JUNE 2012 WEEK THREE. GO GETCHER FRIKKIN' PICKANICK BASKETS.
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.
Well, week one seemed to go okay. So I guess we'll do a week two. Which covers week three. Of June. 2012. Just go with me on this.
We got off to a late start last week. Normally this site will begin on the 1st Monday of every month with an overview of that month and then provide follow up coverage of revival screening happenings of each following week . As we started in the second week of the month last week, we missed out on week one of June so OUR week one was actually JUNE'S week two, so this week...look this is all getting really over complicated really fast. Let's just get to the flicks, shall we?
The big happ over the course of these next seven days is the 20th anniversary kick off of Bryant Park's outdoor Summer Film Festival. Yes, you'll never hear the movie. Yes, the social experiment known as civilization will find it's worst manifestation here. YES, you will refuse to testify against Bryant Park in court because you'll feel you asked for it. But all our communal and correct gripes aside this has become a seminal event for New Yorkers, and you really should make time on at least one perfectly gorgeous Monday evening in the city to absorb all the sounds and smells of Manhattan in summer, but substitute it's sights for the park's big screen offering that particular night. Fest kicks off with a little movie called Psycho, a classic screwball comedy about a boy, his motel and the mother that comes between him and his dream girl. Hilarity ensues.
Over at Anthology Film Archives their From the Pen Of... series continues apace, with some solid seventies cult gems in the offing. This week you can catch John G. Avildsen's Joe, which not only made the director's career but cemented the stardom of one of Hollywood's favorites, the great Peter Boyle! It's a star-making turn and a flick which has lost none of it's controversial impact, though it may have lessened form a punch to a hard slap. A Peter Boyle slap. They hurt.
AFA also provides Robert Aldrich's nihilist western (would he make any other kind?) Ulzana's Raid and Richard Fleischer's gritty thriller The Last Run. Monte Hellman showcases a pre-stardom Jack Nicholson in The Shooting, a post-stardom Nicholson dials it down in Rafelson's The King Of Marvin Gardens, featuring the glorious DP work of one Laszlo Kovacs. Frankenhiemer chills with possibly the bleakest film ever made, Seconds, featuring not only Rock Hudson's finest perf but eerie scene settings from Jerry Goldsmith's score and the stark work of DP James Wong Howe. What better sez Summer asks me?
The two crown jewels of AFA's fest this week, however, are two vastly different films which have both come to represent, in terms unequivocable, their time and place like no other films of their era; Late 70's NYC. Both have their soundtracks to thank for the continued devotion of their fans, but while one represented not only the apex of it's scene and became the cause of it's downfall, the other emerged a rallying point, a galvanizing force in a burgeoning movement.
John Badham's Saturday Night Fever simply IS the 70's NYC disco scene. It is the Citizen Kane of that genre if there were a genre. It is the top film in a category that doesn't exist, and that doesn't matter. It so exemplified the popular music of the day in the setting it thrived in that no other films could possibly attempt contention. Just ask Can't Stop The Music or Xanadu. Alas, it is both summit and nadir. What made the flick the culmination of the disco era subjected it to it's harshest critics. To this day it's both cherished totem and derided trinket while overlooked as a superbly crafted film and choice example of the filmmaking style of that kooky 70's Hollywood era. Really, musical tastes regardless, a classic.
It's absolute opposite also screens this week, criminally mismanaged to this day but bible to a generation that would come to love it even unseen. 1980's Times Square existed for most kids and still does to some degree as a movie poster to a flick they couldn't see for various reasons; youth, access, legal entanglements over music rights. What it mostly existed as for the fans who exalt it so was an album cover, and the vinyl inside. Yes, the punk scene was well underway, The Ramones and Blondie and Talking Heads were getting serious airplay, but this film and it's soundtrack served as the punk version of The Harder They Come; an LP gateway to a larger, cooler, rebel rocking world. It legitimized the music, the lifestyle, the genre. Hollywood had given it's imprimatur, and the young punk audience rallied 'round.
Now, you'd think that made it easy to see. You'd be wrong. Even on cable after and on VHS or DVD, rights issues, royalties, blah blah blah kept this film the definition of obscure. But occasionally it got the midnight screening. And here it gets a couple of before-midnight screenings. Time capsule of late 70's Manhattan, of the punk scene just on the verge of turning commercial dramamine, this is the most essential screening of the week. Essential just doesn't say it.
The Film Forum's Spaghetti Western retro continues it's glorious gallop towards death at the hands of an Ennio Morricone score with more of the great and goddawful that defined the genre. Fans of Corbucci can catch the last screenings of The Mercenary, Hellbenders and the you-must-finally-fucking-see-this-already Django. It's DJANGO fer fuck's sake. If only to say you're caught up on all the references when Tarantino's flick opens this Christmas, go see this friggin' movie already!
