10HTE: Sterling Hedgpeth

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

First-time IOHTE contributor Sterling Hedgpeth runs a stamps & cinema blog called The Filmatelist, from which he's allowed me to re-post (with different images) from this entry.

Dumbo screen capture from Disney DVD

We’ll start with Dumbo (Sharpsteen, 1941) at the Paramount in Oakland, on absolutely stunning 35mm. Although the emcee called it original (which it couldn’t have been, because that would have meant nitrate stock), it certainly was a crisply struck print that had not seen much circulation. Combine the divine “Pink Elephants on Parade” sequence with the most gorgeous Art Deco palace in the Bay Area, and it was a great way to start the year.

Also in January were some memorable titles at Noir City at the Castro, and for me, the highlight was a first viewing of Mickey One (Penn, 1965), a glorious jazz-tinged fever dream of a film, with an assist from legend Stan Getz. Disjointed, bizarre, singularly unique and punctuated by a live dance routine from burlesque goddess Evie Lovelle.

Soon after, the PFA had an excellent Maurice Pialat series, but I suspect that the power of his Under the Sun of Satan (1987) was magnified by it being bookended (quite by coincidence) with two other contemporary films I saw the same week that also explore religious faith, fanaticism and hypocrisy: Pablo Larrain’s The Club and Avishai Sivan’s Tikkun. In Pialat’s fantasy-fueled acid bath Passion Play, he posits the possibility that religion may be the most oppressive to the truly devout. Overall, a provocative accidental trilogy.

The Beguiled screen shot from Universal DVD

Some fun Gothic films ran their course at the Yerba Buena Arts Center that summer, and the highlight was my first time seeing The Beguiled (1971) on the big screen. Still Don Siegel’s best, Clint Eastwood plays a Yankee fox trying to subvert and seduce a Dixie henhouse. The thick hothouse atmosphere and sexual tension played beautifully through Siegel's lighting and the insidious plotting and character power plays. Still a remarkable film (soon to be remade by Sofia Coppola).

Though a relatively recent movie, I have to include the Triplets of Belleville (Chomet, 2003) screening at the Taube Atrium in the SF Opera House because Benoît Charest was there with a jazz combo to perform his exquisite score live, including saws, bikes, and trashcans as percussion instruments. A terrific experience.

2016 was the first year the Alamo Drafthouse in the Mission was open, and the best part of their programming is the late night Mon-Wed screenings. My first dip into that pool was a packed show of Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman, 1971), which I’ve seen several times in the theater, but never tire of the gearhead culture, the meditative structure and lack of urgency (for a racing film!) and Warren Oates’s phenomenal turn as GTO. My year was relatively short on roadtrips but this went some way to sating my wanderlust.

The Shining screen capture from Warner DVD

In my backyard at the Parkway, there was an irresistible double bill of the cuckoo-bananas conspiracy theory documentary Room 237 (Ascher, 2012) followed by a screening of the focus of its subject, The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) itself. Rarely does a year go by when I don’t see some Kubrick on screen (I also revisited Paths of Glory and Spartacus at the Smith Rafael Film Center for Kirk Douglas’s 100th birthday), but a bonus this year was an excellent exhibit on Kubrick at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in SF with some amazing artifacts from his career, including the typewriter and hedge maze model from this film.

Also at the Smith Rafael was a Sam Fuller weekend (with his widow and daughter in attendance), where the biggest revelation for me was his Tokyo noir House of Bamboo (1955), a beautifully stylized genre piece whose gangster trappings and compositions appeared to anticipate the marvelous Seijun Suzuki, whose career was starting around the exact same time. As you’d expect, Robert Ryan is in top form and the climax on a rooftop amusement park is a standout.

Destiny screen capture from Kino DVD

And finally, two silent films, both firsts for me. At the Silent Film Festival at the Castro, Destiny (1921), the earliest film I’ve seen by Fritz Lang and a glorious anthology of stories where Love must face down Death. It was wonderful seeing Lang’s visual imagination in bloom, anticipating the superb special FX and supernatural wonders of his next few years in Germany. Months later, over at the Niles Essanay Film Museum, the buoyant energy of underrated actress Bebe Daniels was on full display in the fizzy comedy Feel My Pulse (La Cava, 1928), about a hypochondriac heiress looking for rest at a health sanitarium which is actually acting as a front for bootleggers (led by a very young William Powell). A hilarious comedy and secret gem.

