Jesse Hawthorne Ficks Only Has Two Eyes

It's impossible for any pair of eyes to view all of Frisco Bay's worthwhile film screenings. I'm so pleased that a number of local filmgoers have let me post their repertory/revival screening highlights of 2011. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from Jesse Hawthorne Ficks, who teaches Film History at the Academy of Art University and runs the MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS screening series.

13. Monte Hellman's Ride in the Whirlwind (1965), The Shooting (1966), Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and Cockfighter (1974) at the Roxie Theatre on July 23, 24 & 27

12. Jerry Abrams' Sub Rosa Rising (1971) at a sold out Yerba Buena Center for the Arts part of Joel Shepard's brilliant series "Smut Capitol of the World" on August 18

11. Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 (1976) at the Pacific Film Archive which turned out to be the 317 minute unrated version (5 hours and 17 minutes) on July 16

10. Claire Denis' The Intruder (2004) & US Go Home (1994) at the Pacific Film Archive on April 8.

9. David Holzman's Diary (1967) with director Jim McBride IN PERSON at the Victoria Theatre on June 15

8. Hal Ashby's Harold & Maude (1971) at the Red Vic's final nite on July 25. R.I.P.

7. "Watch Out For Children" Triple Bill: Tex (1982), Over the Edge (1979), River's Edge (1986) w/ director Tim Hunter and screenwriter Charlie S. Haas at the Roxie Theatre part of MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS on July 1

6. Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End (1970) & The Shout (1978) at the Pacific Film Archive on July 22

5. "Heavy Metal-Monster Mash" Quintuple Feature: Gerald Potterton's Heavy Metal (1981), The Monster Squad (1987) w/ director Fred Dekker IN PERSON!, Rob Reiner's This Is Spinal Tap (1984) with the only known 35mm print from Paris, Charles Martin Smith's Trick or Treat (1986) and Claudio Fragasso's Monster Dog (1984) showcasing Alice Cooper at the Castro Theatre part of MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS on April 16

4. The North American premiere of the restored 35mm print of Lois Weber's Shoes (1916) and Victor Sjöström's He Who Gets Slapped (1924) showcasing Lon Chaney at the Castro Theatre part of The SF Silent Film Festival on July 17

3. Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight (1965) on the only existing 35mm print in the US!! at the Pacific Film Archive on December 11

2. The U.S. Premiere (and perhaps the only screening ever) of The Hole in 3D (2009) w/ director Joe Dante IN PERSON at the Castro Theatre part of MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS on October 7

1. Hands down one of the most overwhelming and inventive films of the last decade, Bala's Naan Kadavul (I Am God, 2009) at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts part of the series Cruel Cinema: New Directions in Tamil Film on October 9

Jason Wiener Only has Two Eyes

It's impossible for any pair of eyes to view all of Frisco Bay's worthwhile film screenings. I'm so pleased that a number of local filmgoers have let me post their repertory/revival screening highlights of 2011. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from cinephile Jason Wiener, who blogs at Jason Watches Movies; most of the following links take you to his reviews on that site.

Okay, here's my list of my favorite repertory/revival (ya know, "old movie") screenings of 2011. I must stress that these are my favorites and mine alone. I'm in fact sure I saw better movies over the year, but for one reason or another these are the movies that entertained me in a special way. These are also approximately in order, although I could probably move any of them up or down a spot or two. With that said, here we go:

10. THE MOONSHINE WAR (1970) at the Vortex Room, which means I was pretty drunk on Manhattans (my New Year's resolution last year was to drink fewer martinis and more Manhattans--first time I've ever kept my resolution all year). So what I remember most is Alan Alda doing a bad hillbilly accent. That, and the whole town showing up just to watch the final showdown, like this was their weekly entertainment.

9. THE TIME MACHINE (1960) and FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) at the Stanford Theatre. Aka, the "dumb blondes in sci-fi double feature." Seriously, Yvette Mimeaux and Anne Francis respectively are given nothing to do in these movies other than look pretty and be really dumb (or charitably, really naive). The moral here is that little girls in the 50's and 60's didn't need role models.

8. SOYLENT GREEN (1973) and SILENT RUNNING (1972) at the Vortex Room. Again, I was full of booze, so I kinda snoozed through a bit of the middle of SILENT RUNNING, but they were still both very cool. And the fact that I put dystopian future sci-fi above dumb blond eye candy sci-fi probably says something about me.

