Hell On Frisco Bay: Paramount

Showing posts with label Paramount. Show all posts

Monday, December 19, 2011

The BANG BANG Wagon

Year's running out. Holidays are closing in. Frisco Bay movie theatres wrapping up their 2011 programming with annual traditions like Wizard of Oz at the Paramount December 30 and It's A Wonderful Life at the Stanford December 24th, although it's already sold out there. Not at the Balboa or (on the 25th) at New People though, both theatres hoping what's proven popular in Palo Alto can be so here in SF too. New People's also trying a late Friday holiday screening of the Finnish monster movie (with Santa as monster) Rare Exports: a Christmas Tale, as well as a run of the wintry Silent Souls and a new 35mm print of the cold, cold Truffaut classic The Bride Wore Black from now until Thursday, December 22. The Rafael in Marin has another snowbound film starting December 23: Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush with a newly adapted version of Chaplin's score (the occasion for the new 35mm release). The Castro is counter-programming all this chilliness with a full week of heart-warming musicals, starting with a knockout Vincente Minnelli double bill of Meet Me In St. Louis and The Band Wagon December 26th, and winding up with a "sing-a-long" (that is, lyrically subtitled) 35mm print of West Side Story. And this Friday's Oddball Films program is simply a must-see for anyone into Georges Méliès, or Warner Brothers cartoons not on DVD, or the films of Charles & Ray Eames, or all of the above (like me!)

I had to get that paragraph out of the way before coming to the main purpose of this post: to announce, and to provide an index for, a year-end-project cooked up by my buddy Ryland Walker Knight and myself to be cross-posted here at Hell On Frisco Bay and on Ryland's blog Vinyl Is Heavy this week. BANG BANG refers to the double vertical numerals we've been living with since January. We've asked a number of fine folks to weigh in with various year-end-wrap-up articles. Top tens, mostly, though not exclusively. Movies, mostly, though not exclusively. We'll wrap-up the week with our own top ten new releases of 2011. Watch this space!

On The Wagon:

Adam Hartzell offers his top ten with commentary
Julian Tran and Cuyler Ballenger share six crime movies they loved seeing last year
Dave McDougall's selected 2011 discoveries, briefly noted and across various media
Matthew Flanagan gives a quick rundown of stuff he loved from last year
Eric Freeman walks us through some things he found interesting in some things he saw this year
Akiva Gottlieb's got some love for Poetry
Jenny Stewart offers notes on storytelling, and how Breaking Bad's so good at it
Durga Chew-Bose loves ladies
Ryland Walker Knight gabs on some stuff about impermanence
My own entry

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Happy Bastille Day at the Silent Film Festival!

Only hours until the San Francisco Silent Film Festival begins, and word comes from the twitter feed of London-based composed Carl Davis, that he will be conducting the Oakland East Bay Symphony as they perform the score to the 1927 Abel Gance film Napoléon as the film unspools on the screen at the Paramount Theatre of the Arts in Oakland. According to the trailer linked to by Davis, the performances will be on March 24, 25, 31, and April 1st, 2012.

This is momentous news for silent film fans, as it represents the first official announcement that two of last year's special Oscar award recipients, Kevin Brownlow and Francis Ford Coppola. have found their way to collaborate after many years of being at odds over the rights to show Napoléon. This article helps explain why the film has not shown in a US cinema in nearly three decades, and why the version restored by Brownlow and scored by Davis has never been seen by American moviegoers.

For my part, I've never seen Napoléon, other than in brief clips like those seen in Brownlow's excellent documentary series (co-produced by David Gill) Cinema Europe: the Other Hollywood. Too young to have known about the screenings put on with Carmine Coppola's score until they'd already happened, and not well-heeled enough to catch this outdoor screening in 1997, I've always sensed that seeing it in a theatre, as opposed to on the VHS tapes available at Le Video and a few other surviving rental stores, would be worth the wait. It's been a long one, but there are only eight more months of it to go!