So that’s 10 features, but since I saw over 60 archival shorts in the theater last year, I’ll give an honorable mention to two with Buster Keaton, still silent in the autumn of his career. I saw The Railrodder (Potterton, 1965) at an Oddball Film Archive screening, featuring Buster traveling across Canada on an open-air mini-railcar, a playful reminder of his other great train film The General, but in sumptuous color. And around the same time, the Smith Rafael Film Center played Film (Schneider, 1965), one of Samuel Beckett’s few forays into film and a wonderful existential metaphor with Buster showing that age had not changed the expressiveness of his body in motion. A sublime pairing. Here’s looking forward to another year of familiar films and new discoveries.

Adrianne Finelli: IOHTE

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2015. An index of participants can be found here.

IOHTE Contributor Adrianne Finelli is an artist, a Prelinger Library guest host, and co-curator of A.T.A.'s GAZE film series. 

1. Otar Iosseliani's Early Films
Akvareli (1958) Song About a Flower (1959) April (1962) Cast Iron (1964)
Pacific Film Archive
Thursday, January 22, 2015
The early short films of Otar Iosseliani are all poems in their own right, but paired together this quartet evokes a full spectrum of feelings and styles. Cast Iron is one of the most beautiful documentary films I have ever seen. I tried to attend as much of the Discovering Georgian Film series as possible because there was so much amazing work that I had never encountered.  This screening was no different and it stuck with me for weeks.

2. Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966)
The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle, 1969)
Castro Theatre, Noir City 13
Sunday, Jan 25, 2015
This was the craziest double feature I have ever seen in a grand movie palace. Thank you to Noir City for pairing these delightfully strange films together. Seconds is among my favorites, but I had only ever heard of The Honeymoon Killers by way of its influence on John Waters’ garish style. Wow! I was speechless.

3. My Grandmother (Kote Mikaberidze, 1929)
Pacific Film Archive
Saturday, Februrary 7, 2015
Also part of the Discovering Georgian Cinema series at the PFA, My Grandmother was banned for fifty years for its pointed mockery of Soviet bureaucracy. It was by far the most surreal and inventive film that I saw this year, and features a surprising amount of experimental animation techniques.

4. Inevitability of Forgetting: Films of Lewis Klahr––Memory and Collage
False Aging (2008) Engram Sepals (2000) Helen of T (2013) Daylight Moon (2003) The Occidental Hotel (2014)
SFSU August Coppola Theatre
Thursday, February 19, 2015
This was a special screening as Lewis Klahr was there in person to present his work, thanks to SF Cinematheque and the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University. I have been a fan of Klahr’s films ever since seeing Altair (1995) several years ago. His style of collage animation is almost tactile and his characters, although sourced from old comics and magazine advertisements, somehow capture the mysteries of humanity. The strong sound design and musical choices transport you in and out of places from your own past, and there is something very fragile about the materials, like memory, fading and fleeting. This screening resonated with me on a deep emotional level.

5. The Bittersweet Films of Mikhail Kobakhidze
The Musicians (1969) The Wedding (1965) The Umbrella (1967) En Chemin (2001)
Pacific Film Archive
Sunday, March 22, 2015
The Bittersweet Films of Mikhail Kobahidze are exactly that, bittersweet. Each celebrates the pleasures of life while also recognizing the sorrows. Although all four of these films have elements of humor and whimsy, The Musicians pares down the story to just two characters set in an infinite white space, in which a cartoon-like battle ensues between them. The Wedding (1965) reminded me of The Graduate in part and had a more similar feeling to the young-love story of The Umbrella. Kobakhidze’s films all resemble the visual and physical worlds of Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, and Norman McLaren. There is so much to love about these films, and I am grateful to the PFA for their wonderful Discovering Georgian Cinema series for this introduction.