7. GASLIGHT (1944) at the Castro, as part of Noir City. Really, I could list all of Noir City here, but part of the fun is picking my favorite. For all the mental torture of Ingrid Bergman, for me I couldn't take my eyes of saucy little 19 year old Angela Lansbury. Something about finding out I'm attracted to Angela Lansbury makes this movie unforgettable.

6. THE KILLERS (1964) at the Roxie, as part of Not Necessarily Noir II. A cool story and I just love seeing Ronald Reagan playing a gangster. Also, let this serve as a plug for this year's Noir City, where it will play on Saturday Night, January 21st, with Angie Dickinson in person.

5. HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971) at the San Jose Women's Club (as part of the Beanbag Film Festival) and again at the Red Vic (as part of its closing weekend). I feel like I should enter a Bay Area cinephile's confessional and say, "Forgive me Father, for I only made it to the Red Vic a few times, and only after I knew it was in a lot of trouble." In any case, HAROLD AND MAUDE has been one of those weird films that I've seen many times, but always far enough apart that I've managed to forget large parts of it (like Maude is a Holocaust survivor) before I see it again. Until 2011, when I saw it twice in a year. Not only did I finally manage to watch it with the knowledge that Maude is a Holocaust survivor, but...well, you can read my review and see that I managed to read a Maude/Hitler romance into her past.

4. THE MAN WHO LAUGHS (1928) at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum. Again, I could put pretty much everything I saw at Niles on this list, but I had to choose one, and this is it.

3. WORLD ON A WIRE (1973) at the Roxie. Rainer Werner Fassbinder did the MATRIX some 26 years before the Wachowski brothers came up with it. And he did it as a 4 1/2 hour epic made for German TV. Awesome.

2. NOSFERATU (1922) at the California Theatre, with Dennis James on the Wurlitzer organ, as part of Cinequest. I'm generally against the concept of favorites--I think it calcifies an element of my character that should remain fluid. My favorite movie varies with my mood, what I've seen recently, etc. But with that said, NOSFERATU is very often my favorite movie ever. And seeing it on the big screen with Dennis James on the organ is a tremendous treat.

1. THE GREAT WHITE SILENCE (1924, using footage from 1911-12) at the Castro Theatre, as part of the Silent Film Festival. Again, I could've listed the whole festival, but this was far and away the one that impressed me the most. Just looking back and seeing documentary footage from 100 years ago is pretty amazing, and the story of Robert Falcon Scott's fateful attempt on the South Pole is likewise amazing. The King allegedly wanted this footage shown to all English schoolboys to instill in them the strong sense of adventure and British spirit. My snarky half wants to make a crack about how inspiring children onto adventures that end in death isn't necessarily the smartest thing for the empire. But having seen the movie, I understand what the King was thinking.

And that's my top ten. And now for a few (dis)honorable mentions. You can decide for yourself whether they're dishonorable or honorable. These are in no particular order

SUNRISE (1927) at the Castro, again part of the Silent Film Festival. Murnau's masterpiece, of course. The reason it doesn't make my regular list is that the soundtrack was done on solo electric guitar...and that just doesn't work right. But it was interesting, and you can read from my review that it led me to a new interpretation wherein it was a supernatural succubus story. In fact, the full title for this love triangle is SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS. Makes you wonder which one of the three is not human.

PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959) first colorized and in 3-D at the San Jose Rep as part of Cinequest, then in black and white 2-D at the Roxie to end Not Necessarily Noir II. The first time was in fact the world premiere of the 3-D version, and I was there dressed as Vampira (it wasn't pretty, and no I don't have pictures). The second time was with Johnny Legend presenting a whole Ed Wood tribute (including GLEN OR GLENDA, which also could've made this list). I'm pretty sure there wasn't anything all that honorable about either screening, but damn it was fun.

IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) at the Dark Room, on Bad Movie Night, a traditional part of their War on Christmas. Call me a Grinch, but drunk and cracking wise is the only way I ever want to see this movie again. If I ever have to move away from the bay area, I'd want to live in Pottersville. At least it's better than Cleveland.

