Car Crash (1981)

WHO: Italian cult director Antonio Margheriti directed this.

WHAT: An early eighties car chase film with lead actor Joey Travolta (elder brother to John) behind the wheel and a synthesizer score? Sounds like a slice of action-packed schlock of the most easily digestible order to me. I don't believe it's available on DVD in this country, and I've never seen it (I almost said "of course" but I truly do sometimes go in for this kind of stuff). So here's a clip from a review by John Cooke:

Joey Travolta is as endearingly wooden as an Eric Estrada Chips guise clone extracted from two wheels to four but, unlike his more famous brother in recent years, keeps his spare tire in the back of the on screen vibrant red road rooster for all not to see. The blistering good looks of the car shine on screen as it eats up the road both in and out of chase sequences but it is the scene stealing qualities of John Steiner, as the loopy Kirby, which will delight and raise a smile for all in highlighting what a wonderfully accomplished and consummate character actor he had become by this time in his illustrious career.

WHERE.WHEN: 9PM tonight only at the Vortex Room.

WHY: The last few weeks have seen a flurry of local film organizations announcing their Fall programs, and there's more to come. I've been trying to keep readers of this blog and/or my twitter feed abreast of all the notable screenings but worthy events do slip through the cracks. Neither this week's SF Weekly Fall Arts Preview, and last week's Bay Guardian equivalent had much information you wouldn't already know if you read Hell On Frisco Bay as devotedly as I've been writing it this year, but the latter reminded me of a venue I've rarely mentioned on this blog and have only been to once. I wish The Vortex Room had more than a Facebook page as a linkable online presence, but that prejudice shouldn't prevent me from steering cinema lovers to an intimate space decorated like an Esquivel album cover (check out this Jackson Scarlet article on the venue for images and a description of the space and its philosophy) that plays 16mm prints of films just about no other Frisco Bay venue would dare to.

Their on-film presentations are meticulously recorded in the Film On Film Foundation calendar, but for posterity, the other 16mm titles in their current Antonio Marghereti series running each Thursday of September include 1975's Take A Hard Ride (playing with Naked You Die, the latter presumably digitally) September 12th, 1983's Yor, the Hunter From The Future (playing with The Wild Wild Planet, again presumably digitally) September 19th, and 1979's Killer Fish (playing with Cannibal Apocalypse you get the picture) September 26th.

HOW: 16mm print on a double-bill with another Antonio Margheriti action movie, a James Bond knock-off called Lightning Bolt, which I believe will screen digitally.

Behind The Eyes Are The Ears (2010)

WHO: Nancy Andrews made this video work.

WHAT: I haven't seen much of Andrews' work but I really liked her 16mm film Haunted Camera, which I saw and wrote a bit about when it screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival back in 2006. Behind the Ears Are the Eyes is a video-produced piece from the Maine-dwelling filmmaker, but like its forebear it takes a syncretic production approach, utilizing silhouette animation reminiscent of Lotte Reiniger, collage cut-outs a la Stan Vanderbeek, anthropomorphic costuming recalling Isabella Rossellini's "Green Porno" series, and archival images from educational and other films (I spotted Miriam Hopkins from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and several animal stars from Chang myself). And more. 

It's all in service of a mad scientist tale about one Dr. Myes, a researcher doing self-experiments in a quest to increase the capacity of human perception. The genesis of the project was actually a song cycle composed by Andrews and musical co-conspirator Zach Soares, which forms much of the soundtrack to the 25-minute short. In turn, Behind the Eyes Are the Ears is currently being transformed into a feature-length film called The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes starring Michole Briana White, Gunnar Hansen (who played Leatherface in the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre), and Jennifer Prediger (from Joe Swanburg's Uncle Kent and other films). She was inspired to move into the realm of feature filmmaking after being inspired by Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives to consider features as a way to get more exposure to experimental work.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens on a Pacific Film Archive program at 7:00 tonight.

