Welcome to our weekly column, "Staff Picks," in which we ask the staffers at our favorite book, music, and movie stores around to town to share with us what they're reading, listening to, and watching this week. We figure they're good people to ask. Today we're checking in with cinephile Richard Hutchins, who's worked at Film Forum for 13 years, to find out what he's been watching lately.
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Results tagged “filmforum”
Staff Picks: Film Forum Tells You What To Watch
Dial M For Murder To Screen In Real Two-Reel 3-D This Month
Last year when the Film Forum screened Dial M For Murder in real, original two-reel 3-D, all four screenings sold out fast. So here's your heads up that they're bringing it back this month, from June 17th to 23rd, and tickets are still available here. The 1953 Alfred Hitchcock classic, starring Grace Kelly and Ray Milland, was shot with M.L. Gunzberg's Natural Vision 3-D camera rig, which is said to have begun the 3-D craze (which is now suffering backlash?).
Brooklyneer: Is It Obnoxious to Open Bar Homage to Brooklyn?
A few friends who live in Carroll Gardens have opened up a new bar and small plates venture on a dead zone of West Houston called Brooklyneer. It's a win for several reasons: First, it's directly across the street from Film Forum, and finally fills a major void in pre-screening meet-up options. Second, there are a lot of Brooklyn beers on tap, including Six Point, Brooklyn Lager, and a cheap, specially-made $4 pint named after the place. Third, they serve delicious food from a wide variety of small-batch purveyors based in Brooklyn. But Eater deems the whole thing "obnoxious," because they put a map of Brooklyn on their menu. Monsters!
Weekend Movie Forecast: Defiance Vs. Good
Blame his weekend's paltry crop of new movies on the studios' strategy of dropping their last Oscar hopes just before the New Year, which is when prestige pics like and Revolutionary Road debuted. Those releases will no doubt eclipse this week's meager options, but let's try to keep up appearances, shall we? Excelsior!
Filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, Wendy and Lucy
In her new movie Wendy and Lucy, filmmaker Kelly Reichardt follows a desperate young woman (played by Oscar nominee Michelle Williams) as she attempts a perilous journey from Indiana to Alaska in search of employment, accompanied only by her dog.
Extra, Extra
- Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a crime scene/hanging at East 13th St. and Shore Parkway in Brooklyn, a child mauled by a dog in the area of 91-43 Gold Rd. in Queens, and a possible escaped prisoner on Wards Island across from Manhattan.
- Asbestos removal at the Carroll St. F and G line station appears to be a non-issue. Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn received a note saying that air levels were fine and removal is not scheduled for the immediate future.
- The New York Aquarium's sharks at Coney Island are moving on up. They're upgrading their modest 90,000 cubic foot tank to a $67 million waterfront palace.
- The City is pursuing criminal charges against an 82-year-old buildings engineer for what they claim was perjury. A $.99 store whose designs he ok'd caught fire and rotten timbers allegedly resulted in the deaths of two firefighters.
- Did the Hell's Angels plan a 'Bay of Hogs' Long Island beachfront attack that ended in embarrassing failure during the 1960s? Apparently, after the Rolling Stones' concert at Altamont, some Hells Angels tried sailing to Mick Jagger's estate to kill him, but hit rough seas and fell overboard.
- The box office at Yankee Stadium opened this morning at 10 a.m., as the organization began selling tickets to games at the Bronx Bombers' final season in the House that Ruth Built, and that we mostly paid for when it was renovated.
- Bravo to Shannon O'Hanlon, the 9-year-old 4th grader from Queens who won yesterday's Fay Wray Scream-A-Like Contest at Film Forum in Manhattan. The contest was part of a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the original King Kong film.
King Kong to Elicit Screams at Film Forum Today
In a Friday review of the 1933 original production of King Kong, The New York Sun's film critic Bruce Bennett wonders why the low-tech original continues to hold up so well after 75 years, especially in comparison to higher-tech remakes. "How, then, does a puppet made from rabbit fur, a rubber ball, and some socket joints, painstakingly animated frame-by-frame during the depths of the Great Depression, ably kick the motion-capture behemoth of Mr. Jackson's modern edition to film history's curb?"
Weekend Movie Forecast: Balls Vs. Babes
Another Will Ferrell sports flick will inflate this weekend, capping off a nationwide “Funny or Die” promotional tour that brought him to Radio City Music Hall Sunday night. The movie is Semi-Pro, which stars Ferrell as Jackie Moon, owner of the 1976 Flint Michigan Tropics, a team in the maverick ABA basketball league. To keep his career alive against all odds, Moon initiates off a series of increasingly desperate publicity stunts to attract fans – behavior that does sound awfully familiar.
Pencil This In
MOVIE: Delve into the mind and life of H.L. “Doc” Humes (pictured) in a documentary by his daughter. Titled Doc, the 96-minute film focuses in on the counterculture icon. "In the 1950s and early '60s, Doc co-founded The Paris Review, wrote two acclaimed novels, and was a gregarious fixture of the cultural scene in Paris, London and New York. Doc was a 1950s NYC intellectual, a 60s free speech militant, and a 70s visionary crazy genius. His story is the story of decades of cultural history, a poignant personal long-strange-trip, and a fount of ever-relevant ideas." Tonight Immy Humes (filmmaker) will be at the 8pm screening, and tomorrow night she will be joined by Paul Auster. More info here.
