CRUCIAL VIEWING
Warhol's EATING TOO FAST & MARIO BANANA (NO. 1) (Avant Garde)
The Nightingale – Sunday, 7pm
The surface minimalism and bone-dry humor in Andy Warhol's best films make them surprisingly accessible, and EATING TOO FAST (1966, 66 min, 16mm), the rarely-screened sequel to his infamous BLOW JOB, is a perfect starting point if you're new to his work in celluloid. The film is divided into two reels of equal length, each a continuous take. The first reel features an immobile camera in a medium closeup of a young man sitting against a wall. We watch him shuffle through a variety of responses: bored, turned on, antsy, even coldly detached. Warhol toys with our libido. Because it is a sound film (unlike BLOW JOB), we're given subtle clues as to what's happening, stimulating the imagination and heightening the suspense. Toward the end of the reel the phone rings and the young man has a hilariously inane conversation, which acts as the bridge to the second reel. Without spoiling what happens, suffice it to say that things left to the imagination in the first half are bluntly revealed in the second. It's a brilliant revelation, simultaneously de-eroticizing the action of the film while feeding our lust. By film's end we've witnessed a capsule of Warhol's attitudes towards sex. The campier side of Warhol is on display in MARIO BANANA (NO. 1) (1964, 4 min, 16mm). In another static medium closeup, this time in high-key saturated color, a drag queen removes a banana from her purse and teasingly consumes it. It features (by Warhol standards) a perfect "happy ending." This program is presented by White Light Cinema, a new alternative film screening series. RC
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Full details at www.whitelightcinema.com/warhol.html.
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40 Years After: Filming the '68 Revolution (Retrospective)
Facets Cinémathèque – Check the Facets website for showtimes
Even the best historical analyses of the riots, protests, and generally turbulent political landscape of the late 1960s in Chicago (e.g. David Farber's Chicago '68) can often fail to correspond with the picture presented by the narrative-challenging films shot during the events themselves. The actions surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention were less a straightforward confrontation between convention-bound protesters and the Chicago Police Department than a chaotic, constantly-evolving battle of media representation: would viewers see the sensible repression of violent communist outsiders, or "Gestapo tactics" indiscriminately applied to a wide cross-section of city residents and local journalists? Facets' comprehensively programmed, week-long "Filming the '68 Revolution" series commemorates the 40th anniversary of the DNC protests by considering this pivotal moment from every possible angle: contemporary and historical, documentary and fiction, local and global. Of particular interest are the artifacts of the period in question: Films like Newsreel's SUMMER '68 (1968), AMERIKA (1969), BLACK PANTHER (1969) and SAN FRANCISCO STATE STRIKE (1969); Kartemquin's TRICK BAG (1974) and HUM 255 (1969); John Frankenheimer's RFK (1968); Tom Palazzolo's CAMPAIGN (1968); and Mike Gray and Howard Alk's THE MURDER OF FRED HAMPTON (1971) are all invaluable period immersions into the confrontations and discourses of another generation. They stand in stark contrast to informative but self-aggrandizing features like BERKELEY IN THE SIXTIES (1990), which rely on interviews with former revolutionary students to convey the meaning of the attendant images. But their importance is perhaps matched by those classic films of the period which tended to deliberately expose the narrative/ documentary dichotomy as illusory—exemplified by Haskell Wexler's MEDIUM COOL (1969, 35mm), but also including Norman Mailer's MAIDSTONE (1971) and D.A. Pennebaker's reflexive 1 PM (ONE PARALLEL MOVIE) (1972), which documents the remnants of Godard's visit to America and his personal conviction that May 1968 was on the verge of occurring here. As the story goes, the antagonism and violence that took place here in Lincoln Park, in Grant Park, and on Michigan Avenue defined the domestic limits of the possibility of popular revolt. What's the real story? Facets has the hall of mirrors running all week long. (all films showing on video formats, except where noted) MC
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Full details at www.facets.org.