6. The Donovan Affair (Frank Capra, 1929)
Castro Theatre San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Saturday, May 30, 2015

Live Theater Event produced by Bruce Goldstein performed by the Gower Gulch Players: Glenn Taranto, Rick Pasqualone, Hannah Davis, Ashley Adler, Steve Sterner (also on piano), Yelena Shmulenson, Allen Lewis Rickman, Bruce Goldstein, and Frank Buxton.
I was a little nervous going into this screening, I just didn’t know what to expect with a live soundtrack performance and was prepared for something like dinner theater and felt ready to dislike it. Much to my pleasant surprise the whole production was brilliant, from the cast to tiniest details in the live sound effects and the musical score. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the entire team that was involved in this performed version of The Donovan Affair provided an unforgettable and entertaining experience to all at the Castro that night.

7. Ivan's Childhood (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962)
Pacific Film Archive
Saturday, June 27, 2015
My partner and I managed to see several of the Tarkovsky films at PFA, but neither of us had ever seen Ivan’s Childhood and we were just blown away. While I love both The Mirror (1975) and Stalker (1979), there was something about Ivan’s Childhood that shook me to the core. This was the most powerful and haunting film that I have seen all year.

                                              

8. El Sur (Victor Erice, 1983)
Zero For Conduct (Jean Vigo, 1933)
Pacific Film Archive
Friday, July 31, 2015
This screening marked my last night at the old Pacific Film Archive’s theater on Bancroft Way, which made it special in its own right, but sitting directly behind director Victor Erice and his family made it an extraordinary time. Victor Erice gave a beautiful introduction that was as moving as his films, and revealed that watching El Sur pains him, as it is only half of the film that he intended to make. It was fascinating to then occasionally watch him watching his work. Another treat of the night was directly following El Sur there was a screening of the great Zero for Conduct in a program called Cinema According to Victor Erice.

9. For the Eyes: Canyon Salon with Amy Halpern
Assorted Morsels (2012) series – 
Three-Minute Hells
By Halves
Elixir
New Nothing Cinema
Monday, October 5, 2015
I was new to Amy Halpern’s work and left this screening in awe of her stunning cinematography. All three shorts were shot and screened on 16mm film, the photography was some of the most vivid and intimate that I have seen this year. Most of Halpern’s work is silent, allowing you to focus purely on the color and light; yet, Three-Minute Hells had an exceptional sound design. Halpern screened her work along side some of my favorite experimental films: All My Life (1966) by Bruce Baillie, Fever Dream (1979) by Chick Strand, and Fog Line (1970) by Larry Gottheim, and Bad Burns (1982) by Paul Sharits. This was an exceptional program and I am hoping to bring Amy Halpern back to San Francisco for an upcoming GAZE screening sometime this year.

10. Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock , 1946)
Paramount Theatre

Friday, November 20, 2015

I remember seeing Notorious for the first time as a kid and feeling more stressed out about the plot than any film I had seen before. I have returned to Hitchcock time and time again for a good dose of suspense, and it always amazes me that you can watch a film half a dozen times and still feel as anxious. I am a big Ingrid Bergman fan and Notorious has been a long time favorite, but I had never seen it on the big screen before this night at the amazing Paramount Theatre in Oakland. The Paramount is one of the most beautiful and lavish movie palaces I have ever stepped foot in, and it always makes any film feel even more magical.

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)

WHO: Edith Head designed the costumes for this film.

WHAT: The last film Preston Sturges wrote and directed while at Paramount is one of my favorites. It starts in a San Francisco saloon called the Dog Watch, where a group of six busted marines just back from Guadalcanal make the acquaintance of a legacy Marine (born the day his father died at Belleau Wood) named Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith. Truesmith (played by Eddie Bracken) has just spent a year pretending to be overseas after a medical discharge (hayfever) cut short his military career after just one month. Soon all seven men are heading to his hometown of Oakhurst, California, where he'll finally reunite with his mother (Georgia Caine) and former sweetheart (Ella Raines) while the other six eagerly perpetuate the fiction that he was a hero among their company- especially since it gives them an opportunity for free food and lodging during their five-day leave. Things only get more and more out of hand from there, and somehow Sturges is able to walk a tightrope between portraying portraying military men as noble and patriotism as a form of insanity.

WHERE/WHEN: 3:30 and 7:30 today and tomorrow at the Stanford Theatre.

