LA UPCOMING STUFF - JULY 2010

a highly-opinionated selection of things happening around town, and sometimes out of town. this month's page here.

thu. jul. 1

dum dum girls, dunes @ the echo
see no evil, the don is dead @ new beverly theatre
jaws, rocky @ egyptian theatre
tinylittle @ the smell
stellaluna @ pehrspace
who done it?, pardon my sarong @ aero theatre


fri. jul. 2

mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
the savage eye @ filmmobile summer screening series @ location tbd
vacation, european vacation, christmas vacation @ new beverly
liverpool @ ucla film archive
billy jack 8 PM, born losers @ silent movie theatre
the shining @ egyptian theatre
the pink panther, a shot in the dark @ aero theatre


sat. jul. 3

foot village @ the smell
dum dum girls @ detroit bar
chrome wings @ mcworld
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
vacation, european vacation, christmas vacation @ new beverly
the trial of billy jack 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
frank fairfield @ velaslavasay panorama
tinylittle @ pehrspace
easy rider @ cinespia @ hollywood forever


sun. jul. 4

giant 6:30 PM @ new beverly


mon. jul. 5

giant @ new beverly
stellaluna @ sync space


tue. jul. 6

fol chen @ the echo
zidane: a twentieth-century portrait 7 PM FREE @ hammer
fol chen @ the echo
mother, memories of murder @ new beverly
a tribute to gene deitch 8 PM @ jerry beck's animation tuesdays @ silent movie theatre


wed. jul. 7

captain january 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
mother, memories of murder @ new beverly
rich fulcher @ skylight books
reverend beat man @ redwood bar


thu. jul. 8

au revoir simone @ the echo
el topo, the holy mountain @ new beverly
the one man beatles 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
rosemary's baby, a reflection of fear @ egyptian theatre
big wednesday @ aero theatre
dash jacket @ the smell


fri. jul. 9

magic kids @ echoplex
audacity @ the echo
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
trouble in paradise @ lacma
desire 9:05 PM @ lacma
el topo, the holy mountain @ new beverly
los muertos, fantasma @ ucla film archive
easy rider, the american dreamer @ silent movie theatre
bicycles thieves, umberto d @ egyptian theatre
saccharine trust @ the smell


sat. jul. 10

a fool was there, the show-off @ heritage square
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
back to the future the ride @ pehrspace
ninotchka @ lacma
bluebeard's eighth wife 9:30 PM @ lacma
el topo 2:35 7:15 PM, the holy mountain 5:00 9:40 PM @ new beverly
manhunter MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
the great train robbery 2 PM, santa fe @ autry center
the shock doctrine FREE @ ucla film archive
le combat dans l'ile @ silent movie theatre
bachelor party 10 PM, the party animal @ silent movie theatre
2001: a space odyssey (70mm) @ egyptian theatre
breaking away, sixteen candles @ aero theatre
arsenic and old lace @ cinespia @ hollywood forever


sun. jul. 11

river's edge 3:35 7:30 PM, rumble fish 5:35 9:30 PM @ new beverly
la libertad 7 PM @ ucla film archive
20,000 leagues under the sea (w/ live score by stephin merritt) 6:30 9:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
army of shadows, bob le flambeur @ egyptian theatre
first men in the moon 4 PM @ aero theatre
crank 9 PM, crank 2 FREE @ guerilla drive-in


mon. jul. 12

the dark mirror 7 PM @ ampas samuel goldwyn
river's edge, rumble fish @ new beverly


tue. jul. 13

daddy longlegs 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
the adventures of robin hood (1938) 1 PM @ lacma
gone with the pope, massacre mafia style @ new beverly


wed. jul. 14

riding giants 7 PM FREE @ hammer
waking sleeping beauty, frank and ollie @ new beverly
pandora's box 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
fred armisen @ largo


thu. jul. 15

antibalas @ echoplex
waking sleeping beauty, frank and ollie @ new beverly
stellaluna @ the smell
dogs in space 8 PM, we're livin' on dog food @ silent movie theatre
heaven can wait, the president's analyst @ aero theatre


fri. jul. 16

mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
design for living @ lacma
the uninvited, the haunting (1963) @ new beverly
pulp fiction MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
20 million miles to earth, the 7th voyage of sinbad @ ampas samuel goldwyn
mad dog morgan, kid blue @ silent movie theatre
my night at maud's, claire's knee @ aero theatre
residual echoes @ spaceland


sat. jul. 17

movie night (TBA) @ heritage square
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
the shop around the corner @ lacma
angel 9:20 PM @ lacma
the uninvited 3:15 7:30 PM, the haunting (1963) 5:15 9:30 PM @ new beverly
wonder bar, fog over frisco @ ucla film archive
the van, mag wheels, supervan @ silent movie theatre
la collectionneuse, chloe in the afternoon @ aero theatre
we be the echo, witt @ the smell
dead meadow @ spaceland


sun. jul. 18

happiness 5 PM, life during wartime @ egyptian theatre
the 5,000 fingers of dr. t @ aero theatre
chris kennedy - eight films @ filmforum @ spielberg theatre @ egyptian theatre


mon. jul. 19

the blue dahlia 7 PM @ ampas samuel goldwyn
the lucky devil @ silents under the stars @ paramount ranch
1991: the year punk broke 6 PM, the reinactors @ 7 dudley cinema
life during wartime (sneak preview) FREE 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


tue. jul. 20

the big sleep 1 PM @ lacma
ezra buchla @ sync space
luluc @ silverlake lounge


wed. jul. 21

georgy girl, the national health @ new beverly
broken blossoms 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
dossier k @ egyptian theatre
sure fire, the bed you sleep in @ aero theatre
ezra buchla @ sync space


thu. jul. 22

georgy girl, the national health @ new beverly
do it again w/ mondo kinks video mix 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
my favorite year, history of the world part i @ egyptian theatre
sunset boulevard, stalag 17 @ aero theatre
upsilon acrux @ echo curio


fri. jul. 23

sleepy sun, assemble head in sunburst sound @ spaceland
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
the loons @ the casbah (SD)
christmas in july, hail the conquering hero @ new beverly
night tide, tracks @ silent movie theatre
10 from your show of shows, enter laughing @ egyptian theatre
dash jacket @ echo curio
fear and loathing in las vegas MIDNIGHT @ westwood village theatre
jon brion @ largo
tremellow @ neon venus
some like it hot, avanti! @ aero theatre
blue velvet MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. jul. 24

movie night (TBA) @ heritage square
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
personal & the pizzas @ pissed off pete's (SF)
to be or not to be @ lacma
a royal scandal 9:20 PM @ lacma
pulp fiction @ devil's night drive-in
radar bros, sleepy sun, assemble head in sunburst sound FREE @ pappy & harriet's (pioneertown)
christmas in july 4:00 7:30 PM, hail the conquering hero 5:30 9:00 PM @ new beverly
foxes, valley girl, (third film TBA) @ silent movie theatre
the jerk, dead men don't wear plaid @ egyptian theatre
the apartment, irma la douce @ aero theatre
high noon @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
audacity @ the ckb
upsilon acrux FREE @ three clubs
dirt dress, audacity @ women


sun. jul. 25

the lost skeleton returns again, dark and stormy night @ new beverly
saratoga trunk 7 PM, background to danger, between two worlds @ ucla film archive
blue velvet 6 PM, hoosiers, river's edge @ silent movie theatre
neil hamburger @ spaceland
nobunny, audacity @ the echo
blazing saddles, silent movie @ egyptian theatre
double indemnity, ace in the hole @ aero theatre


mon. jul. 26

the stanger 7 PM @ ampas samuel goldwyn
the lost skeleton returns again, dark and stormy night @ new beverly
trill-ogy comp 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


tue. jul. 27

fungi girls @ origami vinyl
re'search wait's 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
polls @ bootleg theater


wed. jul. 28

dark and stormy night, the lost skeleton returns again @ new beverly
metropolis (extended version) 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
young frankenstein, the man with two brains @ egyptian theatre


thu. jul. 29

the player @ lacma
dark and stormy night, the lost skeleton returns again @ new beverly
target video presents: socal punk rockers 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
cooley high, the last dragon @ egyptian theatre


fri. jul. 30

mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
mi ami @ bootleg theatre
moonhearts, goodnight loving @ redwood bar
the marriage circle @ lacma
so this is paris 9:05 PM @ lacma
candy claws @ spaceland
out of the blue, white star @ silent movie theatre
pal joey, bell book & candle @ egyptian theatre
monterey pop, wattstax @ aero theatre


sat. jul. 31

patton oswalt @ largo
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
cluny brown 9:35 PM @ lacma
modern girls MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
the unsuspected, i was a communist for the fbi @ ucla film archive
the last movie @ silent movie theatre
airplane! @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
patton oswalt @ largo


sun. aug. 1

fellini satyricon 6 PM, fellini's roma 8:30 PM @ new beverly
vertigo (70mm) @ egyptian theatre


mon. aug. 2

body and soul 7 PM @ ampas samuel goldwyn
fellini satyricon, fellini's roma @ new beverly
withnail & i 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
eagle rock music festival


tue. aug. 3

koolhaus houselife 7 PM FREE @ hammer
fellini satyricon, fellini's roma @ new beverly
down and dirty duck 8 PM @ jerry beck's animation tuesdays @ silent movie theatre


thu. aug. 5

personal & the pizzas @ the knockout (SF)
deconstructing dad: the music machines and mystery of raymond scott 8 PM, the secret animated history of raymond scott @ silent movie theatre


fri. aug. 6

personal & the pizzas @ TBA (oakland)
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
the bad sleep well @ ucla film archive
cutter's way 8 PM, california split @ silent movie theatre
starship troopers MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. aug. 7

mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
enemy mine MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
the lower depths @ ucla film archive
for all mankind 7 PM, project apollo @ silent movie theatre
tourist trap 10 PM, the hills have eyes @ silent movie theatre


sun. aug. 8

walt & el grupo 3:55 7:30 PM, the three caballeros 6:00 9:35 PM @ new beverly
films by andy warhol featuring dennis hopper @ filmforum @ spielberg theatre @ egyptian theatre


mon. aug. 9

crossfire 7 PM @ ampas samuel goldwyn
walt & el grupo, the three caballeros @ new beverly


fri. aug. 13

mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
no regrets for our youth @ ucla film archive
model shop 8 PM, play it as it lays @ silent movie theatre
let the right one in MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. aug. 14

ema & the ghosts @ pehrspace
mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
acts of violence MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
better off dead 7 PM, one crazy summer @ silent movie theatre


sun. aug. 15

mean streets, goodfellas @ new beverly
red beard 7 PM @ ucla film archive
chuck & buck 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


mon. aug. 16

a double life 7 PM @ ampas samuel goldwyn
dunes @ the smell
john cage's 'one' 6:30 PM @ 7 dudley cinema
mean streets, goodfellas @ new beverly


tue. aug. 17

dunes @ the smell


wed. aug. 18

drunken angel @ ucla film archive


thu. aug. 19

get out of the car 8 PM @ an evening with thom andersen @ silent movie theatre


fri. aug. 20

mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
ikiru @ ucla film archive
dr. strangelove MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. aug. 21

mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
ron silva & the monarchs @ the whistle bait @ bordello
hepcat @ henry fonda theater
sunset junction
nothing lasts forever 7 PM @ silent movie theatre


sun. aug. 22

throne of blood 7 PM @ ucla film archive
sunset junction


mon. aug. 23

the kiss of death 7 PM @ ampas samuel goldwyn


tue. aug. 24

bonossus and the gnomefly @ the smell


fri. aug. 27

mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
dersu uzala @ ucla film archive
cisco pike 8 PM, dusty & sweets mcgee @ silent movie theatre
clueless MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. aug. 28

mary lynn rajskub @ steve allen theatre
the cross revolves at sunset: recent restorations of experimental film from the academy film archive @ ucla film archive
oneida @ spaceland


sun. aug. 29

the idiot 7 PM @ ucla film archive


mon. aug. 30

white heat 7 PM @ ampas samuel goldwyn


tue. aug. 31

ciao manhattan 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


thu. sept. 2

ty segall @ spaceland


fri. sept. 3

the pope, foot village, arab on radar @ the sex
american psycho MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. sept. 4

fyf fest


wed. sept. 8

the gories @ the echo


thu. sept. 9

camper van beethoven @ echoplex


fri. sept. 10

terminator 2 MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. sept. 11

the clientele @ echoplex


sun. sept. 12

sleep @ san francisco


wed. sept. 15

melvins @ troubadour


fri. sept. 17

cheech & chong's nice dreams MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. sept. 18

autolux @ el rey


mon. sept. 20

richard leacock - documentary pioneer 6 PM @ 7 dudley cinema


fri. sept. 24

enter the void MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. sept. 25

enter the void MIDNIGHT @ nuart
the woggles @ los angeles venue TBA


sun. sept. 26

streetwise 3 PM @ getty center


thu. sept. 30

sonic youth, no age @ hollywood bowl
john cale @ ucla royce hall


fri. oct. 8

chapterhouse @ troubadour


thu. oct. 14

the yes men @ ucla royce hall


sat. oct. 23

abbott and costello's hold that ghost 2:00 8:00 PM @ alex theatre
halloween and mourning movie night (TBA) @ heritage square


sat. oct. 30

phantom of the opera @ royce hall organ & silent film @ ucla royce hall


sun. oct. 31

dr. jekyll and mr. hyde (w/ live organ accompaniment) @ walt disney concert hall


wed. nov. 3

ornette coleman @ ucla royce hall


thu. nov. 11

dean wareham plays galaxie 500 @ troubadour


sat. nov. 27

three stooges films 2:00 8:00 PM @ alex theatre


sun. dec. 5

pharoah sanders, nels cline, han bennink, etc @ ucla royce hall




WHAT IT IS:



ACTS OF VIOLENCE
A man named Flyn (Il Lim) is on a mission on killing the men who raped his wife Olivia (Leelee Sobieski). He finds himself living a double life as a killer and a husband. He finds an unexpected friend, a priest (Ron Perlman), as he deals with the gravity of his acts.    Dir. 
Il Lim, 2010.


The American Dreamer
The wild, unexpected success of Easy Rider ushered in what is now seen as one of the most significant turning points in film history, making pathologically rebellious Dennis Hopper an unlikely King Of Hollywood for a day. Incredibly, that day was filmed -- and not just filmed, but captured by two innovative and inventive filmmakers. Co-directed by L.M. Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller, The American Dreamer is many things: an insightful document of a complex artist in the midst of his creative process, a self-reflective exploration and explosion of vérité filmmaking tropes, and a playful and entertaining snapshot of the private life of one of Hollywood's most eccentric stars at the peak of his newly found fame. Hopper boldly allowed access to his crazy life in all its aspects: firing his rifles off in the desert, editing The Last Movie, stripping naked and walking through downtown Taos, New Mexico, pontificating about art and life, and holding forth guru-like to a room full of naked women. Fortuitously timed, fantastically made, and virtually unseen, The American Dreamer is the great '70s film doc you always wished existed. L.M. Kit Carson will be here in-person for the screening, and to share his voluminous Dennis Hopper stories!
NOTE: Our show of The American Dreamer is a free screening, generously donated by the filmmakers and the Hopper estate -- however, guaranteed seating will be made available to ticketholders for our earlier screening of Easy Rider.


