I’ll come running

Mark August 15-19 on your calendars NOW for a four-film retrospective at Anthology Film Archives that absolutely cannot be missed–THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL: THE MELODRAMAS OF VINCENTE MINNELLI. 3 of these films are not available on DVD, and all 4 are amazing.

The series features:

- THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, a cynical, scintillating tale set within the Hollywood studio system starring Kirk Douglas, as well as my own namesake (Lana Turner)

- THE COBWEB, starring the always entrancing Gloria Grahame selecting new drapery for a mental hospital, a trivial decision that sets off a chain of events which will eventually consume and destroy an entire network of lives

- TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN, another industry insider tale adapted from a Shaw novel, and featuring the unlikely combination of Edward G. Robinson and Cyd Charisse, among many others

- SOME CAME RUNNING, with three incredible performances by Frank Sinatra as a drunk, Dean Martin as a gambler, and Shirley MacLaine as a sweetly uncouth “good time girl” in post-World-War-II small town America–featuring one of the most moving and astounding final sequences ever put on film. DO NOT MISS!

Posted by Lana | Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 | 0 comments

Re-Master

GUEST BLOGGER: Kate Robinson, PERFORMA

Mathew Barney to present DE LAMA LAMINA and Other Short Films
Wednesday, June 20 at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $15 (Adults) $5 (Members)
IFC CENTER
323 Avenue of the Americas (West Third Street)
(212) 924-7771
http://www.ifccenter.com/event?eventid=999834

See the artist Mathew Barney tonight! See the art of Mathew Barney tonight, too. The artist will be at IFC tonight to present three of his rarely-screened short films, spanning a decade of his work.

The screening will begin with ‘De Lama Lamina’ (2004) ‘ leave it to Barney to begin in the middle, at least chronologically speaking. Set in Brazil, this performance-film, which is a collaboration with the musician Arto Lindsay, explores the culture and religion of the Afro-Brazilian spectacle of Carnaval and the geography of place.

‘Scab Action,’ (1998) the artists first video work, captures the esthetic of physical strain and pain. As viewers are subjected to nauseating, prolonged close-ups of a facial blemish (Barney’s own), the artist subjects himself to surgery by razor, needles and nose-pliers. (Obviously there is a conscious allusion to ‘ 70s body art here, the grand gestures of self-laceration in all of their psycho-symbolic meaning, but Barney’s interest seems to be less about the effect of the action on the subject than his own child-like fixation with the grotesque and its effect on the viewer.

The screening will conclude with Barney’s most recent film-performance, ‘Drawing Restraint 13′ (2007), which is part of an on-going series of ‘Drawing Restraint’ projects, in which the athletic artists hooks himself up to various encumbering apparatuses in an attempt at free-expression. In ‘Drawing Restraint 13′ Barney emerges from a large crate dressed as General MacArthur, walks across a platform, and then falls into a vat of petroleum jelly. Executed behind closed doors at New York’s Barbara Gladstone Gallery, which at the time was exhibiting work of Barney’s from ‘Drawing Restraint 9,’ the production of ‘Drawing Restraint 13′ conflates the two works to show that the new is always made in the free-limitation of the past.

Don’t expect the expected. What you see is what you see.

Posted by Guest Blogger | Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 | 0 comments

Jesper Just, Vicious Undertow, Opens July 11th in New York

Jesper Just
A Vicious Undertow
July 11 - August 17, 2007
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
534 West 24th St

Our good friend Jesper is back with a wonderful new film which I had the pleasure of seeing beautifully installed at SMAK in Ghent. Worth a summertime Chelsea visit!

Posted by Esa | Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 | 0 comments

TO SAVE AND PROJECT

Some highlights of the fifth installment of this annually terrific MoMA series, featuring beautifully restored 35-millimeter prints in all cases:

- King Vidor’s sad and beautiful war movie THE BIG PARADE, shown with live piano accompaniment
- the 1928 surrealist short KoKo’s Earth Control, in which “KoKo the Clown and his dog cause gravity and other forces to go awry”
- a week-long run of Andy Warhol’s CHELSEA GIRLS
- I WAS A COMMUNIST FOR THE FBI, a 1951 House of Un-American Activities propaganda film about an undercover FBI agent hunting for Communists, which–although a fictional feature film–was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary!

Posted by Lana | Thursday, June 7th, 2007 | 0 comments

PASSIO!

Hand-colored black-and-white film images that have been “carefully chosen from the billions created during the tumultuous century since the moving image first appeared.” Live music by an organ player, and the Trinity Choir. Isabella Rosselini, in the audience. All of this in St. John’s Cathedral of the Divine–if you’re not there this weekend, you’re crazy.

More information here

Posted by Lana | Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 | 0 comments

Fassbinder’s JAIL BAIT!

Next Monday, April 16, at 8:30, don’t miss this rare film by that brilliant German maniac Rainer Werner Fassbinder, based on the true story of a 14-year-old girl convincing her 19-year-old lover to kill her father (later to be ripped off by BADLANDS). Part of MoMA’s continuing series, Fassbinder in the Collection.

“A melodrama that mixes the tacky with the sublime”–Vincent Canby, 1977 (from the original New York Times review)

Posted by Lana | Monday, April 9th, 2007 | 1 comments