January 19th 2013. Pick Of The Day. Oh Boy.

The Nitehawk Cinema kicks the day off with its Little Creatures series, today offering a noon screening of Steven Spielberg's 80's behemoth E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL. As entries in the director's CV go, I'm sure the Nitehawk's brunch is delicious.

Film Forum's New Yawk New Wave series continues today with a two-fer screening of the Carroll Baker rape drama SOMETHING WILD and the early Kubrick noir KILLER'S KISS. Miss Baker will be in attendance for the 4:40pm screening today. Tempts, but not my Pick.

The 92YTribeca offers a pair of vastly different views of crime in La-La-Land with their L.A. Law series tonight. Dennis Hopper's long awaited return to directing resulted in the controversial gang flick COLORS, considered by many a drastic 180 in tone from the director of EASY RIDER. Screens at 7pm, followed by Axel Foley shoving a banana in your tailpipe. BEVERLY HILLS COP remains the finest distillation of Eddie Murphy's comedic gifts and the now taken for granted star's best two hours onscreen. Unspools at 9:30pm. Trust me.

Midnight fare this chilly goddam evening includes the Landmark Sunshine's screening of Robert Zemeckis' BACK TO THE FUTURE. Again, I never got this flick. Plus I hate Bobby Z's entire CV. Did I mention how much January sucks? Blargh!

Midnight at the IFC Center offers duelling unspoolings of Wes Craven's LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and Martin Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER. Both seminal works from directors who've enjoyed long careers and varying degrees of success and respect. Both remakes/rethinks of earlier masterworks, Craven re-telling Ingmar Bergman's THE VIRGIN SPRING, and Scorsese re-thinking John Ford's THE SEARCHERS. Both indulging European cinematic influences mixed with exploitation technique. But fuck the Craven movie, Travis Bickle kicks its ass forever.

All worthy efforts and deserving of your attendance, except we got a DOOZY screening tonight in Brooklyn, an amber encased fossil excavated from a distant time, the 70's, containing the crossed DNA of that era's arthouse and grindhouse fare. So controversial it was nearly shelved entirely, and when ulitmately released bankrupted its distributor. This is still a potentially very offensive work taken out of context, and, considering its creator's record of provocation, controversial even IN context. After all there's only one man from that era, maybe ANY era, that would attempt a cartoon about racial steroetypes in America. Read on.

Ralph Bakshi. How that name stirs delight in some and disgust in others. Considering his regard for the medium's potential to stir emotion wildly this comes as praise indeed. Starting his career as a cel polisher for the Terrytoons Studio, home of Mighty Mouse, he graduated to cel painter and ultimately director, but remianed dissatisfied with the limitations of kiddie animation. Steeped in the counterculture of the 60's he sought a project that would redefine animation for a more adult modern era. Discovering Robert Crumb's Fritz The Cat at an East Village bookstore, Bakshi embarked across a virtual minefield of eccentric artists, questionable contracts and grueling animation effort to create his first feature film. FRITZ THE CAT broke box office records for an indie animated feature and seemingly paved the way for a new edgy and radical type of film. His follow-up, HEAVY TRAFFIC, was equally successful both commercially and critically and eschewed the whole talking animal thing in the process. The film world seemed primed for a drastically different merging of two types of cinema, a seamless blending of the medium's origins; the photograph and the flipbook. He next chose to gamble his newfound cache to make his most daring, most controversial, and most combustive effort yet. Man, did he succeed as only Bakshi defines success.

Daring to take on the state of race relations in America circa 1975, following a trio of criminals from the deep South to the inner city North, and sparing no ethnicity's sense of decorum, Bakshi offered his view on the country's short-changing of its African-American population's fortunes by pushing black stereotypes to their limit. One look at any of the film's animated cels, depicting the trio of black leads as various woodland animals in ways Disney only dreamed, surely confirms this. Examining character in contrasted environments reveals the same degrees of corruption. Common hood in the post-Jim Crow South remains common hood in segregated Harlem. Bakshi's film asks whether the game hasn't been rigged to guarantee this outcome, and whether the main characters are right to survive by wits acquired in this game.

Appraised upon completion as a masterpiece and invited to premiere at MOMA, a sudden and sizeable protest from the Congress of Racial Equality stopped the unveiling dead in its tracks. After appeals from the filmmaker and his studio per the ironic implementation of stereotype fell on deaf ears, and Warner Brothers balked at the anticipated backlash, the film fell to a smaller distribution company, Bryanston, which promptly went bankrupt two weeks later. An ignominious end to what Bakshi felt was his crowning achievemnet. In the years since its demise it has found champions among the filmmaking community in the likes of Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino, and we all know how much THEY love to agree on anything.

So all that's left is to type the title of this remarkably offensive and insightful slice of bugfuck. Here goes.

COONSKIN screens tonight at Videology in B-Burg at Midnight. You really, REALLY shouldn't miss this. Plus the popcorn's good.

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Stay safe and sound and WARM this week and make sure the next guy does too. Volunteer/donate to OccupySandy.com. See ya next week, Stockahz!

-Joe Walsh