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.

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.

Larry Chadbourne'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 Larry Chadbourne, also of the Film On Film Foundation
Ten Best Rep/Revivals of 2010:

1. The Bad Sleep Well. VIZ Kurosawas. In a year of several tributes on Kurosawa's centennary, this one (sometimes compared to Warners exposés) stood out, and reminded me instead of Stroheim, and late Lang.

2. The Boy With Green Hair, PFA Loseys. Despite some disagreement on how the restorers reproduced the original color, my favorite re-discovery of the series.

3. California Split, Roxie. Not even one of Altman's best, but it brought back the loss to modern American cinema of its greatest talent.

4. The Crimson Pirate, PFA Lancasters. How often do we get to see real Technicolor? Like being a kid on Saturday afternoon, once again.

5. The Godfather, Part III, DVD. Wanted to see something by (or with) Sofia Coppola after Somewhere. Could this Part's lower reputation have to do with the touchy subject of The Vatican's relation to the Mafia?

6. L'Heureuse Mort, Castro. The highpoint of this year's Silent Film Festival.

7. The Housemaid, Castro, Asian American Film Festival. Hopefully there will be more such revivals of classic Korean cinema.

8. Ladies of Leisure, PFA Capras. Especially for Marie Prevost and Lowell Sherman. This series was enlivened by Joe McBride's scholarly presentations.

9. The Light in the Piazza, Stanford. Packard's revival, in conjunction with the Mountain View staging of the musical, which I also saw, allowed me to catch up with an underrated British/U.S. co-production I'd missed since 1962. Though director Guy Green may be worth further study, the key names are the still-vibrant Olivia de Havilland, and producer Arthur Freed, who was partially responsible for the success of the best Vincente Minnelli musicals.

10. Maedchen in Uniform, 1958 version, Castro, Frameline. An example of a remake which arguably improves on the original. Made 27 years later and set 15 years or more earlier than the Weimar classic, this story of school discipline turns into a more sweeping indictment of the whole span of Prussian obedience and militarism, at a time when the Germans were starting to examine their more recent past.

For the record, I saw about 195 older films, 150 in a theatre, 45 on video.

Max Goldberg'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 sfbg critic Max Goldberg who blogs at Text Of Light:

I began by compiling those rep knockouts that were new to me—Dion Vigne’s North Beach and Jim McBride’s My Girfriend’s Wedding sprang to mind—but then decided that it might be more interesting to limit myself to those films which I’d seen before, but which made a different kind of sense to me in the cinema. Here are five:

The Postman Always Rings Twice/He Ran All the Way double bill at the Castro. Specifically John Garfield’s fighting frame. Cinephile discourses tend to privilege formalist elements of composition and color in defense of the big screen experience, but actors work on that same canvas, and we might easily miss their tempos at home. Garfield with Lana Turner is a fever dream Philip Roth’s Portnoy would have admired.

Bad Lieutenant at the Roxie. There are certain factors—both dispositional and spiritual—which prevent me from “getting” Ferrara/Keitel’s howl at the void. At a certain level, I just need to trust that people really do shake before the cross. But wasting sunlight to view a scuffed print of Bad Lieutenant at the Roxie was exactly what I needed to respond to Ferrara’s oozing moral tale. Walking past the well dressed on a beautiful afternoon afterward, I could only smell garbage.

Love Letters and Live Wires: Highlights from the GPO Unit program at the Pacific Film Archive. I’ve long marveled at Night Mail for its amazing rhythms and railroad fetishism, to say nothing of its startling combination of talent (Basil Wright, John Grierson, Alberto Cavalcanti, Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden?!). Seeing it with seven other wildly inventive films produced by Britain’s General Post Office Unit was a revelation, however. The two by Len Lye confirm him as a great pop artist before the fact, and all these films remind us that the cinematic obsession with technological connectivity did not begin with The Social Network.

