Seven Centimeters

What a spectacular shot. It's a dramatic moment in Lawrence of Arabia. We've been following a certain character through a particularly difficult, waterless ordeal in the desert. Then, off in the distance a tiny speck appears on the line between sand and sky, still too small to be confirmed as anything other than a mirage. But now, just as Maurice Jarre's triumphant score swells on the soundtrack, we can just barely make out that the speck has become a moving object, approaching the camera, surrounded by a screen-full, a world-full, of empty space. Here's a freeze-frame of the moment:

Oh, you say you can't see the speck on your computer screen? Funny, neither can I. Such are the limitations of standard DVDs. No Blu-Ray release of Lawrence of Arabia has occurred, nor is there any officially on the, ahem, horizon. It hardly needs reminding that for the overwhelming majority of us, home and mobile video have long since become the default methods of viewing movies more than a month or so old. No wonder; digital and video have made the alternative that used to be the norm, the theatrical revival screening, seem inconvenient and expensive by comparison. For those lucky few of us who live in places like New York, Paris, Berlin and even San Francisco, however, classic films still live and breathe in theatres, where their makers expected them to be seen.

It's hard to imagine a better time for a San Francisco movie lover to partake in the by-now almost subversive act of watching a great classic film in a cinema, than when our city's architectural pride and joy, the Castro Theatre, devotes its screen to a 70mm film series, as it will for eight days starting this Saturday night, when it plays West Side Story, which repeats on Sunday. Monday and Tuesday bring Jacques Tati's Play Time, which I'd like to see in 70mm at least once every year. Another movie I can never tire of plays Wednesday, Thursday and Friday: Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. The series wraps up the following Saturday and Sunday (June 11 & 12) with twice-daily showings of Lawrence of Arabia.

Yes, all four of these titles are available on DVD. One of them (guess which!) is even available as a Blu-Ray. But it's still a hotly-debated topic whether or not Blu-Ray can look as good as a pristine, well-projected standard (35mm) film projection. I don't want to get too technical here, but I'll just say that I'm aware of almost* no-one who's claiming that digital formats can compete with 70mm film, projected from strips about twice as wide as in a standard film reel, and with roughly four times as much resolution. The clarity of 70mm is simply unbeatable in my book.

The Castro is the only San Francisco theatre equipped to show classic films in 70mm, but this is their first such series in two years. It was intended to be even more ambitious as originally planned. Two films, Tron (which I've seen in eye-popping 70mm with a sold-out Castro crowd) and It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (which I've never seen) were hoped to be part of the series, but because the Castro's 70mm projection equipment needs an expensive repair before it can handle certain prints (getting technical again, they can only show prints with DTS Audio timecode at the moment) those two titles had to be canceled. I hope audience turnout for this series encourages the Castro management that there's an audience hungry for 70mm, making the prospect of shelling out for the repair a no-brainer. If all goes well, maybe we'll be able to see Tron and other films in 70mm relatively soon after all. Take that, DVD!

My Two Eyes

I've been so pleased with the participation in this year's "I Only Have Two Eyes" project, collecting lists of favorite repertory/revival film watching experiences had in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2010 from 21 other Frisco Bay film-watchers. The entire set of contributions is collected here. But I haven't yet published my own list of ten. Here it finally is, in the order in which I saw them:

Pitfall
Outfitted with a series pass, I was able to catch more of Noir City 8 than any of its previous Castro Theatre editions. The best of the set, to my determination, was the this series opener, a still-underrated marital thriller directed by Andre De Toth. This searing critique of post-war America's stifling suburban ideal stars Dick Powell at his most embittered, with Lisabeth Scott and Jane Greer terrific in supporting roles. However, it's Raymond Burr who nearly steals the show as the extremely menacing villain of the picture, a role that prefigures his own future as one of filmdom's most effective heavies, as well as the terrorizing Burl Ives role that drives the action in De Toth's later masterpiece, Day of the Outlaw (which later in the year played the Roxie if unfortunately in a severely compromised 16mm print).

Trafic
Only two things could have enhanced this year's complete Jacques Tati retrospective, held on both sides of the Bay at the Pacific Film Archive and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (with other Tati screenings at the Red Vic and Rafael): a supplimental 70mm screening of Playtime at a venue equipped to show the increasingly-uncommon format, and a showing of Tati's first feature Jour de Fete at a time that didn't conflict with my unavoidable non-cinephile activities. The plus side of the latter "defect" in the otherwise tremendous undertaking is that I still have an unseen Tati film to look forward to. Trafic, which I also had never seen until YBCA's screening in early 2010, is something of a spiritual sequel to Playtime, and nearly as great. Where the 1967 film wanders through Paris like a seemingly-directionles tourist, this one takes a more linear road-movie approach to its playful but cutting jibes at modern transportation and leisure.

That Night's Wife
In 2010 I was thankful that the VIZ Cinema provided numerous opportunities to revisit some of the best films by perhaps my most consistent favorite of Japanese directors, Yasujiro Ozu: Late Spring, Tokyo Story, Late Autumn, etc. But this Pacific Film Archive screening of Ozu's 1931 silent That Night's Wife, shown with an accompaniment by the superb pianist Judith Rosenberg, trumped even those screenings in opening a window to a younger filmmaker's creative range; the sequence of a vigil in a cramped apartment space shows just how radical (and dramatically effective) Ozu's approach to cinematic temporality could get.

Dodsworth
More than any other cinema on Frisco Bay, the Stanford (or the St. Anford, as a friend recently re-Christened the venue) functions as a temple to one man's cinematic taste. Lucky for us, David Packard has great taste in 1930s-50s Hollywood (and British) cinema! I shuttled to Palo Alto more often than usual in 2010, and was particularly excited to see a 35mm print of the heartrending Make Way For Tomorrow, which I'd only ever seen on a bootlegged VHS tape before. That its previously-unfamiliar-to-me double-bill mate, William Wyler's Dodworth was nearly able to match Leo McCarey's masterpiece in its emotional pull, and even surpass it in its unpandering sophistication, seemed miraculous and still does months later.