Angel
1937/b&w/91 min. | Scr: Samson Raphaelson; dir: Ernst Lubitsch; w/ Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall, Melvyn Douglas
Nowhere are the famed Lubitsch touches more finely executed than in the story of Angel, a low-key masterpiece that failed on release but is now ranked among his best films by critics like Sarris and Godard. Dietrich, the bored wife of distracted London diplomat Marshall, revisits her past at a thinly disguised bordello in Paris, where she meets Douglas and is indiscreet. Though she flees without giving her besotted lover a name—he calls her "Angel"—fate would have it that Marshall and Douglas are old friends who reunite at a dinner party; it is only a matter of time before Marshall invites Douglas to meet his charming wife. In Angel, Lubitsch perfected his gift for ironic revelation through exclusion, keeping major dramatic moments off-screen to brilliant effect: he would never again make a film of such refined emotional intensity. "The ritziest of all the Lubitsch comedies-the most discreet, the most soft-spoken, the one with the most impeccable manners."—James Harvey, Romantic Comedy in Hollywood.


ARSENIC AND OLD LACE
Cary Grant stars in this hilarious black comedy about two sweet old ladies who poison lonely old men with elderberry wine, as a kindness. Cary is the confused nephew who has to juggle dead bodies, escaped murderers and an uncle who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt with a marriage announcement and the police. With Peter Lorre as Dr. Einstein. Frank Capra---USA---1944---118 mins. 


AVANTI!, 1972, MGM Repertory, 140 min. Dir. Billy Wilder. Uptight millionaire Jack Lemmon has his eyes opened (and more) when he travels to Italy to collect his late father's corpse – and finds himself falling for the lovely daughter (Juliet Mills) of his dad's Italian mistress.


Bachelor Party
"While some critics appreciated the humor, others found it to be vulgar and gratuitous." - Bachelor Party's Wikipedia entry
For a willfully stoopid kickass good time at the cinema, one could do no better in the '80s than look to the team of Neal Israel and Pat Proft (Real Genius, Moving Violations, Americathon and the Police Academy franchise), and the crown jewel in this classic comedy duo's arsenal is without a doubt Bachelor Party, one of the prime contenders for Heavyweight Slob Comedy Of The World. An epic monster that devilishly stretches the limits of tastelessness in forty-seven different directions, Bachelor Party stars Tom Hanks (never funnier than in this film, hands down) as a slacker who's about to get married to rich girl Tawny Kitaen; before he ties the knot, his goofball friends throw him the party-til-you-puke rager of the century. This thing's the ultimate densely-layered bahklava of a hedonistic sex farce, with its nonstop parade of T&A, endless boozing, loud rock 'n roll, neckties as headbands, hookers, shredded hotel rooms, starchy WASPs and their rightful comeuppance, dance contests, and cocaine-snorting livestock; Bachelor Party is what we all dreamed of as kids when we saw in our minds what a real party was supposed to be like -- so come freak the fuck out with us as we burn this mother to the ground!
Dir. Neal Israel, 1984, 35mm, 105 min. 


BACKGROUND TO DANGER
(1943) Directed by Raoul Walsh
Turkey during World War II is a strategic focal point for Russia, Nazi Germany and the United States. Tough-guy George Raft is an undercover US agent posing as a salesman, caught between German and Russian spies all trying to nab a set of strategically crucial photographs that have been entrusted to him. Not quite the epic romance nor the moral examination represented by recent hit Casablanca, the picture is fascinating in its parsing of America's wartime loyalties, and for the opportunity to see Raft in a version of the Casablanca role he had previously refused.
Warner Bros.. Based on the novel by Eric Ambler. Producer: Jerry Wald . Screenplay: William Riley Burnett. Cinematographer: Tony Gaudio. Editor: Jack Killifer. Cast: George Raft, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre. 35mm, B/W, 80 min. 


THE BAD SLEEP WELL
(Tengoku to jigoku)
(1963) Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Fifty years after its initial release, The Bad Sleep Well still proves amazingly prescient in its dissection of corporate corruption. A brilliant, and highly filmic, drama set against a political background of intrigue, it has been described as Kurosawa's Hamlet, "a black, twisted story of revenge in which a grieving son takes on powerful business and political figures." (Stuart Rosenthal)
Producer: Akira Kurosawa, Tomoyuki Tanaka. Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Eijiro Hisait, Kikushima Ryuzo, Shinobu Hashimoto. Cinematographer: Yuzuru Aizawa. Editor: Akira Kurosawa. Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Masayuki Mori, Kagawa Kyoko, Tatsuya Mihashi, Takashi Shimura. 35mm, B/W, 151 min.


THE BED YOU SLEEP IN, 1993, Complex, 117 min. Dir. Jon Jost. A haunting portrait of a family in crisis, set against the backdrop of tough economic times. Ray (Tom Blair) and his wife Jean, who operate a lumber mill in central Oregon, are forced to confront painful truths when their daughters says she has recovered memories of sexual abuse. Shot on 35mm with a crew of three, it’s nothing short of a miracle. "A tragic, beautiful, and mysterious film....as evocative and apocalyptic as Jost's cinema gets." -Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader. Discussion between films with actor Tom Blair and producer Henry Rosenthal. 


BELL BOOK & CANDLE, 1958, Sony Repertory, 103 min. Dir. Richard Quine. When modern-day witch Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak) casts a love spell on unsuspecting neighbor and publisher Shepherd Henderson (James Stewart), both parties find themselves in for much more than they bargained. With Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs. Discussion between films with actress Kim Novak (schedule permitting).


Better Off Dead
Fusing Bananas-era Woody Allen to a bizarro netherworld John Hughes landscape, Better Off Dead finds death-obsessed protagonist Lane Meyer (John Cusack, in one of his funniest roles) battling heartbreak with the help of substance-obsessed pal Charles (Curtis Armstrong aka Revenge Of The Nerds' Booger), a lovingly deranged family, and an endless depository of demented, oft-quoted gags ("I want my two dollars!!!!"). Underseen at the time of its original release, Better Off Dead is rightly appreciated now as a cult standard; Savage Steve's plan of taking the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker template of a thousand jokes a hour and lovingly crafting around it a sweetly told tale of teenage ennui is a brilliant move, resulting in a unique and sparkling classic. Savage Steve will be joined by Curtis Armstrong, E.G. Daily, Dan Schneider and Diane Franklin for a Q&A after the film!
Dir. Savage Steve Holland, 1985, 35mm, 97 min. 


BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
(1944) Directed by Edward A. Blatt
After a deadly air-raid in London, a group of bombing victims awake to find themselves aboard a ship, which they slowly realize is en route to a mysterious hereafter. Warner Bros. modernized this adaptation of Sutton Vane's 1923 play Outward Bound and crafted a fanciful study of death and the afterlife with the concerns of its war-time audience in mind.
Warner Bros.. Based on play by Sutton Vane. Producer: Mark Hellinger. Screenplay: Daniel Fuchs. Cinematographer: Carl Guthrie. Editor: Rudi Fehr. Cast: John Garfield, Paul Henreid, Sydney Greenstreet, Eleanor Parker, Edmund Gwenn. 35mm, 110 min. 


BIG WEDNESDAY, 1978, Warner Bros., 120 min. Dir. John Milius. Easily the greatest surfing movie ever made – and one of the finest portraits of innocence lost during the Vietnam era – BIG WEDNESDAY stars Gary Busey, Jan-Michel Vincent and William Katt as a trio of L.A. surfers who ride the big waves while dodging girlfriends, maturity and the draft board. Discussion following the film with actor William Katt and surfer/stuntman Peter Townend. 


Billy Jack
Forget Buford Pusser and Paul Kersey -- Billy Jack is by far the baddest, coolest, take-no-prisoners vigilante justice merchant of the '70s cinema universe. This half-Cherokee, ex-Green Beret, gun-slinging, karate-chopping mystic is one of the greatest walking contradictions in an era that perfected the form -- and Billy Jack, the most well-known of four epic, visionary works starring this superhuman everyman, still slays forty years on! When the seemingly mild-mannered, wandering Vietnam vet Billy Jack happens upon a vicious conflict pitting the students of a peace-loving, desert "freedom school" for runaways against oppressive locals, Billy is drawn towards his Native American side, and in a fight for the underdog kicks the violent townies’ asses with a dose of manic martial arts (which, at the time, was completely unseen in American film). Conceived and played by actor/director/writer/political activist (and later, Jungian pysychotherapist and three-time US presidential candidate) Tom Laughlin, the film features many non-actors who improvised most of their dialogue, as well as a sudden awesome appearance by the San Francisco improv group The Committee (featuring Howard Hesseman). With Coven’s “One Tin Soldier” as its theme song, this influential, action-packed, cult film remains a landmark focusing on the most emotional themes of its time: anti-establishment sentiment, two-sided justice, prejudice and racial segregation.  Tom Laughlin will be joined by Process Media impresario Jodi Wille for a discussion between films, and DJ Turquoise Wisdom will be spinning tunes before and after the films!
Dir. Tom Laughlin, 1971, HDCAM, 114 min.


Bluebeard's Eighth Wife
1938/b&w/85 min. | Scr: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett; dir: Ernst Lubitsch; w/ Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Edward Everett Horton.
Stylish, well-bred Colbert marries and divorces humorless millionaire Cooper whose success in business is offset by his seven failed marriages; but when she sets out to recapture her husband, her schemes lead to his mental breakdown and confinement in a straitjacket. A satiric, slapstick depiction of the battle of the sexes that combines the cynicism of Wilder with the more generous personality of Lubitsch, Bluebeard's Eighth Wife is "a screwball comedy of fits, starts and anxieties... (ending) in a brisk little brawl on the asylum floor."—Ed Sikov, Screwball.


The Blue Dahlia
(96 mins.)
Novelist Raymond Chandler penned this original screenplay which reteamed Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, as a veteran accused of murder and the woman who comes to his aid.


Body and Soul
(104 mins.)
John Garfield was nominated for his powerful performance as a boxer embroiled in the underworld in this drama from writer Abraham Polonsky (“Force of Evil”) and director Robert Rossen (“The Hustler”).


Born Losers
Before the tremendous success of Billy Jack, the righteous half-breed ass-kicking pacifist first surfaced in Born Losers, Tom Laughlin's sincere attempt at melding his long-harbored ideas for the ex-Green Beret bent on correcting injustice and hypocrisy (in order to help America reach its full potential) -- with a good ol' exploitation quickie. Using the then-popular trend of biker flicks as the shell in which to hold his outside-the-box ideas, and accompanied by a killer score from Davie Allen & The Arrows (under the moniker The Sidewalk Sounds), Laughlin gives us the origin story of our demin-clad icon: running afoul of hair-trigger tempered, racist 'n rapist Hell's Angels clones in a small seaside community, the self-sacrificing Billy Jack has no choice but to circumvent the piggish, ineffectual local boys in blue, and exact the appropriate vengeful hellfire. Even at this early stage, Laughlin's anti-authority tendencies are flashing in full effect, resulting in a fantastic and highly entertaining precursor to his future trilogy of unique, up-with-people Billy Jack films.
Dir. Tom Laughlin, 1968, 35mm, 113 min.


BREAKING AWAY, 1979, 20th Century Fox, 101 min. Dir. Peter Yates. Four teenagers (Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, and Jackie Earle Haley) come of age in an Indiana university town where their status as "townies" creates numerous economic and emotional obstacles. Paul Dooley stands out in a uniformly excellent cast as the befuddled father of a young man who sees cycling as his way out of obscurity.


Broken Blossoms
D.W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms, aka The Yellow Man and the Girl, adapted from Thomas Burke's "The Chink and the Child"(!), kicks off its supremely unusual love story by casting Richard Barthelmess as Chinese immigrant Cheng Huan, a missionary living in London's seediest district, whose hopes of spreading Buddhism are lost when he develops an opium addiction. Enter the always-astonishing Lillian Gish, a delicate sylph incapable of extracting herself from a home in which she is routinely beaten unconscious by her father, who's an amateur boxer and professional wretch. To say these lovers are star-crossed is an understatement, though the tragedy of their impossible love is acknowledged with surprising sensitivity by Griffith, who many claim offered this film to audiences as an apology for his frightening portrayal of racial intolerance in Birth of a Nation. Remarkably poetic intertitles complement the on-screen hulabaloo!
Dir. D. W. Griffith, 1919, 35mm, 90 min. 


California Split
Elliot Gould and George Segal bounce wildly off one another in the loose and engaging California Split, Robert Altman's exploration of compulsive gambling that ranks right among Nashville and McCabe & Mrs. Miller as one of his very finest works. Gould is the devil-may-care wild man, living on couches and a diet of cereal; Segal is a successful magazine publisher, the man with something to lose. Together, they wander in and out of old man bars, poker clubs, racetracks, and ultimately big-time casinos, their deeply touching yet tenuous friendship taking repeated blows as they come face-to-face with their own addictive natures. Working with one of his most finely-tuned acting ensembles (including Bert Remsen, Gwen Welles and a very young Jeff Goldblum), Altman captures the sumptuously seedy side of the Southland without ever sacrificing the grace and dignity that these pool souls deserve. A feast of detail and subtle characterization, California Split is best experienced in the theater, where, like the gaming floor, you never really know what time of day it is.
Dir. Robert Altman, 1974, 35mm, 108 min. 


Captain January
Before "America's First Sweetheart" Shirley Temple won the hearts of film fans across the globe at the dawn of the sound era with her spunkiness, her charm and her irrepressible cuteness, there was the equally adorable Baby Peggy, one of the silent screen's youngest and biggest stars. Starting her film career at the ripe old age of two(!), Baby Peggy appeared in over 150 shorts and over 20 features before semi-retiring from the picture business by age eight (in favor of the vaudeville stage) -- including versions of Heidi and Captain January, both of which would later become big successes for little Miss Shirley. In Peggy's Captain January, she plays a mystery girl who's found by Jeremiah, a scruffy, elderly lighthouse keeper after washing ashore by herself. Taken in by Jeremiah, she's later discovered to be the niece of a wealthy woman who wants to raise the girl for herself, even though Peggy's perfectly happy where she is -- who will be the girl's true guardian? Also showing before the feature is Mickey The Detective (1928), one of the earliest surviving shorts starring Mickey Rooney, then eight years old and credited as "Mickey McGuire"! "Baby Peggy" Montgomery, one of the last living silent film stars and still spunky at 91 years old, will be here at the Cinefamily in person to introduce the screening!  Dir. Edward F. Cline, 1924, 35mm, 64 min. (Library 35mm print courtesy of the Library of Congress Motion Picture Collection)


CHLOE IN THE AFTERNOON (L’AMOUR L’APRES MIDI), 1972, Les Films du Losange, 97 min. Dir. Eric Rohmer. Affable businessman Frederick (Bernard Verley) inhabits a healthy, loving marriage with his wife, with seemingly little to disrupt it. Then he falls for the aggressively desirable Chloe (Zouzou), and his carefully functioning universe is set askew. Plus, prior to the first feature: "Suzanne's Career," (1963, 54 min). Two friends, one a shy pharmacologist and one a slick womanizer, each go after a different woman, using drastically different techniques.


