West Coast Repertory Cinema

[beamish14]

You’re right in that the Vista is an even bigger shrine to Tarantino’s ego than the New Beverly. It’s a shame that Neon, A24, Apple, and WB are among the only outfits providing them with new celluloid prints to project, and they’re padding out the schedule with some really bottom-tier films from Tarantino’s vault (although I did enjoy seeing Mandingo at a near-empty midnight screening, as I missed it when the New Bev had a huge Richard Fleischer retrospective quite a while back). It’s bizarre that they’re charging people money to watch his VHS tapes at the sister micro cinema located inside of it, too.

I keep religiously checking the Secret Movie Club to see when they’re going to be fully operational again, but its reopening has been delayed more times than I can count. They have wildly ambitious plans of having screenings every day.

[yoloswegmaster]

Frederick Wiseman Retrospective starting at American Cinematheque next month and lasting till the end of the year

It says that they will be playing "all 45 of the master's works", with Titicut Follies, High School, Law and Order, Hospital, and Basic Training being screened in September.

[okcmaxk]

Paging beamish/Dandy Fop/anyone: any good Marc Edward Huyck stories? Watched a couple episodes of Beat the Geeks on YT recently, comes off as a real character. He's got to be a blueprint for Gregg Turkington's On Cinema persona.

[beamish14]

Paging beamish/Dandy Fop/anyone: any good Marc Edward Huyck stories? Watched a couple episodes of Beat the Geeks on YT recently, comes off as a real character. He's got to be a blueprint for Gregg Turkington's On Cinema persona.

Haha! Yes, he is an absolute asshole. Megalomaniacal as manager/projectionist at the Nuart and frequently ejected people for minor offenses. He also refused to let individuals with disabilities into the theatre first to get situated. He’s just so awkward to be around. Hostile and socially maladroit, which is a deadly combination. He can still be seen at New Beverly screenings, usually seated by himself in a rear corner. He was contributing blog posts to their website for a time, and I know he quit the Nuart to work at Robert Rodriguez’s godawful El Rey cable channel, which clearly didn’t pan out.

Andy Zaxx, another of the “Geeks” from the show you mentioned, actually does have a lot of music industry cred. I’ve seen him in the wild once.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Ha! Not sure if personal gossip is the right thing for the forum, but I do know him in passing and he's nice to me. I do know his reputation very well and know several of his old Nuart stories including from friends of mine. He is rich with movie knowledge and if you're forgetting the name of a certain person, chances are he'll remember perfectly. His commentary on Vinegar Syndrome's release of Malibu High is quite good too. He has an uncredited cameo in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but you never see his face.

I don't feel like sharing too many personal stories or stories from other folk, but I can tell you about a personal one eight years ago. I went to a repertory screening of an early 70s comedy (then out-of-print on any format) I love and told him I had only seen it previously as a pirated copy I downloaded onto my computer. I could tell it made him angry that I pirated movie instead of paying for it, but I think because there were other folk there he kept it together.

[beamish14]

Surprisingly decent February 2025 at the New Beverly, with a personal favorite of mine (Noises Off!), and a title I have long, long wanted to see in a theatrical venue: the still-not-on-DVD Tom Waits: Big Time

Secret Movie Club still keeps posting on social media and making podcasts, but there is no calendar in sight. They were supposed to formally reopen, what, a year ago?

[Altair]

For those in the Bay Area, the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto are having an incredible 'Lubitsch, Mamoulian, Sternberg' Spring season, including showing all of Sternberg and Dietrich's collaborations in 35mm. The Shanghai Express and The Shanghai Gesture double bill seems to be a real highlight, particularly as the latter has no HD release anywhere.

[hearthesilence]

See MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944) on nitrate again this weekend at the Egyptian!

The rare nitrate print courtesy of the Library of Congress @librarycongress is playing on Sun. Feb. 23rd at 4 pm.

Thank you to everyone who sold out our first screening + to Judy Garland’s granddaughter Vanessa O’Neil @vanziipper for a wonderful introduction

[beamish14]

In-person tributes to Carroll Ballard, Errol Morris, and Michael Almereyda (Twister!) at the American Cinematheque

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Has anyone gone to TCM Fest? How do you get individual tickets to a show? I'm usually not interested as it seems to draw a lot of fedora-wearing types cosplaying old Hollywood, but I am curious about the two Vistavision screenings happening. I was told these projectors were being retrofitted, so it's exciting to see it happening.