Ran
I usually like to reserve slots on my own personal "I Only Have Two Eyes" lists for films I'd never seen before at all, but I had to make this exception this year, for this film that jumped most dizzingly highly in my estimation when finally viewed in 35mm. When I viewed it on VHS as a college student, it was my first exposure to Kurosawa and, indeed, to non-sci-fi Japanese motion pictures, though in fact at the time its 16th Century feudal mileu felt more alien to me than any animated robot or rubber-suited beastie. I'd never gotten around to revisiting it even after becoming a guarded Kurosawa fan, and still harbored the suspicion that it had been overrated by those who ranked it among his best films. But in 2010, "the Emperor"'s centennial year, when I was able to employ the VIZ & PFA to fill in a number of my Kurosawa-gaps (the Quiet Duel being my favorite new discovery) and revisit a couple favorites (Stray Dog, High & Low), it was the extended engagement of Ran at the Embarcadero which provided me with my most fundamental re-understanding of the master's bold artistry. It cannot hurt to know how closely the re-worked Lear story sometimes parallels Kurosawa's late-career struggles as a cast-off from the industry he did so much to build. It also cannot hurt to see those colors (all that blood-and-fire red!) cast in a glorious new print on a big screen.

Le Bonheur
Speaking of color. It seems fitting that I caught up with what I now think of as Agnès Varda's greatest masterpiece (though I love Cleo From 5 To 7, Vagabond and The Gleaners & I deeply) thanks to a PFA series devoted to preservation. Not just because it seems miraculous that these natural, vivid but never gaudy hues and cries could have been photographed in the mid-sixties, and restored lovingly for us today. But also because, in its way this painfully truthful fable is all about the possibilities and impossibilities of preservation and restoration of love relationships and families. Just drawing the film up in my mind again months after seeing it, I find myself shuddering to the memory of its beauty and its ultimate, still shocking agony.

The Chelsea Girls
I've never held much truck with the frequent assertion that the proper role of music in film is: not to be noticed. Becoming something of an aficionado of live musical scores to silent films has only solidified my position. It's harder to dispute that the performative element the projectionist provides to a film showing should be unnoticed if it's to be appreciated. But there are clear-cut exceptions, and The Chelea Girls is the most prominent one. With two projectors running reels side-by-side on the screen, with a fair amount of latitude available to toggle between soundtracks from the control booth, it's probably fair to say there can (and should) be no frame-definitive version of this Andy Warhol film, making a screening (this one was at SFMOMA) feel something akin to a maddening, exhilarating, frustrating, but somehow also illuminating concert experience. "Everything is more glamorous when you do it in bed," Warhol once wrote. I would hope he'd make an exception for watching The Chelsea Girls.

Pastorale D'ete
I could easily have made a respectible top ten, or twenty, or thirty, culling only from the locally-produced experimental short films I watched and re-watched as part of the still-ongoing Radical Light series in support of the fantastic book published last year. Supplemented by a number of SFMOMA screenings in the Spring (and a couple in the Fall), the Radical Light project made 2010 the year the filmic floodgates really opened for me, and the trickle of knowledge and appreciation I had for Frisco Bay's storied history of avant-garde film scenes became a hearty river. Any year allowing me to finally see Will Hindle's Chinese Firedrill, Kerry Laitala's Retrospectoscope, John Luther Schofill's Filmpiece for Sunshine, Dion Vigne's North Beach, Barbara Hammer's Dyketactics, Sidney Peterson's The Lead Shoes (three times!), Jordan Belson's Allures, Ernie Gehr's Side/Walk/Shuttle, Dominic Angerame's Deconstruction Sight and Premonition, Dorothy Wiley's Miss Jesus Fries on the Grill, Allen Willis, David Myers and Philip Greene's Have You Sold Your Dozen Roses?, Chuck Hudina's Icarus, and Frank Stauffacher's Sausalito, and to rewatch Tominaro Nishikawa's Market Street, Bruce Conner's Looking For Mushrooms, Take the 5:10 to Dreamland and a Movie, George Kuchar's Wild Night in El Reno, Curt McDowell's Confessions, Hy Hirsch's Eneri, Chris Marker's Junkopia, Gunvor Nelson's Schmeerguntz, and especially Bruce Baillie's The Gymnasts and All My Life (and meet the man himself), and just as especially Christopher Maclaine's The End (and become involved in an intensive collaborative project attempting to retrace Maclaine's steps and talk to survivors of his cohort, most notably Wilder Bentley II) is simply an astoundingly rich one. But above even all of these, it was a new restoration of Hindle's first film Pastourale D'été whose nine minutes burned most brilliantly into my retinal hippocampus during its PFA screening. Shot in the kind of hillside landscape I'd always incorrectly imagined to be typical of the famous Canyon, California until I finally visited the forested town last September, and edited to an Arthur Honegger composition on equipment built by Hindle himself, this nature study is the clearest justification of the zoom lens I've ever observed. The first film made by a director (scarcely) better known for his more claustrophobic later works, it won an award at the 3rd San Francisco International Film Festival in 1959.

Times Square
One of the most heartening developments on the Frisco Bay film scene last year was the re-emergence of the Roxie as a genuinely adventurous, calendered, repertory theatre that can play excellent host to imaginative events. The only known print of this feisty teenaged melodrama set against the punk and new wave scene in 1980 Manhattan provides a unique semi-documentary look at a very specific historical moment, but the film is also special because of how seriously director Allan Moyle takes the relationship between his two leads. Nicky Marotta & Pamela Pearl may represent the 'bad girl' and the 'daddy's girl' but they bust out of their archetypes thrillingly.

Braverman's Condensed Cream of the Beatles
I'm slightly embarrassed that after hearing about the place for years, it took my April move into a loft space shockingly nearby to Oddball Film & Video for me to actually start visiting this unique film archive and screening venue. I took in four of the locale's regular weekend evening shows, including a Saturday-after-Thanksgiving pair of not-exactly themed shorts programs compiled by Lynn Cursaro and Carl Martin of the Film On Film Foundation. Amidst delightful rarities like Red Ball Express, Doubletalk, and Zoo was Charles Braverman's (and Gary Rocklen's) psychedelic collage of music and graphics tracing the birth, growth and public separation of the Fab Four. Constructed between the Beatles' break-up and the tragic assassination that quashed all hope of a real reunion, this nostalgia head trip seems unlikely to ever be cleared for a commercial release in these intellectually proprietary times. It brought me waves of joy and reminiscence to my boyhood in a house where The Beatles ruled the record player over The Stones, The Beach Boys, and practically everybody else.