Chris Kennedy – Eight Films
Chris Kennedy in person!
Made over the course of six years, these recent films by Chris Kennedy investigate how meaning is made and how the world is seen. 
Concentrating either on the documents that construct a history or on the elements that create an image, his films propose a variety of ways to re-see what is right before our eyes.  Featuring the Los Angeles premieres of most of these films (although Filmforum has previously screened The Acrobat in our Festival of (In)Appropriation)!
“Often combining a careful concern with the apparatus and a high degree of formal rigour with thoughtful attention to social reality and history, Kennedy’s films examine the interpenetration of a kind of phenomenology – how the things of the world appear to consciousness – with the material possibilities of film (multiple exposures, hand processing, found footage, multi-frame presentations).” - Scott Birdwise, Canadian Film Institute


CHRISTMAS IN JULY, 1940, Universal, 67 min. Dir. Preston Sturges. Sturges’ second feature as director stars Dick Powell as a humble clerk who thinks he’s won a big contest and starts spending like it’s, well, you know. Big problem: he doesn’t know he’s the victim of a practical joke. Typical madcap mayhem with Ellen Drew, Raymond Walburn, William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn and the rest of the Sturges Stock Company.


Chuck & Buck
(10th Anniversary screening, w/ Miguel Arteta & Mike White in person!)
We're all friends here -- so join us in celebrating the tenth anniversary of Chuck, Buck, and their curious friendship. One of the most frank and powerful coming-of-age indies to bust out of Gen-X's shackles, Chuck & Buck is an intelligent, multi-layered treatise on obsession and longing for things past -- as well as being what David Edelstein of Slate.com calls "the most perversely agreeable stalker picture ever made". Buck (screenwriter and "Freaks & Geeks" alum Mike White) is an emotionally fragile, detached 27-year-old man-child who packs his life up in order to reunite with his one close childhood friend, Chuck, in Los Angeles. The purpose? Let’s just say that once they're both in the same room, Buck doesn't mince words. Directed by Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl, Star Maps) and employing lo-fi DV imagery to its righteous fullest, Chuck & Buck is an enthralling human dichotomy that imbues Cassavetes-styled invasiveness and Rushmore-esque whimsy with several coats of creepiness and a swathe of universal empathy. And it's even more captivating today than it was ten short years ago. Miguel Arteta & Mike White will be here in person for a Q&A after the show! 


Ciao Manhattan
Both Bob Dylan and Lou Reed wrote songs about her, and Andy Warhol dubbed her a Superstar, making film after film with her at the center. Edie Sedgwick was the "it" girl of the Factory, the tragic beauty of the '60s -- and there is no more perfect entry into Edie's world (and by association, Warhol's Factory) than David Weisman and John Palmer's experimental fiction/documentary fusion Ciao Manhattan. In this unusual take on the biographical film, Edie plays a thinly-veiled version of herself, Suzie Superstar, whose mod Manhattan exploits are recounted from her mother's Malibu swimming pool, where Suzie now lives in a makeshift tent. The NYC flashbacks are made up of gorgeous 1967 footage Weisman and Palmer shot for an unfinished film, paired with audio of candid true memories Edie recorded years later in a more dissipated state. Co-director David Weisman will be in person, along with co-stars Wesley Hayes and Jeff Briggs to share their memories -- and this special screening will be accompanied by the monstrously cool, very rare 30-minute documentary Edie: Girl On Fire, made up of outtakes, rare audio recordings, photographs, and more! 


Cisco Pike
Kris Kristofferson makes his leading man debut in this heavenly slice of dark, laid-back '70s storytelling that effortlessly captures the pulse of Venice Beach in the post-Summer Of Love "what do we do now?" era. Faded rock star and ex-con Cisco Pike (a sexily dejected Kristofferson, armed with squint, stagger, boots and perfectly tousled locks) dreams of a better life with his girl (Karen Black), but his hopes are dashed when his contacts are more interested in his dope connections than his new songs -- and when Cisco agrees to deal a trunkload of skunk for a blackmailing crooked cop (a brilliantly nervous Gene Hackman), his unsteady world crumbles further. The plot is mostly secondary to the film's glorious, casual unveiling of all manner of flaky Venice chicks and scene-stealing counterculture denizens, who include Tex-Mex musician Doug Sahm, Joy Bang, Antonio “Huggy Bear” Fargas, Warhol superstar Viva, and Harry Dean Stanton in a role so perfect that we wished a spin-off film could've been created just for him.
Dir. Bill L. Norton, 1971, 35mm, 95 min.


CLAIRE’S KNEE (LE GENOU DE CLAIRE), 1970, Wellspring, 105 min. Dir. Eric Rohmer. While vacationing, Jean-Claude Brialy becomes obsessed with a desire to have tactile contact with a certain body part of teenage Claire (Laurence de Monaghan). Plus, prior to the first feature: "The Bakery Girl of Monceau," (1962, 23 min). A young man (Barbet Schroeder) pursues a beautiful woman he meets randomly on the street, but when days go by without seeing her, he develops a new object of affection: the girl working in the local bakery.


Cluny Brown
1946/b&w/100 min. | Scr: Samuel Hoffenstein, Elizabeth Reinhardt; dir: Ernst Lubitsch; w/ Charles Boyer, Jennifer Jones, Peter Lawford.
Lubitsch's last film is a cheeky send-up of the British aristocracy that lampoons upper-class customs—theirs is a life of gardening, tea parties, and weed-killers—with keen insight and verve. Set just before the outbreak of the Second World War, the story revolves around the odd-couple pairing of a Czech writer (Boyer) who is hiding from the Nazis at the genteel country manor of a British family and Cluny Brown (Jones), the estate's irreverent Cockney maid whose love of plumbing (!) has dimmed her prospects for middle-class marriage. It's only a matter of time before Boyer and Jones each recognize their soulmate in the other and in so doing inject a new spirit into the tradition-bound household. "A merry charade with all the Lubitsch raffishness. And the closing scene, played in frantic pantomime, was touched with the old charm… It was a nice note for the Lubitsch story to end on-high trill with bells and violin"—Herman G. Weinberg, The Lubitsch Touch.


Crossfire
(86 mins.)
Richard Brooks’s novel The Brick Foxhole became a powerful thriller about murder among World War II veterans, directed by Edward Dmytryk from a screenplay by John Paxton.


THE CROSS REVOLVES AT SUNSET: RECENT RESTORATIONS OF EXPERIMENTAL FILM FROM THE ACADEMY FILM ARCHIVE
Since 1992, the Academy Film Archive has conserved and restored countless works of avant-garde cinema. This program features a mix of both acknowledged masterworks and utter obscurities, drawn primarily from the Academy's most recent restoration output.
The title of the program was inspired by Keewatin Dewdney's very rarely screened 1967 masterpiece, The Maltese Cross Movement. Dewdney's unforgettable film vividly and playfully explores many elemental and metaphorical qualities of celluloid cinema, themes variously touched upon by other works in the show. Included among the evening's additional highlights is a 35mm print from the digital restoration of Daina Krumins' utterly unique and bizarre The Divine Miracle (1973) along with newly restored and rarely seen films by Robert Nelson, Scott Stark, J.J. Murphy, Gary Beydler, Diana Wilson and others.
Program curated by Academy Film Archive preservationist Mark Toscano. All films shown in restored prints from the Academy Film Archive, and courtesy of the filmmakers.
IN PERSON: Mark Toscano, Preservationist, Academy Film Archive.


Daddy Longlegs
"Featuring some of the most unhinged parenting decisions ever made!" - Melissa Anderson, Artforum
With Daddy Longlegs (formerly known as Go Get Some Rosemary), sibling directing team Josh and Benny Safdie have crafted a realistic fairy tale that captures the magic of parenthood grounded in the gritty, grainy milieu of New York City, invoking memories of their own inventive dad's outré rearing techniques. Divorced and alone, Lenny (the perfectly cast Ronald Bronstein, director of the darkly comic nightmare Frownland) is the father of two young boys he gets to see a couple of weeks a year. He cherishes his time with them, and plays out the dual roles of stern parent and lovable buddy, inventing myths and somehow living them, all while working overtime in the big city. When the going gets tough, Lenny uses some unusual, perhaps even hazardous, techniques to keep the kids safe from the world -- and the Safdies' fluid style gives us the tangible feeling that we're in the boxing ring alongside Lenny, thrilling to his unorthodox method of dealing with the shitstorm of society. Also showing before the feature are a selection of shorts from the Safdies' early career! Ben & Josh Safdie will be here at the Cinefamily in person for a Q&A after the show!


DARK AND STORMY NIGHT. 2009, Bantam Street, 92 min. Dir. Larry Blamire. The crackpot geniuses behind the LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA franchise return again with their biggest and funniest film yet, a lovingly faithful re-creation of those 1930s old-dark-house thrillers, complete with a reading of the will, secret passageways, a hooded killer, wise-cracking reporters and a Brooklyn cabbie who just wants his "toity-five cents," all presented in glorious black-and-white. With Daniel Roebuck, Jennifer Blaire, Brian Howe, Fay Masterson and many others, plus a terrific new score by Christopher Caliendo (FORD AT FOX).


The Dark Mirror
(85 mins.)
Olivia de Havilland plays twin sisters suspected of murder in this 1946 romantic thriller with a screenplay by Nunnally Johnson and directed by Robert Siodmak, who was Oscar-nominated the same year for directing “The Killers.”


DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID, 1982, Universal, 88 min. Dir. Carl Reiner. Steve Martin is a private eye who interacts with Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck and Alan Ladd thanks to gorgeous black-and-white cinematography and some extremely creative editing. Discussion between films with Carl Reiner.


Deconstructing Dad: The Music, Machines and Mystery of Raymond Scott
One of the true enigmas of 20th-century music, Harry Warnow -- better known to the world of jazz aficionados, record collectors, exotica fiends and electronic music tinkerers as Raymond Scott -- was a highly prolific figure with a career that began in the 1930s swing/big-band era, and continued on through the experimental music age of the 1970s. Practically everyone on Earth can instantly recognize Scott's off-kilter melodies as heard in many of Warner Brothers' cartoons, but few also know that he also invented his own dazzling array of gadget-based musical instruments (as well as other devices like an early fax machine), played a part in busting racism on network radio -- and was the Director of Electronic Music Research and Development for Motown! Stan Warnow, Scott's son and renowned film editor (Woodstock, Hair, and many collaborations with Robert Downey Sr.), leads us on a thorough and revealing tour of Scott's multi-faceted life, while attempting to reconcile the myth of the man with the reality of a father he never fully knew. DJ Skip Heller will be here to spin Raymond Scott tunes before and after the show!
Dir. Stanley Warnow, 2010, digital presentation, 70 min.


DERSU UZALA
(1975, USSR/Japan) Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Directed by Kurosawa at the invitation of the Soviet Union, Dersu Uzala went on to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Based on a true story, it centers on the friendship between a Russian surveyor in Siberia and a native guide, Dersu Uzala, whose quiet presence hides a powerful grace and an even more powerful connection to the world around him.
Based on a novel by Vladimir Arsenyev. Producer: Yoichi Matsue, Nikolai Sizov. Screenplay: Yuri Nagibin, Akira Kurosawa. Cast: Maksim Munzuk, Yuri Solomin, Svetlana Danilchenko, Dmitri Korshikov. Presented in Russian and Chinese dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 144 min. 


Design for Living
1933/b&w/93 min. | Scr: Ben Hecht; dir: Ernst Lubitsch; w/ Miriam Hopkins, Fredric March, Gary Cooper.
Loosely adapted from the Noel Coward-Lunt-Fontaine soufflé by Ben Hecht, the proletarian author of The Front Page (who claimed to have retained only one line from Coward's original) Design for Living thumbs its nose at rigid sexual mores with finesse and wit, and can be appreciated today as one of Lubitsch's most ambitious and daring films. A young American artist (Hopkins) working for an advertising firm in Paris falls in love with two men: a painter (Cooper) and a playwright (March). Unable to choose between them, she ends up marrying her boss, only to decide she can't live without her bohemian companions. "The earliest (and probably the most iconoclastic) example of the genre which was to become known as screwball comedy, and a film of outstanding cinematic grace."—Ed Lowry, Screwball.
Print courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archive.


Desire
1936/b&w/89 min. | Prod: Ernst Lubitsch; scr: Edwin Justice Mayer, Waldemar Young, Samuel Hoffenstein; dir: Frank Borzage; w/ Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper.
As Paramount's newly appointed head of production, Lubitsch oversaw The Devil is a Woman, Sternberg's last film with Dietrich, and personally produced Desire, the star's first post-Sternberg film, in which she plays a cosmopolitan jewel thief whose attempts to retrieve the necklace that she dropped into the pocket of American businessman Cooper while crossing the Spanish border leads to comedy and romance. "The actors get more close-ups than Lubitsch might have given them... but Borzage's gentle eroticism matches up nicely with the usual Lubitsch playfulness, and the dialogue sparkles with an elegant melancholy. Cross-pollinating Lubitsch's taste in plot and characters with Borzage's ability to articulate emotional resonance, Desire is fascinating for the considerable influence it had on Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve."—Scott Eyman, Laughter in Paradise.


Dogs In Space
Unscreened in Los Angeles for ages, Richard Lowenstein's seminal Australian post-punk masterpiece Dogs In Space comes to the Cinefamily in a brand-new HD restoration! Based on Lowenstein's own whirlwind experiences as a young man in the heart of the late '70s Melbourne scene, the film is a dense, chaotic stew of vignettes charting the endless 24/7 partying that takes place in a trashy communal house -- a magical realm in which its wild, impoverished inhabitants do dope, go to shows, play shows, smash TVs, occasionally go to school, and generally live out a gloriously hedonistic life path. In the center of this storm is Sam (played by INXS frontman Michael Hutchence), the charismatic heroin addict whose Zen-like calm fares him well amongst a kingdom's worth of other jokers, junkies and misfits. With a killer soundtrack (featuring Aussie local heroes amongst the likes Iggy Pop and Gang of Four), warm 'n fuzzy period rock show recreations and a fluid, audacious visual style, Dogs In Space is not only an authentic gem begging for rediscovery -- but is also a helluva good time. Part Time Punks main man DJ Michael Stock will be spinning records before and after the films!
Dir. Richard Lowenstein, 1986, Blu-Ray, 104 min.


Do It Again
Small-town newspaper man Geoff Edgers, dreading the approach of his 40th birthday, is a man possessed with an improbable mission: find the still-surviving members of British legends The Kinks, and convince them to reunite. Never mind that he's an American with just one tenuous connection to Kinks leader Ray Davies and his younger brother Dave (who don't speak to each other); through sheer willpower, Edgers will find a way to make it all work -- and when his initial mission fails, Edgers turns the film into a meditation on the power of music and his own chance to testify on his love for the band (which is sometimes worn so unabashedly on his sleeve, you almost feel like you shouldn't be privy to it, yet you can't stop watching it). Director Robert Patton-Spruill follows Edgers from Boston to California, from Las Vegas to New York City as Edgers meets with Kinks fans Sting, REM’s Peter Buck, a deliciously irate Paul Weller, Zooey Deschanel and Robyn Hitchcock -- but the highs and lows of Edgers' ravenous obsession is the real centerpiece, and ultimately is way more important, relevant and fascinating than any possible outcome. Geoff Edgers will be here for a Q&A after the screening, DJ Howie Pyro will spin Brit Invasion rarities both before and after the show -- and the evening wraps up with a full curated hour of ridiculously rare Kinks footage, provided by Dr. Charles Beardsley and the Charles Beardsley Archives!
Dir. Robert Patton-Spruill, 2010, HDCAM, 85 min.


