I Only Have Two Eyes: Carl Martin

2008 was another great year for Frisco Bay repertory/revival screenings. I'm so pleased that a number of local cinephiles have agreed to provide a list of their favorite events attended here over the year. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from Carl Martin, co-founder of the Film On Film Foundation:

i feel like meryl streep in sophie's choice, having to pick only 10 films. here they are, in chronological order (of viewing):

march 4, castro: rolling thunder. a slow burn that finally erupts, but never overstates its case.

april 5, red vic: wild style. incorrectly shown widescreen, assembled with ugly opaque splices (in fact, due to the way the soundtrack was printed, it probably shouldn't have been assembled at all, but the red vic doesn't run changeovers). but this scrappy film captures the dawn of a subculture with inspiration. better than beat street.

may 1, castro: the night they raided minsky's. just a lovely, lovely print of an early friedkin that noone talks about. why not? it's great! shown on big reels: bad idea--see wild style.

may 16, ybca: the velvet undergroud and nico: a symphony of sound. two single-shot reels of the velvets jamming while the camera operator freaks out panning and zooming, creating cubist chaos from a fixed camera position. the show stopped and started again near the beginning for some reason.

june 10, red vic: medium cool. i think this was a technicolor print. it was beat to hell. its beauty made me cry.

august 17, castro: bobby deerfield. print was pink--nobody's made new prints because nobody likes this movie except me. the image structure looked very nice though, and pacino's fantastic, sleep-driving through life obliquely.

september 19, pfa: brief encounter. i'd never seen early lean before this pfa series. he was a master of pathos and this picture just swoons.

november 8, castro: trapeze. print was pretty yucky, frankly. dupey with ugly grain (grain should be beautiful!), and it looked like it should be 2.55 ratio, not 2.35, though imdb disagrees. nothing the castro could do about it anyways. but lancaster and lollobrigida mesmerized me, and oh, the delirious aerial sequences! clearly a kubrick inspiration.

december 13, pfa: the moment of truth. technicolor print. captures the milieu elliptically but perfectly, verite-style. holy cow! the bullfighting is real!

december 14, ybca: l'eden et après. the whole robbe-grillet series was fantastic and the prints were gorgeous. this one was in color, no, it _was_ color. dreamy, delirious, delightful. some focus issues on one projector.