Terri Saul's Two Eyes

Since my own two eyes were not nearly enough to see and evaluate all the repertory/revival film screenings here on Frisco Bay, I'm honored to present local filmgoers' lists of the year's favorites. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from artist/writer Terri Saul, who blogs at Sister-Rye:


1) GOD’S WEDDING (Portugal, 1999)
Directed by João César Monteiro
Seen at the Pacific Film Archive on October 9th, 2010, at 8:10pm
Part of the series Elegant Perversions: The Cinema of João César Monteiro

Monteiro (lead actor, writer, and director) plays a ravenous and emaciated bag of bones who lusts after a tin of sardines, then carelessly throws them in a river, like a satiated elitist who has never known hunger. An angel delivers power to our anti-hero João de Deus in the form of a suitcase full of cash. de Deus then leaves it behind, unguarded, to rescue a drowning woman and deliver her to a nunnery.

Later in the film the two reunite for a sumptuous meal she prepares for him (perhaps as a way of thanking him for saving her life). de Deus piles up food on his plate, bit by bit, arranging each piece carefully and with great anticipation. He then takes one bite and quickly sends it away, wiping his lips with a well-starched napkin as if he had eaten the entire mound. I wonder if he represents a ghost in purgatory, unable to consume earthly meats.

Like a more depaucherous Chaplin’s tramp, de Deus lives in the moment. Whether suddenly rich (by no fault of his own), or sleeping in the park (though not during a picnic), his devil-may-care persona remains intact and unshaken. When his merely visual appreciation of gluttonous delights is captured (leaving the audience to drool), or when the beginning of a sexual encounter is just getting hot, it turns out he cannot eat, perform, or experience orgasm.

Monteiro casts himself as an undeserving and unappreciative recipient of miraculous blessings he then tosses off, neglects, or abuses. From the Harvard Film Archive I learned that João de Deus is “named for the Portuguese-born saint of prostitutes, the infirm, and fishermen,” but that he is “a wholly secular figure.” At one point, de Deus experiences “a hard-on attack,” something like a magical boner that literally blows him over in a garden path, although he’s impotent while waiting for his lover in bed. In another scene, our hero consults the animated stone face of a Homeric-looking god who emerges from some sort of altar-hearth, referring to Monteiro’s appreciation of ancient myth, folklore, and poetry. Late in God’s Wedding, de Deus finally gives in to his cravings for food while erotically eating a pomegranate, ripping it open with his bony fingers, while engaging in a frenetic display, pomegranate juices dripping down his wiry beard.

Like other pictures on this list, disappointment and absurd hilarity drive our unconventional heroes or heroines to candidly explore long pauses, beautiful interruptions, shifting loyalties, unexpected gains and losses, and everyday breaks, with the cool gaze of an uncut and uncensored clip of film. A number of these movies are memorials to idiosyncrasy, uncommon hardships. Though sometimes tragic, they are never taken for granted by their solitary chroniclers.

Monteiro, and other directors here, remind us of the impermanence of wealth, governing bodies, flesh (Monteiro’s own wrinkled nudity contrasted with the youthful skin of his angelic lover is a prime example), sustenance, allegiances, and escape routes. I can’t help but scoff at the too many elderly male filmmakers who love to cast themselves opposite nubile young women.

During one episode of homelessness de Deus pretends to be a general in order to gain entry again to halls of power, reminding me of a film that comes later on my list, Jacques Tati’s Playtime, God’s Wedding being darker, containing more of the earthier bits, a film as outrageous as a fairy tale.

Moteiro prefers shooting in natural light. That being so, his photography has the natural glow of a Dogme shoot. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a great influence on the work of Pedro Costa.


2) RECOLLECTIONS OF THE YELLOW HOUSE (Portugal, 1989)
Directed by João César Monteiro
Seen at the Pacific Film Archive on September 18th, 2010 at 6:30pm
Part of the series Elegant Perversions: The Cinema of João César Monteiro

Monteiro, the director himself, plays João de Deus, a voyeuristic, dirty-old-man living in a boarding house in Lisbon, Portugal. de Deus battles canker sores, a testicle-attacking menace (bed bugs), and his own uncontrollable urges to spy on and assault his bon-bon addicted landlady’s daughter. His lechery and circumstances worsen as the film progresses, as do the greed and games played by those around him. Monteiro shows us the ridiculous, sublime, perverse, self-deprecating moments that are usually hidden.

Collecting cast offs, de Deus (along with the camera) looks closely, meticulously at some piece of evidence the audience might find disgusting, using a magnifying glass, tweezers, a jam jar, or a monocle, to examine something as base as a discarded pubic hair. Our lowly hero lands in and out of mental institutions while remaining cool and fatalistic, emotionally detached. He seems always on the verge of escape from his ill-health, his insect-infested room, his poverty, his solitude, or the asylum populated with a false maniac and friend. Everyone in the yellow house is trying to avoid their own lives, the cash in their pockets, as well as the judgment of authority, the state, a deity, or the crowded community. Recollections of The Yellow House is well composed and poetically furnished, full of lyrical, dissonant magic and deserves to be his best-known film, although I responded with more enthusiasm to God’s Wedding. I wish I could go back in time and see the rest of the series.

3) MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (USSR, 1929)
Directed by Dziga Vertov
Seen at the Castro Theatre on July 16th, 2010 at 8:15pm
Part of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, live accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra

This frenetically paced rhythmic early example of expressive montage, and postmodern self reflexivity (predating most examples of postmodernism), by the inventor of the kino-eye concept, and a day in the life of a city from sunrise to sunset, was flawlessly partnered with the crash bang sounds of Alloy Orchestra. Vertov’s fast cutting, bold juxtapositions, imploding of the Bolshoi, and dizzying games with scale and layering, all broke the boundaries of his “Kino-Eye” philosophy. The Castro was the perfect setting for experiencing Man With a Movie Camera beyond an academic setting.

From Senses of Cinema:
“Vertov proclaimed the primacy of the camera itself (the ‘Kino-Eye’) over the human eye. He clearly saw it as some kind of innocent machine that could record without bias or superfluous aesthetic considerations (as would, say, its human operator) the world as it really was.”
“Vertov’s concept of a self-reflective cinema, of the viewer identifying himself with the filmmaking process, would really only reappear at the end of the 1950s in the work of filmmakers like Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, or in America, Stan Brakhage.”
 
4) THE WOMAN DISPUTED (USA, 1928)
Directed by Henry King and Sam Taylor
Seen at the Castro Theatre on July 18th at 4:30pm
Part of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival with live accompaniment by Stephen Horne on piano

A beautiful example of silent film clichés and Norma Talmadge’s eyebrows in all of their arching glory.