THE DON IS DEAD
(from IMDB)
In a city dominated by three crime families, the adviser of one hatches a scheme to grab control of the city by setting the other crime families against each other. For a time his plan works well, and gang warfare breaks out. One of the family heads is dependant on two brothers who kill for him. The younger of these brothers is reluctant to participate but is more intelligent than both his brother and his friend, the crime Don. Gradually, as the violence accelerates, the younger brother assumes command.  Dir. Richard Fleischer, 1973, 115 mins.


DOSSIER K., 2009, Kinepolis Film Distribution, 120 min. Dir. Jan Verheyen. Anchored by strong leading performances and gorgeously sleek cinematography, this taut thriller follows a duo of underdog policemen (a terrific Koen De Bouw and Werner De Smedt) as they unravel a labyrinthine network of deceit and corruption - extending from rural Albanian mafia warfare to the Belgian police bureau - behind one man's murder. A box office success in Belgium, this gritty and morally intriguing tale of misguided revenge is sure to dazzle local audiences.


A Double Life
(104 mins.)
Ronald Colman won the Best Actor Oscar for his change-of-pace role as an actor whose performance as Othello starts to affect his personal life in this psychological drama from director George Cukor and writers Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.


Down And Dirty Duck
Jerry Beck's Animation Tuesdays:
Turned-On Toons
(feat. Down And Dirty Duck)
With its inherent ability to give vibrant life to the inner imaginings of the artist, animation has always been the perfect art form for the doodling of dirty daydreams. With ink and juices flowing, the animator can indulge their salacious inner fantasies frame by frame. Join us as we explore titillating toons from across the ages, from the secret "smutty symphonies" of '20s studio animators to the raunchy X-rated revelries of the '60s and '70s, up through to the naughties of now, climaxing with an ultra-rare 35mm screening of the 1974 feature Down And Dirty Duck! Produced by Roger Corman as a response to Ralph Bakshi's successful Fritz The Cat and featuring the voices and songs of Flo & Eddie (Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan of The Turtles and Mothers of Invention), Duck is a strikingly stylized psychedelic odyssey of sexual frustration, and an off-color oddity that perfectly embodies the raunchy underground élan of the 1970s. Down And Dirty Duck director Charles Swenson will be here for a Q&A after the screening!
Down And Dirty Duck   Dir. Charles Swenson, 1974, 35mm, 75 min. 


DRUNKEN ANGEL
(Yoidore tenshi)
(1948) Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Drunken Angel is a masterful gangster film, evoking the sinister shadows of American film noir and depicting with compassion the devalued life of underworld characters. It is, moreover, a perfect, poetic allegory of postwar Japan as a good Samaritan, Dr. Sanada (Shimura), clashes with an arrogant hoodlum (Mifune), discovered to be tubercular, in a struggle of mutual loathing and grudging respect. (Judy Bloch)
Producer: Sojiro Motoki. Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Keinosuke Uekasa. Cinematographer: Takeo Ito. Cast: Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Reisaburo Yamamoto. 35mm, B/W, 98 min. 


Dusty & Sweets McGee
Maverick auteur Floyd Mutrux made his feature debut with this extremely stark quasi-documentary look at the L.A. drug scene, constructed around a series of hazy, interlocking vignettes featuring real-life junkies playing themselves, and a supporting cast comprised of "real" actors -- meaning the pushers didn’t want to be seen on camera. Mutrux and his crew follow this motley assortment of users and hustlers as they go through semi-scripted daily routines of scoring and wasting away the hours until their next fix: Dusty and Sweets are a thirty-something couple whose strained relationship is defined by their shared dependence on heroin; Kit turns tricks to support his habit; Tip is a self-proclaimed "everyday card-carrying dope fiend"; and, a vacant teenage couple are seen spending their days shooting up, nodding off, or wondering where to get more smack. The rawness and grit is well-captured by cameraman William Fraker (who also plays one of the upper-ech suppliers), and though it features enough on-screen vein-popping to make any audience wince, the film's languid, melancholy mood captures the narcotic allure of Los Angeles in an utterly convincing and compelling way.
Dir. Floyd Mutrux, 1971, 35mm, 92 min.


Easy Rider
Both one of the great head films and one of the great American film paradigm-shifters, Dennis Hopper's directorial debut Easy Rider, overflowing with Great American Novel-like ambition, filters the hopes, dreams and (ultimately) downfall of an expansively minded generation through the biker avatars of free-wheeling Old Glory-bedecked Peter Fonda and a manic buckskin-clad Hopper riddled with exquisite paranoia and doubt, the dark yin to Fonda's yang. Freed from material complications by benefitting from the Big Score, our antiheroes are ramblin' chrome cowboys with no frontier but their uncertain futures; their trail to true freedom snakes through Anasazi ruins, failing hippie communes, a Midwestern jail cell, gaudy whorehouses and the asphalt temple of the road. Produced for a pittance but grossing endless millions, Easy Rider was the film to show Hollywood its new way of operating (however brief it might have been), and to crown a new filmmaking aristocracy comprised of the socially-conscious and the chemically liberated. Featuring the first truly-realized rock and roll soundtrack, a breakout Oscar-nominated supporting turn from instant legend Jack Nicholson, complex edits and a slow-burn LSD nightmare to end all trip sequences, it's pure witches' brew.
Dir. Dennis Hopper, 1969, 35mm, 95 min.


ENTER LAUGHING, 1967, Sony Repertory, 112 min. Dir. Carl Reiner. Reni Santoni plays a young Jewish man who dreams of becoming a comedian during the Depression. His parents think working in the family drugstore is a safer bet. The supporting cast includes Shelley Winters, Elaine May, Jose Ferrer, Jack Gilford, Janet Margolin and Michael J. Pollard. Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner in person between films.


ENTER THE VOID
Gaspar Noe is a visually trippy director, and “Enter the Void” shows why. The son of famed Argentine painter Luis Felipe Noe, his movies play out like color-draped dreams, sometimes with out-of-sequence scenes, sometimes with flashbacks and flashforwards.
“Enter the Void” plays with experimental storytelling by centering its narrative in the head of a young man, Oscar, who has been killed during a petty drug deal. Oscar’s spirit isn’t free to move on because he promised his sister Linda, a nightclub stripper, that he would never leave her. So he watches from above and prowls the neon-filled city of Tokyo, where they live.


FANTASMA
(2006) Directed by Lisandro Alonso
In this commentary on cinematic rituals, the star of Alonso's earlier film, Los Muertos (Vargas), wanders through the Argentine cinématheque in Buenos Aires, Teatro San Martin, searching for the film premiere in which he is the star. In contrast to his other films, Fantasma charts a journey that unfolds almost entirely within interior spaces without diminishing the power of his contemplative style.
Screenplay: Lisandro Alonso. Cinematographer: Lucio Bonelli. Editor: Lisandro Alonso, Delphina Castagnino. Cast: Argentino Vargas, Misael Saavedra, Carlos Landini. 35mm, 63 min. 


FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, 1964, Sony Repertory, 103 min. In director Nathan Juran’s extremely entertaining adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel, turn-of-the-century British inventor Lionel Jeffries enlists Edward Judd and fiancee Martha Hyer in his scheme to reach the moon. Once the trio hits the lunar landscape, they’re captured by a weird subterranean insect race, and we’re treated to some of Ray Harryhausen’s most enjoyable special effects.


THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T, 1953, Columbia, 89 min. Dir. Roy Rowland. The only live-action film written by Dr. Seuss, THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T is a riotous Technicolor fantasia about a young boy (Tommy Rettig) trying to escape the nefarious clutches of his mad music teacher Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried) – who is bent on capturing 500 boys and forcing them to play his evil concerto on the world’s largest piano! Clip reel and PowerPoint presentation preceding the film and discussion in between films with art director John Muto. 


FOG OVER FRISCO
(1934) Directed by William Dieterle
Society girl Bette Davis has been spending time in a notorious underworld hangout, and her family is up in arms. This brisk, entertaining mob potboiler, replete with stolen bonds, paparazzi and dead bodies, was a personal favorite of Warner Bros. stalwart Davis, who plays a relatively minor role. In fact, her work on this production nearly coincided with her impressive turn in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934), which established her as a true star and raised her stock at her home studio, as well as the position of her name in the credits of this film.
Warner Bros.. Based on a novel by George Dyer. Screenplay: Robert N. Lee. Cinematographer: Tony Gaudio. Cast: Bette Davis, Donald Woods, Margaret Lindsay, Lyle Talbot. 35mm, B/W, 68 min. 


A Fool was There (1915), one of only a handful of Theda Bara films that still exists, where she stars as a “Vamp” set out to ruin the lives of respectable men


FOR ALL MANKIND
Anyone expecting another by-the-numbers space program overview will be overjoyed by Al Reinert's immaculately composed For All Mankind, an unusual chronicle of humanity’s conquest of the moon. Less a history lesson than a philosophical inquiry, Reinert lets the truly awesome sounds and images -- all culled from contemporary NASA recordings and presented with a beauty and clarity never before seen -- do most of the talking, resulting in a profoundly immersive cinematic experience of space travel. As dazzling as the images are the observations and remembrances of the crews; the astronauts themselves provide the only commentary, presented anonymously, the reverential voices forming a chorus of incredible shared experience and insight. While it's sublime in its contemplation of mankind's great endeavor, the film is also full of warmth and humor -- perhaps no other documentary features zero-G montages scored to Merle Haggard, or extended sequences of giggling moonwalkers falling on their face. A rich and remarkable fusion of focus, concision and wonder, For All Mankind aspires, like all the best visions of science, to the level of poetry.  Dir. Al Reinert, 1989, 35mm, 80 min. (35mm print courtesy of Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences)


Foxes
Jodie Foster, Cherie Currie (from legendary '70s all-girl punk band, The Runaways), Marilyn Kagan and Kandice Stroh star as four troubled teens coping with divorce, drugs and alcohol abuse in L.A.'s fast lane. With Scott Baio, Sally Kellerman and Randy Quaid.


FRANK AND OLLIE
(from IMDB)
'Frank and Ollie' is the touching story of Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of the original Disney animators. Lifelong friends and collaborators they tell the story of how their beginnings at Disney animation and the classic films they worked on together. Using archival footage, interviews with Frank and Ollie's respective wives and current Disney animators, the film brings to life the rich picture of the unique and enduring friendship of these talented animators.   Dir. Theodore Thomas, 1995, 89 mins.


GEORGY GIRL, 1966, Sony Repertory, 99 min. Dir. Silvio Narizzano. Lynn Redgrave stars in this breezy comic relic of Mod London as the hopelessly unhip Georgina, pining for close chum Alan Bates while roommate Charlotte Rampling jets around looking fabulous. James Mason co-stars as the older businessman who offers to make Redgrave his mistress.


Get Out Of The Car!
An Evening With Thom Andersen (director of Los Angeles Plays Itself),
feat. U.S. premiere of Get Out Of The Car!
You might be familiar with Los Angeles Plays Itself, Thom Andersen's moving, mesmerizing epic study of the history of L.A. as told through the history of film, but did you know Andersen has been documenting the soul of L.A. since the mid-'60s, tracking what is now gone and what is left of the city we love? Andersen doesn't just see this history -- he hears it as well. Don't Knock The Rock and Cinefamily are thrilled to present three of Andersen's L.A.-centric, music-rich films, including the U.S. premiere of Get Out Of The Car, a city symphony in 16mm composed of advertising signs, building facades, fragments of music and conversation, and unmarked sites of vanished cultural landmarks (including El Monte Legion Stadium and Watts' famous Barrelhouse). The film's musical fragments compose an impressionistic survey of popular music made here in Los Angeles across the 20th century, with an emphasis on '50s jazz/R&B and '90s corridos! Also showing is the unusually-named and rarely-screened "-- -------", Andersen's rock 'n roll doc from the mid-'60s, shot on location on the legendary Sunset Strip -- and Olivia's Place, a survey of the bar on Santa Monica's Main Street that inspired The Doors' "Soul Kitchen" (featuring the music of L.A.'s own Big Jay McNeely)! Thom Andersen will both appear at the Cinefamily to intro the films, and to also present a personally-curated collection of other rare music-filled films after the screenings of his own works!


GIANT
Dennis Hopper tribute:  A film of staggering scale and grandeur detailing the lives of cattleman Rock Hudson and his society wife Elizabeth Taylor and three generations of land-rich Texans. Featuring a stellar performance by James Dean in the last role of his career.  George Stevens---USA---1956---201 mins.


GONE WITH THE POPE, 1976, Grindhouse Releasing, 83 min. Writer-director-producer Duke Mitchell stars as Paul, a criminal with an unholy scheme: to kidnap the pope and charge "a dollar from every Catholic in the world" as ransom. This deliriously entertaining saga was shot in 1976 but remained unfinished until 2009. Now fully realized in 35mm!


THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY
(1903) Directed by Edwin S. Porter
A foundation document of world cinema, this thrilling short film dramatizes a brazen robbery by bandits, and their confrontation with a posse.
Screenplay: Edwin S. Porter. Cinematographer: Edwin S. Porter. Cast: "Broncho Billy" Anderson, Marie Murray, A.C. Abadie, Frank Hanaway. 35mm, silent, B/W, 11 min. 


HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO, 1944, Universal, 100 min.
When Eddie Bracken is discharged from the military for hay fever, his pals decide to send him home with a war hero's reputation. What ensues is a flurry of patriotic fervor, some genuine and some ridiculous, but all of it hilarious in writer-director Preston Sturges' hands.


THE HAUNTING
Robert Wise's nerve-jangling adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. An anthropologist, a disbeliever and two mediums confront the supernatural terror in a Boston mansion. The film is made even creepier through Wise's exquisite lighting and camera work, which makes the unseen even more frightening than what is seen. With Richard Johnson, Claire Bloom, Julie  Harris and Lois Maxwell.  Robert Wise---USA---1963---112 mins.


HIGH NOON
For some, this is the definitive American western. Gary Cooper is the marshal who fights alone for upholding the law when the entire town is paralyzed with fear. Stark settings and shadows heighten the suspense, as does the illusion of much of the film playing out in "real time," with frequent shots of clocks to emphasize the impending showdown. The film is frequently read as a parable  of the McCarthy era, as screenwriter Carl Foreman was blacklisted shortly after completing the script. With Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges, Lon Chaney. Fred Zinnemann---USA---1952---84 mins.


THE HILLS HAVE EYES
Horror master Wes Craven's cult classic finds a white-bread suburban family fighting for their lives against an inbred family of cannibals. Stuck in the remote southwestern desert after their car breaks down, the Carter family become play-things for the bloodthirsty clan and must resort to savagery themselves to avoid becoming dinner. A wonderful combination of brash social criticism and brutality. "Harrowing and nasty" (Entertainment Weekly). Wes Craven---USA---1977---89 mins. 


