By Joe Walsh
Mon, 10/03/2016 - 7:20am
Allo allo, my beaming, beautiful Stockhaz! And might I bid you a fair and fond welcome to our shared October 2016! We're at that transition point between Summer and Winter that has long had no name, no descriptive title to inscribe said epoch deep within our collective conscious okay, it's called Autumn. I fibbed. It's just that I dread Summer's passing, because it only means one more triple-noggined gorgon known as Winter is just around the corner, ready to exhume itself from its always, sadly, temporary grave. It means the end of Baseball, the mean season of Football, and the annual Shakespearean tragedy known as the New York Knicks. It means frigid weather, bleak days, women breaking out their bulky cold spell attire. It means the 3-month full-court press the film world increasingly employs in the leadup to Oscar voting. Yea, it serves as seasonal bellwether of much ill. Yet, it also promises certain splendors. The 2016 World Series. The aforementioned Oscar race. Thanksgiving and Christmas with friends and fam. And, of course, the increasingly busy rep film circuit seeking to meet the demands of our movie mad metropolis! So much is about to happen o the scene, from fests and retrospectives to guest appearances and special reconstructions. We've got much to look forward to, so let's get to the next 31 days of magic!
By Joe Walsh
Fri, 09/23/2016 - 6:16am
By Joe Walsh
Fri, 09/16/2016 - 7:31am
Hola, Los Stockahz! What a difference a week makes! How harshly absence affects the heart, how healing reconnection may prove. I recently shifted to a new format, reducing my workload without, I pray, backing off from what I consider my responsibility to tha lotta ya: presenting a comprehensive rundown of all repertory screenings in NYC's 5 boroughs and just beyond and offering up my suggestions for your attendance. I've gotten some positive feedback thus far, whilst observing a drop in numbers elsewhere, which means I'll have to manage this adjustment period accordingly, make changes, and if neccesary, re-adopt the old platform. Again, we're a week into the new dish, so any unnerve on my part is as premature as believing the Yankees need to win that next game in order to make it to the World Series. Which is not so farfetched as you might think. Yeah laugh all you want big man, they still got a shot! HEY, YOU WANNA TAKE THIS OUTSIDE?!?!?
Ahem.
Upcoming series this weekend include Modern Matinees: B is for Bogart at MoMA, That's Entertainment: MGM Musicals, Part One at BAM Cinématek, The Associates and Aldrich and Old & Improved at Metrograph, Women with a Movie Camera: Female Film Directors Before 1950 at Anthology Film Archives, Film Forum Jr. at you guessed it, Film Forum. Once more into the breach, mi amigos y amigas:
By Joe Walsh
Fri, 09/09/2016 - 7:34am
Whassap Stockahz?!? Glad to see you on the other side of this sweltering season, what Omar Sharif would no doubt refer to as the sun's anvil. Summer '16 has passed, even though its talons still claw at the coming calendar. Fall '16 approacheth, and with it much rep film mirth. In the spirit of the season's change I'm offering up a new format regarding this site and its content. Over the course of the past 4 yaers I've adopted few but various formats, most consistently, or inconsistently a 4-5 day per week post. This proved to be a very rewarding and successful approach, yet the rude interferences of the outside world and its attendant responsibilities have proven a unusurpable hindrance to put it mildly. So beginning now, I'm trying out a new format. Hear me out.
Each week I'll post a weekend overview, with an addendum that forecasts the following week and my Picks appropo. I'll make sure to maintain separate posts on the Facebook page and the site's Twitter feed, but the site itself, it's gettin' an efficiency upgrade. So those of you who feel so inclined, please toss me yer feedback as regards this new development. As always, your convenience is my priority. Let's get to it.
By Joe Walsh
Fri, 09/02/2016 - 6:26am
Happy September '16 Stockahz! Believe it or not, we've seen one more summer come and go, and are going about the usual biz of prepping final BBQ's, cementing our Fantasy Football picks, and scratching our heads over where exactly the hell the last three months went? Whether you enjoyed the season's popcorn fare or not, it wasn't, in my opinion, the worst summer at the multiplex, as many have maintained. There were some big-money projects that hit it out of the park, like the much-maligned GHOSTBUSTERS reboot and the 3rd of the new STAR TREK flicks, while such sleeper fare as OUR KIND OF TRAITOR, THE INFILTRATOR and HELL OR HIGH WATER impressed greatly. Sized somewhere inbetween those scales was Shane Black's THE NICE GUYS, which should have done better at the box office. And I'm still figuring out what to make of SAUSAGE PARTY. I mean, I liked it, but what the hell WAS it?