WHY: Avant-garde film and video filmmakers and fans are converging on Toronto to experience the Wavelengths festival, and many of those left out are eyeing the just-announced program for the Views From the Avant-Garde festival happening in New York City in October. But what of those of us here on the West Coast, who can't make time or spend the cash to jet to an out-of-town festival? SF Cinematheque's Crossroads festival is a Spring event, and in 2013 provided us with opportunities to see terrific work like Scott Stark's The Realist and Jodie Mack's Dusty Stacks of Mom months before New York and Toronto viewers will get to. Hopefully some of the better works from these more-established festivals will find their way to Crossroads 2014. But in the meantime, there are a number of opportunities to see some of the works being presented at Views From the Avant-Garde, and other works by Wavelengths and Views makers at the PFA thanks to its Alternative Visions season, which has recently announced all programs through November on its website. Between these shows and the hot-off-the-press Other Cinema calendar for Saturday night experimental mayhem at Artists' Telvision Access, the Autumn is shaping up to have some good options for fans of "artist-made" cinema.

Nancy Andrews isn't in Wavelegths or Views this year, but two makers who are part of next week's Alternative Visions program, Lost And Found: Recent Experimental Animation are in the latter. James Sansing's Verses, which was a real highlight of the SF International Film Festival's avant-garde programming, will appear at Views, and Jodie Mack has a one-woman show of brand-new works. We'll have to wait to see those, but we will get to see her beautifully fibrous Point de Gaze on a program that also includes new work from local legend Lawrence Jordan and (full disclosure: my girlfriend) Kerry Laitala, as well as Stacey Steers, T. Marie, and Evan Meaney. Steers, Laitala, Jordan, and Sansing are all expected to be on hand for the screening.

Canadian Marielle Nitoslawska will present her new work about Carolee Schneemann, Breaking the Frame at the PFA October 9th, just after its Views From The Avant-Garde premiere. The following week, the great Phil Solomon will be here present two programs of work at the PFA and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, including his new Views piece Psalm IV: Valley of the Shadow at PFA. ELSA merdelamerdelamer, one of two new Abigail Child works playing at Views will be part of the PFA's in-person screening of film and video from the last thirty years of her career. Unfortunately we won't see Wavelengths/Views selection Three Landscapes at the PFA's November 6th showcase on Peter Hutton, but his beautiful work shows rarely enough that we might be happy enough to see the four 1990's-era 16mm films programmed.

And there's more. A showing of Holy Motors with the brilliant Jeffrey Skoller on hand to help contextualize it, a student work showcase, and in-person screenings with Portugal's Susana de Sousa Dias (showing 48) and Lynne Sachs (showing Your Day Is My Night, which also plays Other Cinema November 16th) help make the Fall 2013 Alternative Visions program a very diverse and enticing one. See you Wednesdays!

HOW: Digital presentation along with another Andrews work called On A Phantom Limb.

Lady For A Day (1933)

WHO: Frank Capra directed this film starring May Robson and Warren William.

WHAT: The first film made at then-tiny Columbia Pictures to receive any Academy Award nominations, it was in the running at the 1934 Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Actress (for Robson as "Apple Annie", a an aged peddler who is remade into a high-society matron for the benefit of her visiting daughter). It won none of the above awards, although Capra thought he had won the directing award when host and presenter Will Rogers called from the stage, "Come and get it, Frank!" when announcing the award. He meant his fellow Fox Studio employee Frank Lloyd for Cavalcade, however, leaving Capra embarrassingly standing in front of the stage speechless as he realized on his way to the podium he'd made a (perfectly understandable) mistake. 

The next year Capra found redemption when his It Happened One Night swept the major awards, but I think Lady For A Day is in most respects a superior picture than the slightly-later classic. Joseph McBride describes its uniqueness in his biography Frank Capra: the Catastrophe of Success:

It was not so much that the story had a seventy-year-old heroine but that it was not a conventional star vehicle. It was a truly democratic story. Each character was equally important. Even the nominal lead role of Apple Annie was merely the centerpiece of a fragile fairy tale that to an unusual extent depended for its credibility on the interaction of an entire community of characters.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight only at 7:30 at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto.