Hoosiers
This tale of redemption set in the world of Midwest high school basketball stars Gene Hackman at the height of his gruff powers as a disgraced coach who is given a second chance at life both on and off the court. Considered by many as the gold standard of basketball pictures, Hoosiers' pastorial setting and abundance of earnest charm ably keep the "outsider inspirational teacher turns the kids around" plot from becoming "Backboard Jungle". Eager to work after becoming newly sober, Dennis Hopper leapt straight from Blue Velvet's Frank Booth into the part of Shooter, the alcoholic father of one of the team's players who knows "everything there is to know about the greatest game ever invented", whom Hackman appoints as his assistant coach. Garnering his only Oscar nomination for his role in this film, Hopper is great to watch, in a triumphant film that mirrors his triumphant return to an earned spotlight.
Dir. David Anspaugh, 1986, 35mm, 114 min.


THE IDIOT
(Hakuchi)
(1951) Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Kurosawa obviously poured his soul into his adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. The visuals are stunning and Kurosawa's fidelity to the characterizations and themes of his "favorite author" is almost fanatic. An ingenious scenario finds Myshkin personified as Kameda, an ex-soldier who narrowly escapes death, whose vow to practice total selflessness in his relationships still cannot stave off tragedy. (Judy Bloch)
Based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Producer: Takashi Koide. Screenplay: Eijiro Hisaita, Akira Kurosawa. Cinematographer: Toshio Ubukata. Editor: Akira Kurosawa. Cast: Setsuko Hara, Masayuki Mori, Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura. 35mm, 166 min. 


IKIRU
(1952) Directed by Akira Kurosawa
When government functionary Mr. Watanabe learns he has terminal cancer, his metamorphosis from a drone entombed in paperwork (his co-workers call him "Mummy") to a conscious being actively engaged with and by the world is one of the great spiritual transformations in cinema. Ikiru is a tour de force, a searing portrait of modern society in which individual will is pit against an impotent bureaucracy. (Judy Bloch)
Producer: Sojiro Motoki. Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni. Cinematographer: Asakazu Nakai. Cast: Takashi Shimura, Shinichi Himori, Haruo Tanaka, Minoru Chiaki. 35mm, B/W, 143 min. 


I WAS A COMMUNIST FOR THE FBI
(1951) Directed by Gordon Douglas
Inspired by true events, the film follows Matt Cvetic (Lovejoy), a Pittsburgh steel worker hired by the Feds as a plant in the Communist Party. With only the FBI knowing the truth, Cvetic's duty to country comes at the cost of losing family and friends. Stylishly directed by Douglas for Warner's B-unit, the film typified Hollywood's attempt to placate HUAC's investigations into the film industry.
Warner Bros.. Based on an article edited by Pete Martin. Producer: Bryan Foy. Screenplay: Crane Wilbur. Cinematographer: Edwin DuPar. Editor: Folmar Blangsted. Cast: Frank Lovejoy, Dorothy Hart, Philip Carey. 35mm, B/W, 83 min. 


JOHN CAGE's ONE ('07, 90m)
Maverick composer John Cage's black-and-white meditation on the waxing and waning of light: Candle-like apertures appear, expand, then recede from view while Cage's orchestral work 103 simmers with sustained strings and occasional punctuations from oboe, trumpet, tympani, and other instruments. One11 is a visual counterpart to Cage's 'silent' composition 4:33, questioning our concepts of emptiness. 'No space is empty,' he said. 'Light will show what is in it. The result, aided by the distinguished cameraman Van Theodore Carlson, is a film entirely without plot or actors, which Cage hopes will enable viewers to find themselves.  FOLLOWED BY: The Making of One11 ('06, 43m) at 8pm - Henning Lohner's documentary on the creative process and realization of the film, with Joan LaBarbara and more. Interview with Van Carlson & Henning Lohner ('06, 33m) at 9:30- The filmmakers discuss their work with Cage and the film, the technical challenges, and more.


Kid Blue
In the floppy-eared tradition of the '70s revisionist New Western, Kid Blue, directed by James Frawley (The Muppet Movie), is a gentle, yet dark depiction of a time in which shooters can't shoot straight, the government is crooked, the Indians are under the spell of firewater, and everything is dusty and dirty. Dennis Hopper stars as a bungling bank robber who seeks to "retire" in a small Texas town, but after a string of equally futzed job attempts, and the awful prospect of working in a factory, he looks to crime one last time to turn his fortunes around. The film gives us the most balanced and controlled Hopper performance from its era; displaying few eccentricities or performative stunts, he's simply good here, and for a minute, you can imagine what it would've been like if Hopper had been just an "actor", rather than a big-name personality. As well, Kid Blue delivers the goods on classic Western pleasures: gorgeous 'scope cinematography, a rich nostalghic atmosphere, and actors (including not only the rare pairing of Ben Johnson and Warren Oates, but also Peter Boyle and M. Emmet Walsh) that are as warm and comforting as a shot of good whiskey.
Dir. James Frawley, 1973, 35mm, 100 min.


The Kiss of Death
(98 mins.)
Richard Widmark made a memorable screen debut as Tommy Udo, one of the all-time great villains of film noir, in this tense drama starring Victor Mature and Brian Donlevy, directed by Henry Hathaway from a screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer.


Koolhaus HouseLife
Koolhaus HouseLife examines the daily life of one of the masterpieces of contemporary architecture of recent years: The House in Bordeaux, designed in 1998 by Rem Koolhaas / OMA. Unlike most movies about architecture, this feature focuses less on explaining the building and its virtuosity than on letting the viewer experience the daily intimacy of an architectural icon. (France, 2008, 58 min. French with English subtitles. Dirs: Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine)


LA COLLECTIONNEUSE, 1967, Les Films du Losange, 89 min. Dir. Eric Rohmer. When cultured art dealer Adrien (Patrick Bauchau) retreats to a Mediterranean villa with his close friend for a quiet summer of reading and relaxing, he doesn't count on the presence of a third roommate - Haydee (Haydee Politoff), a young woman whose free-spirited, sexually uninhibited behavior is an unwelcome addition to the planned serenity.


LA LIBERTAD
(2001, Argentina) Directed by Lisandro Alonso
Alonso's debut film revolves around one day in the life of migrant logger Saavedra, who works in the Argentine Pampas. With its documentary feel and Saavedra playing himself, the film magnifies the burdens and liberation of hard labor to become an allegorical portrait. Screened in the Un Certain Regard section of 2001 Cannes Film Festival, La Libertad helped to herald the arrival of the Argentine New Wave.
Producer: Hugo Alberto Alonso. Screenplay: Lisandro Alonso. Cinematographer: Cobi Migliora. Cast: Misael Saavedra, Humberto Estrada, Rafael Estrada. Presented in Spanish dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 73 min. 


The Last Movie
Following the massive reverberations of Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper had carte blanche and a $1 million budget to realize the project of his dreams. The result was The Last Movie, a beautifully raw folk symphony of cinematic romanticism -- and his most ambitious effort behind the camera. Hopper plays a movie stuntman who's working on the set of a Peruvian-shot, Hollywood-funded western. Then, he falls in love. Sound simple? It's not. Initially conceived and edited as a linear narrative, The Last Movie was obsessively retooled by a haunted Hopper for nearly an entire year, and what emerged was an epic, constantly-in-flux fever dream that lobotomized the Godardian ideals of fiction vs. reality, reality vs. reality, form vs. content, and everything between. Rightly eulogized in Europe upon release (and wrongly reviled in the U.S.), this mesmerizing film is both a benchmark and an epitaph for Hollywood’s unhinged hippies and their uncompromising home movies. You may be challenged, but you’ll never be bored by The Last Movie. Join us on our backyard Spanish patio after the film for the closing reception in honor of our Dennis Hopper retrospective!
Dir. Dennis Hopper, 1971, 35mm, 108 min. 


Le Combat Dans L'Ile
A cool romantic noir from the French New Wave, Le Combat Dans L’Ile stars Louis Trintignant and the impossibly gorgeous Romy Schneider in a zigzagging narrative suffused with brooding, dysfunctional romance and political tension. Schneider is Anne, a free-spirited actress struggling to find meaning in her marriage to Trintignant's uptight right-wing reactionary who casually leaves his bazooka lying around the house. The marriage hits the skids after Louis splits to indulge in some South American revenge-killing, leaving Anne to buddy up to pacifist heartthrob Paul (Jules et Jim’s Henri Serre). Produced by Louis Malle as a pointed reprisal to a few notorious right-wing Cahiers du Cinema critics (including Godard and Truffaut at the time), the film shares Elevator to the Gallows’ fatalist tension and smoky monochromatic imagery (by Army of Shadows cameraman Pierre Lhome). In his directorial debut, Alain Cavalier’s originality and gutsy tone reveals the generous first indication of a voice that would grow into one of the New Wave’s most essential.
Dir. Alain Cavalier, 1962, 35mm, 104 min.


LIFE DURING WARTIME, 2010, IFC, 97 min. Dir. Todd Solondz. Part sequel to and part variation on HAPPINESS: 10 years have passed since a series of revelations shattered the world of the Jordan family. Now, sisters Joy (Shirley Henderson), Trish (Allison Janney) and Helen (Ally Sheedy) are embroiled in their own unique dilemmas as they struggle to find their place in a world where the past haunts the present and jeopardizes the future.


LIVERPOOL
(2008, Argentina/Netherlands/France/Spain/Germany) Directed by Lisandro Alonso
This existential fable evokes the voyage of Ulysses in its story about a lonely merchant marine who returns home to the snowy country of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago to see his dying mother after years at sea. As his world expands from the claustrophobic ship's cabin to mountain vistas, details, both biographic and cultural, accumulate, building to a single, spellbinding gesture and moment of revelation.
Screenplay: Lisandro Alonso, Salvador Roselli. Cinematographer: Lucio Bonelli. Cast: Nieves Cabrera, Giselle Irrazabal, Juan Fernández. 35mm, 84 min.  IN PERSON: Lisandro Alonso.


LOS MUERTOS
(2004, Argentina/France/Netherlands) Directed by Lisandro Alonso
Alonso's startling second feature centers on the journey of a recently released convict through a sweltering jungle to reunite with his family. Along the way, Alonso's languorous takes and natural lighting carry us well beyond the borderlines between documentary and fiction into the experience of a waking dream. Suffused with mystery and richly observed detail, the film reveals as much as it conceals.
Screenplay: Lisandro Alonso. Cinematographer: Cobi Migliora. Editor: Lisandro Alonso. Cast: Argentino Vargas, Francisco Dornez, Yolanda Galarza. 35mm, B&W and color, 78 min. 


THE LOWER DEPTHS
(Donzoko)
(1957) Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Kurosawa's faithful adaptation of Gorky's play avoids staginess at every turn despite being largely confined to a single setting: the disheveled common room of a flophouse. Kurosawa's camera penetrates the space and the hearts of its denizens—a thief, the landlady, a gambler, a prostitute, an actor—as they struggle with one another and with themselves in denial of the pitiable fate they all share.
Based on the play by Maxim Gorky. Producer: Akira Kurosawa. Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni. Cinematographer: Kazuo Yamasaki. Editor: Akira Kurosawa. Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Kyoko Kagawa, Ganjiro Nakamura. 35mm, B/W, 137 min. 


Mad Dog Morgan
Vicious, beautiful, naturalistic, dreamlike -- Mad Dog Morgan, Phillipe Mora's western from Down Under, is one of the wildest, best-made examples from Australia’s golden age of filmmaking. The film is based on the deeply fascinating true account of the exploits of Dan Morgan, one of Australia’s most notorious outlaws and folk heroes, a working class Irish immigrant driven to desperate criminal extremes by the abusive colonial government. Mora manages to coach a blistering performance from Hopper, who was going through the most difficult, chemical-addled period of his life, and was banished from Hollywood after the turmoil over The Last Movie. Backed by stunning 'scope photography, the kind of enchanted vistas that seem to populate Australia's art films, and an excllent cast, Hopper's wounded animal instability has never been put to better use. He seems uniquely suited to play Mad Dog Morgan, whose mixture of vulnerability and madness leave you sympathetic for this wounded "mad dog" killer who must be put down. A great performance in a great movie. Philippe Mora will be here at the Cinefamily for a Q&A after the film, and to share his many Dennis Hopper stories!
Dir. Philippe Mora, 1976, 35mm, 99 min. 


The Marriage Circle  
1924/b&w/85 min./silent | Scr: Paul Bern; dir: Ernst Lubitsch w/ Florence Vidor, Monte Blue, Marie Prevost, Adolphe Menjou. 
The first of five successful features he made for Warner Bros. and a major creative turning point in Lubitsch's career, The Marriage Circle introduced, with a subtlety that far surpassed the films of his contemporaries, motifs and a style that would characterize much of Lubitsch's work in Hollywood. Set in Vienna, the film maps the comic web of adultery and suspicion surrounding a happily married couple and an unhappily married couple. As the noted critic Herman G. Weinberg wrote, "the plot can be summed up in a line by Alexandre Dumas: 'the chains of matrimony are so heavy it takes two to carry them, sometimes three.' Not to be overlooked in the midst of the delicate irony… is that the milieu in which these charming people lives is an ideal world in microcosm." 
Live musical accompaniment by Robert Israel.


MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE (aka THE EXECUTIONER), 1978, Grindhouse Releasing, 83 min. Duke Mitchell wrote, directed and stars in this hyper-violent mob movie that plays like THE GODFATHER at half the length and twice the carnage. An exiled mob leader returns to the U.S. to try to re-establish himself, only to set off a bloody gangland war.


MEMORIES OF MURDER
Two rural cops investigate a series of bizarre murders in a small village on the outskirts of Seoul in this Korean crime-drama based on the real-life investigation of Korea's first serial killer. Over the course of six years, 10 women ranging in age from 13 to 71 were viciously murdered, with the killer growing more bold and brutal with each victim. The nightmarish details of the  events unfold as the detectives dig deeper into the case.  Bong Joon-Ho---South Korea---2003---130 mins. 


Metropolis
(newly-restored extended version!)
We're proud to welcome Metropolis, one of the greatest films in the history of the medium, back onto the Cinefamily screen, this time in its newly-restored full 2 1/2 hour version! According to its original press release, Fritz Lang's pioneering science-fiction epic had it all: "8 stars, 25,000 men, 11,000 women, 1,100 bald people, 250 children, 25 Negroes, 3,500 pairs of special shoes, 50 cars." And that doesn't begin to describe the wonders of Lang's Expressionist Tomorrowland! Powered by the unconscious energies boiling up from the Zeitgeist as his country lurched toward fascism, Lang's titanic imagination produced indelible images that have lost none of their power to astonish -- and, under his direction, the ravishing Brigitte Helm gives the iconic dual performances of a lifetime as gentle teacher Maria and the devastating Machine Man made in her image. This new, 145-minute version of the film, which owes its existence to the chance discovery of a 16mm dupe negative found in an Argentinean archive, is the result of two years worth' of painstaking collaborative restoration on the part of several German film organizations; come and see this classic in a brand-new way, as it was originally intended, for the first time!
Dir. Fritz Lang, 1927, HDCAM, 145 min. 


Model Shop
It was only a matter of time before the call of Hollywood's dream factory ensnared French director Jacques Demy, that lover of old musicals and stylized fantasies, whose only film for the American studio system, Model Shop, was made in 1969 for Columbia Pictures. Turning his camera on the sun-bleached, pop culture-drenched L.A. landscape and playing down his usual style, Demy gives us a 24-hour period as experienced by George (2001: A Space Odyssey's Gary Lockwood), a layabout Vietnam draftee who doesn't seem to mind much that his girl, his car and his pad are about to become a memory. Enter Lola (Anouk Aimée) , a mysterious French woman that poses for pin-up pics at a skeezy "photographer's club" -- entranced, he trails her from Malibu to Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and back again, in the blind hope of some kind of real human connection. Long considered a "lost" Demy project, Model Shop's camerawork and art direction are never less than faultless, its soundtrack (courtesy of local band Spirit) is a total jewel of the period -- and its generous footage of L.A. circa '69 is now a treasure trove unto itself.
Dir. Jacques Demy, 1969, 35mm, 97 min. 