[Walter Kurtz]

How can an elegant dandy fop object to fedora-wearing types? Heck based on your description I might dress up like Truman Capote and have my (female gender) wife buy some feather boas along with a cigarette holder and we'll party till dawn at the Egyptian.

Postscript: Better yet dress like Truman Capote and act like Hunter Thompson!

[okcmaxk]

Going through the schedule, saw this under Hud (no surprise):

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

How can an elegant dandy fop object to fedora-wearing types? Heck based on your description I might dress up like Truman Capote and have my (female gender) wife buy some feather boas along with a cigarette holder and we'll party till dawn at the Egyptian.

Postscript: Better yet dress like Truman Capote and act like Hunter Thompson!

You literally pinpointed what I hate. It’s what rockabillies do in Los Angeles when they turn 45. TCM Fest, Noir Fests, and burlesque show types. If you ever see me wearing a fedora and calling women dames, you better believe my glass of scotch has a few drops of aresenic in it.

[beamish14]

Going through the schedule, saw this under Hud (no surprise):

Methinks he’ll be stepping away from public life for a long time.

I think I mentioned it elsewhere, but Lucinda Williams’ newish memoir has a really revolting story with him

[beamish14]

Bleak Week Year 4 begins in June at the American Cinematheque and eventually travels across the States before going to London.

It overlaps with the first Los Angeles retrospective of

Philippe Grandrieux’s work.

[hearthesilence]

Saturday, May 31, 7:30 p.m.

“The Twilight Zone”: “The Big Tall Wish” (1960)
In a rare showcase for an all-Black cast in early 1960s network television, Ivan Dixon delivers a poignant performance as an aging boxer. With his best days seemingly behind him, he’s confronted by the immeasurable power of hopes and dreams via a small child (Steven Perry) who channels giant-sized beliefs into an alternate reality.

Followed by:

🎞 “Nothing but a Man” (1964) — 35mm
In this American neorealist masterwork by Michael Roemer, a railroad worker named Duff marries Josie, an educated preacher’s daughter, and the racial tensions of their small Alabama town tear at the threads of their new life together. In a tour-de-force performance, Ivan Dixon portrays Duff with a roiling vulnerability opposite the quiet intensity of Abbey Lincoln’s Josie. 35mm print preserved by the Library of Congress.

In person: Introduction by Doris Nomathande Dixon, daughter of Ivan Dixon.

Part of “‘Going My Own Way’: Celebrating Ivan Dixon.”

Free admission! Details: ucla.in/43i2kJO

[beamish14]

It’s weird that they’re not showing The Final War of Olly Winter, a CBS film starring Dixon that the Archive restored and has screened in the past. It can be accessed via the Paley Center

Super excited about The Spook Who Sat By the Door

[beamish14]

It’s incredibly annoying how the American Cinematheque showed dozens of features during the course of this year’s Bleak Week, with screenings being held simultaneously across town, and doesn’t appear to be having encores of titles that we might have missed. Why spend a fortune importing 35mm prints of films like Young Torless and show it once while many cinephiles who would enjoy it needed to catch another never-screened title? I realize that some of these films will be traveling to sister festivals in London and other cities, but it really should have been planned better

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

It’s incredibly annoying how the American Cinematheque showed dozens of features during the course of this year’s Bleak Week, with screenings being held simultaneously across town, and doesn’t appear to be having encores of titles that we might have missed. Why spend a fortune importing 35mm prints of films like Young Torless and show it once while many cinephiles who would enjoy it needed to catch another never-screened title? I realize that some of these films will be traveling to sister festivals in London and other cities, but it really should have been planned better

You literally manifested it as they're giving it an encore next Sunday.

They announced a Morse code series with the most obnoxiously cute "text" by putting everything in Morse code. Cinematheque has some good programming, but boy, the amount of emails they send becomes obnoxious and their love of cute themes for a series is annoying. I can't be alone in being repulsed by the concept of Bleak Week, right?

[beamish14]

It’s incredibly annoying how the American Cinematheque showed dozens of features during the course of this year’s Bleak Week, with screenings being held simultaneously across town, and doesn’t appear to be having encores of titles that we might have missed. Why spend a fortune importing 35mm prints of films like Young Torless and show it once while many cinephiles who would enjoy it needed to catch another never-screened title? I realize that some of these films will be traveling to sister festivals in London and other cities, but it really should have been planned better

You literally manifested it as they're giving it an encore next Sunday.