WHY: The Stanford's Summer calendar is winding down now that it's September, with only four pictures to go, all starring Deanna Durbin, who was subject of a full retrospective last Winter and died at age 91 this past Spring. These four include Durbin's most uncharacteristic picture and one of her very best (along with His Butler's Sister and The Amazing Mrs. Holiday, in my opinion), the Robert Siodmak noir Christmas Holiday. It sounds like a charming film but goes to far darker places than even Capra's It's A Wonderful Life in its depiction of Durbin as a prostitute and Gene Kelly as a... but no, I won't give it away.

This film is something of a premonition of the next Stanford series, a dual focus on Humphrey Bogart and film noir running September 14 through November 10. Unfortunately, the theatre will go back to a four-day screening schedule after the initial nine-day run of Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon (Sep. 14-22). But the good news is everything will be shown in 35mm prints, and that every Thursday-to-Sunday weekend will pair one of Bogie's most popular pictures with a top-quality crime picture from approximately the same era. The two bookending bills in this pattern are knockouts: Bogart and Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not arrives with Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer in Out of the Past September 26-29, and my very favorite Bogart vehicle In A Lonely Place is paired with one of the all-time great noirs Gun Crazy November 7-10. In between are a number of other strong pictures (The Third Man, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Touch of Evil, etc.) as well as a few I've never gotten around to seeing (namely, The Blue Dahlia, Key Largo and The Caine Mutiny). I'll be tempted to go every week!

HOW: Lady For A Day screens in 35mm on a double-bill with another Warren William film called Emploees Entrance

Passion (2012)

WHO: Brian De Palma directed this.

WHAT: I have not seen Passion or the Alain Corneau film it was based on (Love Crime) but I love what De Palma had to say when Fernando F. Croce asked him what drew him to remake the latter film:

I liked the way of the plot. I liked the power struggles between the main characters. I didn't like the way Corneau revealed the murder, but that's okay, because if we're planning on remaking a film, then let's remake one that has room for improvement.

It seems to me this is exactly the right attitude for a director to take toward a remake: with confidence that he or she can improve on the original. Then again, De Palma is no stranger to other common approaches as well: the Hollywoodization of a well-known commercial property (The Untouchables and Mission: Impossible), the reconfiguring of setting and character of a respected classic (Scarface), and even the oblique homage that isn't quite a remake but resembles one (Blow Out from Blow-Up, Obsession, Dressed to Kill, etc. from the collected works of Alfred Hitchcock). As a De Palma fan I'm interested in all of these approaches, and am very excited to finally see Passion a year after its world premiere.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens multiple times daily only at the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael today through Thursday September 5, and at 2:45 and 7:00 at the Castro Theatre only on September 4 & 5.

WHY: I don't know why the Rafael is the only Frisco Bay theatre showing Passion for an entire week-long run (which began this past Friday), but it ought to be a good place to see it, with its 4K digital projection. It's also the only cinema where it's possible to see David Lowery's Ain't Them Bodies Saints now that the latter has left San Francisco and Berkeley theatres. Of course the Rafael is preparing to be one of the main venues for the Mill Valley Film Festival in October, which is slowly revealing a few of its programming selections. Since I last checked in on this subject, it's been announced that filmmaker Costa-Gavras will be present at the venue October 4 for a tribute and screening of his latest film Capital, and that on September 17th, a couple weeks prior to the festival's official start date, the U.S. Public Premiere of Metallica Through The Never will occur there. 

But since San Rafael is out of my way, I'm very glad that the Castro will also be screening Passion this week, if only for two days. I find it a little delicious that the venue has booked a De Palma film to screen so shortly after its (approximately) annual 70mm presentation of Vertigo, which ends with three showings there today. Any De Palma fan knows that Hitchcock is the director's biggest cinematic inspiration, and Vertigo in particular (along with Psycho and Rear Window) frequently alluded to in his filmmaking style and content.

