December 7th 2012. Pick Of The Day.

Last day to catch the 1958 Czech fantasy mashup THE FABULOUS WORLD OF JULES VERNE. Screens 1:30pm at MOMA.

Lee Marvin takes on the mob that betrayed him in John Boorman's POINT BLANK, then teams again with the director to face off with Toshiro Mifune in HELL IN THE PACIFIC. You decide which poses the greater risk. Part of Anthology Film Archives' continuing From The Pen Of series.

Max Von Sydow's EXORCIST teams up with his NIGHT VISITOR to both quell and contribute the creepy as BAM's tribute to the Spruce Goose proceeds apace.

Film Forum fetes an equally breezy silver screen import with their Jean-Louis Trintignant retrospective, beginning today with a week-long run of Bernardo Bertolucci's masterpiece THE CONFORMIST and featuring a comprehensive overview of the film icon's most important work. World's worst drinking game? Take a shot every time JLT smiles.

Jimmy Stewart goes a little funny with the binoculars again as Hitchcock's high watermark REAR WINDOW screens tonight at the Rubin Museum's Cabaret Cinema. I never understood, ya got Grace Kelly loungin' on yer sofa and you stare out the window through tiny spyglasses. Explain, please?

And Harrison Ford throws the idol for the whip again as RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK screens at midnight tonight at the IFC Center on 6th Avenue. Tough to choose against any of these worthy classics, but I'm climbing out on the limb of conventional taste to honor a film also sreening at the IFC at midnight this weekend, one I believe will get its proper due from both the audience and critics one day. Hey, finally happened with HEAVEN'S GATE, so ya never know...

Elaine May is my sweetheart, and maybe one day she'll be made aware of this fact. To the uninitiated she's the other half of a comedy team with Mike Nichols that took the upper crust theater world by the neck in the late 50's. To the uninformed the lesser talent of the team; even Nichols would slap you with that label. Elaine May is among the most revered wits and creative talents of the 20th century. Just ask anybody who's employed her in her recurring role of script doctor credited or otherwise, sprucing up or downright saving films like SHAMPOO and TOOTSIE and THE BIRDCAGE. Amongst the meager allotment of visions personal included on her CV are the black comic updatings of screwball cinema A NEW LEAF and THE HEARTBREAK KID, both of which greatly influenced the humor zeitgeist of the New Hollywood of the 70's. Both of which also gained her a rep as a difficlut auteur, demanding multiple takes and on the spot script revision. A modern era Lady Von Stroheim. But with yuks.

Notorious for stretching budgets and shooting skeds, her perfectionism scared away many a studio, and her exercise in out-Cassavetesing Cassavetes, the unsung 70's NYC masterpiece MIKEY AND NICKY, actually made Cassavetes' indulgences seems managable. That film was taken from her after a year spent in the editing suite, but the result still stuns. Taken as a whole these three efforts mark a major cinematic voice who sadly wasn't allowed to venture onward in her calling. We'll never know if she was a victim of her own excess or denied those same excesses due to gender bias in an era when the guys got away with far worse. In either event May was once more employed only in a script doctor capacity, and again responsible for many of the 70's more critically and commercially successful films. So Warren Beatty, recipient of her gifts on SHAMPOO and HEAVEN CAN WAIT, and Dustin Hoffman, same said of TOOTSIE, decided it was time to plant Our Miss May behind the camera again. For a clever little inexpensive trifle that harked back to the Hope/Crosby road comedies of the 40's. Of course, what happened next became the stuff of Hollywood legend.

40 million bucks later and the proud owner of the worst derison both critical and gossip rag seen since Cimino's aforementioned western, the Beatty/Hoffman/May colboration, once planned as Colombia's 1986 Christmas pic, opened in May of '87. Stalin's purges were kinder than the reception this flick got. Coupled with the usual backlash against successful stars and their indulgences was an outrage that a comedy should cost so much, this in a town where some craft/service tables could fund FEMA for a year. Devoted to my girl, I ventured forth to the nearest screening to judge fer meself. And all bias toward those involved aside, here's what I found; a pisser! A dryly witty comedy shot on a romantically large scale by the phenomenal Vittorio Storaro, populated by characters comically baffled by the schemes of others and often even their own. Perhaps not a Lubitsch throwback, but certainly a noble rethink of the Road films Elaine May intended the film to be. And Paul Williams' intentionally bad songs are some of the most preciously devised cinematic land mines of bad taste ever witnessed. John Waters and Nigel Tufnel are fans. I'm sure.

ISHTAR screens tonight and tomorrow at midnight at the IFC Center. Do yourself a favor and see this flick for yourself! Then we'll talk. Just rememeber that telling the truth can be a dangerous buisness.

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-Joe Walsh