MODERN GIRLS
(from IMDB)
Geeky Clifford has a date with pretty Kelly. But when he comes to pick her up, she has gone to see her ex-boyfriend, the DJ at a nightclub, using her roommate Margo's car. Margo and their third roommate, CeCe, induce Clifford into driving them around, first to the nightclub to find Kelly, then on an all-night tour of the L.A. night scene in search of CeCe's new love, rock star Bruno X.  Dir. Jerry Kramer, 1986, 84 mins.


MOTHER
(from IMDB)
A mother lives quietly with her twenty-eight-year-old son, Do-joon, providing herbs and acupuncture to neighbors. One day, a girl is brutally murdered, and Do-joon is charged with the killing. Now, it's his mother's call whether to prove him innocent or to leave him imprisoned.  Dir. Joon-ho Bong, 2009, 128 min.


MY FAVORITE YEAR, 1982, Warner Bros., 92 min. Dir. Richard Benjamin. Mark Linn-Baker stars as Benjy Stone, junior writer on a 1950s TV comedy-variety series who is assigned to keep alcoholic matinee idol Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole) out of trouble during rehearsals and deliver him sober to the performance.  Discussion between films with Richard Benjamin.


MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S  (MA NUIT CHEZ MAUD), 1969, Wellspring, 105 min. Winner of Cannes’ Golden Palm and nominated for an Oscar, this film remains one of the most successful attempts to unravel the complex human psyche. Narrator Jean-Louis Trintignant vows to marry, only to fall in fascination with another woman, divorcee Maud (Francoise Fabian). 


THE NATIONAL HEALTH
(from IMDB)
The appalling conditions of an under-funded national health hospital are comically contrasted with a "Dr Kildare" style soap showing in the ward televisions. The contrast between the real world and the fantasy soap world is skillfully done.  A charming, tragic, funny and intelligent black comedy made in the days when Britain generally made very poor comedy movies.  Dir. Jack Gold, 1973, 95 mins.


Night Tide
Hopper has never been more innocent or likable than in Curtis Harrington's beatnik fairy tale Night Tide; a surprisingly sweet turn for those more familiar with Blue Velvet, or even Easy Rider. Playing a young lovelorn sailor, Hopper falls under the spell of a carnival mermaid named Mora who might also be a lunar-cycle killer in this eerie early 1960s black-and-white dark fantasy. Night Tide marked Hopper’s first starring role after seven years of playing wildly diverse film and TV parts, and his unusual charisma shines through clearly as he wanders the piers of Venice and Santa Monica, all under the sure hand of first-time director Curtis Harrington, whose art film instincts and occult interests (honed after collaborating with childhood friend Kenneth Anger) are firmly in evidence. This dreamy, spaced-out riff on Cat People (complete with a freaky score by the great David Raksin) is absurdly difficult to see on the big screen -- especially in this newly restored print by AMPAS -- so don’t miss your chance to see one of our favorite film mavericks just as he was getting his sea legs.
Dir. Curtis Harrington, 1961, 35mm, 84 min. (Night Tide was restored in 2008 by the Academy Film Archive with support from The Film Foundation and Curtis Harrington.)


1991 - THE YEAR PUNK BROKE ('92, 99m) at 6pm - With Sonic Youth and Nirvana as they stumble thought their 1991 European club festival tour! Let filmmaker Dave Markey put you on stage, off stage and backstage! Witness the boredom! The cynicism! And rock harder than you may have ever rocked before! Featuring Dinosaur Jr., Babes In Toyland, Gumball, The Ramones and a surging wave of punk rock fanatics! See You In The Pit! "Markey strives for a kind of cinema verite-meets-homemade-fanzine appeal and succeeds almost too well."-Entertainment Weekly


Nothing Lasts Forever
(w/ director Tom Schiller in person!)
shown with "Schiller's Reel"
Take the whimsical social satire of Frank Capra, filter it through the startling future dream of Terry Gilliam's Brazil and add a few drops of the gentle madness of both Forbidden Zone and The Hudsucker Proxy -- and you've got Nothing Lasts Forever, the vastly underseen early '80s gem from Tom Schiller, director of some of SNL's most ingenious early film shorts. Zach Galligan (Gremlins) plays Adam, an upstanding wannabe artist trapped in a discreetly ever-mutating retro future dystopia (is it '30s? '50s? '80s?), where the Port Authority has assumed control of Manhattan's government, and has denied him an "artist's license." A secret cabal of hobos, however, sees Adam's worth and sends him packing on a shuttle bus to the Moon! Shelved by MGM after its completion and never released theatrically or on video, this subtle and charming B&W curio -- even with the added presence of its co-stars Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd -- was too "outside the box" and ahead of its time in the boom era of teen sex romps, slasher films and buddy action flicks. Lucky for us, however, Nothing Lasts Forever remains as one of the most truly unique film works of its time. Director Tom Schiller will be here in person to introduce "Schiller's Reel", a half-hour compendium of his early short films -- and for a Q&A after the screening! Plus, special guests TBA!
Dir. Tom Schiller, 1984, 35mm, 82 min. 


One Crazy Summer
Upping the outrageousness quotient by several degrees, this sequel-in-spirit to Better Off Dead is the screwy story of frustrated young cartoonist Hoops McCann (a returning John Cusack), his wise-ass best friend George Calamari (Bill Murray’s gene-channeling brother, Joel), and would-be rock star Cassandra (a tomboyish Demi Moore), as they cavort with a manic, Godzilla-suited Bobcat Goldthwait and a priceless, twitchy, scene-stealing Bruce Wagner on an island in Nantucket during summer break. If all of this sounds wonderfully nuts, you're absolutely right; irreverent, charming and witty, One Crazy Summer is on its own a helluva good time, but when paired with Better Off Dead, it's sublime. Holy crap -- Savage Steve will be joined by Bobcat Goldthwait, Curtis Armstrong and Joel Murray for the Q&A after the film!
Dir. Savage Steve Holland, 1986, 35mm, 97 min.


The One Man Beatles
(U.S. premiere!)
After his band The Merry-Go-Round hit the Top 40 with the Beatles-esque bubblegum classics "Live" and "You're A Very Lovely Woman" -- and his four brilliant solo albums released in rapid succession -- celebrated singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Emitt Rhodes' output halted almost entirely. Inspired by the haunted radiance of Rhodes' work, four young Italian musicians cross the ocean in search of the answer to "where has he been for 35 years?" Once dubbed "The American Paul McCartney," both for his raw talent and strikingly handsome looks, Rhodes is finally discovered on the same street in Hawthorne where he has lived his whole life, and more questions are raised than answered, and The One Man Beatles emerges as a poetic study of an artist who bridged Merseybeat with West Coast melancholy to create some of the most devastatingly beautiful music to ever come out of Southern California. Co-starring Michael Penn, The Bangles' Vicki and Debbie Peterson, filmmaker Allison Anders, and, of course, Emitt Rhodes! Both an Emitt Rhodes tribute concert and a Q&A with producer Tony Blass will follow the screening -- and Emitt Rhodes, along with Merry-Go-Round drummer Joel Larson, will be in attendance (bring your LPs for autographs!) at our post-show reception on our outdoor patio! Plus, DJ Andrew Sandoval will spin never-before-heard Rhodes tracks before and in-between the evening's events!
Dir. Cosimo Messeri, 2009, digital presentation, 60 min. 


Out Of The Blue
After staying away from the director's chair for almost the entirety of the '70s, Dennis Hopper took up the reins again to help ensure that this devastating character study would be completed -- and in a magic act of happenstance, the film turned out to be possibly his best directorial effort. Days of Heaven’s Linda Manz will chill your soul as Cebe, a disaffected punk-worshipping teenager whose dad (Hopper) is in prison for a school bus accident (featured in the nightmarish opening scene) and whose mom is a worthless junkie. The closest cinematic equivalent to a Sex Pistols song (despite lifting its title from the Neil Young’s haunting "My My, Hey Hey," which plays often on the soundtrack), this harsh look at the ultimate dysfunctional family remains an unsung classic with a jolting ending that still packs a nasty punch. If anyone ever had doubts about Hopper as a director, this film quickly dispelled them and kicked off his second great wave behind the camera.
Dir. Dennis Hopper, 1980, 35mm, 93 min.


PAL JOEY, 1957, Sony Repertory, 111 min. Dir. George Sidney. When chorus girl Linda English (Kim Novak) holds out against the advances of womanizing crooner Joey Evans (Frank Sinatra), his interest in her increases ten-fold. Wealthy widow Vera Simpson (Rita Hayworth) meets Joey and agrees to underwrite his private nightclub venture, but has a jealous change of heart when she finds out about young Linda.


PARDON MY SARONG, 1942, Universal, 84 min. Dir. Erle C. Kenton. In one of their most lavish vehicles, Abbott & Costello are bus drivers helping Honolulu playboy Robert Paige win a big yacht race - until they’re blown off course to an island lorded over by an evil scientist (Lionel Atwill).


The Party Animal
Remember when your mom said you couldn't rent Revenge of the Nerds because it was nothing but naked girls, crass jokes and offensive sexual attitudes? And then then you finally saw it at your cousin's sleepover, but it didn't quite deliver on all of those purely illict thrills? The Party Animal is the film that your pre-adolescent fantasies wanted delivered straight to your door, exploding in a frenzy of enough regressive '80s college sex romp thrills to make even that guy who had the huge stack of Playboys in eighth grade blush. Set amongst a completely loony, fractured narrative, our hero Pondo Sinatra arrives at college on the back of a turnip truck looking to shed his virginity but can't score with the improbable throngs of hot chicks that populate the campus until a Faustian deal allows him to whip up Love Potion #9. This bizarre, highly entertaining 78-minute wonder, edited out of the footage from a highly chaotic (and presumably party-filled) shoot, is chock full of drugs, bangin' tunes from groups like The Buzzcocks and The Fleshtones, and enough boobage to melt the scrambler right off your cable box!
Dir. David Beaird, 1964, 35mm, 78 min. 


PLAY IT AS IT LAYS, 1972, Universal, 99 min. Director Frank Perry (DAVID AND LISA) delivered many edgy psychological classics, and none is more deserving of rediscovery than this rarely-screened adaptation of Joan Didion's bestseller, with a screenplay by Didion and her late husband, John Gregory Dunne. Tuesday Weld is at her best as fiercely intelligent Maria, an ex-model on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In-the-closet producer Anthony Perkins is her only friend and Adam Roarke her estranged, director husband trying to jumpstart his career out of the biker-film ghetto. A scathing portrait of Hollywood in the early 1970's. NOT ON VIDEO!


THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST, 1967, Paramount, 104 min. Dir. Theodore J. Flicker. Very hip, idealistic psychoanalyst James Coburn is selected to listen to the troubles of the president of the United States -- but is soon so stressed that he quits, becoming the target of every security agency in the world. 


Project Apollo
Also showing before the feature is Project Apollo, the half-hour experimental educational film (directed by Ed Emshwiller for the United States Information Agency) that gives a fascinating portrait of NASA's Apollo project a full year before the actual moon landing!  Dir. Ed Emshwiller, 1968, digital presentation, 30 min. 


RED BEARD
(Akahige)
(1965) Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Kurosawa's last film with Toshiro Mifune traces the education of an arrogant young doctor after he is assigned to a medical clinic for the poor where he falls under the influence of its stern director. "Red Beard" (Mifune) struggles to cure the physical ailments of his patients and the poverty that begets them in one of Kurosawa's most moving appeals for social and economic justice.
Based on a novel by Shugoro Yamamoto. Producer: Kikushima Ryuzo, Tomoyuki Tanaka. Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Masato Ide, Hideo Oguni, Kikushima Ryuzo. Cinematographer: Asakazu Nakai, Takao Saito. Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Yuzo Kayama, Tsutomu Yamazaki. 35mm, B/W, 185 min. 


NO REGRETS FOR OUR YOUTH
(Waga seishun ni kuinashi)
(1946) Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Made immediately after WWII, No Regrets for Our Youth is based on a true story of political repression in which a university professor was dismissed for "Communist thinking" and one of his students, a leader of an antiwar movement, was subsequently executed as a spy. Kurosawa approaches the story's incendiary politics indirectly, through the repercussions it has on the professor's idealistic daughter.
Producer: Keiji Matsuzaki. Screenplay: Eijiro Hisaita, Akira Kurosawa. Cinematographer: Asakazu Nakai. Editor: Akira Kurosawa. Cast: Setsuko Hara, Susumu Fujita, Denjiro Okochi, Haruko Sugimura. 35mm, B/W, 110 min. 


Pandora's Box
(w/ live score by Cabeza De Vaca Arcestra)
Co-presented by L.A. Record
L.A.'s own Cabeza de Vaca Arcestra will appear live on the Cinefamily stage to perform their live score to G.W. Pabst's silent masterpiece Pandora's Box! Over the course of four silents (Faust, King Of Kings, Metropolis and Häxan), the Arcestra, which features members of Dios Malos, has established itself as Los Angeles' premiere ensemble for film score interpretation. Always experimental without ever sounding unprepared, the group tonight provides the musical backdrop to Pabst's legendary slice of German Expressionist cinema, starring Louis Brooks as conflicted femme fatale Lulu, the girl whose luscious sexuality is fraught with a ruin beyond her control. Brooks makes increasingly twisted, tragic plot turns (shooting her lover, fleeing the country with her lover's son, becoming a "lady of the evening" and having everyone around her perish) seem totally inevitable, for a beauty that burns that brightly cannot burn for too long.
Dir. G. W. Pabst, 1929, 35mm. 


A REFLECTION OF FEAR, 1973, Sony Repretory, 89 min. A true rarity for fans of great cinematography, A REFLECTION OF FEAR was directed by legendary director of cinematography, William Fraker (1999 ASC Lifetime Achievement Award), and photographed by the equally-legendary Laszlo Kovacs. Disturbed teen Marguerite (Sondra Locke), looked after by a protective mom (Mary Ure) and grandmother (Signe Hasso), is sent over the edge when her estranged father, Michael (Robert Shaw), returns with new love, Anne (Sally Kellerman) in tow. Genuinely chilling, with one of the most unexpected twists in any 1970’s thriller. 


THE REINACTORS ('09, 96m) at 8pm - Dave Markey's (in-person) hilarious documentary interweaves the disparate lives of street performers and celebrity look-a-likes on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame. "A bittersweet look at a tribe of desperate dreamers. David Markey dives deep into the subterranean nooks and crannies of this bizarre subculture and surfaces with cinematic gold." - Ann Magnuson, The Paper.