This announcement more than makes up for the fact that this summer marks the first SF Silent Film Festival since 2005 in which there hasn't been a program devoted to French films (although a few French shorts appear on the festival's sole all-digital program, Wild and Weird, including the hilarious Arthème Swallows his Clarinet.) Happy Bastille Day!

Brownlow, as you may have heard, will be returning to the festival this weekend after being awarded last year, will be back to speak at the 10AM Sunday morning event Amazing Tales From The Archives. Having seen the man speak at length on his love of silent film before, I predict that this is going to be the highlight of the entire festival for many (if not all) of its attendees. And it's free! Thomas Gladysz agrees, and he should know, having been involved in the silent film world far longer than I have. Get to the Castro Theatre early for this one!

Some more articles on or related to the 2011 SF Silent Film Festival, in case you still haven't decided what to watch:

Carl Martin on the provenance of the prints and restorations.
Michael Hawley has a comprensive preview of the line-up.
Dennis Harvey writes about A Nail In the Boot for the SF Bay Guardian and on Shoes for sf360.
J. F. DeFreitas on the line-up, with a special focus on Yasujiro Ozu's I Was Born, But.... (which is the film I wrote on for the program guide. Be sure to arrive at the Friday, 4:15 show a little early to catch the slide show on Ozu that I've prepared!)
It's Silent Film Week at the Fandor Keyframe blog, and I've contributed a piece on Douglas Fairbanks. I can't wait to see him in Mr. Fix-It on Saturday!
The festival's own blog has begun collecting more links as well.

I would also be remiss in neglecting to mention a few other Frisco Bay screenings of note, for those whose budget is too tight to wrap around Silent Film Festival ticket prices. Lech Majewski's incredible digital opera The Roe's Room plays tonight at SFMOMA. The new Stanford Theatre calendar is up, and it includes four Friday evenings of Buster Keaton films accompanied by Dennis James at the Wurlitzer, starting tomorrow night. And the Pacific Film Archive's upcoming weekend is full of rarely-screened but highly-regarded films, most notably a new print of Bernardo Bertolucci's epic 1900.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Maureen Russell's Two Eyes

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Ben Armington's Two Eyes

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Jason Wiener'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 cinephile Jason Wiener, who blogs at Jason Watches Movies:

This is simply in chronological order of when I saw them, numbering should not be taken as a ranking:

1. THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950), Castro Theatre, Noir City. I could pretty much fill this list every year with stuff I saw at Noir City, but I'll let THE ASPHALT JUNGLE represent them all. Great characters, great story, Marylin Monroe (the star of Noir City 2010) before she was known. Oh, and if you like pretending to be an erudite film scholar you can point out how the style was influenced by the Italian Neo-realists.

2. CANDY (1968), The Vortex Room. Usually the showings at the Vortex Room are pretty hit-and-miss (at least the public ones)--definitely "cult" movies, if you can pretend that completely forgotten movies have a "cult." But they make a damn good martinis that can get me through just about any movie. CANDY, however, deserves a huge cult following. A bizarre parody of Voltaire's "Candide" (confession, I haven't read it) starring Ewa Aulin as high school girl Candy Christian, just trying to understand the world, and featuring an all-star cast of Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, James Coburn, John Huston, Walter Matthau, and Ringo Starr (as a Mexican!) all trying to bed her. Plus a dual role by John Astin as both her father and uncle. Absolutely crazy.

3. METROPOLIS (1928), Castro Theatre, The San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Again, I could fill this list just with stuff I saw at SFSFF, but there was clearly a big star this year. It had been in the news for a couple of years that they found an additional 30 minutes of METROPOLIS in Argentina. The restoration process is complete, it's out on DVD now, and of course it had to play SFSFF. The extra scenes actually add quite a bit (it's obvious which scenes were added, since they were slightly cropped, inferior quality coming from a 16mm print), but more than that I understand that the complete 16mm print was used as a basis for re-editing existing footage into the original order/pacing. Which means METROPOLIS is no longer just an amazingly visual movie with something of a confusing plot, the story now makes sense! And The Alloy Orchestra did a fantastic job with the accompaniment.