From Distant Voices and Flickering Shadows:
“The subjects of prostitution, sexual favors and suicide would be prohibited (in American films) after 1934, with the enforcement of the Hays Code by Joseph Breen, but the idea of requiring a young woman to sacrifice herself as Mary Ann is can be found throughout literature… However, while literature asks a woman to sacrifice herself on behalf of the beloved or a loved one, the film requires Mary Ann to make her sacrifice (in part) for people who have made no secret of their contempt for her.”

Live music always makes the night complete. Attending the very loud silent film festival made me wish I could hear a contemporary sound-filled film played live, every sound-effect replayed by foley artists on stage with tools in hand.

5) YOJIMBO (Japan, 1961)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Seen at the Pacific Film Archive on July 24th, 2010 at 6:30pm
Part of the Akira Kurosawa Centennial

I managed to miss most of the Kurosawa retrospective at the PFA because I joined too many book clubs, while I didn’t finish much of my book club reading last year because I watched too many movies, not enough of them in theatres.

A Japanese cowboy, Kurusawa’s antihero Sanjuro rejects the idea sacred to a samurai story—allegiance to a master and a band of fighters. Instead the tricky individualist rebel pits one rag-tag band of outsiders against another in order to save himself. The backstage-bin costumes, theatrical bloody make-up, Toshiro Mifune’s pout, and close-up swordplay are guilty pleasures.
Like Monteiro, Kurusawa is another filmmaker who is as influenced by art, literature, folklore, and poetry as he is by other filmmakers.

6) HOUSE (Japan, 1977)
Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi
Seen at the Red Vic on May 7th, 2010 at 7:15 pm

Words cannot describe how awesome and twisted this horror-fantasy cult classic is, with its terrible special effects, a story partially written by an eleven year old, a demon cat, a child-devouring cannibalistic aunt, and an insatiable piano who eats a girl named “Melody.” House is as weird as it gets. I nearly passed out from laughing while covering my eyes in horror.

7) YOU, THE LIVING (Sweden, 2007)
Directed by Roy Andersson
Seen at the Red Vic on January 3rd, 2010 at 7:25pm

Because of shipping problems the 35mm print didn’t arrive on time, so for those willing to stick it out, we had to watch it on video with a watermark; all the Vic could offer was a screener. The RV offered us discounts and were good sports, explaining to ticket holders the pros and cons of either missing the film entirely; coming back the next night; or enduring its superficial imperfections. Nevertheless, the poor quality of the digital projection didn’t keep me from enjoying this absurdist Swedish film, with life-clogging traffic jams, one-take vignettes of undiluted dark, northern humor, and brilliant performances by amateur actors. You, the Living includes my favorite fantasy wedding dream sequence, about which I unearthed this piece of trivia from IMDB:

“As a child, Roy Andersson witnessed the moving of about 100 houses from the bay of Skarvik to Gothenberg to facilitate the building of a new harbor. This involved putting the houses on logs and then rolling them to their new location. This is the inspiration behind the vignette of the rock star and his new bride whose cozy domestic scene appears to be on train tracks.”

Someday I hope to see this film as it was meant to be seen, on film.

8) PLAYTIME (France 1967)
Directed by Jacques Tati
Seen at the Pacific Film Archive on January 15th, 2010 at 7pm

Another anti-hero, another actor-writer-director (and another character oft compared to Chaplain’s tramp) Monsieur Hulot, played by Tati himself lives in a city of glass and employs architecture and urbanity as partners in comedic crime. This inventive film, set within a scale model built by Tati and great expense (and from which he never recovered) gives us a very different view of the mechanized nature of modern city life than Man With a Movie Camera does. Although I find them both to be extraordinarily playful.

During a visit to Paris (where Cinémathèque Française was hosting a Tati retrospective) my local friend told me the story of an uproar caused by the design of a promotional poster in which Tati was depicted sans pipe because of new tobacco laws. To adhere to the rules the graphic designer was asked to delete Tati’s pipe at once, placing a yellow children's windmill in its stead. Cinémathèque never heard the end of it.

9) HOME MOVIE DAY (Historic home movie footage, various places and time periods)
Seen at the Pacific Film Archive on October 16th, 2010 at 1pm

Where among other treasures, I first saw my recently deceased grandmother’s home movie of my mother in Taxco, Mexico at age 15, the day before she sneaked off for her first kiss, secretly floating on a strange boy’s surfboard at sunset, later getting in trouble for her vacation mischief. Most of what I’m telling you was taking place off-camera, revealed during my mom’s narration of silvery and sparkling boating and fishing scenes. The film was chosen to be a part of the curated set. It’s always a pleasure to sit near the curly-headed star of the film, and to meet other home moviemakers in person.

The audience was also treated to early shots of redwood forests near Eureka where a conservationist took a tour (sporting high heels, furs, and all) of the stands she wished to rescue. During a simple silent film in warm color of a suburban mother doing her laundry and hanging it out to dry in the bright Stockton sun, we heard live narration from the now grown daughter of the laundress about how happy she was to have captured her mother during a peaceful time in her life. Another piece of archival footage showed a Seattle family visiting the Olympic peninsula, shooting snow scenes with a very professional looking lens.

Home movie day is also a day where the audience and participants learn something about the archival process, how to preserve one’s personal celluloid.

Lucy Laird's Two Eyes

Since my own two eyes were not nearly enough to see and evaluate all the repertory/revival film screenings here on Frisco Bay, I'm honored to present local filmgoers' lists of the year's favorites. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from writer and projectionist Lucy Laird, who blogs on and off at Lucible:

January:
M. Hulot's Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953), @Smith Rafael Film Center
Having somehow never seen this particular Tati, I ended up viewing it several times over the course of just a few days: once in the audience at the PFA and about three more times projecting it at the Smith Rafael Film Center. Like the saltwater taffy that oozes but is always rescued before it hits the sand, this film is a perfectly choreographed confection, and to project it with perfectly timed changeovers made me feel like I got to dance with M. Hulot, if only briefly.
*and*
Traffic (Tati, 1971), @YBCA
Nice set-up: getting stuck in a rain-drenched traffic jam on the way to this screening. And everyone in the audience got to sport their raincoats and umbrellas, if not any Hulot-ian pipes.