WHY: Although I mention Edith Head above, this is probably not one of the top ten or twenty or fifty or maybe even one hundred films that fans of classic Hollywood would point to as one of her most significant career milestones. But Sturges stuffs his frames with huge numbers of bodies, each character and extra representing perfectly an aspect of American society, and each of them needing just the right outfit to quickly express that aspect. Bracken's own costuming (in uniform or out) is a crucial element of the plot, and the attractive dresses Head is best known for are certainly on display on the Dog Watch's tap dancer and chanteuse, and on the lovely Raines.

Head's several hundred credits as costumer could make a fine introduction to Hollywood "A-pictures" from the 1930s to 1970s. The prolific Head worked in just about every genre and every studio, and with many of the classic era's top stars and directors. A complete Edith Head retrospective sounds like the punchline to a film programming in-joke, but it really would be a thing to behold, even if it took a year or more to unfold. Since it'd never happen, I'll just point out the films with her credit that are screening in the coming weeks. After Hail the Conquering Hero, the next film bearing her imprint to screen locally will be Breakfast At Tiffany's starring Audrey Hepburn, at the Castro on New Year's Day. The following week on January 9th the New Parkway screens King Creole to celebrate its star Elvis Presley's birthday the day before. And just last night the Paramount Theatre in Oakland announced its next three 35mm classic film screenings, and two out of three of them are among Head's most famous among her thrity-five Academy Award-nominated films. January 17 the venue will show To Catch A Thief with Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, and February 28 it will screen Roman Holiday, another film starring Hepburn, that won Head her fifth of eight Oscars. The odd film out on the Paramount schedule is Dirty Harry which screens January 31st; its costumes were picked out by Clint Eastwood's regular wardrobe man until 1992, Glenn Wright.

HOW: Hail the Conquering Hero screens on a 35mm double-bill with the Marx Brothers in A Day at the Races.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

WHO: Mel Stuart directed this.

WHAT: I must have been a sensitive child, because I remember getting nightmares from reading Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I was particularly disturbed by against-the-will transformations, and thus by Violet Beauregarde's metamorphosis into a blueberry. So when my dad took me to see a revival screening of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory at the York Theatre (now the Brava) I went with some trepidation and had to wander into the lobby for a few minutes during that sequence. Upon revisiting the film as a college student I realized that this was actually a pretty tame scene compared to many in the film, which has a seriously sinister undercurrent running pretty much throughout.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight only at the Paramount Theatre at 8:00

WHY: The Paramount is arguably the most luxurious cinemagoing experience (thanks to it's gorgeously restored interior) in the Bay Area for the lowest price (only $5!) I have a rule that if the theatre advertises a screening of something I've never seen before, I must attend if I possibly can. This rarely occurs, however, because such a large theatre to fill means the programming usually emphasizes well-worn classics I've seen many times. I find myself often prioritizing a rare 35mm print of something I've never seen at a place like the Stanford or the PFA or the Castro over a Paramount viewing of an old favorite. But tonight the PFA is closed, the Stanford is showing films I'll have a second shot at seeing tomorrow, and the Castro has a matinee showing of its evening programs. So I plan to visit the latter to catch Tony Scott's True Romance (and skip Pulp Fiction; nothing personal but I've seen that one before) in the afternoon and make a pilgrimage to the Paramount in the evening, with plenty of time to have a convivial dinner with some of my fellow Wonka-goers in the meantime.

If the venue alone weren't enough, I'm glad I'll finally be revisiting Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, for the first time since the death of Mel Stuart in August 2012. I did catch Stuart's documentary Wattstax earlier this year and notice that it is on the Castro's coming soon page as a budding Martin Luther King, Jr. Day tradition, this time on a double-bill with Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip.

HOW: 35mm print of the feature, plus newsreel, animated short film, and trailer(s).

Inequality For All (2013)

WHO: Robert Reich is the focus of this documentary.

WHAT: This breezy documentary addresses a weighty topic, the causes and ill effects of the enormous gap between the wealth and income of a few very rich Americans, and that of the rest of us. Some have lamented that the film doesn't go far enough in arguing for effective solutions to the economic mess we find ourselves in, and it's a fair point to be sure. But clearly the filmmaker (Jacob Kornbluth, a local) felt his film would be more powerful as a tool to raise awareness about the magnitude of the issue, and perhaps even convert some skeptics. To that end, he doesn't go overboard on hammering political points but rather centers his film on one eloquent and tireless advocate of the importance of this issue, UC Berkeley professor and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, whose biography, it turns our, mirrors his chosen cause in poignant ways. Kalvin Henley has written a more complete review I can recommend reading.