4. A TRIP DOWN MARKET STREET (1905 1906), The Edison Theater at The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum. Again, I could fill this list just with stuff I saw at my neighborhood silent film museum (show me any other place in the country that shows silent films with live music every week!), where I also volunteer (come in weekends noon-4 and I or another docent will give you a tour, including a 1913 projection booth). But the clear highlight of the year at Niles was all the publicity around A TRIP DOWN MARKET STREET. The Library of Congress just added it to the National Film Registry and corrected their records which originally estimated the date of the film as September 1905. Of course, we at Niles new for a couple of years that it was really April 1906--4 days before the earthquake. And that's all thanks to our amazing historian David Kiehn, and a news report on him and the film by some outfit called 60 Minutes. Oh yeah, and if you look at the very last second of Morley Safer's report, when everyone is in the theater watching the film, I was on 60 minutes (for about 60 milliseconds)!

5. SUSPIRIA (1977), CellSpace, part of a 24 hour Halloween horror marathon put on by the folks at Indiefest. So the marathon was pretty much a bust. By the end we closed up and went home to sleep rather than watch the last movie. But heck if I don't always love seeing SUSPIRIA on the big screen. In fact, I could've said the same about ERASERHEAD (1976), also in the marathon. Or EVIL DEAD (1981) or even CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980), which for all it's flaws and excesses is sorta the movie that started my career of film fest gluttony. But what the heck, I said SUSPIRIA first, I love SUSPIRIA, so SUSPIRIA makes the list while the rest don't.

6. THE MILPITAS MONSTER (1975), The Edison Theater at The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum. Besides being a bastion of silent film, the folks at Niles also do Halloween right. In fact, I don't have a good reason for putting this on the list instead of their Creature Features show where John Stanley showed up to present THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US (with all the original gags, bumpers, and commercials from it's showing on late night TV) and Ernie Fosselius (HARDWARE WARS) showed up to present PLAN 9.1 FROM OUTER SPACE and give us a little puppet show. The only reason THE MILPITAS MONSTER makes the list instead is I've heard about it for so long, I've always wanted to see it, and I finally did. And it's not that good. But it's also not as bad as I expected. It's made by high schoolers with a keen sense of local humor, and it's an amusing look at Milpitas in the 70's.

7. THE GENERAL (1926) and STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. (1928), The Bal Theatre. And despite all the attention people give to THE GENERAL, I'm not going to pick my favorite nor am I going to choose only one to go on this list. It was presented as a double feature (either one night or two nights, your preference) and of course the films were fantastic. The crowd wasn't big enough to really get into it, and there was a technical glitch in the projection so it was stretched to widescreen instead of 3:4 (I've been assured this has been fixed for any shows in the future), but none of that could ruin the experience. And I just love it when old classic theaters like the Bal are brought back to life. So please, go check out what's playing at the Bal so it can stay open.

8. THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928), The Paramount Theatre. I've lived in the Bay Area over 10 years and I'm ashamed to admit this was my first time at the Paramount. That place is beautiful! That movie is beautiful! That musical accompaniment was beautiful! I'm an atheist, and this was still a religious experience.

9. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946). What could possibly possess me to put this perennially overplayed, cliche bit of treacle on my list? And at which of the half dozen venues that play this around Christmas did I see it? The questions are related, as I saw this at The Dark Room on Bad Movie Night. Heck, I even hosted (meaning I was one of the guys in the front row with a microphone). This is an annual tradition there, so next year if you want to indulge your inner Scrooge and tear this movie apart, come on by. And the fact is, as much fun as I had (and as drunk as I was), this movie can take it.

I also want to digress and add a note about Bad Movie Night in general. Yeah, I'm always drunk there, yeah, my blog posts on it are always ridiculously brief, but the fact is the more I go there the more I notice that when you watch a movie specifically to make fun of it, you (or at least I) pay more attention to it and notice things that I missed before (in particular, plot holes, poor reasoning, questionable morals, general silliness). So I consider this not a diversion from, but an integral part of my film geekness.

