a highly-opinionated selection of things happening around town, and sometimes out of town. this month's page here.
thu. jun. 4
under siege, the taking of beverly hills @ new beverly theatre
upsilon acrux, peter kolovos @ the smell
playtime FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges theater
abe vigoda FREE @ family
the harder they come 7 PM, 9:30 PM @ downtown independent
the year my parents went on vacation @ skirball center
fri. jun. 5
the thing MIDNIGHT @ nuart
king of the ants 8 PM @ steve allen theater
rosa blanca @ ucla film archive
where's poppa? 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
funky forest: the first invasion MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre
aggrolites, the slackers @ iron & ink festival @ sin alley (long beach)
jon brion @ largo
the woggles @ spike's (rosemead)
watts ensemble @ fais do-do
before the fall, the one-hand trick @ aero theatre
bob le flambeur @ lacma
le doulos 9:20 PM @ lacma
sat. jun. 6
casablanca FREE, sahara @ ucla film archive
cat people @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
timonium @ pehrspace
the woggles, the sonics, the slackers @ ink & iron festival @ queen mary
just walking, the oxford murders @ aero theatre
touchez pas au grisbi @ lacma
rififi 9:10 PM @ lacma
abe vigoda, thee makeout party FREE (w/ rsvp) @ three of clubs
the patsy 6:30 PM, the nutty professor @ silent movie theatre
one man force 10:45 PM @ TV carnage night @ silent movie theatre
thrashin' MIDNIGHT @ downtown independent
sun. jun. 7
the wizard, joysticks @ new beverly theatre
point break @ egyptian theatre
festival of (in)appropriation: contemporary found footage filmmaking @ filmforum @ egyptian theatre
visual acoustics: the modernism of julius shulman 2 PM @ lacma
winnebago man (sneak preview) 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
ezra buchla @ the smell
the gold rush 6:30 PM @ ucla royce hall
mon. jun. 8
the taking of pelham 1 2 3 (2009) (sneak preview) @ aero theatre
old toy trains @ silverlake lounge
tue. jun. 9
plague town, the sinful dwarf @ new beverly theatre
pffr night 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
roger corman and aïda ruilova 7 PM @ hammer conversations @ hammer museum
wed. jun. 10
michael winslow: man of 1000 noises 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
ink (sneak preview) @ egyptian theatre
thu. jun. 11
vashti bunyan: from here to before 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
watts ensemble @ the landing party (8th & broadway)
playboy jazz on film FREE @ lacma
imaad wasif, jason simon @ redwood bar
fri. jun. 12
remo williams: the adventure begins MIDNIGHT @ nuart
dinner at eight, grand hotel @ new beverly theatre
real life 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
hausu MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre
suspiria 8 PM, phantom of the paradise @ steve allen theater
jon brion @ largo
jay reatard, thee oh sees @ the echo
airplane!, top secret! (david zucker in person) @ aero theatre
gunga din 6:30 PM @ ampas samuel goldwyn theater
le cercle rouge @ lacma
uhf MIDNIGHT @ fairfax regency theatre
sat. jun. 13
dinner at eight, grand hotel @ new beverly theatre
a tribute to marilyn chambers MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
abe vigoda @ the smell
funny face @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
houdini 2:30 PM @ million dollar theater
some like it hot 7:30 PM @ million dollar theater
purple noon @ lacma
elevator to the gallows 9:35 PM @ lacma
the bellboy 7 PM, the errand boy @ silent movie theatre
dangerous men 10:30 PM @ mondo mondo mix night @ silent movie theatre
sun. jun. 14
close encounters of the third kind, starman @ new beverly theatre
the adventures of robin hood 4 PM, captain blood @ aero theatre
mitch hedberg tribute night 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
mon. jun. 15
a camp @ troubadour
close encounters of the third kind, starman @ new beverly theatre
the little foxes @ egyptian theatre
ezra buchla @ echo curio
tue. jun. 16
close encounters of the third kind, starman @ new beverly theatre
a night with bobcat goldthwait 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
wed. jun. 17
macunaima @ last remaining seats @ million dollar theatre
strangers on a train, suspicion @ new beverly theatre
mack sennett shorts 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
damien youth @ bootleg theater
blue velvet 8 PM @ afi 100s @ arclight hollywood
thu. jun. 18
strangers on a train, suspicion @ new beverly theatre
flash gordon (1980), battle beyond the stars @ aero theatre
fri. jun. 19
a hard day's night MIDNIGHT @ nuart
the duellists, the prestige @ new beverly theatre
reservoir dogs MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
god told me to 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
zebraman MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre
jon brion @ largo
the loons, the omens @ casbah (SD)
jay reatard, thee make out party @ alex's bar (long beach)
e.t., close encounters of the third kind @ aero theatre
underworld @ ampas samuel goldwyn theater
ghostbusters FREE 8:30 PM @ la film fest @ broxton avenue
embodiment of evil 10:30 PM @ la film fest @ majestic crest
classe tous risques @ lacma
garde a vue 9:20 PM @ lacma
sat. jun. 20
foot village @ the smell
the mad genius, the mad doctor @ starlight studio screenings
mike watt @ redwood bar
the omens, davie allan & the arrows @ haunted house au go-go @ bordello
the duellists, the prestige @ new beverly theatre
the fog (1980) MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
the graduate @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
mae shi @ mr. t's bowl
battlestar galactica the movie (1978), mission galactica the cylon attack, conquest of the earth @ aero theatre
in the loop 7 PM @ la film fest @ majestic crest
13 most beautiful... songs for andy warhol's screen tests w/ dean & britta 8:30 PM @ la film fest @ ford amphitheatre
coup de torchon @ lacma
shoot the piano player 9:45 PM @ lacma
who's minding the store? 6:30 PM, the disorderly orderly @ silent movie theatre
imaad wasif @ future music (highland park)
sun. jun. 21
femi kuti @ hollywood bowl
once upon a time in the west @ new beverly theatre
forbidden planet, fantastic planet @ aero theatre
billy jack 6 PM @ la film fest @ billy wilder theater
mirah 5:30 PM, juana molina FREE @ make music pasadena fest
extraordinary stories 7:30 PM @ la film fest @ italian cultural institute
embodiment of evil 10 PM @ la film fest @ landmark 8
the kid 1 PM @ chaplin father's day matinee @ silent movie theatre
little murders 8 PM @ tribute to jules feiffer @ silent movie theatre
mon. jun. 22
once upon a time in the west @ new beverly theatre
dinosaur jr., earthless @ troubadour
bipolar bear @ pehrspace
call if you need me 9:45 PM @ la film fest @ landmark 8
extraordinary stories 7 PM @ la film fest @ landmark 4
tue. jun. 23
the incredibly strange creatures, the thrill killers @ new beverly theatre
dinosaur jr. @ troubadour
the abyss 6:30 PM @ ampas linwood dunn theater
los bastardos 9:45 PM @ la film fest @ the regent
tv tuesday: unaired tv pilots 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
wed. jun. 24
a streetcar named desire @ last remaining seats @ los angeles theatre
the tenant, the fearless vampire killers @ new beverly theatre
our gang shorts 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
jacquot de nantes, uncle yanco @ aero theatre
los bastardos 2 PM @ la film fest @ landmark 4
i sell the dead 7:15 PM @ la film fest @ landmark 4
all tomorrow's parties 8:30 PM @ la film fest @ ford amphitheatre
chinatown 8 PM @ afi 100s @ arclight hollywood
thu. jun. 25
the tenant, the fearless vampire killers @ new beverly theatre
the gleaners & i, the gleaners & i two years later @ aero theatre
harold & maude @ tribute to hal ashby @ ampas samuel goldwyn theater
cold souls 7 PM @ la film fest @ mann festival theatre
midnight cowboy 7:30 PM @ la film fest @ billy wilder theater
black dynamite 8:30 PM @ la film fest @ ford amphitheatre
fri. jun. 26
brazil (uncut) MIDNIGHT @ nuart
true stories 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
god of cookery MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre
lions love (and lies), murs murs @ aero theatre
jon brion @ largo
joy ride 10 PM, hi-riders @ ucla film archive
the landlord 7 PM, shampoo @ ampas linwood dunn theater
i sell the dead 10 PM @ la film fest @ majestic crest
2001 MIDNIGHT @ fairfax regency theatre
sat. jun. 27
east of eden @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
cleo from 5 to 7, vagabond @ aero theatre
last date 4:30 PM, hot rods to hell @ ucla film archive
tomorrow's drivers 8:30 PM, hot rod girl @ ucla film archive @ the festival promenade on broxton
the last detail 7 PM, coming home @ ampas linwood dunn theater
cold souls 1:30 PM @ la film fest @ the regent
call if you need me 4 PM @ la film fest @ the regent
night tide 7 PM @ la film fest @ billy wilder theater
cinderfella 6:30 PM, the ladies' man @ silent movie theatre
brightblack morning light @ el rey
bottle rocket @ devil's night drive-in
sun. jun. 28
the island at the top of the world 5:30 PM @ aero theatre
united red army 5:30 PM @ ucla film archive @ the landmark
being there 7 PM @ ampas linwood dunn theater
election FREE 8:30 PM @ la film fest @ w hotel westwood
cracking up 3 PM @ mondo jerry bbq @ silent movie theatre
neil hamburger @ spaceland
foot village @ the smell
brutual cinema (films TBA) 7 PM @ steve allen theater
mon. jun. 29
lookin' to get out @ ucla film archive
mika miko, the strange boys @ the smell
tue. jun. 30
mutiny on the bounty 1 PM @ lacma
the strange boys @ the echo
wed. jul. 1
pandora's box @ last remaining seats @ orpheum theatre
scott walker 30 century man, TBA @ new beverly theatre
the beaches of agnes (sneak preview), gwen from brittany
thu. jul. 2
scott walker 30 century man, TBA @ new beverly theatre
citay @ silverlake lounge
fri. jul. 3
ema & the ghosts @ mr. t's bowl
sat. jul. 4
the great gatsby, citizen kane @ starlight studio screenings
red dawn MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
TBA @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
timonium @ pehrspace
sun. jul. 5
bipolar bear @ the smell
tue. jul. 7
jerry beck presents: frank tashlin toons 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
wed. jul. 8
bert jansch @ largo
sat. jul. 11
TBA @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
ema & the ghosts @ pehrspace
foot village @ the smell
wild at heart @ devil's night drive-in
sun. jul. 12
sparrows 2 PM @ alex theatre
oneida, amps for christ @ the echo
mon. jul. 13
ninotchka 7 PM @ ampas samuel goldwyn theater
wed. jul. 15
watts ensemble @ bootleg theater
sat. jul. 18
TBA @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
mon. jul. 20
the pains of being pure at heart, girls @ the echo
tue. jul. 21
ditty bops @ steve allen theater
sat. jul. 25
TBA @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
sun. jul. 26
the strange boys @ the smell
mon. jul. 27
the mekons @ the echo
fri. jul. 31
upsilon acrux @ eagle rock center for arts
sat. aug. 1
shanghai express, the bitter tea of general yen @ starlight studio screenings
WHAT IT IS:
THE ABYSS
As part of its “Prime Tech” screening series, the Academy’s Science and Technology Council presents a 20th anniversary screening of “The Abyss.”
Premiering a newly struck 35mm print from the Academy Film Archive.
Featuring an onstage panel discussion hosted by film historian and author Eric Lichtenfeld.
Much of the action in James Cameron’s 1989 deep-sea epic was shot in a tank containing millions of gallons of water. “The Abyss,” renowned for its sophisticated underwater sound recording and photography, along with its pioneering digital water effects, is still considered by many to possess some of the greatest underwater sequences ever seen on film.
Nominated for Academy Awards® in Art Direction, Cinematography, Sound and Visual Effects (for which it won), “The Abyss” stars Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and tells the story of crew members on an underwater oil rig during the Cold War who are enlisted to help rescue an American submarine, and the bizarre, mysterious force they discover living in the deep.
Several key members of the film’s crew will gather for an onstage discussion of the role motion picture science and technology played in shaping “The Abyss.”
20th Century Fox. 140 minutes.
Starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn, Leo Burmester, Todd Graff, John Bedford Lloyd, J.C. Quinn, Kimberly Scott, Capt. Kidd Brewer, Jr., George Robert Klek, Christopher Murphy, Adam Nelson. Directed by James Cameron. Produced by Gale Anne Hurd. Screenplay Cameron. Cinematography Mikael Salomon. Underwater Photography Al Giddings. Film Editing Joel Goodman. Production Design Leslie Dilley. Art Direction Peter Childs. Set Decoration Anne Kuljian. Costume Design Deborah Everton. Music Alan Silvestri. Sound Design Blake Leyh. Sound Mixing Don Bassman, Kevin F. Cleary, Richard Overton, Kevin Carpenter, Lee Orloff. Visual Effects John Bruno, Dennis Muren, Hoyt Yeatman, Dennis Skotak. 20th Century Fox. 1989. 140 minutes.
THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, 1938, Warner Bros., 102 min. Dirs. Michael Curtiz and William Keighley. In what is commonly acknowledged as one of the most beautiful, spectacular early Technicolor films, swashbuckling Errol Flynn ("Welcome to Sherwood!") rescues lovely Olivia de Havilland from the evil clutches of Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone in a rousing adventure for the ages.
ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES
(England, 2009, 82 mins)
HDCam
Directed By: Jonathan Caouette,
All Tomorrow's People
Executive Producers: Mark Herbert, Robin Gutch
Producer: Luke Morris
Cinematographers: Vincent Moon, Jason Banker, Marc Swadel
Editor: Nick Fenton
Cast: Sonic Youth, Belle and Sebastian, Daniel Johnston, Nick Cave, Mogwai, Animal Collective
This vibrant kaleidoscope of sounds and images from the history of the legendary British music festival features performances by Belle and Sebastian, Mogwai, Animal Collective, Sonic Youth, and more.
BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, 1980, New World Pictures. 104 min. Dir. Jimmy T. Murakami. Roger Corman produced this variation on SEVEN SAMURAI/THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN that transplants the action to space (and stars MAGNIFICENT SEVEN veteran Robert Vaughn for good measure!). Screenwriter John Sayles shows his usual flair for colorful characterizations in a film that serves his words well by putting them in the mouths of John Saxon, Sybil Danning, George Peppard, and other genre stalwarts. Please note that the print is faded.
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (THE MOVIE), 1978, Universal, 125 min. Dir. Richard A. Colla and Alan J. Levi. A resourceful team of space warriors, led by Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict and Maren Jensen, take on the evil Cylons (dig that moving red eyeball!) in this humorous and action-packed television series, screening here in the 1978 theatrical feature version. Often compared to a small-screen STAR WARS (visual effects guru John Dykstra created superb F/X for both), "Battlestar Galactica" achieved its own unique charm through a winning cast and a refreshing, tongue-in-cheek approach to the sci-fi genre.
THE BEACHES OF AGNES (LES PLAGES D’ AGNES), 2008, 110 min. "If you opened people up, you would find landscapes," Varda says in the opening voiceover of her new film. "If you opened me up, you would find beaches." Varda’s latest work is an autobiographical essay that takes a nostalgic yet penetrating look back at her life and films. Using photographs, recreations and scenes from her films, Varda illustrates the various stages of her life, from her marriage to Jacques Demy and his death in 1990 to her childhood memories of Sote, the fishing village that would become the subject of her first film. Woven through these reminiscences are lonely, dreamlike sequences shot on the beaches that have influenced and inspired her.
BEFORE THE FALL (3 DIAS), 2008, 93 min. The Secretary General of the United Nations makes an important announcement: A giant meteor is headed towards Earth, and scientists believe its impact will destroy all life on the planet in about three days. For Alejandro (Victor Clavijo), a frustrated young man who lives with his mother in the isolated village of Laguna, the impending end inspires him to spend his last days shut away, getting drunk and listening to his favorite music. All is well, until a stranger arrives and unsettles the town. First-time director F. Javier Gutierrez masterfully creates the atmosphere of a world literally waiting for its own destruction; facing the inevitable end, what should you still care about? "One of the most original genre films in years, a quadruple winner at the Malaga Film Festival. Shocking and brilliantly executed, F. Javier Gutierrez's first feature will leave you shaken."-- Lane Kneedler, AFI Festival; "Spanish writer-director F. Javier Gutierrez proves that films about armageddic meteorites crashing into the earth can be both intelligent and moving." Rebecca Davies Telegraph.co.uk
Being There (1979)
In his most sublime performance, Peter Sellers portrays an isolated and apparently simpleminded gardener whose entire world view is shaped by what he has seen on television. His subsequent celebrity provides Ashby with an opportunity to examine the follies of contemporary culture. Sellers was Oscar-nominated and Melvyn Douglas won for his supporting role. With Shirley MacLaine and Jack Warden. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive and Warner Bros. 120 mins.
THE BELLBOY
Walking too many dogs? Carrying too many suitcases? Too many phones a-ringin'? Well, join the club! The Bellboy, Jerry's directorial debut, was miraculously conceived, written, shot and released in just six months as part of a promise to Paramount to deliver a summer film after the production of Cinderfella. With no actual story, no real plot, a main character that utters only one line of dialogue, and a baggage cart full of surreal jokes, The Bellboy remains Lewis' most experimental endeavor. A true testament to Lewis' love of the great silent clowns (Stan Laurel in particular), the Miami hotels he played in his youth, and every schlub who could never get a word in edgewise (not even a "Hey, ladeeee!"), The Bellboy is an eruption of cinematic talent that proved Lewis wasn't just a comedian, but a total filmmaker.
The Bellboy Dir. Jerry Lewis, 1960, 35mm, 72 min.
Billy Jack
(USA, 1971, 114 mins)
35mm
Directed By: T.C. Frank
Producer: Mary Rose Solti
Screenwriters: Frank Christina, Teresa Christina
Cinematographers: Fred J. Koenekamp, John Stephens
Editors: Larry Heath, Marion Rothman
Cast: Tom Laughlin, Delores Taylor, Clark Howat, Victor Izay, Julie Webb, Debbie Schock, Teresa Kelly, Lynn Baker, Stan Rice, David Roya, John McClure, Susan Foster, Susan Sosa
Music: Mundell Lowe
Join writer/director Tom Laughlin for a special screening of this cult classic, in which he stars as a part Native American ex-Green Beret who defends a counterculture-friendly Freedom School against the ultra-conservative local townsfolk.
BLACK DYNAMITE
(USA, 2009, 90 mins)
35mm
Directed By: Scott Sanders
Executive Producers: Deanna & James Berkeley
Producers: Jon Steingart, Jenny Weiner Steingart
Screenwriters: Michael Jai White, Byron Minns, Scott Sanders
Cinematographer: Shawn Maurer
Editor: Adrian Younge
Cast: Michael Jai White, Tommy Davidson, Arsenio Hall
Music: Adrian Younge
Decked out with afros, polyester, and nunchucks, this badass ‘70s-style blaxploitation comedy stars Michael Jai White as a former CIA operative who uncovers a nefarious plot while avenging his brother’s death.
Bob le flambeur
1955/b&w/100 min. | Scr: Auguste le Breton, Jean-Pierre Melville; dir: Jean-Pierre Melville; w/ Roger Duchesne, Isabelle Corey.
Bob le flambeur is Melville's most engaging work. August Le Betron (author of Rififi and Touchez pas au Grisbi) worked on the adaptation and dialogue, and in form Bob le flambeur is a gangster film of the type prevalent in the mid-fifties. It deals with a compulsive gambler who, is down on his luck, decides to recoup by robbing the casino in the resort town of Deauville. "As the neon is extinguished for another dawn, a weary Bob the Gambler treads his way home from the tables. Melville's 'love letter to Paris' is shot, like all good city films, between the hours of dusk and dawn, and is a homage to all that is wonderful about the dark American city thrillers of the '30s and '40s. What doubles the pleasure, however, is that in spite of the heist, the double-crosses and the sudden death, it is still remarkably light in tone: an underworld comedy of manners. The courtly Monsieur Bob may wear a trench coat and fedora, but he rescues young ladies adrift in the milieu, remains loyal to his friend l'inspecteur, and gives the impression of wanting to rob the casino, not to assuage his gambling fever, but simply so that he can perform a robbery in dinner jacket. A wonderful movie."—Time Out.
CALL IF YOU NEED ME
(Malaysia, 2009, 104 mins)
In Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Directed By: James Lee
Executive Producers: Liew Seng Tat, Amir Muhammad
Producer: Tan Chui Mui
Screenwriter: James Lee
Cinematographer: J. Ishmael
Editor: James Lee
Cast: Sunny Pang, Pete Teo, Chua Thien See
Music: Ronnie Khoo
A newcomer rises through the ranks of Kuala Lumpur's criminal underworld, while his cousin makes plans to leave the life behind in this flawlessly shot heartbreaker, equal parts gangster epic and elegy to lost innocence.
CAPTAIN BLOOD, 1935, Warner Bros., 119 min. Director Michael Curtiz directs one of the best swashbucklers ever made, and the film that made Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland stars. Dr. Peter Blood (Flynn), a man unjustly convicted of treason, is exiled to Port Royal, sold into slavery and bought by the lovely Lady Arabella (de Havilland). He and fellow convicts manage to escape, take over a Spanish galleon, and pirate Captain Blood is born! Lionel Atwill and villainous Basil Rathbone are standouts in the exceptional supporting cast.
CASABLANCA
(1942) Directed by Michael Curtiz
Director Curtiz's classic romantic melodrama and his only film to win Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, Casablanca posits the titular Moroccan city under Vichy France as a sweltering, decadent last stop for émigrés desperate to escape the clutches of Nazi Europe. Enter Rick Blaine, a cool, white-cocktail-jacket-clad American café owner whose seemingly apathetic demeanor hides leftist sympathies--and a broken heart. When his former flame appears with her new beau–a Resistance fighter and concentration camp escapee, Rick is forced to choose between his only chance for true happiness and his ever-growing conscience.
Warner Bros.. Based on the play "Everybody Comes to Rick's" by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. Screenplay: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch. Cinematographer: Arthur Edeson. Editor: Owen Marks. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt. 35mm, B/W, 102 min.
CINDERFELLA
This gender-bending take on the Cinderella story is the most extravagant of the Frank Tashlin-directed Jerry Lewis films--a big-budget, glorious Technicolor musical for the whole family. Lewis has always said music was the spine of his comedy, and Lewis' and Tashlin's attention to rhythm and movement is exemplary here: watch Lewis make breakfast in perfect time to music, and enacting every note with a goofy physicalization. And then there's the legendary "Cinderfella dance", in which a Dean Martin-suave Jerry smoothly descends a six-foot staircase with grace and style--and he nailed it in just one take! The beginning of a golden era of Jerry Lewis classics, this is a rare chance to see it in a gorgeous IB Tech print from the Academy Film Archive--don't miss it!
Cinderfella Dir. Frank Tashlin, 1960, 35mm, 91 min.
Classe tous risques
1960/b&w/108 min. | Scr: Claude Sautet, José Giovanni, Pascal Jardin; dir: Claude Sautet; w/ Lino Ventura, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Sandra Milo.
The title is an untranslatable pun on tourism and insurance, but the premise is existential and the style neo-realist. Ventura, a French thug on the lam in Italy for a decade, needs to get back home, along with his wife and two little boys. A daylight robbery in Milan precipitates a remarkable chase through Italy topped by a shoot-out on the beach at Nice. With the kids in tow, Ventura makes his way to Paris, thanks to guardian angel Belmondo, fresh from Breathless and the cutest pug-ugly in Pigalle. "Classe tous risques's strength and originality were underestimated on its initial release, and the film was eclipsed by Breathless, released just a few weeks before; all the credit for bringing out the talent of Jean-Paul Belmondo went to Godard, despite the fact that in Classe tous risques, Belmondo shows us a completely different side of his great gift as an actor by fusing virility and childlike innocence in a performance that is totally different from the one he gives in Breathless. I've never forgotten the way he turns to Sandra Milo, after having knocked out the man who was beating her, smiles that unforgettably disarming smile, and says, 'The one good thing about me is my left.' Four decades later, we've come to understand that Classe tous risques—in a less obvious, more secretive, insidious way—was just as revolutionary as Breathless. The long opening sequence, the gripping shots of the train station, and the holdup in the streets of Milan, made it impossible to keep filming these events and the way characters behaved as we used to do. Sautet had succeeded in infusing his action scenes with absolute authenticity, breathing such an incredible sense of real life into them that he won the admiration of Robert Bresson."—Bertrand Tavernier.
CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 (CLEO DE 5 A 7), 1961, Cine-Tamaris, 90 min. Dir. Agnes Varda’s international breakthrough film, CLEO ranks with BREATHLESS and THE 400 BLOWS as one of the seminal works of the French New Wave. Two hours in the life of a hopelessly pretty pop singer (Corrine Marchand), who may or may not be dying of cancer. Vain, childish and selfish at the start, Cleo’s journey through Paris becomes a journey of self-discovery. "The streets of Paris are filmed like they have never again been filmed" - Telerama.
COLD SOULS
(USA, 101 mins)
35mm
Directed By: Sophie Barthes
Producers: Dan Carey, Elizabeth Giamatti, Paul Mezey, Andrij Parekh, Jeremy Kipp Walker
Screenwriter: Sophie Barthes
Cinematographer: Andrij Parekh
Editor: Andrew Mondshein
Cast: Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn, Dina Korzun, Emily Watson
Paul Giamatti plays Paul Giamatti in this idiosyncratic comedy in which soul extraction is a unique form of stress relief. He soon finds out that the side effects of soul storage can get absurdly complicated.
