September 7th 2013. Pick Of The Day.
New York City's premiere resource for classic film screenings in the metropolitan area. Offering reviews, recommendations, venues and a host of links keeping classic film and the silver screens alive.
Today's classic film doings as follows;
IFC Center
WRITTEN ON THE WIND (1957) Dir; Douglas Sirk
THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973) Dir; Alejandro Jodorowsky
BAM Cinematek
PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (1985) Dir; Tim Burton
Film Forum
CONTEMPT (1963) Dir; Jean-Luc Godard
Museum of the Moving Image
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944) Dir; Howard Hawks
RIO BRAVO (1959) Dir; Howard Hawks
MoMA
THE ACTRESS (1953) Dir; George Cukor
ON THE WATERFRONT (1954) Dir; Elia Kazan
EAST OF EDEN (1955) Dir; Elia Kazan
Nitehawk Cinema
PLANET OF THE APES (1968) Dir; Franklin J. Schaffner
My Pick today? I've seemingly gone double-feature mad this week and I see no reason to stop, especially in the face of what may just be the single most satisfying retrospective I've been blessed with in recent memory. Astoria's Museum of the Moving Image kicks off this day their tribute to a most essential of American auteurs, a groundbreaking filmmaker of the sound era whose collective body of work has proven so influential to modern cinema that his name serves as shorthand for examples in virtually every genre the celluloid medium excelled in. A WW1 pilot taking his friend's place in the cockpit on a suicide mission. A female wagon train passenger reacting to an arrow to the shoulder as if it were a bee sting. An aging but still capable sherrif expounding on the virtues of professionalism in the moment of worst crisis. All these story elements have but one appellation in common; Hawksian. A term which may be applied to any number of the films produced by John Milius, John Carpenter, Katherine Bigelow, Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron and, look, the list just goes on and on from here, trust me? The name Hawks is invoked with a fair amount of regularity and his work is screened often in our movie-mad burg. For the life of me, however, I cannot remember a tribute this complete to the man and his films and their lasting effect on cinema for filmmakers and audiences alike worldwide. So, to paraphrase, Today's Pick isn't all I've got, it's what I've got.
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT and RIO BRAVO unspool today as the inaugural screenings in MoMI's The Complete Howard Hawks retrospective. Both classics screen in what promise to be sterling 35mm prints, and if that isn't enticement enough the price of admission gains you access not only to both films but the entire museum, which is the Cinegeek equivalent to crack cocaine. Pros will attend. The rest are well-meaning amateurs.
For the full details on these and all this month's classic screenings click on the interactive calendar on the upper right hand side of the page. And be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter! Be safe and sound and make sure the next knucklehead is too! Back tomorrow with a new Pick! Til then Brrrrrrrr!
-Joe Walsh