Honorable Mention: METROPOLIS REDUX (1984), VIZ Cinema, part of Indiefest's Another Hole in the Head festival. Just a week after seeing the METROPOLIS restoration at the Silent Film Festival, I saw this 1984 rock-soundtrack, partially colorized version by Giorgio Moroder. As a cinephile I can't in good conscience put this on my list, but as a fan of new experiences I was intrigued and left the theater not the least bit upset. The best parallel I could think of was THE WALL, where instead of a soundtrack accompanying the film's story, the music came first and the movie was a series of linked vignettes based around the music. The fact is, I love THE WALL, and I fully appreciate how audiences can love METROPOLIS REDUX. Just please go check out the restored original so you can understand what Moroder tore apart.

Horribly, Disgustingly Dishonorable Mention: 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1916) with a ridiculously distracting mockery of a score by Stephin Merrit and Daniel Handler, at the Castro Theatre, part of the SF International Film Festival. Interestingly enough, a few months later at the Silent Film Festival there was a panel discussion by the musicians about accompanying silent films. No matter if they were traditionalists (Dennis James) or more radical (The Alloy Orchestra), they all talked about the importance of putting the film first and not letting their accompaniment be a distraction. If you want to see an example of getting that completely wrong, see what Stephin Merrit did here. But you'll need a time machine to go back and see it, because if I have anything to say about it nothing like this will happen in the Bay Area ever again.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Lincoln Spector's Two Eyes

Victoria Jaschob's Two Eyes

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Rob Byrne's Two Eyes

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Season of Light

It's truly Winter on Frisco Bay now, with temperatures to prove it. What better time to spend inside a movie theatre, being warmed by the heat of artistic achievement? Though it may be tougher to find time for culture in a December packed with holiday parties and shopping trips, the potential psychological and, dare I say, spiritual rewards, of seeing a good or great movie seem to be ramped up at this time of year. Why else do so many film companies release so many of the films they think will resonate with adult audiences during this season? (So they can position their films for critics' top tens and Academy Awards, you say? Don't be such a Scrooge!) This week Frisco Bay hosts at least two screenings likely to have a profound mood-altering effect on religious and secular cinephiles alike. I mentioned both in my last post but they're worth repeating. There's Thursday's screening of Carl Dreyer's 1928 The Passion of Joan Of Arc at the glorious Paramount, with a 22-piece orchestra and full chorus performing Richard Einhorn's Voices of Light composition as underscore. Seeing the trial of the Maid of Orleans enacted (almost entirely in facial close-ups) on such a large screen with such glorious music accompanying is likely to be the cultural highlight of the month (if not year) for anyone no matter what their religious affiliation, or lack thereof. Then on Saturday the Rafael Film Center screens Apichatpong Weerasethakul's very spiritually-attuned new film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives as part of a week-long International Buddhist Film Festival Showcase.

I haven't seen any of the other selections in the Rafael program of Buddhist-themed films (though I should note that the documentary Saint Misbehavin': the Wavy Gravy Movie will begin a week-long engagement at the Red Vic this Friday, before it screens at the Rafael on Sunday), but I have previewed DVD screener copies of two hour-long films playing together as part of the International Buddhist Film Festival's December 9-19 stint at the Yerba Buena Center For The Arts. Titled The Inland Sea and Dream Window: Reflections on the Japanese Garden, these two Nipponophile documentaries from the early 1990s will be presented in rare 35mm prints, and the cinematographer for The Inland Sea, Hiro Narita (who also shot Never Cry Wolf and La Mission among many other titles) will be present at the films' December 12 pairing.

