December 8th 2012. Pick Of The Day.

John Ford and Edward G. Robinson got their sole opportunity to work together on THE WHOLE TOWN'S TALKING, which sees Eddie G. portray not only an honest bank clerk but his doppelganger bank robber. Which is the greater fiction, that they are lookalikes from different mothers or the term "honest bank clerk?" Screens at 3pm as part of Museum of the Moving Image's The Cinema and its Doubles series.

When Sidney Met Al part one: SERPICO, one of the definitve whistle-blower films and a boilerplate example of NYPD cinema courtesy of Lumet and Pacino. Part two: DOG DAY AFTERNOON, heist film parody and rumination on outsider paranoia. Career highs on both men's CV's, masterpieces of the 70's New Hollywood and iconic New York movie magic. Both screen as part of Anthology Film Archives' From The Pen Of series.

A rearely screened noir gem from GUN CRAZY director Joseph H. Lewis unspools at the 92YTribeca today. SO DARK THE NIGHT concerns a Parisian detective searching out his murdered bride-to-be's killer in her provincial French town. The shadows only get deeper and darker.

Luis Bunuel casts two different actresses to randomly essay the same role in THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE. Because he could. Frog One plays the elder lech enthralled by the eponymous. 6pm at MOMI. Part of their The Cinema and its Doubles series.

Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight glam up an otherwise dreary Times Square in John Schlesinger's seminal statement on postwar American culture, and lone x-rated Best Picture winner, MIDNIGHT COWBOY. Remade as I LOVE YOU, MAN. Kiddin'. Screens today at 6:30pm as part of AFA's From The Pen Of series.

IFC serves up a second night of midnight screenings of dual masterpieces RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and ISHTAR. Yeah, you read that right. Problem?

Finally Jean-LouisTrintignant is repped thrice this day as the Film Forum's tribute to the Francophile Without a Smile merrily skips into its second day. First by Bernardo Bertolucci's masterwork THE CONFORMIST, screening all day. Secondly by the early career lark IL SORPASSO. Lastly by Sergio Corbucci's subverting of the Spaghetti Western genre he helped to create, which is also my Pick Of The Day.

Corbucci wanted snow as his backdrop/obstacle/blood sponge for DJANGO. Instead, the producers gave him mud. And lots of it. It was an instance of providence intervening. That grimy, slimy footing helped make DJANGO the breakout Spag West hit that made Franco Nero a household name and established the director as Sergio Leone's main competitor. The latter role would grow old for Corbucci fast. Ambitions beyond the sub-sub-genre he was instrumental to only led to projects quashed and focus embittered. When he decided to make his snowy Spaghetti at last 3 years and several pounds of gunsmoke pasta later he wanted to kill the genre at best, undermine the tropes that made it popular at worst. He concocted an ANTI-anti-Western that played out according to Spaghetti formula, but subtle tweaks to the tried-and-true lead the viewer to surmise that a different sort of proceeeding is apace even before the whole shebang gets wrapped up in ways unexpected, and some would say soul-crushing. As his titluar hero Trintignant is impeccably cast, his silence, a throat cutting from the film's chief villian recieved years earlier, leaves him with only the emotive power of his facial expressions. Trintignant is an actor of such grace and depth that a single stare in this film is proven to have a thousand different meanings, and Leone could only be jealous of Corbucci's exploitation of his favorite landscape.

Technically a Spaghetti Northern, the story unfolds in Utah, as a band of Mormons are being starved to death on the outskirts of town at the behest of the local land baron. Newly freed slaves are also the object of oppression, and carrying out the moneyman's bad deeds is a particularly unhinged Klaus Kinski, essaying the very soul of bureaucratic evil. Corbucci graciously presents a hero to combat these villains and defend the terrotory newly settled that is their backdrop, but he also provides a resolution unconventional. One you'll take with you for a long time.

THE GREAT SILENCE screens as part of the Forum's JLT retrospective ONLY tonight at 9:45pm. Like us at Facebook.com/NitrateStock! Follow me on Twitter @NitrateStock! And toss me some goddam feedback you quiet sons-of-bitches! Comment! E-mail! Say somehting you fucking mimes!

Ahem. What I mean to say is I'd love to hear from you all. Get back to me about what you're liking or disliking and help me make this a better resource for the Cinegeek community! Be safe and saound and make sure the next guy is too! See ya Stockers!

-Joe Walsh