The NYC rep film circuit fared much better of course, with spectacular series like MoMA's trib to Carl Laemmle Jr.'s brief reign as head of Universal Pictures, Film Forum's featuring of 4K restos like Lubitch's HEAVEN CAN WAIT, the Coen Brothers' BLOOD SIMPLE, and Malle's ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS, the Film Scoiety's ode to charcater great Warren Oates, BAM Cinématek's Election Special series, and the ongoing A to Z fest at NYC's newest rep screen, the LES' Metrograph. So while summer might be slowly winding down, the usual excellent fare at these fantastic venues goes on. Let's explore that case in point;
By Joe Walsh
Fri, 08/26/2016 - 6:25am
Well, one more August seems to be slowly inching, crawling, begging for death like a stranded plane crash survivor in the depths of the Sahara, toward its ultimate, if perhaps untimely end. Which sorta make it the perfect month for my annual celebration of my birth. You do the math/metaphorizin'.
I can't complain, really, and never do. I love celebrating one more spin 'round the bright yellow ball of gas, I love living in NYC, I love the insanely convenient access to our wonderful and still-burgeoning rep film circuit to which I am privy. Most of all, though, I love the people in my life. NYC provides us NY'ers with peeps from all walks of life, with experiences different and philosophies sometimes curious, often divergent. The wonderful thing is that we remain NY'ers, and the hope is that perhaps at some point, we will all consider ourselves Americans because of bold, ugly, cruel, poetic and merciful social experiments like the one that houses the Empire State Building.
So 'ponst the eve of my 47th revolution round the galaxy here be my listings, and my Pick. New and ongoing series include Return of the Double Feature at Film Forum, Modern Matinees: Summer with Judy Holliday and Gaumont: Cinéma Pour Tout Le Monde at MoMA, and the eternally swank Cabaret Cinema at the Rubin Museum. The approaching apepnuemia be thus;
By Joe Walsh
Sat, 08/20/2016 - 7:18am
By Joe Walsh
Fri, 08/19/2016 - 6:43am
Hello my fellow melted popsicles! And I refuse to follow up with a line about the stick and where it was stuck. We seem to be at that point in the Twilight Zone ep where the chick wakes up from her nightmare and discovers that the earth isn't slowly, steadily hurtling toward the sun. Which is relief to us all, viewers and actual physical temp sufferers equally. Saner, safer, much more livable degrees of heat are approaching, for which we can all give thanks. Of course, the twist in that TZ bad boy was that the earth was slowly hurtling away from the sun, and freezing slowly and steadily. So what that metaphor bodes going forward, I'm not sure. But I'm absolving myself of any blame for predicting it. Or demanding a cut of the royalties. Whichever benefits me best.
New and ongoing series this day include the self-explanatory Return of the Double Feature! at Film Forum, Joe Dante at the Movies at BAM Cinématek, Voyeurism, Surveillance and Identity in the Cinema at the brevity-obssessed Anthology Film Archives, and the legroom luxurious Cabaret Cinema at the Rubin Museum. The ubiquitous unspoolery be thus;
By Joe Walsh
Sat, 08/13/2016 - 5:56am
There are heat waves, there are sweltering heat waves, there are punishing pounding heat waves, there are heat waves that sometimes feel, to borrow a line from LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, that the city has become "the sun's anvil". Then there's this current bleak streak, which owes more to that ep of the Twilight Zone where the planet starts spinning further and further toward the sun. The twist in that gem? She discovers...oh hell, I'm not gonna spoil a blessed 22m of TZ for anyone, ANYONE, HELLO!, who hasn't yet seen it (HELLOOOOOOO?!?!?!). Suffice to say it suggests cooler temps are just around the corner, and as with anyhting in this world, we should be careful what we wish for in the face of what we've got. Sermon concluded. The planet's actually drifting away from the sun at the end of that episode I couldn't resist HOW HAVE YOU NOT SEEN THAT TWILIGHT ZONE EP?!?!?!
Ahem.
New and ongoing seris this day include the summer-long Fellini trib at IFC Center, See it Big: The 70mm Show! at Astoria's glorious Museum of the Moving Image, the always welcome reoccurence of the Silent Clowns Film Series at the Library for the Performing Arts, Gaumont: Cinéma Pour Tout le Monde at MoMA, and the excellent and long-deserved Joe Dante at the Movies at BAM Cineematek. The flickering foofaraw be thus;
By Joe Walsh
Fri, 08/12/2016 - 6:32am
Yo knuckleheads! I'm back with a missive concerning your well-earned cash and hard-earned time on this big blue marble spinning 'round the sun. In other words a Pick, which I understand has become a more and more elusive tchothcke to those of you who follow this site loyally, but the world has differing weights, both online and off, so if you'll bear with me I promise to still offer anywhere from 2-3 articles a week regarding the NYC rep film circuit. Plus the calendar. Plus the Twitter feed. Plus the Facebook page look, this is getting exhausting just typing about the workload, and I haven't even adressed the resumption of the podcast. Let's take easy steps, shall we? And begin with this entry. A quite good one at that, mesez.
New and ongoing series this day include the Fellini trib at IFC Center, Modern Matinees: Summer with Judy Holliday and Gaumont: Cinéma Pour Tout le Monde, both at MoMA, Joe Dante at the Movies at BAM Cinématek, and Cabaret Cinema at the Rubin Museum. The shimmering shenanigans be thus;
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