Coming Home (1978)
A profoundly moving anti-war film set against the personal drama of a love triangle involving a disabled Vietnam vet (Jon Voight), the wife of an Army Captain (Jane Fonda) and her husband (Bruce Dern). The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and Voight and Fonda both won Oscars. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive and MGM. 127 mins.
CONQUEST OF THE EARTH, 1980, Universal, 96 min. Dir. Barry Crane, Sidney Hayers and Sigmund Neufeld Jr. Lorne Greene and the Battlestar fleet return to Earth only to discover that the planet is under imminent threat of virtual annihilation at the hands of attacking Cylons in this the third and final chapter in the 70s theatrical Galactica trilogy.
Coup de torchon
1981/color/128 min. | Scr: Jean Aurenche, Bertrand Tavernier; dir: Bertrand Tavernier; w/ Philippe Noiret, Isabelle Huppert.
Tavernier's brilliant adaptation of Jim Thompson's 1964 pulp paperback Pop. 1280, transfers the tale of a corrupt small-town sheriff turned heartless killer from the American south of 1910 to 1930s equatorial West Africa. Not only is racism similarly ingrained in both cultures, but the very first black slaves to come to the New World originated in Senegal where the film was shot. "With equal touches of Kafka, Genet, and Beckett, Coup de torchon takes place in an ethical No Man's Land. Lucien Cordier (Noiret) is chief of police in Bourkassa. Despite his position of authority, nobody treats him with respect: not his wife (Huppert), who openly cheats on him; not the town's citizens, who notice that he's never made an arrest; and not the two pimps who use their monthly payoffs to Cordier as an excuse to humiliate him. He is an object of ridicule, but then he becomes violent and diabolical, covertly engaging in acts so against his nature that no one suspects a thing. As in Taxi Driver, Coup de torchon lets you identify with a lunatic, then compels you to shrink back in horror as you witness the results of his progressively ingenious rationalizations for murder. Though thematically similar to film noir, with its steadfast examination of the dark side of man, Coup de torchon is musically and visually the exact opposite. Composer Philippe Sarde, a frequent collaborator of Tavernier's, provides an evocative, jazzy, cockeyed score; cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn handily captures a bright and airy landscape burnt raw by the relentless, blistering sun"—Michael Hoffman.
CRACKING UP
Mondo Jerry BBQ (feat. Cracking Up)
To enter the world of Jerry can be like entering the world of Joyce or Shakespeare--you can spend a long time there, without ever running out of fascination. To close out our Jerry Lewis retrospective--the first in LA ever!--we're celebrating with a Jerrython, an all-day (and we mean it!) blowout of all the assembled rare Jerry footage we could find, including our own mash-up of our favorite moments. Then, to close-out the fest we'll show Jerry's directorial swan song, Cracking Up, a minimally-released follow-up to his surprise comeback hit Hardly Working. The film is a series of setpieces revolving around Jerry as a middle-aged weakling in extensive therapy, as he tries to figure out what went wrong with his pathetic life. He’s an open nerve, with all of life’s minor indignities and petty pains driving him nuts; it’s the very mechanism of life that’s cracking up here. We can’t say what Jerry’s intent might have been beyond getting some yucks, but what he concocted is not just an assault on filmic conventions and comedy norms, but reality itself. In some ways it comes off as so formally brazen that the end result of this Airplane!-style gag-fest was avant-garde enough to appeal to academically inclined critics and Lewis lovers--Jonathan Rosenbaum, for example, sandwiched Cracking Up between Bresson’s L’Argent and Kiarostami’s Fellow Citizen on his list of best films of 1983.
Cracking Up Dir. Jerry Lewis, 1983, 35mm, 83 min.
DANGEROUS MEN
Mondo Mondo mix night (feat. Dangerous Men)
Over the past year, The Cinefamily has thrown its hat in the ring of found footage collagery with a series of "Mondo" mixes of the wildest and weirdest clips we could find on themes like Christmas, Kids' Movies, Christploitation, Homemade Horror, and Love....each one a one-time only, see-it-now-or-never-see-it assault of mug-melting, eye-searing goodness. 'Till now! We're gonna bring back our best and favorite moments from past Mondo nights, in a meta-mix of hyper-distilled media terrorism. And to top it off, just some of our favorite showstoppers from our secret stash. Since we've asked all our guests in this series to bring a flick, we'll bring one too--another dose of Dangerous Men, our in-house favorite piece of HFS awesomeness.
Dangerous Men Dir. John S. Rad, 2005, 35mm, 80 min.
DINNER AT EIGHT
Based on George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's Broadway hit, in which an elaborate dinner party reveals a web of intrigue and romance. A classic American comedy. With Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, an adorable Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore and Lee Tracy. Dir. George Cukor, 1933, 111 mins.
THE DISORDERLY ORDERLY
The inimitable The Disorderly Orderly, set in a hospital where all the patients seem to be insane, along with at least one orderly to boot.
The Disorderly Orderly Dir. Frank Tashlin, 1964, 35mm, 89 min.
Elevator to the Gallows
1957/b&w/89 min. | Scr: Roger Nimier, Louis Malle; dir: Louis Malle; w/ Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet.
Former paratrooper Ronet kills mistress Moreau's businessman husband in his sleek high-rise office, but, as in Purple Noon, this "perfect murder" goes wrong when a sudden power outage traps him in the elevator while Moreau frantically paces the street below. Shot on location in nighttime Paris by master cinematographer Henri Decaë (Purple Noon, Eva, Le cercle rouge) and featuring a legendary jazz score by Miles Davis, Malle's debut feature and only genre film is an elegant thriller that foreshadows the 'New Wave' by two years. "This terrific thriller is about the horror of being stuck, trapped, unable to move, but the film's beauty lies in its economy, in its formal rigor (Malle once said that he was torn between Robert Bresson and Alfred Hitchcock, and both influences are apparent here), and in the nearly absurdist humor of the cascading coincidences that doom the homicidal protagonist. The New Wave doesn't quite get born in Elevator to the Gallows, but it's clearly more than ready to emerge. You can sense it in Decaë's remarkably daring natural-light cinematography (which he would soon be putting to good use for Truffaut and Claude Chabrol as well), in the funky ebullience of young bit players like Jean-Claude Brialy and Charles Denner, both destined to become New Wave luminaries, and, in the unleashing of Jeanne Moreau, who, nearing thirty, and a busy actress was never quite a star until Malle turned her loose in the nocturnal city and did justice, for the first time, to her amazing, imperious, sexy walk that became the defining movement of the New Wave, the embodied rhythm of freedom."—Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times.
Embodiment of Evil
Encamacao do Demonio
(Brazil, 2008, 90 mins)
In Portuguese with English subtitles
35mm
Directed By: José Mojica Marins
Producers: Paulo Sacramento, Debora Ivanov, Caio Gullane, Fabiano Gullane
Screenwriters: José Mojica Marins, Dennison Ramalho
Cinematographer: José Roberto Eliezer
Editor: Paulo Sacramento
Cast: José Mojica Marins, Helena Ignez, Luis Melo, Jece Valadao
Brazilian horror icon Coffin Joe returns in this delightfully demonic cavalcade of bloody bodies and bared breasts, slaying his way through a small town as he searches for a worthy mate.
THE ERRAND BOY
The perfect companion piece for The Bellboy, The Errand Boy is both its mirror and its opposite. Again, we're given a minimally-plotted series of outrageous gags riffing on the misadventures of a lowly schlemiel in a big, pretentious institution--but whereas The Bellboy was a quiet film, a silent film homage in an environment of luxury and relaxation, The Errand Boy is more like a noisy, manic movie wrap party capturing all the crazed energy of the biz. It's also Jerry's love letter to filmmaking--shot all over the Paramount lot, it's a virtual documentary of the industry that could have been called "A Day at the Studio". The film gives you riffs on every aspect of filmmaking, from ADR sessions to test-screenings, and every profession is gently mocked from the mailroom schlubs all the way up to the starlets.
The Errand Boy Dir. Jerry Lewis, 1961, 35mm, 92 min.
EXTRAORDINARY STORIES
Historias Extraordinarias
(Argentina, 2008, 252 mins)
In Spanish with English subtitles
DigiBeta
Directed By: Mariano Llinas
Producer: Laura Citarella
Screenwriter: Mariano Llinás
Cinematographer: Agustin Mendilaharzu
Editor: Alejo Moguillansky
Cast: Mariano Llinás, Agustin Mendilaharzu, Walter Jakob
In this adventurous experiment in storytelling, secret identities, missing persons, lost treasures, exotic beasts and desperate criminals are only a few of the elements woven into a grand tapestry of mysteries.
FANTASTIC PLANET (LA PLANETE SAUVAGE), 1973, Argos Films, 72 min. French director and animator Rene Laloux’s masterpiece is an astonishingly beautiful and otherworldly vision of a far distant planet where humans are kept as pets by a race of gigantic, blue-skinned overlords called The Traags. With incredible design work by Roland Topor and a mind-blowing progressive rock score by Alain Goraguer. Winner of the Special Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973. In French with English subtitles.
THE FESTIVAL OF (IN)APPROPRIATION
Whether you call it collage, compilation, found footage, detournement, or recycled cinema, the incorporation of previously shot materials into new artworks is a practice that has generated novel juxtapositions of elements which have produced new meanings and ideas that may not have been intended by the original makers, that are, in other words “inappropriate.” This act of appropriation may produce revelation that leads viewers to reconsider the relationship between past and present, here and there, intention and subversion. Fortunately for our purposes, the past decade has seen the emergence of a wealth of new sources for audiovisual materials that can be appropriated into new works. In addition to official state and commercial archives, vernacular archives, home movie collections, and digital archives have provided fascinating source material that may be repurposed in such a way as to give it new meanings and resonances.
In this program, we bring together a selection of recent films that appropriate footage from diverse sources in vastly different ways. Our goal in choosing these films is to show the range of approaches contemporary filmmakers are taking in repurposing found materials. Indeed, tonight’s films push the boundaries of the “found footage” film, raising questions about how we define “found footage” filmmaking in an era in which ever more materials are available for reuse in ever more complex ways. We believe that together, these films reveal how (in)appropriation is flourishing at this social and historical moment. – Jaimie Baron and Andrew Hall
FLASH GORDON, 1980, Universal, 111 min. Like the early 1930s serial, director Mike Hodges’ FLASH is surprisingly faithful to Alex Raymond’s original comic strip, with just the right balance of action, tongue-in-cheek humor and mindblowing production design (here courtesy of wizard Danilo Donati), with a score by none other than Queen! Relative unknowns Sam Jones and Melody Anderson play Flash and Dale, but the supporting cast is full of heavyweights, including Max Von Sydow (as Ming), Topol (as Dr. Zarkov), Ornella Muti (as Aura), as well as Lina Wertmuller favorite Mariangela Melato (SWEPT AWAY) and future James Bond, Timothy Dalton.
FORBIDDEN PLANET, 1956, Warner Brothers, 98 min. Dir. Fred Wilcox. The movie that launched a thousand ships, from STAR TREK to STAR WARS. One of the most influential films ever made, the first big budget science fiction blockbuster is a space opera with its roots in Freud, Jung and Shakespeare. It’s also a landmark of production design and special effects, and features the first all-electronic music score. Starring Walter Pidgeon, Leslie Nielson (as the prototype for Captain Kirk) and the beautiful, future Miss Honey West (Anne Francis) as the mini-skirt-wearing, skinny-dipping object of all the men's affection. Also with Robby The Robot - need I say more?
Funky Forest: The First Invasion
"This is film as pure experience, pure joy, childlike wonder laced with just a trace of the disturbing other that most of us are just too damn jaded to recognize in the world around us any more." (Twitch.com)
Our American fascination with the warped absurdities of Japanese television has brought us the joys of "Iron Chef" and "I Survived A Japanese Game Show", but nothing you've ever witnessed will prepare you for Funky Forest: The First Contact, simply one of the most hyper-fluctuating artistic explosions on record and a shit-hot ode to the 500-channels lifestyle. Maintaining an absurdly high level of entertainment for every second of its 150-minute running time, this film pulverizes the conventional bonds of sketch comedy, giving us rapid-fire, vaguely connected strands featuring an imbecilic variety show duo, Cronenberg-inspired oozing slime, student-teacher sexy relations and J-pop dance numbers, to name a few. Come join the communal spectacle with us, as Funky Forest will epoxy you to your seat and blissfully haunt you for years to come.
Dirs. Katsuhito Ishii, Hajimine Ishimine & Shunichiro Miki, 2005, 35mm, 150 min.
Garde à vue
1981/color/86 min. | Scr: Claude Miller, Jean Herman, Michel Audiard; dir: Claude Miller; w/ Lino Ventura, Michel Serrault, Romy Schneider.
