August 9th 2013. Pick Of The Day.

Now the madness that is August 2013's repertory screening schedule truly, fully, madly begins.

Steven Spielberg's UFO fairy tale CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, which basically updates the Bible tale of Saul on the road to Damascus with a nifty dose of 70's era paranoia, gets the day going and kicks of Film Forum's massive Son of Summer Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror series. Richard Dreyfuss plays one of filmdom's oldest little kids, manically hunting down a vision he can only finger carve in mashed potatoes, until Doug Trumbull brings him the whizz-bang for the finale. As utterly, breathtakingly beautiful now as it was back in 1977. Would definitely snag my Pick today were it not for a less gleaming, less optimistic mission to the stars that also unspools this very night. Sorry Shpielz.

Also screening as part of the Forum's genre fest is Sam Raimi's seminal work of anarchic horror EVIL DEAD 2, which is basically a remake of his debut feature with the insanity dialed up to eleven. Hard to take sides against Sammy, but even he would agree methinks that a diff genre auteur merits the top spot today, one he himself would cite as an influence. Keep reading.

Outside this fest D.W. Griffith's INTOLERANCE has been reprieved, and will continue to screen at the Forum til August 20th. An unequivocaly influential work from perhaps our most important film pioneer, but I've chosen it already and gotta play by dem rules.

Alain Resnais' HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, the Nouvlle Vague progenitor's dissertation on love and memory and the pain their mingling may bring, screens its last today as part of MoMA's ongoing Auteurist History of Film series. And not a moment too soon. Sorry Alain, bebeh.

BAM kicks off a short weekend series dedicated to Chaplin on 35mm, beginning today with the master's ode to love, empathy and compassion, and their desperate cling in an uncaring modern metropolis, the flat-out masterpiece CITY LIGHTS. I would normally NEVER pick against Chaplin, and I'm at the moment still questioning the sanity of this decision, but I believe a more winning Pick screens later in the day. Later in the night, rather. Midnight to be exact. Proceed, Senator.

Uptown at the increasingly less stuffy Film Society of Lincoln Center George Roy Hill's classic of genre reinvention and perhaps subverison, BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, screens as part of the series Fasten Your Seatbelts (Part 2): 20th Century Fox! Hill's sure direction of William Goldman's endearing screenplay mines the whimsy as well as the woeful in the first of two classic teamings of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. That's a Helluvan amount of blue eyed squint to turn down, but today Dan O'Bannon's lone screen perf bests the two male movie gods. Please wait at the bar, sirs.

Anthology Film Archives' series Cine-Simenon, dedicated to celluloid adaps of the famed author Georges Simenon's works, today brings the rep screen lover Marcel Carne's THREE ROOMS IN MANHATTAN and Burgess Meredith's (yes, that Burgess Meredith, wawk, wawk) THE MAN ON THE EIFFEL TOWER. The former details the brief nighttime love affair between Maurice Ronet's French actor and the Americanized Annie Girardot, while the latter features Charles Laughton as the author's famed detective Jules Magret as he hunts a knife killer. I don't mean a killer of knives, I mean a guy who kills with a knife. What the Hell does a "killer of knives " mean anyway? Have you thought this question through, jackass?!?

Ahem.

The Rubin Museum's ongoing Cabaret Cinema series, currently exploring the theme Say a Little Prayer, blows the doors off with a presentation of Sam Fuller's THE STEEL HELMET tonight. The first film set against the backdrop of the then-ongoing Korean War was, let's say, controversial in the gruff auteur's hands, with no less an institution than the U.S. Army calling foul for allowing the use of their stock footage in a film where a Korean POW is murdered. On a lighter note the price of a cocktail gains your admittance to the museum's excellent screening space. Love this joint, but tonight belongs to a moving pic venue you can get completely plastered in without ever leaving your seat. Progress!

WAAAAY out in untamed, prehistoric, hirsute Williamsburg the beloved Nitehawk Cinema presents two gems of B-movie madness. Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE, which is either a sequel to George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD or a completely stand alone work of batshit in its own right, follows the undead hijinks on a tropical island and closes with a quite famous shot amongst the Cinegeek set. The second? Let's get to today's Pick.

John Carpenter. Dan O'Bannon. Should you be only vaguely familiar with these names let alone clueless your Geek cred amounts to exactly naught. They are gods of genre filmmaking whose work has influenced an innumerable amount of filmmakers and spawned countless sequels. The latter ain't exactly a good thing, unless you're counting sales and not judging quality. The sequels hadda come from a starting point, though, just as their status perhaps unequivocal had a genesis moment. For that moment we turn to the University of California film program.

Carpenter and O'Bannon both attended USC and, sharing common interests and storytelling sensibilities, chose to collaborate on their thesis film, a black sci-fi comedy heavily influenced by the then-current counterculture of the early 70's. Carpenter and O'Bannon would collaborate on the script, while OB would handle the basement budget FX work, as well as essaying the comic relief onscreen as cosmically inept Lt. Pinback. The plot concerned astronauts on a seemingly unending deep space mission to destroy unstable planets with a super nuke. That spoke back to them. The 60-minute student film proved so popular on the festival circuit producer Jack H. Harris bought the distribution rights and provided additional funds to stretch the running time to feature length. Borrowing elements from IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and, I contend, the examination of futility found in the works of Sam Beckett, the resulting film proved a resounding success with critics and the cult filmgoers alike, kickstared two highly influential careers, and remains an example of employing exemplary creative artistic solutions in the face of shoestring budget. Interestingly O'Bannon would revisit the film's basic plot to concoct a script called STAR BEAST, which switched tone from yuks to screams, and would eventually become the masterpiece ALIEN, while Carpenter would never seek to return to this film's farcical tone over the course of an exalted CV, unless you think BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA is a kindred work. Unique, entertaining and important to the cinematic timeline, Midnight Movies don't get much more Midnight than this.

John Carpenter's debut feature DARK STAR screens tonight at 12:20am at the Nitehawk Cinema. Watch if only to see how Charlie Day based his entire persona on O'Bannon's Pinback. Well, you tell me?

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Be safe and sound and make sure the next guy is too! Back tomorrow with the week's final Pick. Til then take an umbrella, wear your rubbers and call yer Mom. I know you were raised better than this!

-Joe Walsh

joew@nitratestock.net