2/5: The Leopard Man (Jacques Tourneur, 1943), @PFA
If only the back alleys of Berkeley could look this magnificently menacing when the panther comes down from the hills to hunt...

2/28: Sid's Cinema: A Tribute to Amateur Filmmaker Sid Laverents (1963-85), @PFA, introduced by Ross Lipman and Melinda Stone
Ross and Melinda's stories about hanging out with Sid enlivened an already mind-blowing afternoon of selections from his wacky oeuvre.
5/28: Follow Thru (Lloyd Corrigan, Laurence Schwab, 1930), @Stanford Theatre
A sublimely silly tale of apple-cheeked young golfers in love, featuring a jaw-dropping devil-girl dance number that really does the 2-strip Technicolor justice: I almost couldn't believe my eyes.

7/30: The Boston Strangler (Richard Fleischer, 1968), @PFA
With widescreen, split-screens, and hysterical montages of desperate cops sifting through all the perverts on file to find their granny strangler, this installment in Steve Seid's Criminal Minds series left me reeling and unexpectedly disturbed by Tony Curtis's sinister side.

8/22: Endless Love (Franco Zeffirelli, 1981), Film on Film Foundation @PFA
Full disclosure: I did not see this at the public screening, but got a chance to view the print when Carl Martin (Film on Film Foundation Executive Director) test-projected it. Its Sirkian power, glowing interior cinematography, and cast of beautiful young things—Brooke, of course, but also James (Spader) and Tom (Cruise)—could only have benefited from one thing: a houseful of fellow audience members to savor it all with.

10/9: The Sensitive '70's: Empathetic Self-Help and Social-Problem films from the Disco Decade, Film on Film Foundation @Oddball,
On a rare escape-from-the-projection-booth Saturday night, I gobbled down FoFF's delicious baked goods and one of their periodic cinematic benders culled from the Oddball archives. What was most startling about these films were the faces of '70s adolescence unfiltered, in all their pimpled, combed-over, underplucked glory (Francesca Baby and The Drug Scene, in particular), before the aesthetically (and otherwise) sanitizing forces of the 1980s and '90s set in.

(Will Oldham in Old Joy)

(River of Grass)
11/11-12, Ode, Old Joy and River of Grass (Kelly Reichardt, 1999, 2006, 1993) with Reichardt in person @PFA
My favorite American director right now, Kelly Reichardt, appeared at the PFA to present her films. I was charmed, though not surprised, to find her modest and funny and smart. I was surprised, charmed, and vindicated to find that she helped fund her good works through bad; she edited a season of America's Next Top Model, my one reality-TV guilty-pleasure. Now I just have to figure out which season so I can comb through it for hints of Reichardt's quiet genius.

12/3: Vampyr (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1931), @PFA
Another one I saw from the projection booth (launching the electronic subtitles this time); I can't say that the somewhat battered print didn't dampen the experience (as well as the fact that I wasn't sitting in the audience and absorbing the communal mood), but this Dreyer dreamscape thoroughly unsettles, one uncanny scene after another. An early sound film with the sound made all the eerier in its echo and minimalism, it also features shadow tricks (upside down and backwards) that are the essence of cinema itself. For the people who attended the Voices of Light/Passion of Joan of Arc extravaganza at the Paramount the night before, Vampyr was probably a nice Dreyer hair-of-the-dog hangover remedy.

12/10: Point Break (Kathryn Bigelow, 1991), 20th anniversary screening, Midnites for Maniacs' Push It to the Limit! triple bill, Castro Theatre
Jesse Hawthorne Ficks is fighting the good fight with his Midnites for Maniacs—and one of my new year's resolutions is to attend more of them—because his neo-sincerity-ism extends to print quality: if it isn't the nicest, newest 35mm print available, then the faded and pink last-ones-on-earth he hunts down are sincerely explained and treasured all the more. The print of Point Break wasn't perfect (though far from bad), but I was stunned by the widescreen, sun-baked, heavy-grained hugeness of it on the Castro's screen, elevating Keanu Reeves and (sniff) Patrick Swayze to god-like levels. And I don't know anything about surfing, but those CGI-less scenes were pretty rad. All the more poignant because I saw this on the big screen as a teenager, when it first came out, and probably marveled about some of the same things. Oh, it was also fun to be reminded that Bigelow was always pretty good at depicting the performance of masculinity.

Adam Hartzell's Two Eyes

Since my own two eyes were not nearly enough to see and evaluate all the repertory/revival film screenings here on Frisco Bay, I'm honored to present local filmgoers' lists of the year's favorites. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from writer Adam Hartzell, who regularly contributes to sf360, koreanfilm.org, and Hell On Frisco Bay:

10 & 9) DIARY OF A LOST GIRL (G.W. Pabst, 1929, Germany) THE FLYING ACE (Richard E. Norman, 1926, USA) - Silent Film Festival at the Castro Theatre in mid-July
　
Of the four films I saw at 2010’s SF Silent Film Festival, these two are the standouts, particularly THE FLYING ACE due to my interest in portrayals of disability, in which a character played by a single-leg amputee finds a clever use for his crutch when (if I recall correctly) chasing a villain.
　
8) SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE (Park Chan-wook, 2005, South Korea) at VIZ Cinema in early August.
　
VIZ provided us a chance to revisit THIRST and Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance Trilogy this summer. It was a pleasure to re-visit SYMPATHRY FOR LADY VENGEANCE, more awake this time, since my first viewing was a drowsy one in Toronto. I must ask, though, when will we ever get a chance to see his first two films before JSA?
　
7) BEFORE TOMORROW (Marie-Helene Cousineau and Madeline Piujuq Ivalu, 2009, Canada) at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as part of a curated FASTRUNNER Trilogy of Canadian First Nations films in early April.
　
This was a film where the discussion with Cousineau afterwards added so much to the film. The YBCA film series makes me so happy so often.
　
6 & 5) M. HULOT’S HOLIDAY (Jacques Tati, 1953, France) & TRAFIC (Jacques Tati, 1971, France) at YBCA as part of a Jacques Tati retrospective in late January/early February.
　
Tati is so much fun. And although nothing compares to a 70mm screening of PLAYTIME, these two films didn’t disappoint. Now onward soon to the Tati screenplay animated in THE ILLUSIONIST.
　
4) WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE at the Clay Theatre in mid-March as part of the San Francisco International Asia American Film Festival, a curation of omnibus shorts by Apitchatpong Weerasathakul, Jia Zhang-ke, Tsai Ming-liang, and Hong Sangsoo.
　
Let me sneak this one in here, because film festivals do provide an opportunity for first-run theatres to have a brief flash of repertory-ness. And, come on, Weersathakul, Jia, Tsai, AND Hong!!!??? It’s an Asian all-star omnibus! And possibly my new favorite film by my favorite director, Hong Sangsoo.
　
3 & 2) EARLY SPRING (Ozu Yasujiro, 1956, Japan) & RECORD OF A TENEMENT GENTLEMEN (Ozu Yasujiro, 1947, Japan) at VIZ Cinema as part of a brief Ozu retrospective in mid-June.
　
I will never tire of watching Ozu, so to every SF rep house, feel free to bring his films anytime.
　
1) REFRIGERATOR FETISH: VINTAGE INDUSTRIAL DESIGN FILMS (various ephemeral films) as curated by film archivist Dennis Nyback for a series on Architecture and Design films at YBCA in July and August.
　
Freaking amazing! Underscores how important our film archivists are. The gem of the collection was the sumptuous, dazzling color of the National Film Board of Canada documentary on the making of pencils. Seriously, it’s mesmerizing.