In this fine psychological thriller set in a provincial police station on New Year's Eve, M. Martinaud (Serrault) a rich lawyer goes from witness to main suspect in the rape and murder of two young girls during a formidable grilling by a hardboiled cop (Ventura). The heat is turned up when Ventura drags in Martinaud's estranged wife (Schneider) who has waited a long time for such a good opportunity to do her husband some damage. "Martinaud is a haughty but troubled figure with a secret or two, and Mr. Serrault—in a César-winning performance-gives him a perverse appeal."—The New York Times
THE GLEANERS & I (LES GLANEURS ET LA GLANEUSE), 2001, Zeitgeist, 82 min. Once again Agnes Varda uses the documentary format as a jumping-off point for an expressionistic diary in which her own life intercedes. A marvelous "wandering road documentary" that focuses on the centuries-old tradition of "gleaning" in France -- literally picking up the castoffs of others. Varda follows rural scavengers who gather leftover vegetables after the harvest, and urban scavengers who collect discarded food and appliances from the streets of Paris. Interwoven with these are Varda's own intimate thoughts on aging, humorous interviews with judges and attorneys who debate, Monty Python-style, the legality of gleaning while standing in potato fields, and a host of other spontaneous musings on French art and culture. Through it all, Varda's patient sense of social obligation shines through, as she asks again and again, "How can one live on the leftovers of others?" "I managed to approach [the gleaners], to bring them out of their anonymity. I discovered their generosity. There are many ways of being poor, having common sense, anger or humor." -- Agnes Varda.
THE GLEANERS & I: TWO YEARS LATER, 2002, Zeitgeist, 60 min. Varda's exuberantly inventive follow-up to her critically lauded essay film, in which she revisits characters from the original and further explores what it means to be a gleaner. Discussion in between films with director Agnes Varda.
God Of Cookery
Those familiar with Chinese box office powerhouse Stephen Chow only through his recent import releases Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer and now CJ7, will be in for a pleasant surprise with this rare showing of his comedy masterpiece. God of Cookery, a send-up of the Triad gangster genre in the gag-a-second style of Mel Brooks, is shot through with a lethally black sense of humor, full of delirious wildly-paced physical comedy and dense pop culture references, and is filmed in gorgeous 35mm 'Scope. Chow plays the ultimate Iron Chef, a culinary con humiliated by a competitor and deposed (literally) from his throne. From there, it's a steep climb back to the top, as Chow navigates culinary gangs, Shaolin monks, hit men and divine intervention itself in this one-of-a-kind slapstick genre stir fry.
Dirs. Stephen Chow & Li Lik-Chi, 1996, 35mm, 95 min.
God Told Me To
presented by Patton Oswalt
Filmmaker Larry Cohen's written a lot of movies based around gonzo satirical high concepts, from killer babies to killer Aztec dragon gods, to killer creamy desserts--heck, he probably wrote another one, dictated loudly into a microcassette recorder while stuck in L.A. traffic, before I could finish this sentence. But even by Mr. Cohen's high standards, God Told Me To is quite a feat of convoluted daring-do. Starting with a Charles Whitmore-style sniper, people all around New York are killing off strangers, calmly admitting their guilt, and offering only one explanation, "God told me to". From there, any possible attempt to say what happens in this wildly unpredictable mystery would easily qualify as a spoiler, but let me tempt you with a glowing, hermaphroditic yellow hippy with dreadful powers, played by a scar-faced Richard Lynch. Patton says: "“I picked God Told Me To because I’ve never seen it — and I’ve always wanted to see Andy Kaufman go on a shooting rampage.” That does happen, by the way.
Dir. Larry Cohen, 1976, 35mm, 91 min.
THE GOLD RUSH
THE GOLD RUSH (1925) is the quintessential Chaplin/Little Tramp film, with a balance of slapstick comedy and pantomime, social satire, and emotional and dramatic moments of tenderness. It was Chaplin's own personal favorite film, which showcases the classic Tramp character (referred to as "The Lone Prospector") as a romantic idealist and lone gold prospector at the turn of the century, with his cane, derby, distinctive walk, tight shabby suit, and mustache.
Classic scenes include the starvation scene of two cabin-marooned prospectors boiling and fastidiously eating a stewed shoe, the Tramp's cabin-mate deliriously imagining his companion as a large chicken, the teetering cabin on the edge of a cliff, and Chaplin's lonely fantasized New Year's Eve party (with the dancing dinner rolls routine) when he waits for a girl who never comes. The original 1925 release of The Gold Rush was 6 years before Chaplin's attempt to compose his first full-length score, City Lights, and the 1925 score compilation (by Carli Elinor and Chaplin, today preserved at the Chaplin archives in Montreux) was used to accompany the initial run in theatres until the film was no longer in frequent demand after the advent of sound. After being in circulation for only 17 years (and only five during the age of silent-film theatre orchestras), the “sound” version of the film was released with a newly composed score in 1942. This 1942 score is the one we associate with The Gold Rush.
The evening will feature a restored print of Charlie Chaplin's complete 1925 cut of The Gold Rush with the musical score Chaplin composed for the film's 1942 reissue. Written, produced and directed by Charlie Chaplin. Starring Charlie Chaplin with Georgia Hale and Mack Swain. The original music has been restored, adapted, and will be conducted by Timothy Brock and performed live by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.
GUNGA DIN
“Gunga Din” (1939) – How did they do that?
Presented as an installment of the George Stevens Lecture Series
A presentation of the full-length feature film preceded by a special sound effects demonstration by Oscar-winning sound designer Ben Burtt and a visual effects presentation by Oscar-winning visual effects artist Craig Barron.
“Gunga Din” (117 mins.) with Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joan Fontaine. One of 1939’s most entertaining films, George Stevens’s action adventure has served as inspiration for dozens of later films.
Academy Award winners Ben Burtt and Craig Barron will set the stage with an insightful journey through the “1939 state-of-the-art” filmmaking used to create this classic back when CG meant Cary Grant. This partial examination of the film’s sound effects and visual effects will reflect the continued admiration Burtt and Barron feel for the film, and the inspiration it provided for their work on “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and other films. Their love for the film will also be reflected in a photographic location quest which reveals that the film’s exotic panoramas of India were artfully created in Lone Pine, CA.
Gwen From Brittany
A short portrait of the encounters over the last decade of Agnes Varda and Gwen Deglise, programmer at the American Cinematheque, shot at the Aero and Egyptian Theatres while Varda was in Los Angeles shooting THE BEACHES OF AGNES. Discussion in between films with director Agnes Varda.
THE HARDER THEY COME
Reggae superstar Jimmy Cliff is Ivan, a country boy who comes to the city to make a record and get his share of that pie up in the sky. But it isn't until he shoots a cop and becomes a fugitive from the law that he gets his sought-after notoriety, proving that--as one of the featured songs puts it--you can get it if you really want. The pulsating reggae soundtrack features Cliff, Toots and the Maytals and Desmond Dekker. A breakthrough for Jamaican cinema. Perry Henzell---Jamaica---1973---104 mins.
Hausu
A delirious pop-horror fantasy from one of Japan's foremost cult filmmakers, Hausu could be the most legendary horror film you've never seen. Former experimental filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi twists ghost story expectations inside-out by utilizing a multi-colored candy-coated visual style that pulls equally from TV commercials, soap operas and the avant-garde. The plot, such as it is, follows Oshare (Kimiko Ikegami) and six schoolgirls as they take an ill-advised summer trip to visit her spinster aunt. Obayashi uses the thin story to cram in as many dazzling experimental effects as the human retina can absorb. Humans turn into piles of bananas, pianos devour their players, animated demons spew blood and appendages--Hausu is a gleeful melee that smashes genres together with more force than the Hadron Collider!
Dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977, HDCAM, 87 min.
HI-RIDERS
(1978) Directed by Greydon Clark
New in town and sporting a sweet, souped-up ride, a sexy young couple races with the hard-partying local hot-rod gang. Confident that their rig is the sweetest on the street, they challenge locals to "run," but soon discover that honor works differently with the folks in this town. After a tense dispute about who has won a key race and a money bet, the newcomers are declared victorious and inaugurated into the group with lots of drinking and partying. When the rural, hardscrabble hot-rodders they've found roll out to an adjacent community, our friends go along. There, a local political boss becomes enraged when his son races with the group, but dies in a fiery crash. He declares revenge, and it is only through clever detective work and some more high octane action that this threat is finally neutralized for good, so that the gang can get back to racing and partying down. The glory of kicking up dust and laying down rubber is celebrated to the hilt in this hot rod action epic.
Screenwriter: Greydon Clark. Cast: Darby Hinton, Diane Peterson, Mel Ferrer. 35mm, 90 min.
HOT ROD GIRL
(1956) Directed by Leslie H. Martinson
Thrill-seeking teens in hot rods terrorize the quiet streets of ‘50s suburbia. Despite dire warnings, the kids insist on proving themselves on the suburban asphalt. If only the kids would listen to local cop Chuck Connors and restrict their racing to the local racetrack. He would like to see this facility expanded to keep reckless driving off of public streets, but his ideas have been shouted down by community leaders who see such a notion as gasoline on an already raging fire. Maybe they're right!
When young Steve accepts a taunting challenge from a newcomer, the race that ensues takes his life . . . to the horror of Steve's big brother Jeff, who got him started hot rodding in the first place. Now the same challenger wants to take Jeff's racing title and taunts him with races that Jeff declines. When the mysterious new racer moves in on Jeff's girlfriend Lisa, this final outrage leads to a hot rod showdown to the finish.
Courtesy of Alpha Video and Oldies.com
Screenplay: John McGreevey. Cast: Chuck Connors, Frank Gorshin, Lori Nelson. DVD, 79 min.
HOT RODS TO HELL
(1967) Directed by John Bram
A middle-class American family moving across the country is terrorized by a band of teenaged hot-rod hellions on the desert highway. Upright citizen Tom Phillips and his wife Peg have decided to move out of the city, for Tom's well being. He lives in nightmarish terror, due to a car crash he experienced one fateful Christmas Eve. All he wants to do now is get away. So the Phillips' and their kids, preteen Jamie and very teenaged "Tina," are moving to a desert motel they will manage in peace and quiet. Or so they think.
No sooner are they on the road than they are harangued by a gang of bad kids in hot rods who keep goading Tom into races and stunts. Before long, the hot rodders have gotten under everyone's skin -- including curious Tina's -- and Tom must take control of the situation from behind the wheel, to preserve the nuclear family and the family car. It's total war in overdrive.
Screenplay: Robert E. Kent. Cast: Dana Andrews, Jeanne Crain, Mimsy Farmer. 16mm, 92 min.
THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED UP ZOMBIES
A funky horror movie set in a sleazy roadside carnival about a deranged fortune teller who creates a series of grotesque monsters and imprisons them in the back of her tent. Problems ensue when a string of unsolved murders plague the carny. "Truly bizarre film features gorgeously saturated color, awful acting, hideous dialogue, haunting atmosphere and little plot" (Leonard Maltin). With Cash Flagg, Brett O'Hara, Atlas King, Sharon Walsh and Madison Clarke. Dir. Ray Dennis Steckler, 1963, 87 mins.
INK, 2009, Double Edge Films, 102 min. Dir. Jamin Winans. As the light fades and the city goes to sleep, two forces emerge. They are invisible except for the power they exert over us in our sleep. They battle for our souls through our dreams. One force supports our hopes and gives us strength, the other force leads us toward desperation through our nightmares. A brutal mercenary named Ink is on a mission for those who give the nightmares, though he has his own unknown purposes. Tonight as the city sleeps, 8-year-old Emma (Quinn Hunchar) awakens in the dream world. Before she can catch her breath, she is ripped from her sleeping body by Ink. The fight is on for Emma's life, as Ink races her through the many dimensions of the dream world. To save her, the dream-givers marshall all their resources. They focus in the real world on winning back the soul of Emma's tragically broken father (Chris Kelly). Shot on DV on a ridiculously low budget, director Winans achieves startling imagery and effects, conjuring a surreal nightmare world much like an unholy cross between Terry Gilliam and Shinya Tsukamoto (IRON MAN).
In the Loop
(England, 2009, 106 mins)
35mm
Directed By: Armando Iannucci
Executive Producers: Christine Langan, David M. Thompson, Paula Jalfon, Simon Fawcett
Producers: Adam Tandy, Kevin Loader
Screenwriters: Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
Cinematographer: Jamie Cairney
Editors: Anthony Boys, Billy Sneddon
Cast: Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Gina McKee, James Gandolfini
Music: Adam Ilhan
In this hilarious, multi-character political satire, Brits and Americans engage in backroom manipulation, back-stabbing, seduction, and other dirty dealings in the build up to an international military engagement.