Invocation of My Demon Brother as part of the Bay Area Ecstatic program at SF MoMA. My pleasure in this was partially the result of having screened Stones in Exile, an authorized look at the making of Exile on Main Street, earlier that same day. The doc is mostly just watching the boys polish their silver, which made it especially delicious getting tossed overboard by Mick’s demonic score for Invocation—an un-recoupable strand of the Stones’ legacy. I’m certain that I would have turned down the volume were I watching Anger’s film at home. And that’s not witchcraft.

Viaggio in Italia and Gertrud on consecutive Sundays at the Pacific Film Archive. I had seen both of these films only once before, when I was a freshman in college—which now strikes me as an almost comically inappropriate time to absorb their truths. Among other things, I hadn’t realized that both films were such frightening contemplations of acting. It’s difficult to think of too many other films which so acutely crystallize the trouble with living in the trouble between men and women.

Monica Nolan'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 filmmaker Monica Nolan, who has full bio on her website:

PFA won hands down as the rep venue of choice. On the one hand I feel lucky to have the PFA within reach; on the other hand, it's frustrating that I have to travel an hour and a half (bike to bart, bart to berkeley, bike to theatre) each way, when I think of the rep programming that was available in years past at the Castro and Roxie, much closer to hand. If it wasn't for the various festivals, my visits to both of those venues would be far and few between. But I shouldn't be too hard on them--after all they don't have the vault that the PFA does to draw from!

1. Accatone (PFA). It's nice to be reminded that there are still unseen classics from the past that can shock and stimulate you. Plus, this tale of pimps and layabouts was the perfect antidote to a family Thanksgiving!

2. Remember the Night (Noir Xmas, at the Castro). Mitch Leisen lights the young and beautiful Barbara Stanwyck! A match made in heaven.

3. Women's Prison (Noir City 8 at the Castro) This beat out the Burt Lancaster prison break movie at the PFA, although Hume Cronyn wins "most sadistic prison warden" over Ida Lupino.

4. Love Letters and Live Wires, shorts from GPO film unit (PFA). Including Night Mail, a short by Cavalcanti, and a Norman McLaren animation, yet my favorite was the wonderful Fairy of the Phone.

5. The Servant (PFA). Kind of jaw-dropping, especially when I kept expecting it was about to end and it kept continuing. How low could James Fox sink? I'm even more intrigued now that I know Somerset Maugham's nephew wrote the book. Was he thinking about the relationship between his Uncle Willie and Uncle Willie's secretary/lover Gerald?

6. My Hustler (Frameline LGBT Film Fest at the Roxie). All these years I've been underestimating Warhol.

7. Senso (San Francisco International Film Festival at the Castro). I know The Leopard is the worthier movie, but this was just as beautiful and awfully fun.

8.Bitter Rice (PFA). This was in the Italian neo-realism series on the thinnest of excuses in my book, but who cares? A gangster melodrama, with shots framed like the covers of pulp novels.

9. The Crimson Pirate (PFA). A completely ridiculous and mediocre movie redeemed by Burt Lancaster's energy and the beauty of the technicolor print.

10. Maedchen in Uniform (the 1958 Romy Schneider version, Frameline LGBT Film Festival, at the Castro). I'd always heard this disparaged in comparison with the 1931 version, and was surprised at how well it stood up.

Margarita Landazuri'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/educator Margarita Landazuri, whose articles appear on the Turner Classic Movies website and elsewhere. She decided to focus her contribution specifically on the 15th San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which she says was "probably the best ever":

Introducing Rotaie, Anita called it "the discovery of the festival," and said it ranks right up there with Sunrise. To audible gasps from the audience, she said, "I know...but it's true." She was right. Visually stunning, emotionally satisfying, wonderfully acted, and with a gorgeous, lyrical piano score by Stephen Horne, it was my favorite film of the festival. I also loved Horne's score for The Strong Man, which was comical but not over-emphatic, lilting and delicate, and perfect for Harry Langdon's rather fey style. Not a big fan of the "Little Elf," but the film was sweet and funny.

