January 30th 2013. Pick Of The Day. With apologies.

Weird Drupal snafus have felled the mighty January calendar it seems for good. As if this month didn't absolutely suck enough. My apologies to all ye faithful who have kept pace with this website and the info it has striven to offer since its inception last summer. I can promise we will do our utmost to ensure this never happens again. In the meantime I can still offer my Picks in an effort to keep you informed of all classic film screenings in these magnificent boroughs. Let's push on, shall we?

MOMA offers up Billy Wilder's wicked adap of Agatha Christie's stage hit WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION. An ace cast is rounded out by Tyrone Power, the still luminous Marlene Dietrich, and the man himself Charles Laughton who is again joined by wife Elsa Lanchester, who still wants him to burn that couch. If you need to ask turn to Google. Part of MOMA's ongoing Auteurist History of Film series. Not my Pick.

The inexclusively entitled Film Society of Lincoln Center speeds furiously through its excelllent Aussie New Wave series, today offering the brutally realistic depiction of migrant farm life through the eyes of Jack Thompson's itinerant sheep shearer in SUNDAY TOO FAR AWAY, and George Miller's seminal celebration of Aussie car culture and AI biker flick homage MAD MAX. Both feature star turns from their repective leads, the durable Thompson and a chap named Mel Gibson, whose maniacal violent sprees were once cause for film geek celebration. Today, not so much. Tempts. Neither my Pick.

Finally Film Forum winds down its impressive New Yawk New Wave retrospective with two important entries to the indie/experimental 60's East Coast scene, and one film that served not only as culmination of this underground era but early shot fired in the New Hollywood revolution of the 70's. The latter is my Pick. Follow...

GUNS OF THE TREES is the debut feature from this fest's spiritual father Jonas Mekas, who presides over retrospectives like these at his glorious avant garde cinema Anthology Film Archives. So it's appropos that the series concludes with a work not curated but created by him. Admittedly I know very little about the cineaste's personal work but I'm still intrigued and think this the most fitting way to close out this shindig of kook. Screens tonight at 7:20pm only.

Martin Scorsese's NYU film school short BRING ON THE DANCING GIRLS utilized Cassavetes-style improv and neo-realist sets, lightng and non-pros. Mostly because that's all the student filmmaker had to work with. One very important ingredient proved priceless; the involvement of fledgling actor Harvey Keitel in the lead. In a very Jerry and Dean way the director looked to the ex-Marine as the proverbial older brother, and would continue to work on the film over the course of several years to pad it out as a feature, during which time it should be noted Keitel had given up on acting and become a court officer. Ultimately Scorsese finished the film, retitled WHO'S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR?, and no less a critic than Roger Ebert decared the filmmaker a major new voice in American cinema. It is remarkable upon viewing this unpolished debut that so much of what Scorsese would become and contribute to film was already evident. This would hands-down be my Pick today, screening all day at FF, except the director's own revisiting of this milieu, these themes and the characters who populate it, albeit more autobiographical and with the inclusion of one of modern cinema's greatest actors, proved superior and even a more exact blueprint for what this daring, dangerous and ultimately most beloved filmmaker emeritus would inject into the cinematic dialogue worldwide. Enough of the gush. Let's do this.

MEAN STREETS was pretty much the result of Cassavetes' critique of Scorsese's proper debut for Roger Corman, BOXCAR BERTHA. The indie pioneer saluted the young director's sophmore effort thusly; "Congratulations, you just spent a year of your life making a piece of shit." Provide a comeback to Cassavetes at your own risk. Even today. Scorsese then turned to the task of filming what he knew, recreating the Little Italy experience of the 60's, replete with the various rogues gallery of SoHo street life. Employing one of the first all-pop song soundtracks that would become commonplace decades hence and pretty much serving as coming out party for one Robert De Niro this film still has the power at times to convince me it's the director's best effort and he's spent a career vainly trying to recapture this magic. That's just me. I got funny opinions.

MEAN STREETS screens all day today at Film Forum. Don't buy the Jap adaptors.

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