I Sell the Dead
(USA, 2008, 85 mins)
HDCAM - NTSC
Directed By: Glenn McQuaid
Producers: Peter Phok, Larry Fessenden
Screenwriter: Glenn McQuaid
Cinematographer: Richard Lopez
Editor: Glenn McQuaid
Cast: Dominic Monaghan, Larry Fessenden, Angus Scrimm, Ron Perlman
Music: Jeff Grace
Two wily grave robbers in 18th century England get more than they bargained for when their corpses start biting back in this ghoulishly delightful comedy horror romp.
THE ISLAND AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD, 1974, Walt Disney, 93 min. Dir. Robert Stevenson. A Victorian gentleman hopes to find his long-lost son, who vanished while searching for a mysterious Viking community in a volcanic valley in uncharted Arctic regions. Explorers embark on an airship expedition to go on the search, but when they reach their destination they must escape from Viking descendants who will kill to keep their existence a secret. With David Hartman, Donald Sinden. Designed by Peter Ellenshaw, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction.
JACQUOT DE NANTES, 1991, Cine-Tamaris, 118 min. Director Agnes Varda’s tender farewell to her late husband, Jacques Demy, JACQUOT re-creates the early years of Demy’s life in the port city of Nantes, delicately interwoven with clips from LOLA, THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG and his other films. Interspersed throughout the film are intimate close-ups of Demy’s fragile body, tenderly filmed by Varda in one of her most personal and affecting films. With Philippe Maron, Edouard Joubeaud, Laurent Monnier. "Has there been anything quite like JACQUOT DE NANTES?…It deserves to be called a CINEMA PARADISO without self-indulgence, or a 400 BLOWS without self-pity." – Film Comment.
Jerry Beck presents: Frank Tashlin Toons
Frank Tashlin spent the first part of his screen career as an animator, storyman and cartoon director at various Hollywood animation studios in the 1930s and 40s. It was during this period he honed his sense of comedy timing and crafted his most outrageous visual gags. He began his career in New York gaining his first screen credits on the original black and white Tom & Jerry cartoons (not the cat-and-mouse, but loose limbed humanoids). He went west to Warner Bros. and helped Tex Avery revolutionize the pace and humor of the earliest Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Tashlin’s talents next brought him at Disney where he contributed sight gags to various Donald Duck cartoons. He was soon hired away to run the Columbia cartoon studio and for them created the Fox & Crow – a long forgotten cartoon duo who were quite popular during the 1940s (their DC Comic books, which were published through 1968, are worth a fortune). Warner Bros. called Tashlin back in the mid forties and he made his funniest cartoons at this time with the likes of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. Check out the roots of Tashlins genius with this rare screening of Tashlin’s best animation, with rare film prints, curated by animation historian Jerry Beck.
JOY RIDE
(1976)
It's bad news for the neighborhood girls when two under-aged and oversexed Romeos jack a ride.
Courtesy A/V Geeks and Fantoma
DVD, 13 min.
JOYSTICKS
(from IMDB)
When a top local businessman and his two bumbling nephews try to shut down the town's only video arcade, arcade employees and patrons fight back. Dir. Greydon Clark, 1983, 88 min.
JUST WALKING, (SOLO QUIERO CAMINAR) 2008, 129 min. Dir. Agustin Diaz Yanes The action opens in Andalucia as four women -- Gloria (Victoria Abril), Aurora (Ariadna Gil), Ana (Elena Anaya) and Paloma (Pilar Lopez de Ayala) -- are poised to rip off Russian gangsters in Spain. Things go awry and Aurora is left behind, receiving a lengthy jail sentence. Paloma falls in with a visiting Mexican mafia delegation, which includes a garish, pimpish crime boss, Felix (Jose Maria Yazpik) and his good-gangster sidekick, the baby-faced Gabriel (Diego Luna). In Spain, meanwhile, Gloria and Ana hatch a plot to spring Aurora from jail. Reunited in Mexico, the girls plot a new heist. Goya Award for Best Cinematography. "The men have the brawn but the women have the brains in…a stylish femme-driven thriller that grips in the first scene and never lets go. Hyperactive style -- with rapid-fire editing and constant narrative jumps."-- Jonathan Holland, Variety
THE KID
Chaplin Father's Day Matinee: The Kid
In celebration of Father’s Day, The Cinefamily presents one of Chaplin’s most moving and beloved films. The Tramp adopts an abandoned baby he discovers in an alley, and raises him to become his sidekick in a variety of schemes and cons. A moving and hilarious film about paternal love, or as Chaplin’s first title says, “A picture with a smile, and perhaps a tear...” Children under 18 get in half price to this special “kiddie” matinee.
Dir. Charles Chaplin, 1921, 16mm, 68 min
KING OF THE ANTS
Ray needs somebody dead. Sean will do anything for money. A double-cross was never part of the deal. Bent on keeping Sean quiet after the killing. Ray's thugs hold him prisoner in the desert, ruthlessly beating him to destroy his memory. But with each blow, Sean is becoming a killing machine hell-bent on payback. The game is about to change. From Stuart Gordon, the director of Re-Animator. Starring Daniel Baldwin, Kari Wuhrer, and a film-stealing George Wendt (Norm from TV's Cheers). DIRECTOR STUART GORDON IN PERSON!
THE LADIES' MAN
There is no better argument for Jerry Lewis's visual and technical genius than The Ladies' Man. After the wild success of Jerry's debut film The Bellboy, which was the climax of a long string of box office hits, he was given unprecedented budgetary freedom--and boy, did he put it to good use. As a filmmaker, Jerry loved his toys, and in this big-budget brain-boiler, he built the biggest, coolest playpen of them all--a four-story, sixty-room, openfaced dollhouse so large they had to break down the wall between two sound stages, each room armed with its own lighting kit and closed-circuit sound system, a working elevator, the world's largest crane, and a battery of video monitors secreted around the set so he could check his own performance at all times. Populating his dollhouse with (what else?) "dolls", he put this coterie of gorgeous dames to use in a series of hilarious, incredibly choreographed setpieces that could only be compared to the best of Buster Keaton or Jacques Tati, but with his own signature cartoonish mania. Color, girls, dance, hilarity--this is comedy as spectacle, and it miraculously works as both!
The Ladies' Man Dir. Jerry Lewis, 1961, 35mm, 106 min.
The Landlord (1970) – 114 mins.
Ashby made his directorial debut with this poignant comedy in which a wealthy young man(Beau Bridges) buys a Brooklyn apartment building and plans to displace the mostly black tenants, before personal relationships cause him to rethink his intentions. Lee Grant received an Oscar nomination for her supporting role in the film. With Pearl Bailey, Diana Sands, Louis Gossett. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive and MGM.
LAST DATE
(1950) Directed by Lewis D. Collins
Speed-crazed Nick and pretty Jeanne have a hot, high-speed date… with TEEN-A-CIDE!
Cast: Joan Taylor, Robert V. Stern, Dick York. 16mm, B/W, 15 min.
The Last Detail (1973) – 105 mins.
Two career sailors are assigned to deliver a young petty thief to the brig for an eight-year stint, and along the way they decide to show him a thing or two about life, drinking and sex. The film earned Oscar nominations for Jack Nicholson (Best Actor), Randy Quaid (Supporting Actor) and Robert Towne’s adapted screenplay. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive and Sony Pictures. 105 mins.
Le cercle rouge
1970/color/150 min. | Scr/dir: Jean-Pierre Melville; w/ Alain Delon, Yves Montand, Gian-Maria Volonté.
Melville's last great gangster film is a masterpiece and a summation of his themes of honor, loyalty, and tragic destiny. Corey (Delon) is a cool, aristocratic thief, released from prison on the same day that Vogel (Volontè), a wild-eyed terrorist and murderer, escapes from police custody. With the help of a third man—an alcoholic ex-cop named Jansen (Montand)—they plan a daring heist from a jewelry store on the chic Place Vendôme. Combining silence, immaculate camerawork and precise editing rhythms, Melville delivers one of the greatest heist sequences on film while drawing brilliant performances from his three iconic actors. "Jean-Pierre Melville was the coolest, most stylish auteur of his time… He's had a great influence on my work… I learned how to hold a gun, and subsequently taught my actors, by watching Alain Delon in the films of Melville."—John Woo.
Le Doulos
1962/b&w/109 min. | Scr/dir: Jean-Pierre Melville; w/ Jean-Paul Belmondo, Serge Reggiani.
The backstabbing criminals in the shadowy underworld of Melville's Le Doulos (slang for an informant) have only one guiding principle: lie or die. A stone-faced Belmondo stars as enigmatic gangster Silien, who may or may not be responsible for squealing on Serge Reggiani), just released from the slammer and already involved in what should have been a simple heist. A much darker film than his celebrated Bob le flambeur, Le Doulos is an absorbing tale of a world that seems to exist between light and shadow. "Le Doulos is very complicated because I gave a twist to the situations in the novel. The characters are all double, they are all false."—Jean-Pierre Melville
LIONS LOVE (AND LIES), 1969, Cine-Tamaris, 110 min. A blissed-out experiment in anarchy and illusion, featuring Warhol superstar Viva (from LONESOME COWBOYS) and "Hair" authors James Rado and Jerome Ragni playing "themselves" -- three innocents adrift in Hollywood. Freely mixing improvisation with scripted dialogue, and occasional news reports on the shootings of Robert Kennedy and Warhol, which interrupt the film, LIONS LOVE is Agnes Varda’s gloriously screwy time capsule of L.A. in its free-love acid-tripping let-it-all-hang-out heyday. In English.
THE LITTLE FOXES, 1941, Samuel Goldwyn Films, 115 min. Southern belle or Southern hell? The claws come out when family fortunes are on the line. Bette Davis is a ruthless member of a Southern clan facing financial decline, and she's backed up by a stunning supporting cast that includes Dan Duryea and Teresa Wright in their film debuts. Director William Wyler pioneered a new form of screen realism with his subtle but elaborately designed deep-focus compositions in this essential film. The same year that he shot CITIZEN KANE for Orson Welles, cinematographer Gregg Toland crafted some equally impressive images for this powerful portrait of family intrigue, based on Lillian Hellman’s play.
LITTLE MURDERS
Family presents: A Tribute To Jules Feiffer (feat. Little Murders)
Cinefamily hosts another “Family Sunday”, where our good friends at Family Bookstore will bring in one of their favorite people to curate and introduce a night of films. This time around, Family brings us Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist/author Jules Feiffer, whose pieces appeared in the Village Voice for over 40 years, and whose film adaptation of his stage collaboration with Elliott Gould resulted in one of the funniest, most vicious social satires of the '70s. A bitter black comedy caked in post-’68 disillusionment, Little Murders is an off-the-wall cocktail of fairy-tale, farce, paranoia thriller and comedy of errors. As Alfred Chamberlain, a shut-in photographer so resentful of his own success that he’s turned to taking photos of feces, Gould personifies the deep ambivalence of the era, delivering a performance both poignant and irreverent. Alfred improbably falls in love with Patsy, a waspy Manhattanite whose unwavering determination to happiness in a crumbling society gives Alfred a reason to believe — at least, until random acts of terror shatter their dreams. Hilarity does eventually ensue, thanks in part to some unforgettable appearances by Alan Arkin (who also directed the film) as a hysterical detective, and Donald Sutherland as a hippie priest officiating what is easily the greatest wedding sequence in cinema. Feiffer will also be screening excerpts from his little-seen 1985 TV movie Grown-Ups, starring Charles Grodin.
Little Murders Dir. Alan Arkin, 1971, 35mm, 110 min.
LOOKIN' TO GET OUT
(1982) Directed by Hal Ashby
The storied and tragic trajectory of Hal Ashby's career turns sharply from the phenomenal promise and success of the 1970s--The Landlord, Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Coming Home, Being There--to the self-destruction and decline of the 1980s. Rarely screened and long difficult to find on home video, however, Ashby's 1982 film Lookin' to Get Out adds a wrinkle to this neat divide between decades. Starring Jon Voight, who co-wrote the script with Alan Schwartz, Lookin' to Get Out follows the travails of "beautiful losers," Alex (Voight) and Jerry (Young), who flee New York for Las Vegas with a pair of loan sharks on their tale. After Alex scams their way into a penthouse at the MGM Grand and a stack of chips on credit--with the unwitting help of Alex's ex girlfriend (Margret)--the hapless pair set their sights on the "big score" but fate comes calling to cash them both out. On his fourth outing with cinematographer Haskell Wexler, Ashby revels in exposing the glittering facades of Vegas in 1980s but where his most celebrated films engage the larger zeitgeist through irony and humor, here, Ashby narrows focus to burrow deep into the nature of personal loyalty and friendship. As the obsessive-compulsive gambler, Alex, Voight delivers a frenzied, high-wire performance set against Young's compellingly understated turn as the long-suffering Jerry. It's a dazzling balancing act that Ashby handles as adroitly as when he was at his peak. Met with harsh reviews and harsher box office on its initial release, Lookin' to Get Out is ripe for reconsideration as it makes its Warner Home Video DVD debut on Tuesday, June 30.
