All Purpose NYC ILX Film Snob Thread

(FTA on DVD later this month)

the class is good. kinda reminded me of claire denis, it's bold enough to really discuss and present ambiguously, for the most part.

i got to stahl's magnificent obsession in the end and loved it.

& i have given up on paul schrader films entirely - is that the one he made last year?

glad you liked! the church sequence has stuck with me ever since i watched it

maybe it's even better than Love Affair (which I didn't realize was same year for Boyer-Dunne).

haha, no schlump, it's a '78 labor unrest film w/ maybe Richard Pryor's best acting role. Schrader says Pryor hit both Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto on the set.

re Oscar Micheaux, for Reade retro:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/life-comes-through-20090204

and Robt Downey Sr retro returns to Anthology:

http://www.hammertonail.com/genre/comedy/downey-sr-a-prince-but-also-a-man-possessed/

damn, trying to figure how I can squeeze in Chafed Elbows and No More Excuses!

gah, not sure i can do either this weekend, schoolwork starting to snowball again

Laszlo Szabo to do Q&A at Made In U.S.A screening at FF this Friday.

Japan Society "Shinjuku Ecstasy: Independent Films from the Art Theatre Guild of Japan" series, Feb 18-March 1:

http://www.japansociety.org/shinjuku_ecstasy

Throw Away Your Books, Let's Go into the Street has to be one of the best titles ever.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/movies/11coop.html

^^yeah, pretty pissed off about this. this is a pretty bad time for film archives (and pretty much every other arts organization) right now

i'm down for funeral parade of roses

Wow, that really sucks. The FMC is necessary for most of these to be seen at all (particularly the parts of the collection that don't overlap with Canyon).

Like the kid in that photo, I was once a Co-op intern, and while I don't know all the details, it really doesn't seem like P.S. 1 would need all the space on that floor for the radio station (iirc, they've been running something similar from there for a while); the FMC collection fills only a small room. And even if they're able to find another space, moving all those films is a ton of work, as illustrated here.

a ton of potentially dangerous work if some of the prints are fragile (and i imagine in many cases they are)

Yeah, that's largely true, but the Co-op is primarily a distributor rather than an archive, so it's not like rare negatives are in danger of being destroyed. It's more a question of these movies' (relative) availability to the public than their existence somewhere.

Maybe that Sicilian town will house them.

I love this guy

Here's another good article about him.

Might go to 6/7:30 Depression double feature at the FF tonight.

I belong to a (semi-defunct) vintage comedy viewing group, one of whose members kept nitrate prints under the sink as a teen/YA. They exploded one day and totaled his parents' bathroom (no casualties).

trying to figure if i shd take double plunge tonight for Micheaux silent @Reade:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0011870/

and then Vitaphone variety shorts at FF:

http://www.filmforum.org/films/breadlines.html#vitaphone

I've seen the Jolson picture, it's good.

I recently read a bunch of the Scott Eyman book about the transition to sound, so I'm pretty curious about the Vitaphones. Thanks for the tip. I might see you there.

That was pretty good and nice to run into you at the end. Did you hear me trying to shout down the cacklers?

no. not at Will Hays I hope...

Were you there for the Will Hays? They were hooting all the way through.

a rare instance of appropriate hooting, imho.

Even though it was Will Hays, it really bugged me all these people laughing at this guy acting like he was addressing a large theater audience and not knowing how to behave in front of a camera.

the arm gestures were pretty choice.

RIP new yorker films:

http://www.indiewire.com/article/end_of_the_road_for_new_yorker_films_legendary_distributor_of_difficult_cin/

ouch. rip

yikes, so much March stuff!

http://sallitt.blogspot.com/2009/02/assorted-screenings-in-nyc-march-2009.html

has anyone made it to 12 at the filmforum? i might go tonight but need to plot a chart assessing quality/length (160 min).

not me. no time for this or that Ferreri film @ BAM.

if ferreri is the dillinger film, i think that's winning the battle for my evening. then stahl soon at filmforum!, too. i really regret not seeing more of the anthology retro.

wish i'd remembered about the film at the lincoln last night too

Hurt Locker tomw @WRT for me

Kuchar Bros fest begins tom'w @ Anthology. Brilliant, hilarious precursors to John Waters, among other niches.

http://www.movingimagesource.us/events/a-lust-for-ecstasy-brand-new-20090311

hi today i got to fix some sprocket holes in the LoC print of the quiet man

i predict that maybe 1 person will find this at all interesting and that person probably posts to this thread

present!

Catch Leave It to Heaven att ff if you haven't; about 25 ppl at my show, derisive chuckles from at least 6 throughout... The color is as stupendous as is some of the later Sirks; wow Gene Tierney on a horse with an urn!

Wow, gotta see that. Saw about five seconds of some Scorcese doc about history of cinema and the clips from that really stood out. Plus look at the disparate group of characters that are repping for it on the FF website: guy that wrote some Godard books, guy that wrote some film noir books, Guy Maddin, and many of the usual suspects, among others.

climaxes w/ most surreal abstract courtroom sequence ever.

I think my Kuchars sched is Friday 9pm, Saturday 5 & 7, Tuesday 7.

The color is as stupendous as is some of the later Sirks;

yeah, it's like le mepris or something. totally great.

OK, went to see this last night. Lives up to the hype.

oh by the way: le mepris actually came to mind way more watching DILLINGER IS DEAD. did any of you get to it? i owe myself ferreri films now.

last Kuchar programs tnite at 7 & 9

What should I see from the BAM series of Nagisa Oshima films?
http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=1017

as much as possible.

S/D: Nagisa Oshima, renegade filmmaker

since my week is insanely imploding already, I'll probably screw it and go to the Dreyer silent at BAM tnite:

http://onfilm.chicagoreader.com/movies/capsules/6016_MASTER_OF_THE_HOUSE

planning on BAM Oshima tomw & Thurs.

forgot about that. i will probably randomly pick a couple. has anyone ever seen that bresson film that's really hard to get that's called something like four nights of a dreamer or something? one of the oshima pics reminded me of it, synopsis wise

As posted on Rolling Documentary thread, you guys need to see this, imo it's one of the best documentaries of the past couple years (/ever). Don't do any research at all before you go to it, it could kinda ruin the experience.