WHERE: Screens at 9:00 tonight and at 6:30 tomorrow and Thursday at the Camera 3 in San Jose, and multiple times daily at the California Theatre in Berkeley at least through this Thursday. UPDATE 11/12/2013: The Balboa is also screening the film multiple times daily through Thursday.

WHY: Whether you feel you've heard Reich's arguments enough or feel you could never hear them enough (or more likely, fall somewhere in between those points on the scale), you may be interested in seeing Inequality For All simply for the local angle. A great deal of the documentary was shot in the Bay Area, including the above image of downtown Oakland's majestic Paramount Theatre (which screens The African Queen for $5 this Friday, incidentally).

Reich appears (with much less screen time, I'm led to believe) in another documentary coming to Frisco Bay soon: Frederick Wiseman's latest institutional investigation At Berkeley, which takes a more comprehensive view of the workings of the University of California's flagship campus. Since I last speculated about where it might screen, I've learned it will come to UC Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive December 3rd that Wiseman will be on hand for, but that will  be open only to the University's students, faculty and staff. A second PFA showing will occur January 18th, 2014 (dare I hope along with a retrospective of Wiseman films? It's been over ten years since the last), but before that both the Elmwood and the Roxie will screen At Berkeley for at least a week starting December 6th, with opening night screenings accompanied by a Skype q&a with the director.

HOW: Inequality For All was made and will screen digitally.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

WHO: Humphrey Bogart stars in this.

WHAT: If you go to the corner of Bush Street and Burritt Alley, you'll find a plaque that reads: "On approximately this spot Miles Archer, partner of Sam Spade, was done in by Brigid O'Shaunghnessy". It must be the only plaque in San Francisco that memorializes not a historical event, but a key moment in fiction, namely the Dashiell Hammett detective novel template known as The Maltese Falcon. At least, the only one that bears no indication of its fictionhood, or that it constitutes a "spoiler" for anyone who might not have read the book or watched one of the movie versions made from it. Such as the 1941 version written and directed by John Huston.

Other versions (the 1931 one sometimes called Dangerous Female, or the 1936 Satan Met a Lady) have their points of interest, but the 1941 The Maltese Falcon is the one that became a cultural sensation and launched (with High Sierra) Humphrey Bogart's career as a leading man, Huston's as a director, and film noir as a powerful cinematic thread through the 1940s, 50s and beyond. San Francisco movie lovers are proud that their city plays such a key role in such a key film in such a key genre of Hollywood filmmaking, even if they know that apart from a few library-footage shots of the Bay Bridge and the city skyline, Huston's film does not feature actual footage of their city. As Nicola Balkind wrote in the recently-published book World Film Locations: San Francisco:

The camera descends and we are introduced to an office announcing 'SPADE AND ARCHER' where Sam Spade is working as the Bay Bridge gleams through a large window. The office interior was shot in LA but the location is estimated to be 111 Sutter Street at the corner of Montgomery in the heart of the Financial District - not far from neo-noir's favorite location: Chinatown. Although The Maltese Falcon was made in Hollywood, we're never allowed to forget it is set in San Francisco.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens daily at the Stanford Theatre at 5:40 and 9:25.

WHY: World Film Locations: San Francisco is starting to get a few reviews, such as this one in the Bay Area Reporter. It's available online and at stores such as City Lights, Moe's and even the DeYoung Museum gift shop. I'm proud to have contributed an essay on film noir in the city for the book, in which I quickly trace film noir history from Hammett and Huston to Otto Preminger's Fallen Angel and Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past, to the post-war vogue for on-location shooting and into the ways noir was transformed in the mid-to-late fifties and ultimately found expression in the still-vibrant neo-noir genre.

That's just two pages of the book's 1928, however, most of which are devoted to individual films from the silent era to relatively recent history (Steven Soderbergh's 2011 Contagion being the most current entry). Forty-six films are matched with forty-six of their most iconic San Francisco locations and presented fully-illustrated and even mapped. The pages for Greed show us the Cliff House in 1924 and today, while The Conversation is represented by One Maritime Plaza and Raiders of the Lost Ark is an excuse to show us City Hall, for example. 