HOW: Passion is (as far as I know) only being distributed on DCP. It was shot on 35mm but I've yet to hear so much as a rumor of a physical exhibition print existing. The Castro screenings pair it with 35mm screenings of prior De Palma films, however; Dressed to Kill on Wednesday, Sep. 4 and Femme Fatale on Thursday, Sep. 5.

The French Connection (1971)

WHO: William Friedkin directed this.

WHAT: I finally recently watched, on DVD, ten years after it was first released, Richard LaGravenese & Ted Demme's documentary on 1970s Hollywood filmmaking A Decade Under the Influence. It's a slick doc filled with interviews with many of the more famous directors and some other figures who had their careers made in that turbulent cinematic era. Its reverence for the landmark films made during the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations goes down smoothly, except for in a rare critical moment when Julie Christie notes the paucity of juicy female roles when compared to male ones- I could have done with more exploration of this angle and more moments like it. (The film also elides mention of Elaine May, Joan Micklin Silver, Barbara Loden and any of the decade's other women directors I may be failing to think of right now- which seems a worse omission than that of any other single director like John Carpenter or Stanley Kubrick.) 

What A Decade Under the Influence is best for is getting the viewer excited about watching or revisiting the (mostly) famous films excerpted in clips during its 3-hour run time, and for hearing figures like Francis Ford Coppola, Jon Voight, Ellen Burstyn, Peter Bogdanovich, etc. speak about their work and their peers' work in their own voices. But of all the directors speaking about both topics, the most eloquent and illuminating in the film must be William Friedkin. Here's a sample of his  commentary on his Oscar-winning film The French Connection, which I haven't seen in about twenty years and definitely need to revisit.

I could see that I could induce the documentary style into this story. I would talk to the lighting cameraman, Owen Roizman, and give him a general area of where the action was gonna take place. I would talk separately to the operating cameraman, who was a guy named Ricky Bravo, who was a Cuban exile, who actually photographed the Cuban revolution at Castro's side. I'd set up a scene with the actors but I wouldn't show it. I then put Ricky in the room with the camera, and it was up to him to find rhe action. I'd say, "A guy's gonna be running down the street over there", and Ricky would say in his broken English, "Okay, I use the wheelchair?" "Yeah." We'll put him in a wheelchair and wheel him along. We never laid dolly tracks down. A lot of the stuff in the chase was an accident; was never planned! There weren't supposed to be any crashes in that chase. They were all supposed to be near-misses. There was no optical effects or anything. It was all done the way you saw it, and the camera captured it as best it could on the run.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens at the Empire and other Cinemark Theatres around the Bay Area today at 2:00, at the Kabuki on Wednesday, September 4th at 2:10 and 7:00, and at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive on September 14th at 8:30.

WHY: Today and Wednesday's digital screenings of The French Connection can be an appetite-whetter for the six-film William Friedkin tribute coming to the PFA in a couple weeks, at which The French Connection will screen in 35mm. Friedkin was just honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival where he also debuted a new digital version of what I agree with him to be his greatest film, Sorcerer. The September 19 Berkeley screening of this DCP in the United States, after a long battle between director and studio to get it back on the market. Film purists may wish this event had been set up before the DCP version was ready, as the last time a 35mm print of Sorcerer screened in the Bay Area was 2007 at the Castro (I was there, thankfully). But I'm glad it'll be screening at all, and that Friedkin will be interviewed in person by my friend and fellow film-blogger Michael Guillén, who interviewed the director for Mubi last year. 

Friedkin will also be on hand for a book signing of his memoir, and screenings of Crusing and Killer Joe on September 21st. Both of these will also be shown digitally, but the first three films in the series (To Live and Die in L.A. and The Boys in the Band along with The French Connection) will be in 35mm, though not with the director present.

HOW: As noted above, The French Connection screens via DCP at the Cinemark & Kabuki, and via 35mm at the PFA.