Lincoln Spector's Two Eyes

Since my own two eyes were not nearly enough to see and evaluate all the repertory/revival film screenings here on Frisco Bay, I'm honored to present local filmgoers' lists of the year's favorites. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from critic Lincoln Spector of Bayflicks, where this list has been cross-posted:


Half of these were silent film screenings. This was a great year for silents–dominated by Metropolis and The Passion of Joan of Arc. I saw two silent films accompanied by full orchestras this year. That’s as many as I’ve seen in my previous 40 years as a silent film fan. And this year, they were better movies.

10 Marwencol, Kabuki, May 2. Serendipity sometimes leads me to the best festival screenings. I saw this documentary about a brain-damaged artist only because was that it was in between two other docs I really wanted to see at the San Francisco International Film Festival. It turned out to be better than either of them, and the best new film I saw at the festival. I’m glad it got a theatrical release in the fall.

9 Mon Oncle, Pacific Film Archive, January 20. Until last year, I’d never seen this particular Jacques Tati comedy. With this one screening, it instantly became my favorite, quite possibly the funniest visual comedy made since Charlie Chaplin reluctantly agreed to talk. Bright and colorful, it works both as a satire of modern materialism and a great collection of belly laughs. Too bad the PFA presented a print dubbed into English, although with Tati, ruining the dialog doesn’t do much damage.

8 Rotaie, Castro, July 17. There’s nothing like discovering an old, wonderful movie that you’ve never heard of. In this 1929 Italian drama, a young couple, broke but very much in love, find a huge wad of cash and start living the good life. We can see the character flaws that left them destitute in the first place, and will leave them that way again. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival screened the only known existing print, with intertitle translations read aloud and Stephen Horne accompanying on piano and other instruments.

7 Cinematic Titanic: War of the Insects, Castro, August 3. I’ve been a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 for a long time. Here was a chance to experience it live. From the opening shot of an H bomb explosion, with Mary Jo Pehl’s comment, "Sarah Palin’s first day as President," the jokes flew thick and belly deep. There were times I couldn’t breathe.

6 The General, Oakland Paramount, March 19. I’ve seen Keaton’s Civil War masterpiece countless times, in classrooms, museums, theaters, festivals, and home. I once rented it on VHS, and have owned it on Laserdisc, DVD, and Blu-ray. Yet this was probably my best General experience. Why? A great, 35mm print, terrific accompaniment by Christoph Bull on the Paramount’s pipe organ, and an enthusiastic audience of symphony goers who didn’t know what they were in for and were very pleasantly surprised.

5 The Gold Rush and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Davies Symphony Hall, April 16. I finally saw Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush properly—a good print with live musical accompaniment–by the San Francisco Symphony, no less. The only problem: Davies Hall really isn’t built for movies.

4 Kurosawa All Over the Place. Akira Kurosawa was born in 1910, so last year saw a whole lot of retrospectives of my all-time favorite filmmaker. Naturally, considering my East Bay residence, I stuck to screenings at the Pacific Film Archive. I started my own personal retrospective, watching the films on DVD late in 2008. The PFA allowed me to finish them in 35mm, on a large screen, and with an audience.

3 Metropolis, Castro, July 17. Setting aside my own experiences, the restored "Complete" Metropolis was the motion picture restoration event of the year. I’d already seen it in New York before it played the Castro in the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, but the Castro screening was the better experience. Part of that was the theater itself. But more credit goes to the Alloy Orchestra’s very electric score, which brings out the film’s overall weirdness and the third act’s excitement better than any other Metropolis score I’ve heard. Too bad that score was not, as was announced at the festival, included in the Blu-ray release. (You can buy it separately from the Alloy Orchestra’s web site.

2 Three live presentations at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Castro and Kabuki, April and May. I’m putting these events together for brevity’s sake. Three of my top, living, English-speaking, cinematic heroes got a chance in the spotlight at this year’s festival, and the results were as entertaining and educational as any movies screened. Editor and sound designer Walter Murch gave the State of the Cinema Address. Screenwriter/producer/studio head/Columbia professor James Schamus answered questions from B. Ruby Rich and the audience as the winner of this year’s Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting. And Roger Ebert was honored with this year’s Mel Novikoff Award.

1. Voices of Light & The Passion of Joan of Arc, Oakland Paramount, December 2. This was definitely the greatest film/live music experience of my 40+ years as a silent film aficionado. It jut might be the greatest experience I’ve had sitting in an audience. Not only was it a brilliant film (and one I’d never seen before theatrically), but it was accompanied by Richard Einhorn’s "Voices of Light, An Oratorio with Silent Film," and a great work in its own right. Mark Sumner conducted the 22-piece orchestra and approximately 180 singers from multiple choruses. The overall effect was powerful, entrancing, awe-inspiring, frightening, and beautiful.

Return I Will To Old

On Thursday, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and the Yerba Buena Center For the Arts each began a new season of screenings. The PFA showed Jacques Tati's Mr. Hulot's Holiday. As I noted last month, the screening kicked off both a complete Tati retro at the PFA, and a month-long circumnavigation of Frisco Bay for this unique 1953 comedy. It will land at the YBCA January 28th during the downtown Frisco space's own retrospective, which concludes with a February 11 showing of one of my (and many others') favorite films of all-time, Playtime. The YBCA follows its Tati series with an eclectic set called Freaks, Punks, Skanks & Cranks, and a two-for-the-price-of-one pairing of James Benning's American Dreams and Landscape Suicide on February 26.

