On the Marquee Tonight

The 400 Blows. I haven't watched Truffaut's first feature in almost ten years, when the Castro Theatre brought a giant retrospective of the director to town. It's at the Red Vic one last night, and I've got a Punch Card burning a hole in my pocket. As a member of the What Time Is It There? fan club, I'm overdue to see the film it "samples" again, before I get exposed like one of those fauxs who pose at Marginal Prophets shows.

If you miss this, it's pretty much all hits at the Red Vic in January:

Wong Kar-wai's Fallen Angels January 8th (a gap in my Wong-ography) followed by two nights of Ashes of Time Redux which I wrote on a bit here.

Hiroshi Teshigahara's Antonio Gaudí, a regular attraction at the venue, at least until it was released on a Criterion DVD nearly a year ago. That shouldn't scare off the Red Vic loyalists, though. Right?

A midnight screening of Jackie Chan's The Legend of the Drunken Master from 1994, on Sunday January 11th. Will the Red Vic become Frisco's next viable midnight movie venue?


One of my favorite films of 2008, Ballast, plays January 14-15. See my interview with the director, Lance Hammer. But more importantly, see this film on the big screen if you haven't had a chance to yet.

People have been telling me to see the American Astronaut for years now. Hopefully I'll finally get around to it, now that director Cory McAbee has a new film scheduled for Sundance and I won't be in Utah to see it.

Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre Sa Vie January 18-19- I usually cite this as my favorite Godard.

Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars January 20-21.

And what would we do without the eighties? Perhaps be rolled over by the snowballing nineties revival, kicking and screaming? 'Til then, The Dark Crystal plays January 22.