January 7th 2014. 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.
So, any thoughts about Winter 2014 thus far? Nothing? No?
Expiring series today includes the Chaplin trib at Film Forum and the Film Society's exhaustive George Cukor retrospective. Today's debuting program is MoMA's The Aesthetics of Shadow, Part One: Japan. Here be the slim doings;
Film Society of Lincoln Center
THE CORN IS GREEN (1979) Dir; George Cukor
LOVE AMONG THE RUINS (1975) Dir; George Cukor
Film Forum
THE CIRCUS (1928) Dir; Charlie Chaplin
CHAPLIN AT MUTUAL, PART THREE (1916)
UNKNOWN CHAPLIN (1983) Dirs; Kevin Brownlow & David Gill
MoMA
FIRST STEPS ASHORE (1932) Dir; Yasujiro Shimazu
Today's Pick? I'm gonna go with Yasujiro Shimazu's FIRST STEPS ASHORE, the inagural screening in MoMA's new series The Aesthetics of Shadow, Part One: Japan. The series focuses on post WWI Japanese cinema and the influence Weimar expressionism and Hollywood swashbucklers had on, respectively, their own "street" cinema and jidaigeki, or swordfight, movies. Shimazu's film was heavily influenced, according to MoMA's site, by Joseph Von Sternberg's DOCKS OF NEW YORK, which itself screens later in the series. Live piano accompaniment is provided by that staple of silent film ivory ticklin' Ben Model, so the experience should be very entertaining and informative. Don't sit next to that one guy who complains you snuck peanut M&M's into the screening space. Oh, you know the guy I mean.
For more info on these and all NYC's classic film screenings in 2014 click the interactive calendar on the upper right hand side of the page. And be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter! Back tomorrow with a brand new Pick, til then bundle up somethin' fierce and advise the other kids to do likwise. Brrrrr.
-Joe Walsh