Overall, the music for this year's festival was sublime, making so-so films good, good films better, and great films unforgettable. Among the standouts, Mont Alto's music for Diary of a Lost Girl, very Berlin 1920s, with appropriate touches of darkness; Matti Bye's score for L'Heureus Mort, very French and whimsical; and Alloy's for Man With a Movie Camera. Seeing it with Alloy's music was like seeing it for the first time. It was the perfect combination of sound and picture -- not music, really, but the sounds and rhythms of the city. I also liked Alloy's score for Metropolis, a marvel of percussive machine sounds that I think suit the film better than the original melodic score. I didn't make it to Häxan, but would have been interested in seeing what Matti Bye did with it.


Finally, I must mention The Shakedown. Not a masterpiece, like some of the other films in the festival, but as the second feature film directed by William Wyler, it's a wondefully exhuberant, confident work of a master at the beginning of his career. He fills the frame to overflowing. There's something going everywhere. Like most novices, he probably does too much, but it mostly works. The audacity of it is charming. And I loved seeing a big, brash, joyful performance by James Murray, who was so poignant in The Crowd, and whose star-crossed career and life were tragedies.

Betty Nguyen'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 independent curator/art director Betty Nguyen, editor-in-chief of First Person Magazine:

1. If I wasn't a total zombie after our Holiday fundraiser at Living ARTS Fund, (I don't get out of bed for anything the next day after I throw a party) I woulda tried my darndest to get to the Roxie Theatre's benefit w. John Waters. That would definitely be top on my list. He's wonderful and so is that theatre.

2. I watched a great screening of a film by artist Lawrence Jordan, animator, with a new soundtrack by a local Bay Area drone band at this new little hole in the wall, called Musical Chairs Gallery. The venue located on Geary and Hyde street downtown was being curated by someone local who programmed a month of performances and screenings and I caught this one. It was small and everyone sat on the floor, but the film was so inspiring and charming.

3. Hauntology at the Berkeley Museum was an event program curated by local SF artist Scott Hewicker. It was on Oct. 29th and began with a procession of ghosts and an eerie single violin that echoed throughout the cavernous concrete space but what really kept me engaged were the several screens he set up with different short films. He cleverly also hung pillow cases up like ghosts on a clothes line and made a slide projection of what resembled the swirls of Edward Munch's "Scream" painting for the backdrop to define the area of play for one of the bands. A lot of the L@TE programs this year at BAM were entertaining bits of music mainly, but Scott's was a great integration of sights that one could immerse into a filmic experience of black and white visuals.

4. Jonathan Grothman is a new Bay Area artist whose films are abstract and simple in form, restrained but poetic. I might categorize them as repertory as they repeated all night long during the Living ARTS Fund's Holiday party in the Excelsior for which he made them. But it his projections washed the space in colorful shapes and patterns that never tired and transformed the 1,700 ft venue into something tactile, alien and larger than life as performers became a part of his designs. It reminded me of the iconic visuals of the Velvet Underground shot for their album cover in dots. Or even the psychedelia of Jefferson Airplane at the Fillmore with their oil visuals done live. As Director for the space we didn't want any incandescents in the space, so projection loops proved a powerful medium of setting the tone for mystery, event, and secrecy when you walked in from the lit storefront back into this warp of technicolored sand and kaleidoscopic figures.

5. I've decided to live my life, starting with this New Year beginning right this very night, like the film Pina in honor of my favorite artist of all time Pina Baushch who filled me with laughter, tears, desire and thrills. The film shot in 3D by Wim Wenders is "for Pina Bausch", one of the most extraordinary choreographers of our time who passed away in 2009. Last year, the only film program I saw that paid homage to her was by Joel Shepard, of course, at YBCA. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make the screenings but I was elated that he put this together. The new film has just released a trailer and looks spectacular. Wim and Pina worked on the film together, but she was diagnosed with cancer a few days into the shooting, but is now completed. I look forward to its release in 2011. I think it may debut at the Berlinale.