Re'Search Wait'S
Co-presented and co-produced by MOCA and Elizabeth Dee Gallery
"Seeing it is like being patched into all the computers of the world at once." - Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine
"Imagine slasher films without blood; porn without nudity; the Sistine Chapel without God; the New York Stock Exchange without capital. Pretend that Hieronymus Bosch’s intermeshed figures could text." - Wayne Koestenbaum, Artforum
In conjunction with MOCA and its current exhibit at the Pacific Design Center, The Cinefamily is thrilled to usher you into the terrifying electric hands of Ryan Trecartin, one of the most dangerous, visceral and mesmerizing video artists of the 21st century -- his works grab you by the throat and hijack your brain, taking you on a completely dazzling non-linear high wire journey and dropping you out the other end zapped and spraypainted. Trecartin's films pull off the amazing feat of being both contentless and utterly riveting: no plot, and with threadbare neon-colored characters functioning as shells jerkily animating through what once could have been called the world. Utilizing the signposts of our presently oversaturated media and youth cultures (the cell phone as lifeline, hyper-exaggerated slang, ubiquitous Internet everything) and with a forcefully blurry gender neutrality that catapults beyond gay or straight, Trecartin and his ghoulish cast put forth one of the ultimate collective mindfucks you're likely to see in years. Totally post-human, these videos are the longform fulfillment of Max Headroom's "blipvert" prophecy -- so be prepared to experience all-consuming seizures of the soul.
RE'SEARCH WAIT'S:
Ready (Re'Search Wait'S), 2009-2010
The Re'Search (Re'Search Wait'S), 2009-2010
Roamie View - History Enhancement (Re'Search Wait'S), 2009-2010
Temp Stop (Re'Search Wait'S), 2009-2010


RICHARD LEACOCK - DOCUMENTARY PIONEER
Ishan Shapiro & Marija Coneva (in person) screen rare films by Ricky Leacock, who spawned Direct Cinema & Cinema Verite, and worked with Robert Flaherty, DA Pennebaker, Shirley Clarke, Jean-Luc Godard, Bob Dylan, Igor Starvinsky and many more. He was the head of MIT's Film School for 20 years. His JFK doc Primary was praised as a revolutionary step and breaking point in the recording of reality in cinema having caught the scenes of real life with unprecedented authenticity, immediacy and truth. Henri Langlois called it "the most important documentary since the brothers Lumiere." Ishan & Marija mentored under Leacock for several months in Paris recently and will share some of their understandings on the importance of his work. They will discus Leacock's essays on our relationship as creators of media and his point of view on the democratization of the tools to create media - a lifelong struggle for him. They are helping him publish his autobiography currently.


Riding Giants
An exhilarating, often mind-blowing history of surfing. — Washington Post
Riding Giants takes us along surfing’s timeline from its Polynesian roots to its early 20th-century rebirth in Southern California. The film highlights the group of extraordinary adventurers who, not satisfied with the mere recreational and social aspects of the sport, began searching for bigger and bigger waves. A Q&A with director Stacy Peralta will follow the screening. (2004, 104 min. Dir. Stacy Peralta.


River's Edge
"This is the best analytical film about a crime since The Onion Field and In Cold Blood." - Roger Ebert
With River's Edge, Dennis Hopper continued his streak of dead-on awesome post-Blue Velvet performances in his role as Feck, the emotionally shattered one-legged drug dealer who befriends a group of misfit kids in a terrible quandry. Set amongst a northern Californian high school milieu and expertly directed by Tim Hunter (writer of the '70s teen angst masterpiece Over The Edge), a beautifully frantic Crispin Glover leads a cast of post-Brat Pack up-and-comers (including Keanu Reeves and Ione Skye) who must deal with the emotional fallout of their friend having just nonchalantly raped and strangled his girlfriend, gone for some smokes and casually started bragging about the whole thing. It's all made seriously impactful by the cast's multi-faceted and unpredictable response to the tragedy, made very real by their waffling teenage indecision over their allegiance to their boneheaded friend. In a supporting yet essential role, Hopper gives his hollowed-out ex-biker the meaty gravitas that only an actor who's truly been to hell and back can convey, and he does so with surprising gentleness.
Dir. Tim Hunter, 1986, 35mm, 99 min.


A Royal Scandal
1945/b&w/94 min. | Prod: Ernst Lubitsch; scr: Edwin Justice Mayer, Bruno Frank; dir: Otto Preminger; w/ Tallulah Bankhead, Charles Coburn, Vincent Price.
Lubitsch's second film for Fox was a remake of his silent hit Forbidden Passage, a satirical romp starring Pola Negri as Catherine the Great; for the retitled sound version, Lubitsch offered the role of the sexually voracious Czarina to Tallulah Bankhead, a lioness of the Broadway stage whose rare appearance on celluloid thrilled her devoted fans. Lubitsch collaborated with To Be or Not to Be screenwriter Mayer on a script peppered with risqué one-liners and supervised the actors' rehearsals, but due to Lubitsch's heart problems, Otto Preminger directed the actual filming. The finished comedy clearly lacks the Master's lightness of touch and his skill with ensemble performances—by contrast Preminger relies on reaction shots and dialogue delivered at top speed—but A Royal Scandal is often very funny in the spirit of Mel Brooks, but with better production values. Bankhead, surrounded by palace intrigue and a parade of lovers, plays the Czarina as an extremely vigorous personality with a Russian accent by way of Brooklyn. Coburn is fun as the corrupt Chancellor, and as the French Ambassador, shrugging at the romantic shenanigans and speaking faux Gallic Franglaise, Vincent Price is hysterically camp. 


SANTA FE
(1951) Directed by Irving Pichel
Following the Civil War, four brothers head west. One gets a job helping to build the Santa Fe Railway, while the other three, bitter about the South's defeat, resent the Union's incursion into the West and take to robbing trains, pitting brother against brother. Stupendous action scenes grace this stirring historical drama.
Columbia Pictures. Based on a novel by James Marshall. Producer: Harry Joe Brown. Screenplay: Kenneth Gamet. Cinematographer: Charles Lawton, Jr. Editor: Gene Havlick. Cast: Randolph Scott, Janis Carter, Jerome Courtland, Peter Thompson. 35mm, 87 min. 


SARATOGA TRUNK
(1946) Directed by Sam Wood
Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman and director Sam Wood re-team after For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) in this epic tale of corruption and revenge in New Orleans, based on the novel by Edna Ferber (Cimarron, Giant). Cooper and Bergman smolder together as a Texas gambler and a spurned schemer looking to burn the town down to settle their own private scores.
Warner Bros.. Based on the novel by Edna Ferber. Screenplay: Casey Robinson. Cinematographer: Ernest Hall. Editor: Ralph Dawson. Cast: Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Flora Robson. 35mm, B/W, 135 min. 


THE SAVAGE EYE
Angelenos are invited to discover and explore their changing urban landscape when the Filmmobile projects an array of classic films at (actual or implied) cinematic locations across the city. Join us for The Savage Eye, the 1959 “dramatized documentary” film that provides a peephole into the seedier side of a long gone Los Angeles.


The Secret Animated History of Raymond Scott!
Raymond Scott's musical legacy is felt not only throughout the classic age of Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes, but also across the animation spectrum. Tonight, after our screening of Deconstructing Dad, join animation historian Jerry Beck as he takes you on a guided tour of Scott's work as heard in such shows as Ren & Stimpy, The Simpsons, Duckman, Animaniacs and more!


SEE NO EVIL
Mia Farrow stars in this horror drama as a young woman, blinded in an accident, who finds her entire family murdered on their farm. She must now escape the homicidal maniac who targets her. With Dorothy Allison. Richard Fleischer---USA---1971---90 mins.


The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
With Kerwin Mathews, Kathryn Grant, Richard Eyer, Torin Thatcher. Directed by Nathan Juran. Produced by Charles H. Schneer. Screenplay by Kenneth Kolb. Story by Ray Harryhausen. Visual effects by Ray Harryhausen. Columbia Pictures. 35mm. 88 mins. Print courtesy of Sony Pictures.  Presented in conjunction with the exhibition “The Fantastical Worlds of Ray Harryhausen.”  Special late gallery hours from 6–7:30 p.m. and after the screening.


THE SHOCK DOCTRINE
(2009, United Kingdom) Directed by Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom
In their thought-provoking adaptation of Naomi Klein's bestseller, co-directors Whitecross and Winterbottom examine disaster capitalism: the exploitation of crisis moments by governments and businesses. The film traces the doctrine's origins in the theories of economist Milton Friedman and their application in countries such as Pinochet's Chile and Yelstin's Russia, and in the recent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Producer: Andrew Eaton. 35mm, 79 min. 


The Show-Off  (1925) a comedy starring Louise Brooks, about an insufferable braggart who disrupts the lives of a middle-class family by pretending to be much, much more than he really is.


SILENT MOVIE, 1976, 20th Century Fox, 87 min. Director Mel Brooks plays a washed-up film director who sees a new silent film production as the way to save both his career and Hollywood, and he enlists the aid of pals Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman. Discussion between films with Mel Brooks.


So This is Paris
1926/b&w/80 min./silent | Scr: Hans Kraly; dir: Ernst Lubtisch w/ Monte Blue, Lilyan Tashman, Patsy Ruth Miller.
An inventive and dynamic treatment of love triangles, Lubitsch's favorite subject, So This Is Paris consolidated the critical view that Lubitsch could unfailingly outsmart and outlaugh the competition with films that dealt openly with sex outside of marriage. Dr. Giraud (Blue) stumbles across an old love whose husband is in the process of flirting with the doctor's wife, Mrs. Giraud (Miller). Much scheming and dodging ensues between clandestine rendezvous, culminating in a hilarious masquerade ball in which the drunken Dr. Giraud attempts to pick up his own wife. "The standout scene of the film is an astounding Charleston sequence at a Parisian ball, with multifarious double exposures and special effects."—A Guide to World Cinema.
Print courtesy of the Library of Congress
Live musical accompaniment by Robert Israel.


Streetwise
Directed by Martin Bell
(1984, 91 min., HDCAM, not rated)
This unflinching vérité documentary tracks nine teenagers living on the streets of Seattle in the 1980s, and was produced in conjunction with Mary Ellen Mark's photographic project of the same name. 


SURE FIRE, 1990, Strand Releasing, 83 min. Dir. Jon Jost. A dark and mesmerizing portrait of a small town entrepreneur. Wes, portrayed brilliantly by Tom Blair, is a bully of a man full of get-rich-quick schemes. Director Jon Jost captures an America we seldom see, through elegantly composed conversation and arresting visual stylistics, in this film strikingly shot in the "Mormon Dixie" of central Utah. "It's clearly an American masterpiece...SURE FIRE burns slowly, then explodes." Georgia Brown, Village Voice


Target Video presents:
SoCal Punk Rockers
In 1977, San Francisco-based artist Joe Rees founded Target Video. Target taped bands in its studio space, in clubs, at parties and on the streets of the world at a time when music television was nonexistent. With a vision and love for underground music and art, Target documented a truly explosive era, and in the process created a massive archive of punk rock performance footage that captured the scene in all its raw clumsiness and exuberance. Joe Rees and Target co-conspirator Jackie Sharp will be in-person at the Cinefamily to present a two-hour program drawing from the seemingly bottomless Target library, focusing this time on an L.A./So Cal-centric program featuring classic footage of local heroes (The Screamers, Black Flag, TSOL) alongside lesser-known-but-equally awesome acts (Nervous Gender, BPeople, The Plugz). This may be your one and only chance to ever see these clips, so this night is not to be missed!


10 FROM YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS, 1973, 92 min., Dir. Max Liebman. A compilation of sketches from the comedy-variety series starring Sid Caesar telecast live on the NBC television network from 1950 to 1954. 


THE THREE CABALLEROS
Starring Donald Duck, Jose Carioca and Panchito, this combination of live action and animation was made as a companion piece to Saludos Amigos, a goodwill gesture by Disney toward our South American allies. Donald celebrates his birthday down south, opening a wondrous collection of gifts that evolve into musical journeys with a Latin beat. Norman Ferguson---USA---1945---71 mins. 


THRONE OF BLOOD
(Kumonsu-jo)
(1957) Directed by Akira Kurosawa
In his audacious adaptation of Macbeth, Kurosawa relies on the aesthetics of Noh theater and his own visual and cinematic invention to brilliantly capture the emotional grandeur of the original and to evoke the Bard's timeless themes. Toshiro Mifune brings his Macbeth to life with a concentrated physicality, using every gesture and glance to become a man possessed, then destroyed, by a dream of power.
Based on a play by William Shakespeare. Producer: Akira Kurosawa, Sojiro Motoki. Screenplay: Shinobu Hashimoto, Kikushima Ryuzo, Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni. Cinematographer: Asakazu Nakai. Editor: Akira Kurosawa. Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Takashi Shimura, Akira Kubo. 35mm, B/W, 110 min. 


To Be or Not to Be
1942/b&w/99 min. | Scr: Edwin Justice Mayer; dir: Ernst Lubitsch; w/ Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack, Sig Ruman.
Films that satirized the Nazis as bumbling bureaucrats or depicted the followers of Hitler as robotic thugs proliferated in pre-war Hollywood-Chaplin's The Great Dictator, with its blend of slapstick, sentiment and patriotism, outgrossed Rebecca in 1940—but by 1942 America had joined the Allies and Lubitsch's audacious mix of farce and thriller and biting sarcasm was condemned for its "tasteless" humor and quickly disappeared from screens. Set in occupied Warsaw in 1939, To Be or Not to Be revolves round a troupe of Shakespearean actors, headed by sexy Maria Tura (Lombard) and her vain husband Joseph (Benny) aka "that great Polish actor" who impersonates Nazis in a daring ruse to foil a political assassination. As the wall between theater and reality crumbles, Lubitsch directs his performers through a dizzying array of entrances, exits, and costume changes, while peppering the action with a string of blistering yet very funny one-liners, none more controversial than the outrageous remark to Benny by Sig Ruman's backslapping Nazi commandant: "What you did to Shakespeare, we are now doing to Poland." "Lubitsch's most modernist film… (and) one of the least cynical comedies ever made. The Nazis in the film are like normal people. They are also monsters. Evil is clearly named, but it is also brought closer to familiar feelings and situations than audiences expected which is what gives the film its special quality of hilarity."—James Harvey, Romantic Comedy in Hollywood. 


Tourist Trap
As sensory-charged as an experimental film and as graphic as a PG rating of its time allowed, Tourist Trap, one of the great archetypal drive-in horror films, initially unfolds in the classic horror tradition, but quickly swerves right off the highway into total blissful mindwarp territory. A quartet of hapless youths take a backroads vacation journey up to a desolate tourist trap run by the suspiciously hospitable Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors); inbetween skinny dipping and exploring creepy resort attractions, the victims-to-be encounter Slausen's mannequins, which have a nasty habit of coming to life and offing folks. Thanks to its startling music score by Italian legend Pino Donaggio, its weird lyrical romantic qualities and sharp direction by David Schmoeller (Crawlspace), this oddity seemingly evokes many wonderful elements of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, including its chilling rural setting and Connors' truly crazed performance as one of the more memorable down-home psychopaths in horror film. Director David Schmoeller will be here in person for a Q&A after the film!
Dir. David Schmoeller, 1979, 35mm, 90 min. 


