criterionforum.org

I don't know in NYC,

I've just come back from London and that Odeon cinema almost in Hyde Park with Oxford St has been demolished for making... a super expensive flat building for oligarchs. How strange. Everywhere are making flats.

BUT in North Regent Street a new Cinema, pretty cool the lobby, has arrived, and they play independent and Repertory.

Buttery Jeb wrote:The new Film Forum repertory calendar is up. Along with the Bergman Centennial, Janus Films has a new 4K restoration of Mizoguchi's A Story From Chikamatsu/The Crucified Lovers coming soon, along with 4K restorations of Sansho the Bailiff and Belle de Jour.

Holy shit they really are charging separate admissions for all the versions of Fanny and Alexander. $45 if you want to to see the whole film in theaters.

I have to say this calendar does nothing for me. DCPs and 4k restorations galore, fewer and fewer 35mm prints. BAM recently fired a lead programmer and their selections seem less interesting. And MOMI, after a few years of amazing retrospectives doesn't seem to have any repertory cinema going at the moment. Lincoln Center, MOMA, Metrograph, and The Quad are the only ones focusing on 35mm which surely makes my life easier, but weird to see such a quick shift away from 35mm at the other places.

The most interesting thing is the Sjostrom films, to me, and they are playing once each! Too bad.

Drucker wrote:And MOMI, after a few years of amazing retrospectives doesn't seem to have any repertory cinema going at the moment.

FWIW, besides Histoire(s) du Cinéma (in 35mm?), they are scheduled to screen a rare 35mm print of the full four-hour version of La Belle Noiseuse (Quad was screening a DCP, albeit a 4k restoration) and some other great and rare Stan Brakhage films in 16mm and even 35mm. All of this is over the next several weekends.

Drucker wrote:

Buttery Jeb wrote:The new Film Forum repertory calendar is up. Along with the Bergman Centennial, Janus Films has a new 4K restoration of Mizoguchi's A Story From Chikamatsu/The Crucified Lovers coming soon, along with 4K restorations of Sansho the Bailiff and Belle de Jour.

Holy shit they really are charging separate admissions for all the versions of Fanny and Alexander. $45 if you want to to see the whole film in theaters.

I have to say this calendar does nothing for me. DCPs and 4k restorations galore, fewer and fewer 35mm prints. BAM recently fired a lead programmer and their selections seem less interesting. And MOMI, after a few years of amazing retrospectives doesn't seem to have any repertory cinema going at the moment. Lincoln Center, MOMA, Metrograph, and The Quad are the only ones focusing on 35mm which surely makes my life easier, but weird to see such a quick shift away from 35mm at the other places.

The most interesting thing is the Sjostrom films, to me, and they are playing once each! Too bad.

Here's the calendar

hearthesilence wrote:

Drucker wrote:And MOMI, after a few years of amazing retrospectives doesn't seem to have any repertory cinema going at the moment.

FWIW, besides Histoire(s) du Cinéma (in 35mm?), they are scheduled to screen a rare 35mm print of the full four-hour version of La Belle Noiseuse (Quad was screening a DCP, albeit a 4k restoration) and some other great and rare Stan Brakhage films in 16mm and even 35mm. All of this is over the next several weekends.

Saw the Brakhage, not the rest of those. In my defense their calendar layout is atrocious and half of the things listed are evergreen and never go away, so it's hard to catch what is actually new!

To Save and Project returns tonight at MoMA - some very interesting screenings, the type you many not be able to see anywhere else anytime soon.

Drucker wrote:Saw the Brakhage, not the rest of those. In my defense their calendar layout is atrocious and half of the things listed are evergreen and never go away, so it's hard to catch what is actually new!

Absolutely - it's even worse if you look on your phone.

Drucker wrote:I have to say this calendar does nothing for me. DCPs and 4k restorations galore, fewer and fewer 35mm prints. BAM recently fired a lead programmer and their selections seem less interesting. And MOMI, after a few years of amazing retrospectives doesn't seem to have any repertory cinema going at the moment. Lincoln Center, MOMA, Metrograph, and The Quad are the only ones focusing on 35mm which surely makes my life easier, but weird to see such a quick shift away from 35mm at the other places.