Victora Jaschob Only Has Two Eyes

It's impossible for any pair of eyes to view all of Frisco Bay's worthwhile film screenings. I'm so pleased that a number of local filmgoers have let me post their repertory/revival screening highlights of 2011. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from Victoria Jaschob, an animation production manager who also writes for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

The Great White Silence
Herbert G. Ponting, 1924

The Blizzard (Gunnar Hedes Saga)
Maurtiz Stiller 1923

He Who Gets Slapped
Victor Sjöström 1924

Scored and accompanied by the Matti Bye Ensemble for the 16th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival

Although I didn’t get out to many repertory screenings this year, I made a point of attending as many of the SF Silent Film Festival programs as possible. This year’s offerings were especially eclectic, both cinematically and musically. As was the case last year, the films scored by Sweden’s Matti Bye Ensemble stood out for me as the epitome of how music and image can combine to create a totally immersive experience.

The Ensemble (Matti Bye, Kristian Holmgren, Lotta Johannson, Mattias Olsson), did an Artist’s Residency at the Headlands Center for Arts earlier in the year, where they spent a month composing completely new scores for the three films. At the end of the residency, the musicians gave a presentation where they described their process and played sections of the scores in progress. What made the greatest impression on me during this talk was the emphasis, not only on the technical aspects of the music, which was stunning, but the effort to express musically the psychological and emotional life of the characters in the films.

The three films were linked (perhaps intentionally) by imagery and theme: Two of them took place in harsh, frozen environments, and all three depicted man’s struggle to survive his circumstances. There was also a uniting theme of man’s relationship to animals, which seemed unusual in silent film: comic penguins and tragic ponies in The Great White Silence; otherworldly reindeer in The Blizzard; a murderous lion in He Who Gets Slapped, which channels “He’s” rage to terrifying effect.

The Great White Silence, which depicts the doomed South Pole Expedition of Captain Scott, included some breath-taking, nearly surreal imagery of ocean, waves, icebergs, and glaciers. The orchestration (Matti, Kristian and Lotta accompanied by two string musicians and Kristian’s home-made wind machine) captured the poignancy of the men’s efforts to reach their goal, and the futility of human striving in the face of implacable Nature. A foreshadowing came at the moment when, as their ship approached the Antarctic, a huge iceberg hove into view. At that moment, even though he’d watched the film dozens of times, Bye said he “felt the iceberg.” I think we all did.

The Blizzard was a mythic, and again, tragic fable of a man who again runs into difficulties when he ventures into uncharted territory, in this case, Lapland. This film doesn’t end with death, but madness. Some of the film’s truly magical moments included a circus pony that would pull its wagon only when accompanied by harmonica; a wise woman/witch/goddess who appeared in a sled pulled by two bears, and a hallucinatory reindeer, who appears to the hero in complete silence as he lies on a snow bank, near death. The musicians portrayed these moments with great delicacy, humor and emotion.

He Who Gets Slapped, the legendary Lon Chaney drama, was scored completely differently than other Matti Bye-scored films I’ve seen to date. Strings were dispensed with entirely, replaced by the amazing percussionist Mattias Olsson. The score often worked counter to the images, to emphasize the tragic, ironic elements of the film, and was relentlessly dark. Even the romantic moments between Norma Shearer and John Gilbert were treated with the same darkness, indicating that their happiness was doomed. The climax of the film, when the villains are trapped in a room with a man-eating lion, was so intense I think I stopped breathing.

I can’t wait to see what next year’s festival will bring from Matti Bye and his incredibly talented Ensemble!

Frako Loden Only Has Two Eyes

It's impossible for any pair of eyes to view all of Frisco Bay's worthwhile film screenings. I'm so pleased that a number of local filmgoers have let me post their repertory/revival screening highlights of 2011. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from critic and teacher Frako Loden, who writes for documentary.org, The Evening Class, and elsewhere.

Al Momia (The Night of Counting the Years) (Shadi Abdel Salam, 1969) - Pacific Film Archive showed this magnificent, mysterious film about an Egyptian clan that has been surreptitiously selling off mummy treasures.

The Battle of Chile Parts I, II, III (Patricio Guzmán, 1975-78) - Another PFA-hosted masterwork, part of the SFIFF, that had me enthralled for over four hours.

Went the Day Well? (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942) - At last I got to see this weird "what if" propaganda about Nazis infiltrating an English village.