Leone fans can check out two masterpieces this week; Once Upon A Time InThe West may be the finest of film eulogies to the Old West both historic and Hollywood, with the coolest of perfs both heroic and other from Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda. It is Sergio Leone at his slowest, most operatic, most legato, most most most. This is the absolute Leone flick. But, as I've always said, if I have to choose my favorite Western of all time, I've never been able to find a flick that'll knock The Good, The Bad And The Ugly off it's perch. It's simply the most perfect example of the form, even though it has at it's roots mockery of said form. Coolest titles, coolest characters, coolest theme music, coolest coolest coolest. There's no reason to not see this on the big screen again. Whenever you get the chance.
Also at the Forum this week, the Monday's with Erich Von Stroheim series offers The Great Gabbo and The Great Flamarion. I have no idea what these flicks are about but how far afield can ya go with the great slate pate?
And of great cheer indeed is the Forum's week-long-at-least run of the 35th anniversary run of Annie Hall; one of the great NYC love stories, one of the great Woody Allen flicks, the best picture of 1977, and Christopher Walken's career cementing lunatic perf. Gordon Willis remains one of the great cinematographers of our bustling metropolis, and he may have found no subtler yet profound use of this urban celluloid soliloquy than this humble slice of narcissism.
MOMA screens Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu this week as part of their Auteurist History Of Film Series. A ghost story like no other.
BAM screens the film debut of Noel Coward tonight as part of their Elliot Stein Selects series. The second outing as directors from screenwriting team Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, this is also notable as the debut of Lionel Stander. If ya don't know, ya don't know.
92YTribeca follows up last week's Jeff Bridges tribute, the Before The Dude series, with Fat City, John Huston's autumn career boxing masterwork, about dreams and smoke and how the two compete for elevation. You can chew on Conrad Hall's cinematography.
The Museum Of Art And Design screens Sex, Lies And Videotape this week, but only I suspect as a ruse to horde more human blood. Be warned.
So week 2's in the books. I hope you find this site useful and catch as many classic screenings as you can. Join our Facebook group for daily updates and leave comments below as you see fit. See ya at the next screening!
-Guiseppe Du Cinematek
Spaghetti Western Retrospective
Django - Thu 6/21 9:45pm
Death Rides A Horse - Thu 6/21 7:30pm
Django Kill...If You Live Shoot! - Tue 6/19 1pm
The Mercenary - Tue 6/19 5:40pm
Hellbenders - Wed 6/20 8:20pm
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly - Thu 6/21 4pm
The Big Showdown - Wed 6/20 1pm, 10:15pm
Sabata - Mon 6/18 9:30pm, Tue 6/19 3:30pm
China 9, Liberty 37 - Tue 6/12 9:10pm
Duck You Sucker - Tue 6/19 8pm, Thu 6/21 1pm
Once Upon A Time In The West - Wed 6/20 3:05pm
The Ruthless Four - Wed 6/20 6:15pm
Von Stroheim Love-In
The Great Gabbo - Mon 6/18 1pm, 4:15pm, 7:40pm
The Great Flamarion - Mon 6/18 2:50pm, 6:05pm
Queen Kelly - 6/25 7:10pm
Annie Hall - Fri 6/22 thru Thu 6/28 1:10, 3:10, 5:10, 7:10, 9:10
The King Of Marvin Gardens - Tue 6/19 9:15pm
Times Square -Fri 6/15 9:30pm, Tue 6/19 7pm
Seconds - Fri 6/22 9pm
Damnation Allley - Sat 6/23 7pm
Saturday Night Fever - Mon 6/18 9:15pm, Thu 6/21 6:45pm
Joe - Thu 6/21 9:15pm, Sun 6/24 4:30pm
Ulzana's Raid - Wed 6/20 9pm, Sat 6/23 4:45pm
The Last Run - Wed 6/20 7pm, Sat 6/23 9pm
The Shooting - Sun 6/24 9pm
Ugestsu - Wed 6/20, Thu 6/21, Fri /22 all showtimes 1:30pm
Roman Holiday - Wed 6/28, Thu 6/29, Fri 6/30 all showtimes 1:30pm
Nashville - Fri 6/29 7pm, Sat 6/30 1pm
Days Of Heaven - Sat 6/30 4:30pm
The Elephant Man - Sat 6/30 6pm
The Scoundrel - Mon 6/18 6:50pm
Harakiri - Tue 6/19 6:50pm
Psycho - 6/18
Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid - 6/25
films begin at sunset
Raiders Of The Lost Ark - Sat 6/23 Midnight
Fat City - Wed 6/20 7:30pm
Sex. Lies And Videotape - Thu 6/21 7pm
Duck Soup - Fri 6/29 and Sat 6/30 Midnight