San Francisco moviegoers can hardly get enough of seeing our own city on cinema screens, and there are many opportunities to do so in the coming months. The Stanford's current "Best of Bogart and Film Noir Classics" series gives us one almost every weekend in late September and October. After The Maltese Falcon this week, the venue brings Out of the Past (with the Caribbean-set To Have and Have Not) September 26-29, and Dark Passage (Oct. 10-13 with The Blue Dahlia), The Lady From Shanghai (Oct. 24-27 with Key Largo) and The Caine Mutiny (Oct. 31-Nov. 3 with Touch of Evil) each have their own entries in World Film Locations: San Francisco as well.

Two of the three features playing at Oakland's Paramount Theatre as part of its fall movie classics series are also featured in the book: Bullitt, which screens this Friday, and All About Eve, which was set in New York and Connecticut but had a key scene shot at San Francisco's Curran Theatre, screens there October 15th. (The third Paramount movie classic this fall is Huston and Bogart's Uganda-shot adventure film The African Queen on November 18th). Both of the films screening at the Pacific Film Archive's free outdoor movie series in the coming weeks also get WFL:SF entries: Harold and Maude and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And Vertigo (of course also in the book) screens November 1st at Davies Symphony Hall, with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra performing Bernard Herrmann's incredible musical score live.

Perhaps the most unexpected upcoming showcase of Frisco Bay films comes courtesy the San Francisco Film Society, which is hosting at New People Cinema October 18-20 an event called Zurich/SF, which is a cinematic celebration of the ten-year anniversary of San Francisco's sister-city partnership with Switzerland's largest city. This mini-festival collaborates with the Rainer Werner Fassbinder retrospective coming to the PFA, YBCA and Roxie this fall to plug the Autumn's German-language cinematic gap caused by the Berlin & Beyond festival's move back to a January timeslot after a few years having a go in the Fall, by showing films such as Kurt Früh's rarely-seen The Fall and Andrea Štaka's Fraulein (both in 35mm) as well as five other films by Swiss filmmakers. But it also brings four showings of films in which San Francisco is more than mere backdrop to action but a major element of character and theme. Of these, The Conversation and The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (the latter of which will screen on 35mm) merit entries in WFL:SF, while Medicine For Melancholy is discussed in one of the other contextualizing essays in the book. As for 1970s buddy-cop oddity Freebie and the Bean, it will have to wait and see if sales on the book merit a sequel.

HOW: The Maltese Falcon screens on a 35mm double bill with Casablanca.

To Live And Die In L.A. (1985)

WHO: William Friedkin directed and co-wrote this film.

WHAT: Most people I know cite The Exorcist and/or The French Connection as their favorite Friedkin films, but I prefer a couple of films he made slightly later in his career, including this 1985 thriller featuring terrific performances from William Peterson, John Pankow and Willem Dafoe, and one of the impactful finishes to a Hollywood film of its era, if not ever. And an incredible chase sequence. As Michael Crowley wrote on the film,

It may seem at first that Friedkin is merely trying to outdo the chase sequence in The French Connection. But the car chase in To Live and Die in L.A. is utterly unique and superior in many respects to its predecessor.

The sequence that opens with the arrival of "Thomas Ling" at Union station and transforms gradually into the chase is the bedrock of the film. Everything that comes before leads towards it, and all that follows is the inevitable consequence. Many of the film's ambitions are realized in this sequence—its themes are crystallized and conveyed visually, intellectually and emotionally. The geographic and narrative incoherence that may confuse or annoy viewers the first time they see it, over time, become its defining feature.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight only at the Pacific Film Archive at 7:00 PM.

WHY: With the publication of yesterday's SF Chronicle article on the PFA's 6-film Friedkin series, tickets are starting to go fast, especially for the in-person appearances on Thursday, Sep. 19 & 21. I purchased my ticket to the screening of Sorcerer yesterday, but who knows how much longer they'll be available? Friedkin is well-known as an entertaining raconteur with an edge, and pent-up demand to see that particular film on the big screen is pretty large, as it's never been available on DVD and has screened in cinemas very infrequently since it's original, poorly-recieved release (though there was a special San Jose screening I was unable to attend this past Spring).