A weeklong Michel Piccoli retro and not even one film that's really obscure or unavailable on disc. Classic Bruce "Just Play the Hits" Goldstein.

Perkins Cobb wrote:A weeklong Michel Piccoli retro and not even one film that's really obscure or unavailable on disc. Classic Bruce "Just Play the Hits" Goldstein.

Of course - why else would he have this poster on his door?

I'm most disappointed by the 16mm print of HE WHO GETS SLAPPED that they'll be running. Sad. The film and the audience deserve way better.

Lincoln Center has announced some upcoming programs, though no screening schedule has been announced.

• a Lucrecia Martel retrospective on April 10 & 11 (with free screenings of Manuel Abramovich’s Light Years, a documentary portrait of Martel during the making of Zama on April 14 & 15)

• the U.S.’s first complete retrospective of the works of Czech animation master Jiří Trnka from April 20-25

• a complete retrospective of Luchino Visconti’s feature films, including many restorations from June 8-21

Kazuo Miyagama retrospective coming to MOMA in April, featuring 4K restorations of Floating Weeds, Sansho the Baliff, and A Story From Chikamatsu, as well as a smattering of 35mm prints.

Press release from MoMA on a major retrospective that will take place over three different venues:

The most influential cinematographer of postwar Japanese cinema, Kazuo Miyagawa (1908–1999) worked intimately with Yasujirô Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Kon Ichikawa on some of their most important films. It was Miyagawa who, in his astonishing versatility, helped perfect Ozu’s exquisitely framed tatami-level compositions in Floating Weeds (1959); the long, choreographed tracking sequences of Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu (1953); the multiple perspectives and jump cuts of Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) and Yojimbo (1961); and the innovative use of cameras from different vantage points in Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad (1965).

This first major US retrospective of Miyagawa’s work in more than 35 years opens with a rare screening of Hiroshi Inagaki’s 1943 version of The Rickshaw Man and the 4K restoration premiere of Ozu’s Floating Weeds (1959), a special event introduced by Miyagawa’s son Ichiro and Miyagawa’s camera assistant Masahiro Miyajima. A career-spanning survey of Miyagawa’s cinematography then continues both at MoMA and Japan Society throughout the month. Additionally, new 4K restorations of Kenji Mizoguchi’s A Story From Chikamatsu (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954), both shot by Miyagawa, will run at Film Forum from April 6 through 12.

Yesterday I went to the Film Forum. There were two films, The Great Silence and The Story of Chikamatsu, starting at the same time. I spent several minutes trying to decide which one. The former was on it's last day and the latter has two more days but my schedule is a bit of a problem. So, I know whatever choice I make, I would most likely not be able to catch the other. Well I made the wrong choice. I saw The Great Silence and was disappointed. I'm not even sure why I picked that because I'm kind of indifferent about spaghetti westerns and I love Mizoguchi. ](*,) Maybe Klaus Kinski playing the antagonist made me interested enough to pick The Great Silence. Oh well.

Couldn’t get through much of it on DVD-I can imagine the feeling of being trapped in the theater though. That’s the great things about film fests, you can escape into another room.

Going to see any of the Orphan Symposium in Queens this weekend? I’m about to fly into LGA as I type this...

FrauBlucher wrote:Yesterday I went to the Film Forum. There were two films, The Great Silence and The Story of Chikamatsu, starting at the same time. I spent several minutes trying to decide which one. The former was on it's last day and the latter has two more days but my schedule is a bit of a problem. So, I know whatever choice I make, I would most likely not be able to catch the other. Well I made the wrong choice. I saw The Great Silence and was disappointed. I'm not even sure why I picked that because I'm kind of indifferent about spaghetti westerns and I love Mizoguchi. ](*,) Maybe Klaus Kinski playing the antagonist made me interested enough to pick The Great Silence. Oh well.