The Inland Sea ties nicely into the Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives screening because the latter film's director Apichatpong has reportedly been planning to follow his Cannes prize-winning film with a project on Donald Richie, who narrates and briefly appears in The Inland Sea, quite appropriately since he wrote the 1971 travel memoir upon which it was based. Richie is of course best known to cinephiles for his writings on Japanese film, but in fact his writing on the country he's lived in since the late 1940s investigates more than just its cinema. The Inland Sea, both in book and film form, seeks a traditional Japan fading from view in the latter part of the 20th century, by journeying between the coastal towns bordering the Seto Inland Sea that separates the islands of Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. One gets a good sense of the subject and tone of the documentary from Vincent Canby's New York Times review from 1991. But perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the film is how it straddles the line between time capsule and period piece. Richie wrote the following for a 1993 reprinting of the memoir:

It has now been over twenty years since The Inland Sea was first published, and nearly thirty since I began the journals on which it is based. During this time the area has much changed. Last year, when the book was made into a film, the crew could no longer follow all of my original route since large portions of it were now unrecognizably developed.

Yet, they discovered that by jumping one island over, as it were, they could parallel my journey of three decades before; they could find places where, mirroring the words of my text, the past had not vanished, not quite. The Inland Sea I wrote about yet exists--it is there, if you know where to look.

I do wonder if the same could be said today, now that nearly another twenty years have passed.

Both The Inland Sea and suitably titled Dream Window: Reflections On The Japanese Garden are enriched by a musical score from 20th century Japan's arguably greatest composer, Toru Takemitsu, who wrote music for films by Nagisa Oshima, Masaki Kobayashi, Masahiro Shinoda, Shohei Imamura, Akira Kurosawa (though not for any of the Kurosawa/Toshiro Mifune collaborations, like the seven playing the VIZ over the holidays), and many other directors before his 1996 death. His contribution to Dream Window is much stronger than to The Inland Sea, however. Not only is there more music, featured more prominently, but Takemitsu is interviewed on camera, and even the title Dream Window was taken from the title of one of his serialist compositions. Any Takemitsu fan should consider this film a must-watch; it's especially enlightening to be able to hear the man speak about the affinity he feels between music composition and gardens, and then hear a passage from one of his Messaien-influenced pieces, while an image from the garden at Sai-Hochi appears on screen.

Perhaps Toru Takemitsu's most fruitful if not frequent composer/director relationship was the one he had with Hiroshi Teshigahara, director of Woman In The Dunes, Antonio Gaudí, and Rikyu as well as other films Takmitsu scored. Teshigahara, too, appears prominently in Dream Window: Reflections On The Japanese Garden, not in the role of film director but as grand master of his father's Sogetsu school of Ikebana (flower arranging), and as a budding outdoor garden designer as well. Since the documentary was released between Teshigahara's final two films Rikyu and Basara: Princess Goh, the only two jidai-geki (period films) the multitalented artist made in his career, it's particularly interesting to hear him advise, "we have to think of what we can create for today's world. It would be pointless just to copy what went before."

Ultimately both The Inland Sea and Dream Window are likely to be satisfying viewing for anyone with a natural interest in Japanese culture, with added excitement for cinephiles curious to see legendary figures associated with Japanese cinema (Richie, Takemitsu, Teshigahara) speaking of matters separate from their involvement in film. They certainly make sense paired together (perhaps this was first done in a 1993 issue of the Buddhism journal Tricycle) by the International Buddhist Film Festival. Though neither film addresses Buddhism in a sustained and direct way (Shintoism is in fact more prominently dealt with in The Inland Sea), they both invite a kind of contemplative observational style that may appeal to Buddhist viewers, especially those who remember that the festival programmed Thomas Riedelsheimer's documentary on artist Andy Goldsworthy Rivers And Tides at a previous event. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Riedelsheimer had encountered Dream Window in particular before developing the rhythms he employed in that film.

Before I sign off, let me point out that Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is equally devoted to the sacred and the profane in December, as in addition to their Buddhist film series, the venue is also hosting a devious horror film series called Go To Hell For the Holidays From December 2-18. Dennis Harvey has previewed most of the titles, including Wolf Creek (the Australian film that was released on Christmas Day 2005 in the US). The only selection I've seen myself is the Thai film about the cannibalistic-minded noodle vendor, The Meat Grinder. I'll simply say it was just as gory and twice as atmospheric as I expected it to be.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Twenty Years South

Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive has a new calendar out, full of goodies. Oakland's Paramount has plans to show Wait Until Dark, The General and Captain Blood in March. San Rafael is getting a rare Jan Troell retrospective February 27-March 6. Even Sepastapol has its annual documentary festival March 5-7. And here in Frisco we've got a new SF Cinematheque season underway as well as festival after festival after festival: first Noise Pop, then German Gems, then the Disposable Film Festival, and then my own favorite festival of the season, the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival, which has been amply previewed by Michael Hawley. Before you know it, the San Francisco International Film Festival will be around the corner; Frisco Bay's most prominent film festival has already begun announcing festival events, namely the 1916 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with Stephen Merritt, Daniel Handler & David Hegarty providing musical accompaniment, the presentation of the Kanbar screenwriting award (by John Waters!) to James Schamus, best known for his collaborations with Ang Lee; their film Ride With the Devil, will screen May 1st.

Where does this leave the South Bay? Well, the SFIAAFF does run one weekend of films in San Jose, at the Camera 12. And the Stanford Theatre is still in the first week of a diverse Akira Kurosawa retrospective, including some of his most famous as well as some of his most obscure films, samurai-centered and otherwise. The Seven Samurai plays through Friday, so you haven't missed any of the series (which ends March 30 with Ran) yet.

But you probably live under a rock, or else north of the southernmost BART stops, not to realize that the South Bay's biggest film festival of the year, the Cinequest Film Festival, begins its 20th anniversary program tonight with a screening of international co-production the Good Heart starring Brian Cox. Dennis Harvey of sf360 has written an overview of potential festival highlights, but let me add my own voice to the conversation, even if there's a good deal of overlap between his picks and mine.

Though intriguing films like Bong Joon-ho's Mother and Ilisa Barbsh & Lucien Castaing-Taylor's documentary Sweetgrass are promised to screen in Landmark Theatres around Frisco Bay, the majority of Cinequest films are not guaranteed to play anywhere else locally. That includes what must be the must-see of the festival, French master Alain Resnais's latest Wild Grass scheduled for a single screening on March 4th; though it has a distributor, a local theatrical release date has not been set yet. Babnik, the third feature from Alejandro Adams to play Cinequest in as many years is another important draw for those of us who've been intrigued to see what the maker of Around The Bay and Canary has in store next.

I've seen three of the films playing already. The two silent films Dennis James is slated to accompany behind the California Theatre organ are both seen far too infrequently. Erich Von Stroheim's the Merry Widow does not match his masterpiece Greed in either ambition or impact, but any of Stroheim's films are of serious interest to cinephiles. Ernst Lubitsch's the Student Prince of Old Heidelberg, on the other hand, may just be his greatest (and most delightful) silent film, as anyone who saw it open the 2007 San Francisco Silent Film Festival might be inclined to agree.

I've also seen, on a screener DVD, one of the new films in the lineup, with a title inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit. If you're sick and tired of the hip but nowheredly-mobile characters glorified by a certain movement of no-star, low-budget filmmaking that peaked in critical attention a couple ago (yes, that one that rhymes with 'Dumbledore') you may be in the target audience for Jarrod Whaley's Hell Is Other People (fully reviewed by Richard van Busack). There's no way around it: Whaley has created in underground psychotherapist Morty Burnett one of the most pathetic, non-glorified, unappealing characters I've seen on a screen in quite a while. He's likely to truly test an audience's sense of empathy. Though Hell Is Other People doesn't bear enough technical dissimilarity to prevent some observers from distinguishing it from the genre-that-must-not-be-named, those who've been paying close attention might just agree that Whaley has launched a counter-movement of his own, that now just needs a catchy name to spread like wildfire. So then, what rhymes with 'Voldemort'?

Friday, May 1, 2009

SFIFF52 Day 9: 35 Shots of Rum

The 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival is halfway over; it runs through May 7th. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about one film I've seen or am hotly anticipating.

35 Shots of Rum (FRANCE: Claire Denis, 2008)

playing: 7:00 PM tonight at the Clay, with two more showtimes later in the festival.
festival premiere: Venice 2008
distributor: Cinema Guild theatrical release expected in New York, and hopefully here in Frisco as well.