Holiday Movie Releases Crowding the Chimney
The holiday-time movie releases are starting to pile up with their usual feverish frequency. Some have Christmas themes, like the widely reviled Vince Vaughn vehicle Fred Claus that’s already roadkill on the lost highway of cinema history; others, like Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, are timed to make an impression as close to Academy Award-voting season as possible. Here are some of the biggest gorillas set to dominate New York’s screens in the next six...
45th New York Film Festival Begins
Tonight marks the beginning of the Film Society at Lincoln Center's 45th annual New York Film Festival and oh what a jam-packed fest it is. A panel of film critics chose 30 of the best new international movies to show to New York's discerning audiences and they picked hometown director Wes Anderson's newest, (which also comes out in theaters this weekend) to open the festival.
The Cinecultist's Weekly Repertory Pick: Impossible Dreams Edition
is the project that really encouraged his brilliant madness. It's one of the greatest potential disaster stories in film making and it won Herzog a best director prize at Cannes.
The Cinecultist's Weekly Repertory Pick: M For Murderer Edition
Museum of the Moving Image, through Sept. 30
John Turturro, Director
Hardly content with his career as one of the most fascinating actors in the business today, John Turturro continues to make his mark as director of a growing catalog of boldly independent films. His searing debut, Mac, drew deeply from his experiences in a Brooklyn family cast adrift after their father’s death. Six years later, Turturro reveled in his love for theater with Illuminata, which Salon called “a heartbreakingly beautiful tragicomedy about art, love and artifice, with a script of rare humor and complexity.” Fast forward seven years to 2005, and, like clockwork, Turturro finished his most wildly imaginative project, Romance and Cigarettes, produced by the Coen brothers. Unfortunately, the Hollywood distribution system lacks Turturro’s regularity, and it’s taken another two years for this heartfelt and hilarious picture to appear in America. (A run at Film Forum begins tonight.) Gothamist recently spoke with Turturro about the film, the entertainment industry, and his hope to hatch a Big Lebowski spin-off with the Coens.
Romance and Cigarettes Finally Lights Up
Hear about that movie Romance and Cigarettes that premiered last night? You know, the one directed by John Turturro, starring Chris Walken, James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Steve Buscemi, Kate Winslet, Mary Louise-Parker, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Elaine Stritch and Amy Sedaris? Well, don’t feel bad if you didn't – that fact that two years since it wrapped the film’s been released all over the world except the town where it was shot speaks volumes about the Hollywood distribution system.
Pencil This In
THEATER: New York Magazine called Kanene Holder’s last solo show, SITCHAASSDOWN “21 pitch-perfect snapshots of the black experience”. His current multimedia performance art installation, Committing that Black on Black Crime Called Blackface, goes down in the front window of chashama on 37th Street. Between the hours of 5:30pm and 8pm, curious passers-by can behold Holder paying satirical homage to Buckwheat “via a self-muzzled/pantomiming character who navigates a racist cauldron of images while staring into circus mirrors for glimpses and reconfirmations of reality, by repetitively applying and removing black-face makeup. The menacing screens around him “flash a motley crew of visual memorabilia and supplanted nostalgic references to "the good ole' days" of minstrel shows then and now.” - John Del Signore
Pencil This In
MUSIC: There's not a whole lot going on musically tonight, but the show at Cake Shop seems pretty...sweet. By The End of Tonight and Multitudes will be taking the stage -- the former is described as "the perfect marriage between the math-rockiness of Hella with the glistening, soaring guitars of Explosions in the Sky."
Pencil This In
MUSIC: Former Fugee Lauryn Hill will be giving a rare performance in Crown Heights tonight. The Grammy winner hasn't put out a new release in nearly a decade! So there's a good chance she'll be playing a lot off of 1998's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Sean Kingston also performs.
The Cinecultist's Repertory Pick: Sanguine Cinema Edition
In honor of the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birthday, the city of Vienna commissioned a special festival of visual art, music, dance, architecture, and film called New Crowned Hope. The name refers to the Masonic lodge Mozart co–founded, a venue in which he made his last public appearance.
Ingmar Bergman Dies at 89
Only 2 weeks after his 89th birthday, Swedish film and theater director Ingmar Bergman passed away at his home on Fårö Island this morning, the Associated Press reports. "Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, confirmed the death, and Swedish journalist Marie Nyreröd said the director died peacefully during his sleep. Bergman never fully recovered after a hip surgery in October last year, Nyreröd told Swedish broadcaster SVT."
The Cinecultist's Weekly Repertory Pick: Eastern Experience Edition
July 19 - 28, Asia Society
C'est Bastille Day!
It's July 14, which means it's time to appreciate the je ne sais quoi of all things French as you celebrate Bastille Day. Eating frites is one way, but there are many other events and activities today and tomorrow.
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