But before all of that, the YBCA's screening room will be given over to the largest country in South America for the next week or so, to match what's going on in the galleries through the end of the month. A Bit Of Brazilian Music On Film began with a sold-out showing of a 1977 concert tour film well-known in Brazil, called Os Doces Bárbaros or the Sweet Barbarians after the album and supergroup both bearing that name. The band included Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Maria Bethania and Gal Costa, and if you're a Brazilian music novice like me, those names sound familiar but not familiar enough to hit home as a supergroup. You have to catch that from the musicianship and the scale of the concerts being staged, both of which are more than convincing.

For a beginner in the sphere of Brazilian popular music, the new documentary Beyond Ipanema seems an ideal introduction to the many styles that have been developed in the country and broken out into global consciousness over the past 70 years or so. It plays tonight (Saturday), but I was able to view a DVD screener alongside some Brazilian friends who enjoyed it from their position of familiarity as much as I did from my position of relative ignorance. The film traces the history of Brazil's international impact on music, starting with World War II-era Hollywood import Carmen Miranda and continuing into present-day electronic music, indie rock. Clips of artists in performance and music-centered films like Black Orpheus are intermingled with re-recordings of certain hits that were presumably too expensive to gain rights to.

But the story is told primarily through interviews with Brazilian and international music figures and fans alike. Former Talking Head frontman David Byrne is presented as a particularly passionate supporter. He observes that unlike many countries whose chief export is sugar or coal or some physical commodity, Brazil's chief export for many years was culture. We are exposed to samba, marcinhes, and the politically-oriented Tropicália movement and its "most experimental artist" Tom Zé (who Byrne sees as a particularly kindred spirit to the New York art-punk scene he was immersed in in the 1970s.) We experience the psychedelia of Os Mutantes, who influenced the likes of Beck and Beastie Boys decades after their heyday. We learn how Seu Jorge views Wes Anderson and the Life Aquatic's instigation of his popularity spike. We get a taste of Northeastern Brazil's lively folk strain called Forró (enough of a taste that I'm determined to check out a Frisco-based Forró band called Forró Brazuca when they play the Cafe Du Nord January 22nd!) Everything from the bossa nova explosion in the sixties to the raunchy Favela funk of the modern era gets spotlighted in a section. With so much to cover there's no time to go into much depth, however; one wishes for a full-length documentary on each genre and subgenre.

The YBCA answers that wish in one instance: the aforementioned funk is the focus of another new documentary playing next Saturday, January 23rd: Favela on Blast, featuring musicians with names like Deize, Tigrona, Mr. Catra, Duda Do Borell, etc. It's a highly-danceable, in-your-face form of music with some parallels to North American hip-hop, that has found a fan in international superstar M.I.A. I was not able to preview this doc, so I don't know if it takes a more unconventional approach than the interview/linear history of Beyond Ipanema. I am also curious to know if the lyrics to these funk songs will be subtitled in English so we non-Portuguese speakers can see just how dirty they can get; the funk in Beyond Ipanema was left untranslated but my friends assured me it would make most anyone blush.

I was able to view a screener DVD of the fourth and final entry in the YBCA series, the Discovery of Brazil. On first glance it appears to be an anomaly in the set. It's by far the oldest, made in 1937 by Humberto Mauro, who alert Frisco cinephiles may remember as the director of 2005 Silent Film Festival selection Sangue Mineiro. Moreover, the Discovery of Brazil is not a documentary at all, but a fictionalized retelling of the national founding myth, the voyage of the first European (Pedro Álvares Cabral) known to have touched Brazilian soil and interacted with its native populations back in the year 1500.

But the Discovery of Brazil speaks to the other films in the series in two major ways. One, as a film endorsed by a Brazilian government which in 1937 was at a peak of nationalist sentiment, it shows us a certain self-image of Brazil and its history at a singular moment, just before the country started to become better-known to the world thanks to its unofficial cultural ambassador, Carmen Miranda. In a way, it fills in a bit of backstory for Beyond Ipanema. Two, as the only Brazilian film scoring credit for perhaps the greatest of all South American classical composers, Heitor Villa-Lobos, the film lets us listen to one of the important strains of Brazilian music left out of the three documentaries in the series.

Indeed, the version of the Discovery of Brazil being shown at YBCA on Sunday, January 24th will privilege Villa-Lobos's composition over fidelity to the film as it was originally seen. Not all of the musical themes the composer was inspired to create for the film were actually used in the finished film that first screened in Rio in December 1937, and Villa-Lobos turned the music written for the score into a set of four suites, which apparently were not performed in that form until a 1952 concert in Paris. The music is best known in the classical music world in the form of these suites, which have been recorded or performed live relatively often. In deference to the importance of Villa-Lobos as a creative contributor to the film, the Rio archive which has made the Discovery of Brazil available has replaced the original music recording with a newer recording of the suites, in much higher recording quality than we are used to hearing accompany a late-1930s talking picture. The integration of the music with sound effects and original dialogue is deftly handled, but still a bit jarring for those accustomed to experiencing string sections in classic films recorded using long-outdated technology.

But though Villa-Lobos aficionados and archival-film purists may be split in their feelings on the Discovery of Brazil's soundtrack as it will be presented at YBCA, both should be pleased by the images themselves, as long as they can appreciate the practical necessity of showing them in a video format rather than 35mm. The first extended section of the film in particular is quite strikingly photographed. Mauro and his cinematographers (the imdb credits four of them, including Mauro himself) refused to approach shipboard shooting challenges as obstacles to creativity; rather they exploited every conceivable camera angle to capture the action from the appropriate distance to stress the meaning of each shot. Below deck we get an intense chiaroscuro that conveys claustrophobic sensations artfully. The way the camera captures the sea itself recalls the shimmering photography of another 1930's Brazilian film, Limite.