Just about every cinephile I've talked to about the SFIFF program has the same thing to say when I've asked what new film in the program they're most eager to see: 35 Shots of Rum by Claire Denis. If you don't know her or her work yet, check out this resource for approaches to catching up. I think it must be the perfect storm of a respected auteur who has still not received her due in this country, a four-year absence of new Denis work on local screens, and a particularly well-received film that seemingly has been a highlight of just about every other film festival in the world. If I ask myself the same question, I have the same answer, and I guess for the same reasons. I don't pretend to be a leader rather than a follower here at Hell On Frisco Bay.

I already have a ticket for Wednesday's screening, but might just see 35 Shots of Rum tonight as well, at its first festival showing. I'm anticipating it more fervently than anything other than perhaps the Dengue Fever/Gordon Willis pairing next Tuesday, and the latter anticipation is at least as much for the extra-filmic experience as it is for the film itself. I hope my expectations, high as they are, are not dashed.

I must admit I've done very little reading on the film in preparation for seeing it; sometimes I like to let a trusted director take me by the hand into her cinematic world as uninformed of details as possible. When a perusal of the SFIFF program guide sparked a mental exercise in which I tried to identify the three filmmaker references in a written description that I think provide the least help for me in determining whether or not to see an unfamiliar film, I came up with Eric Rohmer (code for "talky, but good"), David Cronenberg (code for "this may be a horror film but don't dismiss it if your not a fan of that genre") and Yasujiro Ozu (code for "quiet" or maybe "transcendental", neither of which I find particularly appropriate labels for Ozu's frequently misunderstood work). It was not an intentional slight to the SFIFF notes written by Judy Bloch, as I had not even skimmed her piece to see that she'd name-dropped two of these three in it. For me, Denis is name enough to know I want to see a film.

SFIFF52 Day 9
Another option: Our Beloved Month of August (PORTUGAL: Miguel Gomes, 2008), a demanding but ultimately satisfying cine-relexive work by a young filmmaker. Jeffrey Anderson says more.
Non-SFIFF-option for today: Notorious (USA: Alfred Hitchcock, 1946) at the Paramount in Oakland, where five dollars gets you entry into a true Art Deco palace, along with cartoon, newsreel, and organist. And the feature just happens to be Hitchcock's greatest black-and-white film, in my opinion.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Silent Movies In Big (and not-quite-so big) Spaces

The Paramount Theatre in Oakland, by far the grandest movie palace in which I've ever seen a film projected (sorry, Ziegfeld), hasn't shown a film since January 2007, when they played Double Indemnity to an appreciative audience including yours truly. But they're having a go of it again. A brief series of Friday night films began last night with a screening of the dearly departed Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. I learned about it mere hours before, which was not enough time to change my evening plans or to blog about it before hand. So I'm telling you now. The art deco temple to luxury and entertainment, has booked Lon Chaney in the Phantom of the Opera with live Wurlitzer organ accompaniment by Jim Riggs on October 31st, Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest November 7th, and Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain November 21st. With a promise of more to come (though I've learned not to place too much stock in these kinds of promises...I'll keep you posted). The tradition of the old-time movie night, complete with newsreel, cartoon, and "Dec-o-win" prize giveaway, will remain intact. And the price has been lowered back down to $5, perfect for folks with concern that the nation's economy may be coming closer to resembling that of 1931 (the year the Paramount was built) than is comfortable. What great news about a film venue I'd pretty much written off last year after reading this piece.

The Paramount is not the only Frisco Bay venue screening Phantom of the Opera on Halloween. Dennis James will take the controls of the 9,000-pipe Ruffatti organ to accompany the Rupert Julian-directed film at Davies Symphony Hall that evening. The tickets are more expensive but the unique nature of the event (the first organ-accompanied silent I've seen booked at Davies since I've been paying attention) may be worth it. Hopefully both venues will be showing the film on 35mm prints, unlike Grace Cathedral which projected from a DVD on a disappointingly modest screen when this horror warhorse was shown last New Year's Eve.

