Happy Memorial Day from Nitrate Stock!
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.
It's here, at last, a day that seemed an impossible mark mere weeks ago, as we chafed and chapped and turned one more shade of grey beneath the heel of a winter's oppression immemorable. Finally we can inaugurate one more summer, one more indulgence of the sun's warmth, a season where we are unencumbered by extraneous clothing, preppings of emotional bulwarks for that first step out the door, and newer and increasingly inventive invective toward Mother Nature. For the time being, it would seem, we have entered a climatic Goldilocks Zone, and there has existed no better 24 hours in modern times to find celebration of said within.
However, there is a reason this day of picnicking, sunbathing and sizzurping is called Memorial Day, and while it has co-opted the lesser-celebrated Veterans Day's initial intent, I suggest, humbly and for the last time, that we also take at least a moment, whatever our activities might be this day, to remember the past and current servicemen and servicewomen who have selfessly served in the defense of our country, so that you might eat that last charcoal-singed frankfurter off the grill without reprisal from any vicious overlord. Unless Michelle Obama is hosting the cookout ya see what I did there??? Liberal pokes fun at Dem 1st lady dear lord I'm so evolved!
Ahem.
Today's continuing series include Orignal Gangsters at IFC Center, Fassbinder: Romantic Anarchist (Part One) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and An Auteurist History of Film Reprise, Part 2 at MoMA. The Wim Wam be thus;
IFC Center
SCARFACE (1933) Dir; Howard Hawks
Film Forum
ACCIDENT (1967) Dir; Joseph Losey
Film Society of Lincoln Center
WORLD ON A WIRE (1973) Dir; Rainer Werner Fassbinder
EFFI BRIEST (1974) Dir; Rainer Werner Fassbinder
BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE (1970) Dir; Rainer Werner Fassbinder
MoMA
WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND (1961) Dir; Bryan Forbes
AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON (1962) Dir; Yasujiro Ozu
Today's Pick? You're friend's backyard BBQ of course! What do you take me for, a nut?
But okay, should you really REALLY wanna spend this day of splendid weather and assorted meats grilled indoors, then I suggest you spend two hours with Howard Hawks' SCARFACE, screening today in a splendid new DCP resto at IFC Center as part of their Original Gangsters series. Can ya get more American that a film based on Al Capone, directed by Howard Winchester Hawks, that pretty much defined the 30's gangster genre at its inception? Plus you'll still have time for a full day's worth of BBQ-hop post-screening! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
For more info on these and all NYC's classic film screenings in May '14 click on the interactive calendar on the upper right hand side of the page. For the monthly overview and other audio tomfoolery check out the podcast, and follow me on SoundCloud! For reviews of contemporary cinema and my streaming habits (keep it clean!) check out my Letterboxd page. And be sure to follow me on both Facebook, where I provide further info and esoterica on the rep film circuit and star birthdays, and Twitter, where I provide a daily feed for the day's screenings and other blathery. Back tomorrow with a brand new Pick, til then Cesca, beb, I never meant this to get so weird...
-Joe Walsh
P. S. Even though we're coming into the summer months and therefore not often as mindful of the displaced, some of our fellow NY'ers are yet to be made whole since Hurricane Sandy hit nearly two years ago. Check in with the good folks at Occupy Sandy to see if you can't still volunteer/donate to our neighbors in need. Be a mensch.
