeed.
Walter Murch's RETURN TO OZ screens for brunch at the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg. I can easily promise you won't see too many flicks this gloriously nuts in your lifetime, so sweat it out on the L platform for one day, ya mollycoddled bastidz!
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Be safe and sound and make sure the next certifiable lunatic is too! Back on Wednesday with the last Pick of July 2013, and that pleases me not! Thursday brings the August Calendar and my monthly overview won't be far behind. In the meantime follow me on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with my daily Picks. Enjoy the weekend, knuckleheads!
-Joe Walsh