6. Ryan Trecartin kinda slayed it this year. Adored, embraced by art establishment but repping a generation of texters, ravers, and tweakers who talk a mile a minute about life, about getting somewhere and about their consciousness. His art videos are everywhere not just museums but splashed throughout the tabloids of life. The psycho babble of wisdom his characters ramble on is filled with gen NOW savvy. Their makeup, closeups, digital editing quick cuts and filters are what not to do's in the cutting room and made it exactly right for ART that made its own system of rules and broke every one along the way. I love his films and the way they look totally wrong everywhere I've seen them - at the Whitney Biennial to the SFMoMA right now on the 5th floor. Amongst a quiet stark room of minimal colors and formality, lives in this small screen with exposed wire, his mayhem and life with friends shot in nightvision or low res. Its relevancy to our culture is breathing.

7. I almost puked watching Enter the Void for the first hour in the daytime. I couldn't finish it. I couldn't stand it. But it's in my memory.

8. I found out about this Parking Garage show in the Mission and literally bands were playing while cars were pulling in and out. My youthful days of going to guerilla shows was sparked again, and I felt really special to be there. Most of the bands had visuals and the two I remember was one duo, who just had their laptop projecting a video of the moon. It was jarring and effective. Nothing fantastic or out of the ordinary, but like their music, it was simple but a little bit off in a good way. The moonlight kinda danced ever slightly as their music seemed cut off in square waves. And another artist played blaring keyboards while showing a flicker of portraits he made. It was intense like the flicker films genre can be, reminding me of the Vasulkas and artists that Nate Boyce had turned me onto while curating films for the SFAI. Hypnotizing...

9. My friend works at Opera Plaza and it's always great to have a friend who works at a theatre. He invites me from time to time to come watch a film and I saw the Tom Ford film A Single Man. I liked its uncomplicatedness. I liked the story of the neighbors played by Colin Firth and Julianne Moore when she said something like, "You're fucking this up by being gay. We coulda been so right for each other." There was a lot of build up to nowhere in particular. It was a bit rigid, but probably the best part of this filmic experience was when my friend snuck in and handed me a huge box of buttered corn. He's so sweet.

10. Well, the last one, I kinda wanted to really thank the invention of the internet for allowing me to see all kinds of things whenever I let my fingers do the walking. From Gossip Girl episodes to Madmen, most recently Louie on Netflix streaming, Agnes Varda's The Gleaners & I, and my friend suggesting John and Mary and Seraphine. Sometimes not being able to know when something's coming out, etc. even torrenting stuff. I hope I'm not being a bah humbug, but gosh, the movie going experience in bed is a great one! In my Tumblr blog, I've enjoyed countless shared music videos by bands, fashion fans, and sharing is caring when you come to think that millions of people out there are taking the time to upload any of this stuff. It's not ego it's like hey youtube let's put up this rare video, or my cat chasing itself, or gosh, endless hours of that shiba inu puppy cam got me through some shitty days. So, thank you to everyone who posts something. Cuz you never know how it's going to affect someone else - inspiration, wisdom, entertainment, career opportunity. The internet is a good tv and film screen.

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.

Rob Byrne'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 film preservationist and researcher Rob Byrne. He blogs at Starts Thursday!: The Art And History of Motion Picture Coming Attraction Slides

Rick Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, 5
Herbst Theatre
Archival celebration of orphan film. Quickly becoming a holiday season tradition. Some of the more amusing segments included public service featurettes describing the wonderful and modern Bay Area Rapid Transit system, and 16mm home movies featuring street scenes in SF neighborhoods.

Kid Boots
Edison Theatre, Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum
A delightful comedy starring Clara Bow and Eddie Cantor. It's always nice to find a little gem that for some reason you've overlooked.

A Trip Down Market Street
Edison Theatre, Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum [screening during 60 Minutes taping]
So great to see film research and archiving making news in mainstream media. David Kiehn and the Niles Film Museum on 60 Minutes! Who could have predicted that?

Rotaie
Castro Theatre, presented by San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Beautifully atmospheric, wonderfully evocative. Loved it, just loved it.

The Passion of Joan of Arc
Oakland's Paramount, presented by SF Silent Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive, and Paramount Theatre
An amazing film anyway, but adding an orchestral ensemble and 200 voices elevated the experience to an entirely different plane.