Every year the San Francisco Silent Film Festival leaves me with the most vivid memories of films gone by. Il Fuoco (The Fire) (Giovanni Pastrone, 1915) was my first big-screen look at the astonishing Italian diva Pina Menichelli that ignited my fascination with Black Romanticism. The Great White Silence (Herbert G. Ponting, 1924) documented Capt. Robert Falcon Scott's doomed expedition to the South Pole. The orphan film Origin of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” (1909) reduced me to helpless laughter thanks to Stephen Horne's piano accompaniment. Lois Weber's 1916 social-problem Shoes was a revelation. And Upstream (1927) could have been a completely mediocre film for all I cared--I was just thrilled to see a John Ford film thought to be lost forever.

Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960) - The Jewish Film Festival had Kirk Douglas on the Castro Theatre stage for a brisk and hilarious Q&A.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the California Film Institute continued their "A Century Ago" series with a half-dozen films from 1911 at the Rafael. I'm hooked as of this year.

My first visit to Telluride this summer happened to be guest-programmed by Brazilian musico-political legend Caetano Veloso. His choice of the Les Blank-style documentary Nordeste: Cordel, Repente e Canção (Tânia Quaresma, 1975), about the vernacular arts of Northeastern Brazil, was one of the most rewarding screenings there. I also finally got to see the triumphant ending of the restored, fully tinted A Trip to the Moon (Fr: Georges Melies, 1902) as the climax of another great Serge Bromberg program.

Carl Martin Only Has Two Eyes

It's impossible for any pair of eyes to view all of Frisco Bay's worthwhile film screenings. I'm so pleased that a number of local filmgoers have let me post their repertory/revival screening highlights of 2011. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from Carl Martin, the keeper of the Film On Film Foundation's Bay Area Film Calendar.

this year's short list was modest compared to years past. still tough to winnow down to ten:

april 3, pfa: north beach
the fragment of dion vigne's film i'd seen before is brilliant. i'd heard the complete film was even more so--but how could it sustain its frantic energy for 17 minutes? it could!

april 27, kabuki #1: salvador
i've never been an oliver stone fan but this early buddy movie (?) has just the right tone of general nonpartisan political cynicism. james woods is a lunatic. a first-rate print, well projected.

may 13, castro: out of the blue
finally allowed to direct again after the last movie, dennis hopper made a film almost as radical and disruptive, yet, to its benefit, with more confidence and cohesion. linda manz. linda manz!

june 5, red vic: the great muppet caper; june 19, castro: the muppets take manhattan
i hadn't seen these first two muppet sequels since their original releases, and they had me choked up from scene one. masterful puppetry, masterful command of cinema's emotive possibilities. plus great songs and cameos. lovely prints. (the new muppet movie was ok but they shot the dang thing with a video camera!)

july 1, roxie: tex
matt dillon: a dumb mug awash with pathos-inducing, vulnerable bravado. this movie tore my damn heart out. followed by the somewhat cathartic over the edge, an earlier, nearly as good effort (as screenwriter) from tim hunter.

august 1, roda theatre: the juggler
the early part of the day is a dead time for repertory. but that's when i'm most alert, most receptive, before the drowsiness of early evening cycles in. thank you, sfjff, for showing this lovely print of a heartbreaking film at mid-day. i felt every twist of the emotional wrench. kirk douglas gives one of his finest performances as a charismatic man revealed to be quite mad--the only sane response to the madness of his world. too bad the ending's a bit pat.

august 5, pfa: king queen knave
usually i don't like to "read the book" before i "watch the movie" but when i read nabokov's novel five years ago i had no idea who skolimowski was, let alone that he'd adapted it. oddly, some of the clunkier material from the book, such as the robot mannequin sequence, reveals itself to be cinematic gold in this hilarious sex comedy. the print, alas, was faded.

september 9, pfa: payday
no punches are pulled in this dissection of country music's seedy underbelly, back when country music was good. now it's even more cynically commercial, but, worst of all, bland. rip torn--bland he is not.

september 14, pfa: ice
a ballsy super-low-budget agit-prop feature that really seems to embody its own convictions and contradictions. the first part of zabriskie point meets... it happened here, maybe? why the hell is it called ice?

december 2, roxie: hi-riders
i was surprised the same auteur lay behind the ultra-schlocky joysticks and this considerably more interesting work. it's shamelessly exploitative, to be sure, with a breast count to rival its body count, but dean cundey's photography elevates it, and the finale is shockingly effective. this original print had, shall we say, lots of character.