The Lookin' to Get Out DVD will feature the director's cut version being screened tonight. This version of the film was recently discovered twenty-seven years after it was first released. As Voight -- who was instrumental in the film's development and the writing of screenplay (as a co-writer) -- tells it, "For various reasons, the film we released didn't really represent Hal's best work. I knew every version of the script and every cut, so I was understandably excited when I heard about this, yet I also didn't want to be disappointed. But when I saw it, I knew instantly it had Hal's touch. The way he took all the elements and made it his own, it was almost like we were working together again. When Hal Ashby [an Oscar® winning editor] cut his films himself, it was magic."
Lorimar Productions. Producer: Robert Schaffel, Edward Teets. Screenplay: Al Schwartz, Jon Voight. Cinematographer: Haskell Wexler. Cast: Jon Voight, Ann-Margret , Burt Young, Bert Remsen, Jude Farese. HDcam, 105 min.
IN PERSON: Actor Jon Voight and screenwriter-director Curtis Hanson.
Los Bastardos
(Mexico , France , USA, 2008, 86 mins)
In Spanish with English subtitles
35mm
Directed By: Amat Escalante
Producers: Jaime Romandia, Carlos Reygadas
Screenwriters: Martín Escalante, Amat Escalante
Cinematographer: Matthew Uhry
Editors: Ayhan Ergürsel, Amat Escalante
Cast: Jesús Moisés Rodríguez, Rubén Sosa, Nina Zavarin, Kenny Johnston
Music: Ciril, Jazkamer
Pulp crime and cinematic formalism collide in this hauntingly visceral portrait of two Mexican day laborers moved to desperate deeds in a hellish contemporary Los Angeles.
Mack Sennett Shorts
Banana peels, car pileups, dangling damsels, oh my! For fans of silents, the name of writer/director/everything-elser Mack Sennett instantly conjures up images of his infamous Keystone Kops, the oafish, incompetent boobs in blue--but Sennett was equally responsible for bringing about the film debuts of Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, Harry Langdon, Gloria Swanson and the awesome cross-eyed no-necked Ben Turpin! With the help of this coterie of statrs, Sennett laid down the early rules for American slapstick comedy, with his films' sharp comic timing and heaping doses of infectious silliness. Often playing by their own completely loopy rules of logic and casting disapproving nods to authority figures, Sennett's shorts awaken the kid in us all, and tonight we delve into Sennett's ocean of material (he directed over 300 shorts and produced at least twice as many) to bring you a night of guffawing, giggling, tittering and cackling.
Macunaíma
(Brazil, 1969, 105 minutes, color, in Portuguese with English subtitles, MPAA rating: R)
Celebrate the 40th anniversary of the award-winning Brazilian classic based on the famous novel by Mario de Andrade. This farcical, irreverent satire follows anti-hero Macunaíma from the jungle to the city and back again. Not for the young or the faint of heart, the film uses mature themes, and sometimes graphic visuals, to poke fun at certain myths of Brazilian identity while critiquing the military regime in power at the time.
THE MAD DOCTOR
(from IMDB)
A crazed physician marries a wealthy women and, with the help of his demented assistant, murders them for their money. Tim Whelan thriller w/ Basil Rathbone, Ellen Drew, Martin Kosleck. 1941-Paramount
Michael Winslow: Man of 1000 Noises
You know him best as Officer Larvell Jones, the irrepressible burbling, beep-borping human Foley machine that was a mainstay character in the Police Academy repertory company. Be it helicopters, electric guitars, cop sirens, the inner workings of robots, barking dogs, squishing soggy sneakers, roaring jets, spine-tingling scratches on a chalkboard, screaming guitars, cell phones, kung fu dubbing--he is truly the man of a thousand noises, at the very least. He captured the juvenile fascinations of a generation with his uncanny talent for imitation, and tonight, Winslow takes the Cinefamily stage to embark on a new venture: a never-before attempted challenge that only he could possibly fulfill. Yes, Winslow will be providing a live music-and-effects track to a varied sampling of classic and not-so-classic shorts from the silent era. Not so silent anymore!
Midnight Cowboy
(USA, 1969, 113 mins)
Directed By: John Schlesinger
Producer: Jerome Hellman
Screenwriter: Waldo Salt
Cinematographer: Adam Holender
Editor: Hugh A. Robertson
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight
Forty years after its release, Midnight Cowboy has lost none of its audaciousness. Prior to the screening, Jon Voight will take the stage for an extended conversation about this landmark film.
MISSION GALACTICA: THE CYLON ATTACK, 1979, Universal, 108 min. Dir. Vince Edwards and Christian I. Nyby II. Lloyd Bridges stars as Cmdr. Cain, the glory-seeking commander of Pegasus, a fellow Battlestar vessel. With designs on attacking a nearby Cylon Base World, Cain deviously lures a reluctant Cmdr. Adama into all-out war with the Cylons, further sidetracking the fleet’s return to Earth, and leaving the Galactica Cmdr. near death.
Mitch Hedberg Tribute Night (feat. Los Enchiladas)
Much like his obvious antecedent, Steven Wright, the late Mitch Hedberg dealt in surrealist snippets and ingeniously obvious wordplay, where the only real set-up needed for any joke, which rarely lasted more than a few seconds, was your becoming in-tune with his personality. Whereas Wright’s delivery is incredibly dry and snail-paced, Hedberg’s was fast ‘n furious, spoken to the floor while he hid behind a pair of sunglasses, in a captivating drawl halfway between “stoner” and “beat poet”. Hedberg died prematurely in 2005 at the age of 37, and is remembered with admiration and affection by his fellow comedians and friends. The Cinefamily, with generous assistance from Mitch's widow and fellow comedian Lynn Shawcroft, has gone through her voluminous archives to unearth rare footage of live performances, TV appearance, and his unreleased MTV reality pilot ("The Mitch Hedberg Project"). The night will climax with a screening of Mitch's lone directorial effort, the autobiographical 1999 feature film Los Enchiladas.
MURS MURS, 1980, Cine-Tamaris, 81 min. Essential viewing for all Angelenos, MURS MURS is Varda’s lively tribute to this city’s outdoor murals, from the riotous Pig Paradise in Vernon to The Fall of Icarus in Venice. Along the way, she captures priceless interviews with the muralists themselves, including 23-year old Judy Baca, who observes, "I started painting because I realized... that I had never seen a Chicana in a museum." In English. Discussion in between films with director Agnes Varda.
Mutiny on the Bounty
1935/b&w /132 min. | Scr: Talbot Jennings, Jules Furthman, Carey Wilson; dir: Frank Lloyd; w/ Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone.
An 18th century British naval vessel sets off for South America but during a mutiny the captain is cast adrift and the mutineers settle in the Pitcairn islands.
Night Tide
(USA, 1961, 84 mins)
Directed By: Curtis Harrington
Executive Producer: Jules Schwartz
Producer: Aram Kantarian
Screenwriter: Curtis Harrington
Cinematographer: Vilis Lapenieks
Editor: Jodie Copelan
Cast: Dennis Hopper, Linda Lawson, Gavin Muir, Luana Anders, Marjorie Eaton, Marjorie Cameron, H.E. West, Tom Dillon, Ben Roseman
Music: David Raksin
A young Dennis Hopper stars in Curtis Harrington's haunting feature debut about a sailor who falls in love with a mysterious woman, who believes she is a descendant of mythical Sirens.
A Night With Bobcat Goldthwait (feat. Shakes The Clown)
The inimitable Bobcat Goldthwait will be in person at the Cinefamily to present a selection of his favorite found footage from his private collection, in addition to his infamous directorial debut, which also happens to be one of the most underappreciated films of the 1990s. One can only imagine the horror of unsuspecting mothers who took their children to see Shakes The Clown, expecting to see the cuddly Bobcat of Hot to Trot and the Police Academy franchise, and who were instead treated to ninety minutes of clowns snorting yayo, discussions on the merits of “peanut butter pussy” and mime-bashing. Goldthwait has said he based the clowns’ dysfunctional and self-destructive behaviors on the backstage antics of fellow stand-up comedians. Fittingly, the film is populated with a who’s who and who will-be of comedy: Adam Sandler, Blake Clark, Robin Williams, Tim Kazurinsky, Kathy Griffin, and Tom Kenny (future voice of Spongebob Squarepants). If you didn’t think the backstage of The Laugh Factory on Sunset Blvd. circa 1988 was a scary place, we promise you will now.
Shakes The Clown Dir. Bobcat Goldthwait, 1992, 35mm, 87 min.
THE NUTTY PROFESSOR
The crown jewel of all the Jerry lewis movies, The Nutty Professor is his most undeniable masterpiece--the film to thrust upon Jerry doubters and dare them to deny its perfection. With meticulous and awesome color coordination, it is a visual feast, and Jerry creates not just one, but two brand-new, completely original characters that are each miracles of meticulous acting craft. Just creating the iconic klutzy Professor Kelp would be enough, a personage so memorable both in appearance and voice as to haunt all of our subcortexes forever, if only second-hand through a staple character from the "Simpsons" stable (Professor Frink). But then you've also got Kelp's frighteningly funny and terrifyingly sexy alter ego Buddy Love: the suave, greazy rat pack incarnation of Lewis' Id. Every molecule of Buddy Love's body, every inch of his movement, is completely realized, a kind of comedic acting ballet that will have your jaw on the floor. So wipe off our lipstick, slide over here, and let's get started.
The Nutty Professor Dir. Jerry Lewis, 1963, 35mm, 107 min.
ONE MAN FORCE
TV Carnage night (feat. One Man Force)
For TV addicts, watching one of TV Carnage’s distilled and potent DVDs is the equivalent of buying a grip of crack cocaine and locking yourself in your apartment for the weekend, or like a mystical night of channel-flipping, in which every single click of the remote lands you on that bizarre something that stops you in your audiovisual tracks. Tonight, TV Carnage barfs up its frenetic celebration of the human thought process with a magical odyssey of alternative judgment calls and creative decision making. Humans RULE! Once the odyssey is over, we will reconvene to watch One Man Force, a film rife with documentary-like, brilliantly nuanced aspects of the human condition. It stars John “The Tooz” Mantusak as Jake Swan, a renegade cop on several missions occurring all at once for no particular reason. If you have a penchant for Asian gangs, renegade cops, murdered partners, a by-the-book crotchety police chief and an ex-football player who applies his “offensive lineman” knowledge to the world of “offensive one-line man” acting, then this shit’s for you.
One Man Force Dir. Dale Trevillion, 1989, digital presentation, 90 min.
Our Gang Shorts
We all remember the beloved set of Our Gang characters--Spanky, Alfalfa, Buckwheat and the rest--from frequent airings of shorts on local TV, but did you know that there were also 88 silent shorts produced in the 1920s featuring those Little Rascals? Created by film pioneer Hal Roach, the Our Gang shorts make for endlessly fun viewing, as we watch these scraggly, streetwise, mischievous kids do their thing: tussling with snotty rich kids, making trouble, and having a good time. Noted for the naturalism and surprising comedic agility of the children’s performances (Roach started the series with the offspring of his various employees at the studio) and their multi-racial cast, the Our Gang films continue to charm both kids and their parents.
THE OXFORD MURDERS (LOS CRIMINES DE OXFORD), 2008, 108 min. From the wildly talented Spanish filmmaker, Alex de la Iglesia (DAY OF THE BEAST; LA COMUNIDAD) a riveting thriller in English. American student Martin (Elijah Wood) arrives in Oxford on a foreign exchange program and gets tongues wagging when he challenges the theory of Professor Seldom (John Hurt) that math doesn't hold the exact answer to everything. But this mismatched pair are thrown together when a series of murders starts that seems to throw both their theories into disarray. A box office hit in Spain. "Movie buffs will enjoy references to Hitchcock, SLEUTH and THE USUAL SUSPECTS, among others"-- Jonathan Holland, Variety. Discussion in between film with actress Ariadna Gil and director Alex de la Iglesia.
Pandora's Box
Louise Brooks took naturally to the life of an ex-pat actress, after breaking her Hollywood ties after a salary dispute with Paramount and linking up with Bohemian director G. W. Pabst for a film as beautiful and haunting as the actress herself. Brooks cemented her legendary status as the willful, silent muse of German Expressionist cinema with 1929's Pandora's Box. As conflicted femme fatale Lulu, the girl whose luscious sexuality is fraught with a ruin beyond her control, Brooks makes increasingly twisted, tragic plot turns (shooting her lover, fleeing the country with her lover's son, becoming a "lady of the evening" and having everyone around her perish) seem totally inevitable, for a beauty that burns that brightly cannot burn for too long. As Brooks' outrageous autobiography Lulu in Hollywood attests, the movie's effect was so powerful on audiences that the character's name stuck with her for life.
