August 15th 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.
I wanna lead off with a quick note about my recent birthday gift to me, my first-ever Kindle edition of David Thompson's essential, addictive Biographical Dictionary of Film. This is my fourth (and FINAL GODDAMMIT I MEAN IT this time!) purchase of the film critic/essayist/historian's incisive, somewhat eccentric at times, guide to the men and women who made and make the great miracle/mirage of our lives. It's always been a joy to have around, whether employed as a research tool or casually leafed through as a source of informative entertainment for hours. Hours. I mean hours!
Pre-IMDB and the interwebbery in general there were certain tomes we Cinegeeks relied upon for our collective fix, continuously updated works like Ephraim Katz's Encyclopedia of Film and Halliwell's Film Guide. Thompson's Biographical Dictionary may well be the only of these compendiums that remains a required purchase. Be warned: anyone who thinks they can take a cursory glance at the pages within offered by Amazon as sugar to potential flies, thinking they can peek but not purchase, also thinks he can peek at a litter of kittens with his girlfriend and not wind up with a fourth cat. I'm going by hearsay on that conflation. From what I understand it's fairly accurate oh hell okay I lived with 4 cats at one point okay! Just buy the Thompson book. Don't judge me.
Ongoing series today include An Auteurist History of Film, The Great War: A Cinematic Legacy, and MoMA Presents: A Fuller Life at MoMA, Red Hollywood & the Blacklist and Freaky Fridays at the Film Society, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: The Cinema of Patrick Lung Kong at Museum of the Moving Image, Cabaret Cinema at the Rubin Museum, and the inventively titled midnight vampire series Bite This! at the Nitehawk Cinema. Let's go to the 35mm!
Film Forum
GUN CRAZY (1949) Dir; Joseph H. Lewis
THE KILLING (1956) Dir; Stanley Kubrick
MoMA
APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX (1979/2001) Dir; Francis Ford Coppola
The Great War: A Cinematic Legacy
TELL ENGLAND (1931) Dir; Anthony Asquith
WESTFRONT 1918 (1930) Dir; G. W. Pabst
HATS OFF (1936) Dir; Boris Petroff
HOUSE OF BAMBOO (1955) Dir; Sam Fuller
Film Society of Lincoln Center
ZULU (1964) Dir; Cy Endfield
HELL DRIVERS (1957) Dir; Cy Endfield
BLOOD FOR DRACULA (1974) Dir; Paul Morrissey
Museum of the Moving Image
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: The Cinema of Patrick Lung Kong
STORY OF A DISCHARGED PRISONER (1967) Dir; Patrick Lung Kong
Rubin Museum
OF HUMAN BONDAGE (1934) Dir; John Cromwell
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989) Dir; Steven Spielberg
Nitehawk Cinema
NEAR DARK (1987) Dir; Katherine Bigelow
IFC Center
THE SHINING (1980) Dir; Stanley Kubrick
Today's Pick? It's perhaps rote, routine and underwhelming at best when an award is handed out to a filmmaker in our movie-mad burg, as the fiend for publicity and the laying of red carpet ever worsens at some venues, and trophies are seemingly invented just to stage these events. My sympathies tend to lie with the red carpet makers of the world, though. Someone's gotta earn a better life through fabric.
On the positive side of the sycophantic preen one normally expects from such honorings, filmmakers deserving of posterity's spotlight occasionally get their due, and longtime champions and/or intrigued neophytes are allowed their moment to heap praise on an artist who'd otherwise be buried beneath time's sands. Such is the case tonight, when a maverick of Hong Kong cinema, one who not only allowed but invited the volatile cultural change of the 60's to inform his take on the action genre, is given his proper due. The more obvious modern disciples he may lay claim to include such household names of world cinema as John Woo and Tsui Hark, the latter of whom will be in attendance tonight. In truth, though, from what I've learned about his CV, his influence is most likely almost without bounds. I'm fairly sure this'll sell out incredibly fast tonight if it hasn't already, so grab your tix immediately. And wear nice shoes, somebody MADE that carpet, y'know!
Patrick Lung Kong's STORY OF A DISCHARGED PRISONER screens tonight as kickoff to Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, a retrospective of the filmmaker's most influential films, as well as some he influenced. The filmmaker himself will be in attendance to discuss his work and accept some well-deserved huggery. Do yourself a favor and head to beautiful downtown Astoria for the proceedings. You'll be glad you did.
For more info on these and all NYC's classic film screenings in August '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 safe, sound, make sure the next knucklehead is too.
-Joe Walsh
P. S. Even though we've fully entered 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.