To Live And Die In L.A. was a hit on first release, however, and has actually already screened in San Francisco twice in the past year. The San Francisco International Film Festival screened it digitally earlier this year and Elliot Lavine included a 35mm print of it in his third annual Not Necessarily Noir series last October. (No sign of a fourth edition of this series on the latest Roxie calendar, I'm sad to note.) But I find it's always good to view great films in context with other films by the same director, so seeing my favorite Friedkin films Sorcerer and To Live and Die In L.A. in such close succession, possibly along with other films he made (I'm thinking of checking out the one title in the series I've never seen before, The Boys In The Band, this coming Sunday), should make their resonance build upon each other.

Interestingly, Friedkin's opinion on another famous car chase movie was part of yesterday's Chronicle article: 

"Bullitt is the best cop film I've ever seen," Friedkin said. "I probably watch it five times a year. But not the chase. I like it, but I don't think it's great. What they did was clear the streets and send the cars over the hills. No people in danger."

Bullitt will screen next Friday at the Paramount in Oakland, kicking off a three-film fall season. It's a great opportunity for East Bay audiences to see multiple contenders for "greatest chase scene of all time" on the big screen in a short period of time. If only Friedkin's San Francisco-set Jade, which has what the director has called "the best chase scene I’ve ever shot" was part of the PFA series.

HOW: To Live And Die In L.A. screens via a 35mm print.

Godzilla (1954)

WHO: Eiji Tsuburaya was the mastermind behind the visual effects in this film.

WHAT: The biggest movie ever produced in Japan in 1954 (taking that crown from the just-released Seven Samurai, another film featuring actor Takeshi Shimura and produced at the Toho studio under production chief Iwao Mori), the original Godzilla was like no film made before it. It's also like no Godzilla film made since; for one it's the only film in the 28-entry series in which Godzilla is the lone monster star; all subsequent productions faced him off against another kaiju creation like Mothra or Rodan or King Ghidorah or all of the above at once. It's also the only Godzilla film to feature the beautiful black-and-white compositional creations of cinematographer Masao Tamai, who shot so many masterpieces for the great director Mikio Naruse in the 1950s. 

But the most lasting achievements of the film can be put at the feet of effects wizard Tsuburaya, the subject of one of the most attractive and informative books in my collection, by local author August Ragone. Here's an excerpt of what Ragone says about the first Godzilla movie:

Originally, Tsuburaya wanted to bring the nuclear nightmare to life using stop-motion effects, as King Kong had been made. When asked how long it would take to produce such effects, Tsuburaya told Mori it would take seven years to shoot all of the effects required by the screenplay, based on the current staff and infrastructure of at Toho. Of course this was out of the question--the film had to be in theatres by the end of the year. Tsuburaya decided that his department's considerable expertise in miniature building and visual effects photography could accommodate working with a live actor in a monster costume instead of using stop-motion techniques. 

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at Oakland's Paramount Theatre at 8:00.

WHY: I recently wrote about how my disappointment in Pacific Rim stoked a desire to see the original Japanese giant monster movie again, especially considering it's coming to the kaiju-sized Paramount screen for only five dollars. I won't repeat all of that again here, but I will stress that a full house at the theatre tonight would be a great signal that not only is Godzilla fandom alive and well here on Frisco Bay, but that there's considerable interest in seeing films from other countries enter the rotation of Paramount Movie Classics, which as long as I can remember have always been drawn from a rather narrow slate of Hollywood productions (the August 23rd showing of North By Northwest is at least the third showing of that film in that venue in the past ten years or so, for example.)

True diehards can make this a real kaiju weekend in Oakland, as the New Parkway is screening King Kong Vs. Godzilla Sunday August 11th, with an introduction by the aforementioned Japanese cinema expert Ragone.

Finally, it seems worth mentioning that the Pacific Film Archive's ongoing tribute to the Japanese animation world's most respected company, Studio Ghibli, includes a few films with giant monsters in them as well. The series has been popular enough that the venue has decided to add an extra screening of My Neighbor Totoro August 25th, I've never heard Totoro referred to as a kaiju, but he's got to be the only giant Japanese creature that might rival the Big G in international popularity.