Dir. G.W. Pabst, 1929, 35mm
THE PATSY
In one of the most self-reflexive films in the Lewis cannon (originally conceived as a sequel called Son of the Bellboy), The Patsy chronicles the life of a young bellboy chosen at random to be transformed into a famous actor, Pygmalion-style, by an out-of-work entourage who just lost their movie star employer in a freak accident. What transpires is a stage-by-stage satire of the Hollywood machine, and some of Jerry's best signature fake-bad performance pieces--a hapless and hilarious attempt at lip-synching, the ultimate cringe-inducing, cricket-chirping standup act, and a singing lesson that literally brings down the house. The last of Jerry's big-budget Paramount pictures, The Patsy closes out an era in style....and with plenty of laughs.
The Patsy Dir. Jerry Lewis, 1964, 35mm, 101 min.
PFFR Night
"Wonder Showzen" and "Xavier: Renegade Angel" are simply two of the funniest and most psychedelic shows to have ever aired on American television. Their creators are the team known as PFFR, and the Cinefamily is havin' them on down to present a night of their high-voltage, slap-happy stuff, including the theatrical premiere of their psychosexual porn prank film, Final Flesh!. From the desk of PFFR: "Multi-hyper shine collective, and thrice acclaimed electro funk outfit PFFR (Vernon Chatman, John Lee, Alyson Levy, and Jim Tozzi) are the award-caressing creators of such comedical zaz as MTV's Wonder Showzen, [adult swim]'s Xavier: Renegade Angel, Snoop Dogg's Doggy Fizzle Televizzle and production entitty behind Jon Glaser's Delocated and Ben Jones's (Paperrad) Neon Knome, among other laughular atrocities. On this night of wonderment, the belly of their colossus will be sliced open, allowing the hilariously writhing guts of their yucks to sluice out and stick your visual ribs. Good luck."
PLAGUE TOWN
After years spent making documentaries about genre movies, British filmmaker David Gregory (Scathed) stepped back into the B-spotlight with this creature feature of his own. When an American family gets lost while on vacation in Ireland, they end up in a remote town. If the title is any indication, the inhabitants aren't exactly friendly. This is especially true for the mutant children. "A boundary-pushing, taboo-breaking experience...Plague Town goes where most mainstream horror films fear to tread" (Fangoria). Dir. David Gregory, 2008, 88 mins.
Playboy Jazz on Film
For close to three decades Playboy Jazz on Film has offered an evening of film clips that highlight the greatest names in jazz. Join us for a 10th year in the Bing where film archivist Mark Cantor will present a series of rare and always swinging performances featuring such artists as Freddie Hubbard, Duke Ellington and his Orchestra with Louie Bellson, Louis Armstrong, Bill Evans, Fats Waller, Jack Teagarden, Lennie Tristano and many others.
Purple Noon
1961/color/115 min. | Scr: Paul Gégauff, René Clément; dir: René Clément; w/ Alain Delon, Maurice Ronet, Marie Laforêt.
As the sun beats down on a yacht in the Mediterranean, two men loll back: privileged, runaway playboy Ronet and penniless hanger-on Delon, sent by Ronet's industrialist father to bring his son back to the family nest. Only one of them will leave that boat alive. The first adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley gave 24-year-old Delon his breakthrough role as the charming, amoral sociopath Tom Ripley, who believes he can get away with anything… and under the taut direction of expert storyteller Clément (Forbidden Games), he almost does. "Against some sparkling backgrounds of the blue Tyrrhenian Sea, a fishing port on the Gulf of Salerno and the tree-shaded avenues of Rome, director Clement unfolds a dark tale that is as fascinating as it is dazzlingly beautiful. Everything is out in the open, yet every deliberate maneuver is an exercise in monstrous deceit which the brilliant color makes more vivid, harsh and alive. As the principal figure in this case, Alain Delon brings an engaging combination of noxious and nice qualities. He is handsome, gracious and pathetic. You want him to succeed, yet you know he is a criminal."—The New York Times.
Real Life
presented by Bob Odenkirk
Albert Brooks' highly underrated film about a documentary filmmaker (Brooks) whose invasion of a "typically American family" to record their lives tears apart the nuclear family, exposing deeper and darker truths about contemporary America and even darker truths about the filmmaker. Brooks' film is raw in its visual patterns, yet the long, uninterrupted takes established him as a director with a unique comic style. Brooks wrote the screenplay with Monica Johnson and Harry Shearer, who also appears (though his face is never seen) as a cameraman--part of one of the funniest running gags in the film. Dir. Albert Brooks, 1979, 99 mins.
REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
(from IMDB)
An NYPD cop is 'killed' in an accident. The death is faked, and he is inducted into the organization CURE, dedicated to preserving the constitution by working outside of it. Remo is to become the enforcement wing (assassin) of CURE, and learns an ancient Korean martial art from Chiun, the Master of Sinanju. Based on the popular pulp series "The Destroyer," by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy. Dir. Guy Hamilton, 1985, 121 min.
Rififi
1955/b&w/118 min. | Scr/dir: Jules Dassin; w/ Jean Servais, Jules Dassin.
After making such American noir classics as The Naked City and Brute Force, blacklisted director Jules Dassin found himself unemployable and penniless in Paris when an agent offered him a script originally intended for Jean-Pierre Melville who had dropped out of the project. With Melville's blessing, Dassin embarked on his masterpiece: a twisting, turning tale of four ex-cons who hatch one last glorious heist in the City of Lights. At once naturalistic and expressionistic—Dassin imbued the rainy streets of Paris with the same gritty realism that marked his earlier films shot on location in New York and London—this mélange of suspense, brutality, and dark humor was an international hit and earned Dassin the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival. With a restrained score by famed composer Georges Auric, and sets by the great designer Alexandre Trauner who had worked on Children of Paradise. "The most talked about sequence in Rififi is a silent half hour during which four men rob a jewelry store. It is like a documentary on how to disconnect a burglar alarm and open a safe, and it is thoroughly engrossing because we see the criminals as craftsmen and we celebrate their teamwork, their finesse, their triumph. Ironically we find ourselves sympathizing with their honest exhaustion after their dishonest work. From there on the film follows the tradition of Scarface, Public Enemy and The Asphalt Jungle and brings the tragic trapped figures to a finish so cadaverous that, as one critic remarked, 'The lesson that crime doesn't pay is taught so thoroughly that no one in the cast is left alive to profit from it.'"—Pauline Kael.
ROSA BLANCA
(The White Rose)
(1961, Mexico) Directed by Roberto Gavaldón
Certain topics in Mexican history have not tolerated criticism and consequently have been considered taboo by filmmakers. Among them is the period during the 1930s when vast tracks of agricultural land were appropriated by powerful oil interests. Based on a story by Bruno Traven, Rosa Blanca broached that issue and was banned in Mexico until 1972 and is still one of the country's most noted cases of censorship, in part because of Gavaldón's status as an established commercial director. The film centers on a proud farmer, Jacinto Yanez, and his battle with an American-owned oil company. When Yanez refuses to sell the rich, fertile land his family has tilled for generations, the company hatches a plot to lure Yanez to Los Angeles where he mysteriously disappears. Once the defiant patriarch is out of the way, the bulldozers start rolling in. The highly romanticized imagery that Gavaldón uses to represent the Yanez farm makes its destruction all the more poignant and pointed as an idealized Mexico gives way to a harsh, modern reality.
Based on the novel by Bruno Traven. Producer: Felipe Subervielle. Screenplay: Emilio Carballido, Roberto Gavaldón, Phil Stevenson. Cinematographer: Gabriel Figueroa. Editor: Gloria Schoemann. Cast: Ignacio López Tarso, Christiane Martell, Reinhold Olszewski, Rita Macedo, Begoña Palacios. Presented in Spanish dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 100 min.
SAHARA
(1943) Directed by Zoltan Korda
This gripping WWII war drama stars Bogart as the gruff Sgt. Joe Gunn, commander of a rag-tag group of Allied soldiers (with two POWS in tow) sweating it out in the Libyan desert and outnumbered by advancing Nazi soldiers. When the dwindling group of men finds a dried up well, Gunn plots to use it as a fort (while camouflaging their tiny number), and as a bargaining tool to negotiate with the parched Nazis who are desperate for water. This riveting, thoroughly engaging film is a masterful portrayal of honor, ingenuity and compassion during war.
Columbia. Screenplay: Philip MacDonald, John Howard Lawson, Zoltan Korda. Cinematographer: Rudolph Maté. Editor: Charles Nelson. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Bruce Bennett, J. Carrol Naish, Lloyd Bridges, Rex Ingram. 35mm, 97 min.
Shampoo (1975) – 112 mins.
A classic tale of womanizing and blow-outs in the fast lane of the swinging ‘60s, written by Robert Towne and Warren Beatty. Lee Grant won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress; the film was nominated for Writing, Supporting Actor (Jack Warden) and Art Direction. With Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive and Sony Pictures.
SHANGHAI EXPRESS
(from IMDB)
Many passengers on the Shanghai Express are more concerned that the notorious Shanghai Lil is on board than the fact that a civil war is going on that may make the trip take more than three days. The British Army doctor, Donald Harvey, knew Lil before she became a famous "coaster." A fellow passenger defines a coaster as "a woman who lives by her wits along the China coast." When Chinese guerillas stop the train, Dr. Harvey is selected as the hostage. Lil saves him, but can she make him believe that she really hasn't changed from the woman he loved five years before? Josef von Sternberg drama w/ Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook. 1932-Paramount
Shoot the Piano Player
1960/b&w/81 min./Scope | Scr: Marcel Moussy, François Truffaut; dir: François Truffaut; w/ Charles Aznavour, Marie Dubois, Richard Kanayan.
Based on David Goodis' 1956 novel Down There, Truffaut's comic and heartbreaking second film leaves the "too French" world of The 400 Blows to tell the noirish tale of Charlie (Aznavour) a former concert pianist who goes undercover as the in-house piano player in a divey cafe because he killed in self-defense. When his kid brother Fido is kidnapped by two nitwit thugs, the world comes crashing in on Charlie and Léna (Dubois), his devoted new squeeze. "A strange pastiche of gangster movie, love story and cabaret film with a totally unpredictable plot… Though he never sings in the film, Aznavour poignantly conveys profound sadness, stemming from a crazy family, betrayal, loss and squashed hope. It is a masterstroke of casting."—Time Out.
THE SINFUL DWARF
A most psychotropic, perverted British horror flick. A little piano player named Olaf (Torben Bille) uses his ivory-tickling to lure young girls back to his mother's boarding house, where he drugs them, tortures them, gets them addicted to heroin, and forces them into prostitution. "Repulsive...Torben leers and lurches like a demented Bette Davis" (Variety). Dir. Vidal Raski, 1974, 95 mins.
SPARROWS
(1926) United Artists
The Library of Congress, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, and Glendale Arts join the Alex Film Society to present
Mary Pickford in SPARROWS
In association with the Library of Congress, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and Glendale Arts, AFS presents a screening of the restored silent classic, Sparrows, Mary Pickford’s 1926 dramatic story of abused orphans.
The 35mm print will be accompanied by a live organ performance featuring famed silent film organist Robert (Bob) Mitchell and is the only Los Angeles screening scheduled.
Considered to be Mary Pickford's best feature, Sparrows is an expert blend of thrilling spectacle and hissable villainy. The story concerns a group of orphan children held in virtual slavery on a southern farm surrounded by a treacherous swamp. In the climax, Mollie (Pickford) leads the children to safety after a hair-raising chase through a wilderness filled with alligators and quicksand. This transfer comes from the original 35mm material, from Pickford''s own collection, with a wonderful score by Gaylord Carter. "A gorgeous restoration--Pristine--Sparrows is beautifully mounted, richly Dickensian" (John Hartl, Seattle Times). Also included are two early shorts directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Pickford: Wilful Peggy (1910) and The Mender of Nets (1912), both from the original 35mm William Beaudine---USA---1926---81 mins.
THE TAKING OF BEVERLY HILLS
(from IMDB)
A chemical spill has caused the occupants of Beverly Hills to be forcibly evacuated. A retiring football player left behind finds that the toxic gas emulating from the spill is a bogus front for a heist set up by fired police officers out to plunder the city of all its valuables. Finding himself siding with a corrupt cop who was once a part of the plan until he discovered the city's mayor had just been blown away by one of the chief crooks in charge. Now both on the run with no help in sight...both must do whatever they can to stop these murderous looters. Dir. Sidney J. Furie, 1991, 96 min.
13 Most Beautiful... Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests
(USA, 1964, 75 mins)
Directed By: Andy Warhol
Producer: Andy Warhol
Cast: Richard Rheem, Ann Buchanan, Paul America, Edie Sedgwick, Billy Name, Susan Bottomly, Dennis Hopper, Mary Woronov, Freddy Herko, Nico, Ingrid Superstar, Lou Reed, Jane Holzer
Music: Dean Wareham & Britta Phillips
Acclaimed musical group Dean & Britta provide live accompaniment to Andy Warhol’s starkly beautiful black & white 16mm portraits of Factory luminaries like Nico, Lou Reed, and Edie Sedgwick.