Thanks for the heads up on Mizoguchi. Got a few days off. May catch it.

Great line-up, I actually saw their rarely screened 35mm print of Howard Hawks's Fig Leaves yesterday, which looked great. Probably the best one out there too - like the program notes say, the movie survives because of MoMA, and though it's his second film, it's his earliest surviving film as his first (The Road to Glory) is considered lost. After watching it, it really dawned on me that so many of Hawks's films, regardless of genre, turn on the distinctive way he handles the relationships between men and women - not just within couples, but between all members on both sides. It's something that works well in pretty much any context and probably explains his protean talents as a director. As a result, much of what made him the auteur we now know is already on glorious display even at this stage of his career (though to be fair he was already 30 by the time he made this film).

It was great seeing this fresh, but I was startled by two discoveries after doing a cursory search on this film. First, the fashion sequence was actually shot in Technicolor - it's generally accepted as lost but it looks like the George Eastman House found four frames that were in the possession of a private collector, and these were eventually used for the cover of a recent book called The Dawn of Technicolor. Second, the two most prominent women in this film went on to early and tragic ends, with their careers ending well before they died. What happened to Olive Borden is one of the saddest stories I've ever read about a once-major Hollywood star.

I'm a bit late with this, but Quad Cinema is running a program called "In Her Words: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, The Woman Behind Merchant Ivory" and James Ivory has been making appearances at various screenings. Last night he presented his own personal 35mm print of Mr. & Mrs. Bridge, and I'm sorry to say I missed it as it's rarely screened in 35mm and I think it's one of his better films, maybe even my favorite.

All About Eve and Showgirls, both in 35mm at MoMI, and Adam Nayman, author of It Doesn’t Suck: Showgirls, will be signing copies of his book between screenings. I've grown to appreciate some of Verhoeven's work, particularly Black Book and Starship Troopers, and Jacques Rivette famously said Showgirls was his best, so I may have to check this out.

The Swimmer played BAM last night in a 35mm (I've only seen a DCP come around) and it looked absolutely gorgeous. Almost surely an original release print? The person who introduced it said it was very unpopular upon release, and I would have no idea how often an unpopular film got theatrical re-releases over 30+ years. If you get the chance to see it, do make it out. A quick glance at the caps on the Grindhouse BD are basically identical to this print I saw.

The film...still wrapping my head around it as you can imagine! I was actually a bit disappointed it wasn't MORE psychedelic. I literally thought Lancaster jumped from pool to pool in some weird trippy way. Sad this wasn't the case.

Icarus Films is going to mark their 40th anniversary with a 56-film retrospective at Metrograph beginning on September 14th. Filmmakers represented include Wang Bing (Bitter Money), Chris Marker (A Grin Without a Cat), Chantal Akerman (D'est), Raoul Peck (Profit and Nothing But!), Imamura Shōhei (A Man Vanishes), Robert Kramer (Milestones), Bill Morrison (Decasia), Marcel Ophuls (Hotel Terminus), Peter Watkins (La Commune), and Jean Rouch (Moi, un noir), among many others.

Just got back from the renovated Film Forum. They did a nice job. Lobby didn’t change except for new carpeting and an electronic board over the entrance to the screens. There are now 4 screening rooms. All with new, bigger, more comfortable seats. The tall folks will appreciate the added leg room. Do to bigger seats and more leg room the three rooms to the right when you walk in are smaller rooms that seat less than before. One (screen 4) of course is the the new room. The room to the left has maintained the same size but capacity seems less as well. The sight lines haven’t changed but seats are all on a slope so the person in front is a tad lower.

It was pretty busy for a Wednesday early afternoon. I saw No Date, No Sign. An intense Iranian drama in the style of Asghar Farhadi. It’s good to have the theater back.

Do those pillars still get in the way, or did the new room designs manage to shift things over to our advantage?

The new room didn’t have a pillar. The first room to the right , which I was in still has the pillar. The the old second room to the right I think doesn’t have pillar anymore but not positive on this one. The room to the left still has the pillar.