A Century Ago: The Films of 1910
San Rafael Film Center, presented by California Film Institute
Randy Haberkamp's annual compilation. Marvelously researched and impeccably presented. The program was almost exclusively one-reelers. The two most memorable being The Sergeant, a Selig picture filmed in Yosemite Valley; and Aviation at Los Angeles California, an amazing document of a 1910 air show outside Los Angeles filmed by Essanay.

Diary of a Lost Girl
Castro Theatre, presented by San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Reveals something new every time you see it. Not a surprise that it was never released in the US, nothing would have survived the censor's shears.

Rain or Shine (the sound version)
Pacific Film Archive
Seems too good to be an early talkie, Joe Cook was a revelation, talks faster than Groucho Marx and a great physical comedian as well. One of those films you want to share with other people just so you can see their reaction.

The Shakedown
Castro Theatre, presented by San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Excellent gritty drama directed by William Wyler.

King Kong
Oakland Paramount
Say what you want, seeing King Kong in a packed house in the glorious Oakland Paramount was movie-going (as opposed to "cinema-attending") at it's best - especially when preceded by a cartoon, newsreel, trailers, and a raffle.

Michael Hawley'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/critic Michael Hawley. He blogs at film-415, where this list has been cross-posted:

The Bay Area continues to be an incredible place to experience repertory cinema. There are few places on the planet where it's possible to see a film every day of the year and not watch a single new release. In 2010 I caught 47 revival screenings at various local venues. Here, in no particular order, are 10 of the most memorable.

Showgirls (Castro Theater)
What better way to celebrate the 15th anniversary of my fave film of the 1990s. Peaches Christ brought an expanded version of her infamous Showgirls Midnight Mass preshow to a sold-out Castro, complete with exploding on-stage volcano and free lapdances with every large popcorn. It inspired me to inaugurate my iphone's movie camera feature and create a YouTube channel to post the results. Apart from Peaches' Castro world premiere of All About Evil, this was the most fun I had at the movies in 2010.

Armored Car Robbery (Castro Theater, Noir City)
I was blown away by this taut and tidy 67-minute slice of obscure 1950 B-Noir about the aftermath of yes, an armored car robbery outside L.A.'s Wrigley Field. It would be brought back to mind months later with the Fenway Park heist of Ben Affleck's The Town. Other 2010 Noir City highlights included the double bill of Suspense (1946) and The Gangster (1948), both starring British ice-skating queen Belita, and 1945's San Francisco-set Escape in the Fog, which begins with a woman dreaming about an attempted murder on the Golden Gate Bridge.


Pornography in Denmark (Oddball Cinema)
There's something weird and wonderful going on each weekend at Oddball Cinema, a funky alternative film venue tucked inside the Mission District warehouse digs Oddball Film + Video. In the spring they screened a 16mm print of this landmark 1970 documentary by local porn-meister Alex de Renzy, which became the first hardcore to show in legit U.S. theaters and be reviewed in the NY Times. Introducing the film was writer/film scholar Jack Stevenson, who was on tour promoting his book, Scandinavian Blue: The Erotic Cinema of Sweden and Denmark in the 1960s and 1970s.

Freddie Mercury, the Untold Story (VIZ Cinema, 3rd i's Queer Eye Mini-Film Festival)
3rd i is best known for the SF International South Asian Film Festival it puts on each November. Back in June they packed SF's snazzy subterranean VIZ Cinema with this revival of Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher's 2000 documentary – seen in a new director's cut with 43 extra minutes. The audience went nutso at the climax of "Barcelona," Mercury's soaring duet with Montserrat Caballé from the 1986 summer Olympics. Further repertory kudos to 3rd i for bringing an exquisite 35mm print of 1958 Bollywood classic, Madhumati, to the Castro.

