November 25th 2012. Pick Of The Day.
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The Nitehawk offers both WILLY WONKA and Nick Ray's BIGGER THAN LIFE today. Both booze optional.
The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria unspools both ALL ABOUT EVE and SHADOW OF A DOUBT. Plus they got some other cool stuff out there too. I hear.
Film Forum screens the last comedy from Douglas Fairbanks Sr. before he went the full leotard, THE NUT, featuring live piano accompaniment from Steve Sterner. All worthy, all excellent. None my Pick Of The Day. Which should technically be reffered to as Picks...
Antonio Margheriti was an accomplished director of D-Film fare almost entirely absent of budget yet popular in his native Italy, with titles like CASTLE OF BLOOD and ASSIGNMENT OUTER SPACE on his CV by the early 60's. This led MGM to hire him to helm what became known as the Gamma-One science fiction series, films with incomprehensible plot matched by equally baffling production design and effects work. Put it this way; your infamously awful attempt at building the Aurora model space station kit in the 70's would be considered high production value in one of the Margheriti flicks. Put it another way? He filmed all four of the Gamma-One films in three months. THREE MONTHS! There's a genius to that, people. Put it even one last third and final way; if STAR WARS had a thirty dollar budget it'd be screening this crisp day at Anthology Film Archives, and it'd be called WAR OF THE PLANETS or THE WILD WILD PLANET! I can't think of a cooler way to finish off the long holiday weekend than to kick back with the chemically imbalanced patron on either side of you in what amounts to the closest remaining reminder of NYC's grindhouse lineage and catch these anti-gems on the big screen! Okay one last sell: Tarantino borrowed the director's name for Eli Roth's Italian pseudonym in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS! If yer still a skeptic no one can help ya. I swear.
Margheriti's Gamma-One series, THE WILD WILD PLANET, WAR OF THE PLANETSand THE SNOW DEVILS, screens all day today at the Anthology Film Archives. I'll probably see you there. Like my page at Facebook.com/NitrateStock! Follow me on Twitter at @NitrateStock! Get over the tryptophan coma suckahz! This is the last time I'll mention tryptophan! Honest! Be well Stockers!
-Joe Walsh