In the film's second half, focusing on the encounter between Portuguese and indigenous Brazilian people, religious significance is imbedded in every scene, if not every shot. There is an uncomfortableness to watching these scenes. One wonders how much factual resemblence it bears to the the way that first contact truly occurred. But strikingly, the film, though it emphasizes the so-called "primitive" aspects of the native Brazilians, lingering on lip-piercings and highlighting their ignorance of European technologies and customs, really does seem to convey a convincing awkwardness on both sides of the cross-cultural encounter, quite different from the patronizing platitudes that one might expect from a film made under a nationalist regime. We do get these platitudes in the dialogue of the film's final scene, but that doesn't wash away the mixed emotions invariably stirred by the penultimate sequence, the "first Mass in Brazil" in which newly-made Christians and Europeans alike gather around a huge cross made from one of the tallest trees in the forest. The scene is accompanied by Villa-Lobos's almost-mournful melodies, which befit both a sacred ceremony and a prelude to cultural domination.

Monsieur Hulot after the Holidays

The year's film festivals are now all in the rear-view mirror. This weekend marked the last of the 2009 film programming at Yerba Buena Center For the Arts and the Pacific Film Archive. Even the Castro Theatre turns its back on repertory for a few weeks after the end of its Alfred Hitchcock series this Wednesday. Yes, Frisco Bay's cinema screens are clearing room for moviegoers to focus on the year-end releases which angle for box office boosts from critical top ten lists and nominations from awards-giving bodies. If not for exceptions like the booking of a new print of Bicycle Thieves at the Roxie, Christmas-themed programming at the Stanford and San Jose's California Theatre, and the traditional booking of Baraka at the Red Vic, local cinema addicts would have no other option but to see a 2009 commercial release if they want to attend a movie. Of the new ones available, I highly recommend Frederick Wiseman's ballet documentary La Danse, perhaps his most musical film and thus one of his most accessible. It plays the Rafael and the Balboa and the Elmwood for a few more days before moving to the Little Roxie. Claire Denis's haunting 35 Shots of Rum is making its long-awaited return to Frisco Bay this week at the Lumiere and the Shattuck. And much to my surprise, I also liked Clint Eastwood's Invictus quite a bit; though not a perfect movie it has some truly remarkable scenes, and a smart self-awareness of both the facilities and the limitations of mass entertainment to motivate social change.

In January, Frisco Bay repertory will gear up again. Arguably the centerpiece of early 2010 is the newly-struck print of Jacques Tati's international breakthrough Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot a.k.a. Mr. Hulot's Holiday, which will appear at no fewer than four venues around the bay in the next couple of months. First, on January 14th, it kicks off the new semester at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, and the complete Tati retrospective it's holding (other PFA attractions in January and February include but are not limited to tributes to Val Lewton and the early work of Frank Capra, the annual African Film Festival, and screenings of films by Jean-Luc Godard, Yasujiro Ozu, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, and Nathaniel Dorsky.) From January 15-21 Mr. Hulot's Holiday spends an entire week at the North Bay's Rafael Film Center (which has also announced its For Your Consideration series of international submissions for the Foreign Language Film Academy Award). Then on January 28th it stops at YBCA, which is also hosting the touring Tati retrospective, before taking up a two-day residence at the Red Vic on February 3rd and 4th.

The PFA and YBCA Tati retrospectives are particularly exciting: not only chances to see Mr. Hulot's Holiday in a restored print with an audience to laugh along with, but a chance to contextualize the 1953 film into this woefully misremembered filmmaker's career. If Tati is thought of by modern cinema audiences at all, he is too frequently considered an anachronistic kindred to silent-era clowns like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Max Linder. It's true that like these gentlemen he developed his comedy in music halls before unleashing it on cinema screens, but unlike them his films exhibit a near-revolutionary understanding of the comedic potential of film sound. Sound effects, snatches of dialogue, and deceptively relaxing musical scores play as much a role in his peculiar brand of humor as do his physical gags and his democratic approach to mise-en-scene. Though my personal favorite of his films is Playtime (which plays the PFA Jan. 15 & 23, and the YBCA Feb. 11), it is Mr. Hulot's Holiday which introduced the character of Monsieur Hulot, and is likely the purest distillation of Tati's aesthetic. It's a film in tune with the elements: wind, water, sand, etc. The director gets great comic mileage out of the most seemingly insignificant things, like the sound a door makes when opening and closing, or a tennis swing, or the tide rolling onto the shore.

But don't take my word for it. Who better to talk about a French filmmaker than the most influential French film critic, André Bazin? Thankfully, his essay on Tati and Mr. Hulot's Holiday has been translated into English by Bert Cardullo and was published at Bright Lights Film Journal with a substantial introduction by Cardullo earlier this year.

The Evening Class has compiled the PFA and YBCA programs into one handy list. Though both venues will showcase shorts Tati directed and/or starred in as well as his features, and both include all four of the films featuring Tati's Hulot character as well as the barely-seen color version of his first feature Jour De Fete, only the PFA will be screening the director's swan song Parade. YBCA screened the latter twice earlier this month, and I attended one of the showings, never having seen Parade before. This final, post-Hulot work was shot on both film and video, showing off the advantages of both formats as they existed in 1974. It's a capturing of a circus performance filled with jugglers, animal acts, magicians and musicians, all of them doubling as clowns. Though in essence a non-narrative performance film, there are multiple micro-narratives to be found in Parade, many of them stemming out of the broken barriers between circus performers and audience members that Tati and his troupe have instigated. We follow one towheaded child from apparent boredom to full participation when he is invited to ride a mule around the circus ring, showing up animal-handling skills of the other audience volunteers attempting the task. It's one of many delights packed into this relatively brief, made-for-television feature.

The Criterion Collection DVDs of Mr. Hulot's Holiday and Mon Oncle feature introductions by a comic director of another sort, Terry Jones of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Jones directed, or co-directed with Terry Gilliam, each of the Pythons' feature films. He will be in town early next year as well, appearing at the Castro Theatre January 21st for a double feature of Monty Python and The Holy Grail and The Life of Brian as part of the SF Sketchfest film programs. (Other Sketchfest screenings include UHF with "Weird Al" Yankovic in attendance, Brain Candy with Dave Foley in attendance, Waiting For Guffman with Fred Willard in attendance, two screenings celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers, and a live heckling of Danger On Tiki Island from Mystery Science Theatre 3000 alums at the Castro.) I'm sure the Castro will have a massive turnout of generations of Monty Python fans eager to see the Knights Who Say 'Ni' and the Peoples' Front Of Judea on the largest possible screen, with one of the chief collaborators on hand with his perspectives. Wouldn't it be great if some who have never experienced a film by one of his chief comedic influences stepped outside the zone of 'comfort cinema' to enjoy the Tati screenings on offer as well?