They announced a Morse code series with the most obnoxiously cute "text" by putting everything in Morse code. Cinematheque has some good programming, but boy, the amount of emails they send becomes obnoxious and their love of cute themes for a series is annoying. I can't be alone in being repulsed by the concept of Bleak Week, right?

Haha! Very nice.

Yeah, I’m not super crazy about the general conceit of bleak week, and I’m sure some of these filmmakers whose works gets screened aren’t happy with their films being lumped under that umbrella, either.

The constant emails and gradual trickles of screenings being added does drive me nuts. I miss the calendars they would mail pre-Los Feliz 3

[hearthesilence]

FYI, UCLA's Robert Altman centennial retrospective starts in a couple of days, and it looks like most titles are in 35mm (and IIRC those showing in DCP were restored in recent years). Most screenings are also double features! Admission should be free but first-come, first-serve.

[beamish14]

FYI, UCLA's Robert Altman centennial retrospective starts in a couple of days, and it looks like most titles are in 35mm (and IIRC those showing in DCP were restored in recent years). Most screenings are also double features! Admission should be free but first-come, first-serve.

UCLA had a much more thorough and guest-packed retrospective just a few years ago. They screened beautiful prints of Images and That Cold Day in the Park, while guests including Alan Rudolph, Ryan Philippe, Dermot Mulroney, and editor Danford Greene (amazing how Altman went to high school in St. Louis with his editor on M*A*S*H) all came. It also included rarities like Jazz ‘34.

I remember when they premiered the new restoration of Come Back to the Five and Dime…. All (or most of) of Altman’s offspring were there, and it’s amazing how much they look like their late father

Their archive does hold very faded prints of HEALTH, which was not show, but a Fox archival print was shown a few years ago in, I think, Milwaukee or Chicago

[hearthesilence]

I didn't know about Mezzanine in Los Angeles, but a couple of great programs that played here in NYC will be heading over there.

The Luc Moullet retrospective will play next month (including eight brand-new 4K restorations - FYI, the restorations only cover his features, but they will be pairing them with his amazing short films). Then in February, the new 4K restorations of Michael Roemer's last two feature films will finally premiere on the West Coast. That same month, the new 4K restoration of Godard's In Praise of Love will also premiere - I think Jake Perlin/the Film Desk was involved with the Godard restoration, which may explain why it's showing at the same time as the Roemer restorations.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Luc Moullet already played at UCLA early this year prior to the New York retrospective.

The other mentioned Mezzanine screenings are their past screenings done in February of this year.

FYI, UCLA's Robert Altman centennial retrospective starts in a couple of days, and it looks like most titles are in 35mm (and IIRC those showing in DCP were restored in recent years). Most screenings are also double features! Admission should be free but first-come, first-serve.

UCLA had a much more thorough and guest-packed retrospective just a few years ago. They screened beautiful prints of Images and That Cold Day in the Park, while guests including Alan Rudolph, Ryan Philippe, Dermot Mulroney, and editor Danford Greene (amazing how Altman went to high school in St. Louis with his editor on M*A*S*H) all came. It also included rarities like Jazz ‘34.

I remember when they premiered the new restoration of Come Back to the Five and Dime…. All (or most of) of Altman’s offspring were there, and it’s amazing how much they look like their late father

Their archive does hold very faded prints of HEALTH, which was not show, but a Fox archival print was shown a few years ago in, I think, Milwaukee or Chicago

I'm sort of disappointed by their frankly pretty basic Altman retro. I'd love to see the odds and ends, especially HEALTH, if possible on film. Only one that really grabbed me as an oddity is Kansas City, which played at the Cinematheque last year as a DCP. Altman is one of those director's I find always rewarding and when I expect to see a "lesser" work by him, I'm always impressed. Recently saw Cookie's Fortune for the first time and found it to be absolutely delightful.

[hearthesilence]

Luc Moullet already played at UCLA early this year prior to the New York retrospective.

The other mentioned Mezzanine screenings are their past screenings done in February of this year.

Ah, nm - when I was scrolling through a page of film listings, I thought those screenings were for next year since they came right after the fall screenings and had no years indicated on them.

It doesn't look like the UCLA screenings included his shorts. I don't think any of them were restored, at least not recently, but they're generally great and as a whole may even constitute his best work.