Tracks
In Henry Jaglom's Tracks, a most unique improvisational road picture set against the end of the Vietnam conflict, Dennis Hopper finds himself living out the frustrations of a shattered nation's worth of "upstanding people" in a role on the complete opposite end of the spectrum as Easy Rider's Billy. It's 1973, and Sgt. Jack Falen (Hopper) has returned to the U.S. in order to transport the body of a fallen war buddy cross-country. For an actor who was actually too old to be a hippie but too young to be part of The Greatest Generation, Hopper captures a man lost between two generational moralities, as his square and awkward soldier confronts effeminate swingers (including an oily Dean Stockwell) and tries to seduce hippie girls on an endless transcontinental train ride (on which almost the entire film takes place.) Within Jaglom's obsessively truth-seeking style, Hopper explores the two sides of his talent: the innocent, fragile rabbit whose psyche was crushed by the violence of Vietnam -- and the crazed Hopper full of demons, revealed as the train rolls on through a series of dream sequences, flashbacks, uncomfortable confrontations and a classic '70s fuck-you hallucinatory twist ending. Director Henry Jaglom and co-star Zack Norman will intro the film and participate in a Q&A after the screening!
Dir. Henry Jaglom, 1976, 35mm, 90 min.


The Trial of Billy Jack
Co-presented by Process Media
"[Tom] Laughlin's Billy Jack movies are ostensibly action movies, but they're also message movies, melodramas, documentary-style exposes, comedies, dramas, semi-musicals, avant-garde experiments with pure abstraction, and just about everything else." - Nathan Rabin, A.V. Club
After the humungous success of Billy Jack propelled him to the status of a cultural icon, Tom Laughlin -- not a man to rest on his laurels -- set about creating the inevitable: an ambitious sequel that aimed to be even more expansive in its exploration of social justice, and, boy, is this a promise on which Laughlin delivers! Running a surprising yet zippy three hours, The Trial of Billy Jack gives us the tale of how Billy Jack's Freedom School finds itself flourishing while our titular anti-hero sits in prison. In a beautifully lofty, Holy Mountain-like celebration, the utopian existence of the school is characterized by everything ranging from "yoga sports" to muckracking journalism. The narrow-minded townspeople and its police force, however, have major problems with the school's brand of liberalism -- and when Billy Jack is released, his vision quest (in which he literally bitch-slaps a stunned Jesus Christ!) leads him to stage what could be his final bloody showdown. This one's a high-minded brainboiler for the ages -- a pioneering, eye-opening, and relentlessly entertaining audience favorite!
Dir. Tom Laughlin, 1974, 35mm, 170 min. 


A Tribute to Gene Deitch
Jerry Beck's Animation Tuesdays:
A Tribute to Gene Deitch
Oscar-winning animator, acclaimed cartoonist and dedicated jazz historian Gene Deitch will be at the Cinefamily for an in-person tribute led by cartoon historian Jerry Beck! One of the most influential men from the golden age of toonery, Deitch produced tons of shorts for a wide variety of studios (Columbia, Fox, MGM and Paramount, to name but a few), all with a freewheeling and innovative touch that represented the very best of the "modern" style of the '50s and '60s. Throughout this epic night, we'll screen some of the coolest shorts of Deitch's career: an appearance by Tom Terrific (one of TV Guide's Top 50 Cartoon Characters of All-Time), the Oscar recipient Munro (penned by the great Jules Feiffer), a selection of Deitch's widescreen Cinemascope "Terrytoons", his award-winning beer commercials (featuring the comedy team of Bob & Ray as "Bert & Harry Piels"), Deitch's independent shorts from the '60s, a long-thought-lost UPA Howdy Doody Cartoon recently unearthed by the Library of Congress -- and toons directed by Deitch featuring Krazy Kat, Popeye and Tom & Jerry. To cap off this fantastic lineup, Gene Deitch will appear in person for a Q&A! Deitch lives in Prague, Czech Republic, and rarely visits L.A. -- so don't miss this this rare one-of-a-kind evening of amazing animation!


Trill-ogy Comp
Co-presented and co-produced by MOCA and Elizabeth Dee Gallery
"Seeing it is like being patched into all the computers of the world at once." - Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine
"Imagine slasher films without blood; porn without nudity; the Sistine Chapel without God; the New York Stock Exchange without capital. Pretend that Hieronymus Bosch’s intermeshed figures could text." - Wayne Koestenbaum, Artforum
In conjunction with MOCA and its current exhibit at the Pacific Design Center, The Cinefamily is thrilled to usher you into the terrifying electric hands of Ryan Trecartin, one of the most dangerous, visceral and mesmerizing video artists of the 21st century -- his works grab you by the throat and hijack your brain, taking you on a completely dazzling non-linear high wire journey and dropping you out the other end zapped and spraypainted. Trecartin's films pull off the amazing feat of being both contentless and utterly riveting: no plot, and with threadbare neon-colored characters functioning as shells jerkily animating through what once could have been called the world. Utilizing the signposts of our presently oversaturated media and youth cultures (the cell phone as lifeline, hyper-exaggerated slang, ubiquitous Internet everything) and with a forcefully blurry gender neutrality that catapults beyond gay or straight, Trecartin and his ghoulish cast put forth one of the ultimate collective mindfucks you're likely to see in years. Totally post-human, these videos are the longform fulfillment of Max Headroom's "blipvert" prophecy -- so be prepared to experience all-consuming seizures of the soul.
TRILL-OGY COMP:
Sibling Topics (section a), 2009
K-CoreaINC.K (section a), 2009
P.opular S.ky (section ish), 2009


Trouble in Paradise
1932/b&w/83 min. | Scr: Samson Raphaelson; dir: Ernst Lubitsch; w/ Miriam Hopkins, Herbert Marshall, Kay Francis.
Gleaming black and white cinematography and incredible Art Deco sets by Hans Dreier, Paramount's top production designer, add sparkle to this witty tale of two jewel thieves—Marshall and Hopkins—who pose as sophisticated aristocrats in order to rob languorous Parisian widow Francis of her perfume fortune. Lightning-quick repartee between these con artists (meeting for dinner in Venice, they express their growing attraction by pick-pocketing increasingly personal items from each other) gives way to complicated emotions when Francis falls for Marshall, thus forcing an incensed Hopkins to concoct her own brand of larceny. "Trouble in Paradise is about people who are impossibly adult, in that fanciful movie way—so suave, cynical, sophisticated that they glide. In this pre-Code film, the sexual undertones are surprisingly frank and we understand that none of the characters are in any danger of mistaking sex for love… The comedy material is given dignity by the actors; the characters have a weight of experience that suggests they know life cannot be played indefinitely for laughs."—Roger Ebert, The Great Movies. 


20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)
With William Hopper, Joan Taylor, Frank Puglia, John Zaremba. Directed by Nathan Juran. Produced by Charles H. Schneer. Screenplay by Bob Williams, Christopher Knopf. Story by Charlott Knight. Technical effects created by Ray Harryhausen. Columbia Pictures. 35mm. 82 mins. Print courtesy of Sony Pictures.   Presented in conjunction with the exhibition “The Fantastical Worlds of Ray Harryhausen.”  Special late gallery hours from 6–7:30 p.m. and after the screening. 


20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1916)
(w/ live score by Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields)
In a one-time-only L.A. show, Stephin Merritt -- the ingenious musical brain behind the inventive, tender and endlessly catchy pop treasures The Magnetic Fields -- performs his brand-new live score to the rarely-screened 1916 silent film version of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea! The film is one of the most epic fantasy feature productions of its day, featuring riveting location work and extensive underwater photography, lavish costumes, inventive production design and soundstage wizardry that includes a full-scale "Nautilus" ship set (eighty years before James Cameron's similar tactic for Titanic!) Working from Merritt's score originally commissioned by the San Francisco Film Society, Stephin and his musical companions for the evening (Daniel Handler, accordian; Johnny Blood, tuba; David Hegarty, organ) bring a charming, witty and sublimely old-timey musical feel to this classic version of the tale of Captain Nemo and his treacherous undersea kingdom.
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea   Dir. Stuart Paton, 1916, 35mm, 105 min. 


THE UNINVITED
(from IMDB)
When brother and sister Roderick and Pamela Fitzgerald stumble across a vacant old house on the west of England, they know they have to buy it. They're forewarned by the owner, Commander Beech, that there have been strange occurrences there but they go ahead anyway. The house had once belonged to Beech's daughter, Mary Meredith, who committed suicide by jumping off the nearby cliff and his granddaughter Stella Meredith, now a young woman, lived there until she was 3 years old. Roderick and Pamela pay no mind to the rumors and tall tales but soon find that there are spirits in the house. They become convinced that the spirit is that of Beech's daughter but it is clear that the target of her venom is her own daughter Stella. Beech is convinced that his granddaughter is in danger in that house and seeks the assistance of the family's one-time nurse, Miss Holloway.  Dir. Lewis Allen, 1944, 99 mins.


THE UNSUSPECTED
(1947) Directed by Michael Curtiz
A woman mysteriously vanishes and is presumed dead. Her portrait transfixes a young man. Her effete literary mentor seems oddly detached about her disappearance. When she suddenly reappears, the mystery only thickens. The plot points may say Otto Preminger's Laura, but the shadowy, unnerving visuals are all Michael Curtiz and cinematographer Woody Bredell who craft this unfairly overlooked noir into a dark classic.
Based on a novel by Charlotte Armstrong. Producer: Charles Hoffman. Cinematographer: Woody Bredell. Cast: Joan Caulfield, Claude Rains, Audrey Totter, Constance Bennett, Hurd Hatfield. 35mm, B/W, 103 min. 


VALLEY GIRL
A teen-comedy spin on the Romeo and Juliet story, with a high school romance between a trendy, southern California girl (Deborah Foreman) and a new wave/punk rocker (Nicolas Cage). One of the better of the countless youth comedies of the 1980s, this helped launch Cage towards stardom.  Martha Coolidge---USA---1983---96 mins. 


WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY
After the golden age of Disney animation--when a small group of "old men" cranked out wonders like Fantasia and Sleeping Beauty--there was a Disney drought. Waking Sleeping Beauty tells the nitty-gritty inside story of who and how Disney came to dominate animated spectacles in the 1980s onward, with blockbusters like The Little Mermaid, Lion King and Beauty and the Beast under the animation division's belt. You'll hear it from Jeffrey Katzenberg, John Lasseter, Michael Eisner, Tim Burton, and Roy Edward Disney.
Don Hahn---USA---2009---86 mins.


WALT & EL GRUPO chronicles the amazing ten-week trip that Walt Disney and his hand-picked group of artists and filmmaking talent (later known as “El Grupo”) took to South America in 1941 at the behest of the U.S. Government as part of the Good Neighbor Policy. Within just three short years after the phenomenal success of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the Walt Disney Studios experienced a chain of financial challenges that ultimately led to the infamous animators strike. Also during this time, the Roosevelt administration had growing concerns about Nazi and Fascist influence in Latin America, and the rest of the world was slipping further into war. In stark contrast to these trying times, Disney and his colorful group of artists found themselves on a lively trip full of hope and discovery as they explored various South American cities, spending the majority of their time in the countries of Argentina, Brazil and Chile. The group was saddled with an unusual assignment – while gathering story material, immersing themselves in the culture, befriending local artists, meeting political leaders and attending countless functions, their journey was also a de facto diplomatic mission, and as a result, the studio produced the classic films “Saludos Amigos” and “The Three Caballeros.” Shot on film in five countries, WALT & EL GRUPO is a tale that still resonates on both sides of the equator. The film time travels in Walt Disney’s footsteps through the use of personal letters and stunning artwork from the trip, remembrances by descendants and survivors, and extraordinary never-before-seen footage. WALT & EL GRUPO brings together an intertwined story of art and politics, the poignancy of a bygone age, and a legendary artist during one of his most trying times.  Dir. Theodore Thomas, 2008, 106 mins.


We're Livin' On Dog Food
The original rallying cry of punk rock truly was a shot heard 'round the world, as evidenced by its deeply planted roots in even Australian soil! From its auspicious late '70s beginnings, Melbourne's underground post-punk subculture overflowed with talent, ferocity and a willingness to go boldly where no Aussie had gone before -- and We're Livin' On Dog Food, originally intended as just a small Dogs In Space "making-of" doc, is the definitive collection of interviews and vintage footage from this vibrant and unpredictable scene. Rowland S. Howard (of The Birthday Party), the Primitive Calculators, Ollie Olsen, Phillip Brophy and many others proffer their recollections and air their animosities in a tribute to the real-life realm of yesteryear that inspired the world of Dogs In Space. The legendary venue The Crystal Ballroom, Nick Cave's pre-Birthday Party band The Boys Next Door, the drugs, the fashions, the influences and the philosophies of the times are all on proud display alongside never-before-seen interviews with Michael Hutchence from the Dogs In Space set. Vive le "Little Bands"!
Dir. Richard Lowenstein, 2009, Blu-Ray, 94 min. 


White Star
If you're like us, you’ve often fantasized about a world in which a gold-chain-and-calculator-watch clad Dennis Hopper emits a frenzied tirade of obscenities, boozy nostalgic rock reminiscences about hanging with the Stones, Winston Churchill quotes, and futuristic prophesies before running over hardcore punks with his fur-upholstered car. Yearn no more! Made in 1981, whilst the synth-pop takeover in Germany was in full effect, White Star has Hopper playing a jive-talking has-been tour manager who vies to take his latest Tangerine Dream-like discovery straight to the top of the pops. For hardcore Hopperheads, this is the major discovery of our retrospective: Roland Klick's White Star is balls-out, mood-swingin', pure, unadulterated Hoppermania, and his performance is ultimately so awesomely unfiltered it seems it almost shouldn't exist. And since White Star has only previously been exhibited in the U.S. in a heavily reedited version called Let It Rock, it almost didn't for American viewers. One part bizarro European post-punk industry crackdown and three parts Hopper delirium avalanche, White Star is endlessly gratifying.
Dir. Roland Klick, 1983, DigiBeta, 92 min.


WHO DONE IT?, 1942, Universal, 75 min. Dir. Erle C. Kenton. In Abbott &  Costello’s first film without musical numbers, they play soda jerks pretending to be detectives in order to solve a murder. The supporting cast is unbeatable: William Bendix, Patrick Knowles, Mary Wickes, Don Porter, Louise Albritton, Thomas Gomez, William Gargan, Jerome Cowan and Ludwig Stossel.


Withnail & I
Richard E. Grant gives not only one of the greatest comedic performances on film of the last few decades, but also one of the best on-screen drunks ever in Bruce Robinson's criminally underseen Withnail & I, which comes to the Cinefamily in a rare 35mm screening, hosted by one of our favorite funny people, Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover)! Grant and Paul McGann breathe boozy, riotous life into the duo of Withnail and Marwood, two out-of-work actors in late '60s London who decide to take a break from their drug-and-drink-riddled squalor, and head out to the country for some R&R -- only to encounter something even more distressing in the form of predatory Uncle Monty (a scene-stealing Richard Griffiths). This cracked classic plays like a big screen version of "The Young Ones" as filtered through the cracked sensibilities of late-era Beatles; alternately funny, creepy and poignant, Withnail & I is pure brilliance.
Dir. Bruce Robinson, 1987, 35mm, 107 min. 


Zidane: A Twentieth-Century Portrait
Halfway between a sports documentary and a conceptual art installation, Zidane consists of a full-length soccer game (Real Madrid vs. Villareal, April 23, 2005) entirely filmed from the perspective of soccer superstar Zinedine Zidane. Original music by Mogwai. (2006, 90 mins. Dirs: Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno).

ARCHIVE