HOW: Godzilla screens in its original Japanese-language version, via 35mm print from Rialto Pictures, and will be preceded by at least one cartoon, newsreel, and trailer, all also in 35mm.

Pacific Rim (2013)

WHO: Guillermo Del Toro co-wrote and directed this.

WHAT: I've seen a few more stereotypical "summer movies" this year than I usually do. Perhaps it's because, with the (temporary) closure of the Embarcadero and the (sadly permanent) closure of the Bridge and the Lumiere, there are fewer arthouse options calling me to the cinema this summer than in prior years. So far my favorite of the gargantuan-budgeted studio releases, my favorite has been the widely reviled The Lone Ranger, which I hope to make time to write about before it disappears from local screens- but that day is not today. So instead, Pacific Rim. I can't say I liked it very much, other than a few touches revolving around the fairly well-handled Mako Mori character.

If you want to read a generally favorable take on Pacific Rim that is nonetheless rational about some of its shortcomings, there's probably no-one better than Vern to provide it for you. But my friend Dennis Cozzalio (from whom I have brazenly borrowed he above still, hoping he doesn't mind) sums up my impression quite nicely:

Del Toro's monster mash makes a hell of a racket, but it goes nowhere, and not particularly fast at that. The sinking feeling I got from watching the trailers, which was dissipated somewhat by some of the decent reviews, came back very quickly as I waited for the endless battle sequences to amount to something-- anything-- but the conclusion of Pacific Rim ends up as routine as everything that came before it, and just as exhausting as well.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens multiple times daily at the Balboa through Thursday, and at many other theatres throughout the area through Thursday and beyond, although its screen count will drop Friday to make way for the next would-be blockbusters.

WHY: Why feature a movie I didn't particularly care for on a day when there are interesting films (albeit unseen by me) playing at (for example) the Stanford or the Roxie?

Because it seems like a perfect opportunity to remind readers of an upcoming screening of the film that more than any other Pacific Rim owes its existence to. Of course I speak of Ishiro Honda's 1954 Godzilla, which has its own remake on the way, but more importantly screens at the the most palatial movie venue on Frisco Bay in just over two weeks.

The Paramount Theatre in Oakland was designed by Timothy Pflueger's firm and erected in 1931, making his company's Castro Theatre design from ten years prior seem like a mere warm-up. It's quite a bit larger and more elaborate, not to mention better preserved than the Castro (where the ceiling paint is noticeably peeling, as a friend pointed out to me as we sat in the balcony this past weekend). But it's not an ideal venue for movies in which making out lots of dialogue is, er, paramount to appreciation of the film (I still have bad memories of a showing of His Girl Friday there), as, last I checked, the audio track can be muddy with certain prints. Thus it's used more frequently as a concert venue (its sound problems don't seem to extend to live performances for some reason), and is ideal for silent film screenings with live accompaniment, as anyone who attended Napoléon there last year will attest.

I've never known the Paramount to screen a foreign-dialogue film with English subtitles before, however. Godzilla will screen, I understand, in its original Japanese-language version, with subtitles translated and prepared by Michie Yamakawa and Bruce Goldstein in 2004. This might work. This might be awesome. With the energy of a big enough audience there, it WILL be awesome.

Akira Ifukube's score and Godzilla's signature vocalizations should come through fine, and if the dialogue doesn't it won't be much of a problem for English-language readers. As usual at the Paramount there will be a cartoon, newsreel, and live organ performance beforehand. Best of all, the show will only cost five dollars a ticket. At those prices, your budget may be able to also afford the cocktails available to be enjoyed in style in the glorious Grand Lobby or one of the ornately Art Deco lounges,

So if your friends ask you to go along with them to see Pacific Rim, consider taking them up on it. Maybe you'll like it better than Dennis or I did. But whether you do or not, make sure to tell them to come along with you to Godzilla at the Paramount August 9th so you all can see what a time-tested kaiju eiga (monster movie) can look like on a REALLY. BIG. SCREEN. Wouldn't it be great if 1700 people filled every seat in the house for a showing of a 1954 Japanese movie?

HOW: 35mm print at the Balboa, and digitally in 2D, 3D, and (at least through Thursday) 3D IMAX (at the Metreon) and "LieMax" (at other venues using the IMAX brand) elsewhere. It was shot in digital 2D, so 3D versions are post-converted.