Mädchen in Uniform (Castro Theater, Frameline)
A whole lot of LGBT folk must've played hooky from work to catch this mid-day, mid-week revival from 1958 – itself a remake of a 1931 queer cinema classic. Romy Schneider and Lili Palmer are respectively radiant as a student obsessively in love with her boarding school teacher – to the extreme consternation of battleaxe headmistress Therese Giehse. Shown in a gorgeous and rare 35mm print, with the inimitable Jenni Olson delivering a dishy intro. Frameline34's other revelatory revival was Warhol's 1965 Vinyl, in which Factory beauties Gerard Malanga and Edie Sedgwick dance a furious frug to Martha and the Vandellas "Nowhere to Hide." Twice.


The Aztec Mummy vs. The Human Robot (Pacific Film Archive, El Futuro Está Aquí: Sci-Fi Classics from Mexico)
If anything's capable of luring me out of the city on a Saturday night during Frameline, it's bunch of Mexican monster movies from the 50's and 60's. This was double-billed with Santo vs. The Martian Invasion, which had a little too much rasslin' for my tastes. But it boasted a hilarious opening scene in which the Martians explain why they happen to be speaking Spanish. It killed me to miss Planet of the Female Invaders and The Ship of Monsters, also part of this series.

Metropolis (Castro Theater, SF Silent Film Festival)
"When you've waited 83 years, what's another 40 minutes?" Eddie Muller quipped to the antsy, capacity crowd awaiting the Bay Area premiere of Fritz Lang's finally-complete expressionist dystopian masterpiece. In spite of the late start time and disappointing digital format, this was still the repertory event of the year. The Alloy Orchestra performed its celebrated score live and Muller conducted an on-stage conversation with Paula Félix-Didier and Fernando Peña, the Argentine film archivists who discovered the 16mm print of Metropolis with 25 additional minutes. The Alloy Orchestra would return to the fest two days later to perform their heart-stopping score to Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera.

The Cook/Pass the Gravy/Big Business (Castro Theater, SF Silent Film Festival)
Each year this festival invites a filmmaker to program a Director's Pick – and past pickers have included the likes of Guy Maddin and Terry Zwigoff. This year Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc., Up) assembled a program of three comic shorts titled The Big Business of Short Funny Films, each of them screamingly funny. First, Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton had a go at each other in The Cook, followed by some hysterical nonsense involving feuding families and a prized rooster in Pass the Gravy. Finally in Big Business, door-to-door Christmas tree salesmen Laurel and Hardy declared war on a disgruntled customer, taking tit-for-tat to absurd heights.

The Boston Strangler (Pacific Film Archive, Criminal Minds)
This ranks as my personal discovery of the year. Director Richard Fleischer employs a wry tone and magnificent use of wide and split screen to tell the story of 60's serial killer Albert DeSalvo. A restrained Tony Curtis, whose title character doesn't appear until the midway point, gives what must surely be the best dramatic performance of his career. Oscar ® didn't care. With Henry Fonda, George Kennedy and an early appearance by Sally Kellerman as the one girl who got away. Double-billed with 1944's The Lodger, a compelling Jack the Ripper yarn starring Merle Oberon, George Sanders and Laird Cregar.

Johanna (Roxie Theater)
I was woefully resigned to never seeing Kornél Mundruczó's 2005 filmic opera about a junkie performing sex miracles in a subterranean Budapest hospital, which had never screened in the Bay Area or been released on Region 1 DVD. Then the Roxie answered my prayers by showing a gorgeous 35mm print for two nights in November, double-billed with the director's follow-up, 2008's Delta. Earlier in the month, the Roxie revived 36 Quai des Orfèvres, a gritty and stylish 2004 policier that had also inexplicably gone unseen the Bay Area, despite starring Gérard Depardieu and Daniel Auteuil.

Honorable Mentions
Traffic (1971, dir. Jacques Tati, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts)
Insiang (1976, dir. Lino Brocka, Sundance Kabuki, SF International Asian American Film Festival)
Black Narcissus (1947, dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, Pacific Film Archive, "Life, Death and Technicolor: A Tribute to Jack Cardiff")
Hausu (1977, dir. Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, Castro Theater)
A Night to Dismember (1983, dir. Doris Wishman, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, "Go to Hell for the Holidays: Horror in December")