THRASHIN'
Two skateboarding gangs battle each other for supremacy, and a member of one gang falls in love with the sister of his rival. Dir. David Winters, 1986, 93 mins.
THE THRILL KILLERS
Director Ray Dennis Steckler (aka Cash Flagg) made this grubby shocker about a band of marauders who randomly terrorize wealthy Los Angeles suburbs and kill indiscriminately. With Cash Flagg, Liz Renay, Brick Bardo, Carolyn Brandt and Atlas King. Dir. Ray Dennis Steckler, 1965, 82 mins.
TOMORROW'S DRIVERS
(1954) Directed by Jam Handy Organization
Tiny toddlers drive kiddy-cars and issue toy traffic tickets in this mind-bender narrated by Jimmy Stewart.
DVD, B/W, 11 min.
Touchez pas au Grisbi
1954/b&w/ 90 min. | Scr: Jacques Becker, Maurice Griffe Albert Simonin; dir: Jacques Becker; w/ Jean Gabin, Lino Ventura, Jeanne Moreau.
The gangsters in Touchez pas au Grisbi ("don't touch the loot") skew toward the middle-aged and courtly, but is there ever really honor among thieves? Released in 1954, Becker's humanistic evocation of a Montmartre criminal demimonde provided a new model for the French crime film and the movie's success paved the way for Dassin's Rififi and Melville's Bob le flambeur. In addition to its generic innovations, Grisbi marked the post-war comeback of Popular Front icon Jean Gabin. Suave and smart, his Max always has a well-appointed lair and a young doll on his arm (Note: a young, ponytail-switching Jeanne Moreau plays a treacherous piece of fluff.) The camera dotes upon Gabin, revealing both a congenital loner who radiates solidarity and a tough guy who pads through one scene in his jammies. But when Max's dim-witted buddy is kidnapped by a sleazy drug lord (Gallic heavy Lino Ventura in his first film) and their stash of gold bars worth 50 million francs is demanded as ransom, Max goes to war—old-school style. "Grisbi is based, as was Rififi, on a Simenon série noire novel whose chief merit was its characters' slang. But Becker uses his technical mastery to weave the strands of the action into a study of loyalty and friendship and a sympathetic portrait of a man of action becoming too old for his way of life. Jean Wiener contributes an excellent haunting theme tune that was very popular in France."—Georges Sadoul.
True Stories
(from IMDB)
presented by Tim & Eric
David Byrne of Talking Heads fame visits a typical (and fictional) Texas town, on the eve of the town's celebration of the state's sesquicentennial. He meets various colorful local characters, most notably Lewis Fyne, a big-hearted bachelor in search of matrimony. Dir. David Byrne, 1986, 90 min.
TV Tuesday: Unaired TV Pilots
TV Tuesday is back, and this time with things never actually played on TV! For every series that makes it on the air, there's a gaggle of dream projects that lie on the TV junkpile. Every season, test run "pilots" (a sample debut episode of a show that was conceived, written, cast and shot, only most likely to be rejected by the network that commissioned it) are made by the score, and end up sitting on a shelf somewhere, gathering dust. In a way, every successful comedian of note has their own "The Day The Clown Cried", a labor of love that has gone virtually unseen by anyone except those in the inner circles of Hollywood. Come check out with us a night of alternate television history, in which K-CINE TV presents a night of new-to-you shows made anytime in the last four decades.
Uncle Yanco
(1967, Cine-Tamaris,, 22 min.) While in San Francisco for the promotion of her last film in October 1967, Agnes Varda, tipped by her friend Tom Luddy, gets to know a relative she had never heard of before, Jean Varda, nicknamed Yanco. This hitherto unknown uncle lives on a boat in Sausalito, is a painter, has adopted a hippie lifestyle and loves life. The meeting is a very happy one. Discussion following with director Agnes Varda, moderated by film critic Kevin Thomas.
UNDERWORLD
The Alloy Orchestra brings its unique energy and dynamic sound quality to this stylistic precursor of the 1930s gangster film, with allusions to real-world Chicago mobsters. In the first year of the Academy Awards, “Underworld” won for Ben Hecht’s original story. This film also helped cement the reputation of a visually inventive, up-and-coming director named Josef von Sternberg.
Cast George Bancroft, Clive Brook, Evelyn Brent, Larry Semon, Fred Kohler, Helen Lynch, Jerry Mandy, Karl Morse. Directed by Josef von Sternberg. Presented by Adolph Zukor, Jesse L. Lasky. Screenplay Robert N. Lee. Adaptation Charles Furthman. Story Ben Hecht. Titles George Marion Jr. Cinematography Bert Glennon. Film Editing E. Lloyd Sheldon. Set Design Hans Dreier. Paramount Famous Lasky Corp; A Hector Turnbull Production. Paramount Pictures. 1927. 35mm. 80 mins. Print courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
UNITED RED ARMY
(2007, Japan) Directed by Koji Wakamatsu
While there has been no shortage of films devoted to the Vietnam-era student radical groups in the U.S. and Europe, the movement's parallel Japanese exponents have remained largely unknown in the West. Until now. This obsessively detailed docudrama from director Koji Wakamatsu--a storied figure in Japan's soft-core erotic cinema--traces the rise and fall of the titular militant organization from its idealistic formation to its violent implosion during a 10-day standoff with police in 1972.
Conceived as a corrective to an earlier, authorized film version of those events told from the perspective of the cops, Wakamatsu's underground epic--for which the filmmaker mortgaged and then destroyed (on camera) his own home--employs a liberal blend of documentary footage and bracing, sometimes intensely brutal dramatized reenactments to immerse us in the psyches of the radicals themselves, as they turn first against one another and finally the invading authorities. The nail-biting tension is enhanced by an original psychedelic rock score from Sonic Youth's Jim O'Rourke.
Producer: Muneko Ozaki. Screenwriter: Koji Wakamatsu, Masayuki Kakegawa. Cinematographer: Yoshihisa Toda, Tomohiko Tsuji. Cast: Maki Sakai, Akie Namiki, Go Jibiki. Presented in Japanese dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 190 min.
VAGABOND (SANS TOIT NI LOI), 1985, Cine-Tamaris, 107 min. Agnes Varda’s most acclaimed work since CLEO and arguably the greatest French film of the 1980s, VAGABOND tells the brutal, simple, yet unrelenting story of the last months in the life of a young female drifter. Sandrine Bonnaire’s harrowing performance in the lead role made her an overnight international star at the age of 18. (The French title of the film literally translates as "without roof or law.") Shot in a semi-documentary style, the film opens abruptly on the body of Mona, frozen to death in a ditch on the side of the road. Interspersed with flashbacks of Mona's life as a drifter are reminiscences by the people she met along the way. In spite of Varda’s attention, Mona ultimately remains unknowable, even to herself. She is a cipher, misunderstood by those she has encountered even as they recall their impressions and interactions with her for the camera. Discussion in between films with director Agnes Varda.
Vashti Bunyan: From Here To Before
For many cult artists, rediscovery comes too late; they never live to know their art has been reappraised, and is being loved by generations not even born when they were at work. In the case of Vashti Bunyan, the “Godmother of Freak Folk”, thirty years of obscurity ended in 2000 with the rediscovery of her lost classic album “Just Another Diamond Day”--inspired by an end-to-end journey across the U.K. by horse and carriage--and her subsequent reintroduction into a mainstream she was never part of in the first place. A lyrical, modern day road movie, From Here To Before is a wonderfully evocative film that retraces Vashti’s extraordinary trip across the British Isles. and sets it against the backdrop of her first high profile London concert. Featuring rare interviews with music luminaries Andrew Loog Oldham, Joe Boyd and Robert Kirby and musicians such as Devendra Banhart, Max Richter and Adem Ilhan.
Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman
2008/color/83 min./digital projection | Scr: Eric Bricker, Phil Ethington, Jessica Hundley, Lisa Hughes; dir: Eric Bricker.
This new documentary, narrated by Dustin Hoffman, explores the monumental career of the 98-year-old Los Angeles-based architectural photographer. Julius Shulman combines the organic with the synthetic, melding nature with revolutionary urban design in images that helped shape the careers of some of the key architects of the twentieth century, including Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, Pierre Koenig, and John Lautner.
We regret to inform that Julius Shulman will no longer attend as previously announced, but a selection of books signed by him will be available on the day of the screening.
In addition, the Photographic Arts Council will have the limited edition, signed benefit print Disney Hall at Twilight by Julius Shulman and Juergen Nogai available for purchase.
Where's Poppa?
presented by Sarah Silverman
According to tonight's host, Sarah Silverman, "I chose Where's Poppa? because I saw it once, and it blew my mind." We can vouch for the virtues of Carl Reiner's 1970 jet black comedy, which, along with being an absolute classic of crass, loud, tush-baring tastelessness, is also a period piece. George Segal stars as a turn-of-the-century schlamazel dying to throw his nutty, senile mom (Ruth Gordon, perfect as always) off a proverbial train. Matters are complicated when he meets the woman of his dreams, played to WASPy perfection by Trish Van Devere. Says Sarah: "It's so hardcore and silly, and funny in a way that I think is emerging now. I was surprised it existed then. Also, I only saw it once, and to be honest I fell asleep at the end. It wasn't the movie's fault, it just happens when I watch movies in bed. So it will be nice to know how one of my favorite movies ends." Come find out how it ends (and begins) tonight-- you haven't lived until you've seen Ruth Gordon wack a gorilla-suited George Segal in his hairy, hairy balls.
Dir. Carl Reiner, 1970, 35mm, 82 min.
WHO'S MINDING THE STORE?
The only director with a style wild and wacky enough to match Lewis' manic energy and rubber-limbed physicality (along with the experience and savoir faire to earn his personal respect), Frank Tashlin directed the best Jerry Lewis films not directed by the King of Comedy himself. "Tash", as Lewis affectionately called him, was also a bit of a mentor; he said Tashlin taught him "everything I ever learned" about filmmaking. And he knew a lot: his resumé included creating classic cartoons for Disney and Warner Brothers, and writing gags for Bob Hope and the Marx Brothers. So we present a double-bill of two great Lewis films he directed. First off, we have Who's Minding The Store?, a series of insane gags set in a mammoth department store, with Lewis' failing all the way to the top of the business.
Who's Minding The Store? Dir. Frank Tashlin, 1963, 35mm, 90 min.
Winnebago Man
(special sneak preview!)
Jack Rebney, aka "the angriest RV salesman in the world", has delighted and fascinated millions of viewers with the hilariously foul-mouthed and ill-tempered outtakes from a Winnebago promotional video he made in the 80s--one of the first and best underground videos to be passed hand-to-hand, before the internet turned him into a full-blown phenomena. Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer takes on the seemingly impossible task of tracking down Jack, and his journey turns into a fascinating exploration of viral video culture, and what it means on a personal level to its sometimes unwilling subjects. When he finally tracks down Rebney, the real man is more savvy, irrascible (of course), deep, weird, and cool than you could have possibly hoped for, and turns out to be more than able to hold his own in the modern media culture. In short, he is a star. A lovely and hilarious look at one man's response to Internet humiliation, and how that so-called "humiliation" can become a beacon of light to many. All hail Jack Rebney: the patron saint of our collective frustrations.
Dir. Ben Steinbauer, 2009, HDCAM, 90 min.
The Year My Parents Went On Vacation (O Ano Em Que Meus Pais Saíram De Férias)
Set in Brazil during the 1970 World Cup, this poignant coming-of-age story thrusts twelve-year-old Mauro (Michel Joelsas) into a maelstrom of political and personal upheaval. When his left-wing parents are forced underground, Mauro is left in the care of his Jewish grandfather's neighbor (Germano Hauit) in São Paulo and forced to create an ersatz family from the diverse, colorful population of his new neighborhood. (Brazil, 2008, 105 min. Rated PG. In Portuguese with English subtitles.)
Zebraman
Lowly teacher Ichikawa (Takashi Miike regular Sho Aikawa), ignored by his children and cuckolded by his wife, has one secret joy: putting on his homemade superhero costume and patrolling the city at night. His masked alter ego is based on "Zebraman", a Power Rangers-style TV show from his youth that was canceled after a handful of episodes were aired. What he doesn't know is that the series was intended to be a warning to the world about a real alien invasion. When green slime monsters begin killing people on the school grounds, Ichikawa has to man up and become the hero he always longed to be. With loving recreations of old kaiju shows, fantasies about defeating a crab monster via the aid of Zebra Nurse, and scenes demonstrating the difficulty of practical superheroing, this is one of Miike's funniest films. Plus, zebra-striped Pegasus vs. giant alien amoeba. How can you resist?
Dir. Takashi Miike, 2004, 35mm, 115 min.