There are more silent films with live musical accompaniment to anticipate over the coming months. The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum has its own Halloween screening next Saturday, October 25th: F.W. Murnau's loose Dracula adaptation Nosferatu with an original score by Molly Axtman, performing with her Invisible Ensemble. The museum's Edison Theatre is nowhere near the size of the Paramount or Davies, and when they program a film as well-known as Nosferatu there it tends to sell out- let that be a warning. There are lesser-known, piano-accompanied silents every Saturday night in Niles (reachable by a short bus ride from the Union City BART stop) planned through the end of 2008, with a few extra days thrown in for good measure. Tonight is the monthly Comedy Shorts Night, with more shorts programmed November 15 and December 13. November 1st brings the Goose Woman, directed by Clarence Brown. November 8th and 9th is a weekend-long celebration of the 90th birthday of Diana Serra Cary, a.k.a. child star Baby Peggy. Carey will be in attendance. Douglas Fairbanks, who would be 125 if he were still alive, also gets a two-day celebration in Niles December 6th and 7th, including screenings of When the Clouds Roll By and National Film Registry selection Wild and Wooly. Other features set to grace the Edison Theatre include the Lost Express November 22, Young Romance (a 1915 Lasky film written by William C. de Mille) November 29, the fun-for-all-ages 1924 Peter Pan December 20 and 21, and John Ford's 3 Bad Men, a reportedly major influence on Akira Kurosawa, on December 27.

Pianist Judith Rosenberg will accompany three Soviet silent films at the Pacific Film Archive this Sunday and on the next two Wednesdays as part of the wonderful Envisioning Russia series running there. The November-December calendar at the PFA has not been announced in full yet, but I do know this: three Saturday afternoons in November will bring Buster Keaton films as part of the theatre's Movie Matinees For All Ages program. It's Go West on November 8, Sherlock, Jr., the Scarecrow and Cops November 15, and Our Hospitality and the Haunted House November 29.

The next Castro Theatre calendar can be downloaded as a pdf, and though it's dominated by a month-long booking of Milk, a highlight looks to be a November 17 screening of one of the greatest ~~silent~~ films of all time, Carl Dreyer's the Passion of Joan of Arc, accompanied by the UC Alumni Chorus performing Richard Einhorn's Voices of Light oratorio. There will be a repeat performance November 23 at UC Berkeley's Hertz Hall, and both programs are co-sponsored by the PFA, which makes me feel confident that it will be screened in 35mm and not video. Sadly the same will not be true for the screening of Indian silent film a Throw of Dice, showing from HD with no live musical accompaniment November 15 as part of the Third i South Asian Film Festival. If you're wondering why the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's annual winter event doesn't occupy a Castro date on the coming calendar, rest assured it will happen on February 14th, 2009. Last I heard, the program line-up had not been firmed up yet but it promises to be a lovely time.

Finally, for those of you in the South Bay who feel like you may be missing out, Stanford Lively Arts is bringing the Santa Rosa Symphony to Palo Alto December 6th to perform Martin Matalon's score to Fritz Lang's enduring science fiction spectacle Metropolis. I doubt the version being shown will include the film's recently rediscovered footage- it's too soon to expect it to appear in circulating prints, I suspect. But this description of Matalon's score: "conventional instruments combine with computerized sound modeling and electronics in a vivid, jazz-infused soundtrack" has me very curious nonetheless.

Hell On Frisco Bay

Monday, December 19, 2011

The BANG BANG Wagon

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Happy Bastille Day at the Silent Film Festival!

Friday, January 21, 2011

Maureen Russell's Two Eyes

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Ben Armington's Two Eyes

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Jason Wiener's Two Eyes

Friday, January 14, 2011

Lincoln Spector's Two Eyes

Victoria Jaschob's Two Eyes

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Rob Byrne's Two Eyes

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Season of Light

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Twenty Years South

Friday, May 1, 2009

SFIFF52 Day 9: 35 Shots of Rum

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Silent Movies In Big (and not-quite-so big) Spaces

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