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A GOOD DAY TO BE BLACK AND SEXY (New American)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday & Wednesday, 8:30pm
The promise of American independent cinema was summed up by a single edit in one of its earliest films, Morris Engel's LOVERS & LOLLIPOPS (1956). With her daughter finally asleep, a single mother and her cautious boyfriend, an old friend, make out on a couch. The image dissolves into the same couch the next day, now with a bored babysitter sitting on it. The lesson: the ability to separate the public, private, romantic, and economic is a luxury. Most of us can't afford it. Ordinary people don't rendez-vous in motel rooms or get swept away by handsome strangers. We make do knowing we have to get up early for work the next day, have to deal with the presence of friends or family, have to fall in love with people we've known for years. And Engel showed us that the modest was just as important as the extravagant. There's a spiritual descendant of the filmmaker in American cinema right now: Dennis Dortch, whose A GOOD DAY TO BE BLACK AND SEXY (2008) is the sort of movie one hopes will someday be referred to as "seminal." It's a series of vignettes set in "semi-private" places: two cars (one with a baby in the back seat), a small bed where two lovers whisper while trying not to wake a roommate, a couch in front of a TV in a house full of sleeping guests. A film made in close-up, in every sense of the word. Dortch will be present for the Saturday screening. (2008, 92 min, DigiBeta) Screening as part of the Film Center's Black Harvest Film & Video Festival; additional festival details below. IV
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
xx LA FRANCE (New French)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
Selected by Cahiers du cinema as one of the ten best of 2007, Serge Bozon's second feature is said to mix such disparate genres as the war film, the musical, and the farce into an adventurous new form. In the midst of World War One, a French woman disguises herself as a boy to find her MIA fiancee somewhere in the trenches; mistaken identity and direct-sound musical numbers ensue. Naturally, this should appeal to anyone who caught the Siskel Center's recent run of Nicholas Klotz's HEARTBEAT DETECTOR or Charles Coleman's regular program of unheralded French cinema at Facets, as this represents an ever-fascinating branch of French filmmaking—the theoretical narrative experiment carried out to logical (though still unpredictable) conclusions. No less an authority than Nathan Lee (an equally theoretical and unpredictable intellect whose contributions to the Village Voice are sorely missed) raved: "This is something new—and, as yet lacking a distributor, not to be missed." (2007, 102 min, 35mm). BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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ALSO RECOMMENDED
Summer Revivals at Doc Films (Classic Revival)
Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to take a trip back to the heydays of the campus film society, before there were restored 35mm archival touring prints, before there was video of any kind. Imagine a time fifty years ago, when folks curious about cinema's past would put down their studying for awhile, set up a portable 16mm projector in the lecture hall and watch movies as yet "un-rediscovered" artists like Jean Renoir and Frank Borzage. Doc Films has become that time machine this week, presenting four movies—none of which are available on DVD, all of which will be shown on 16mm (from a proper projection booth). And all of which are great movies. Three of the four can be seen as departures from what their directors are best known for. Jean Renoir directs TONI (1935, 110 min, 16mm; Friday, 7pm & 9:30pm). Although Renoir's fascination with class comes through, the film is often seen as an antecedent to Italian neo-realism, not least because Luchino Visconti worked on the film as an assistant. Fritz Lang's RANCHO NOTORIOUS (1952, 89 min, 16mm; Saturday, 7pm & 9pm) is an endlessly interesting and rich western replete with eyeball-saturating Technicolor, peppy songs about revenge, and Marlene Dietrich. And Ernst Lubitsch, he of the light touch, directs BROKEN LULLABY a.k.a. THE MAN I KILLED (1932, 76 min, 16mm; Thursday, 8pm), which is not a comedy, but, as you may have guessed from the title, a sober drama. However, it is still Lubitsch, for the focus of the film is a romance between a French soldier and the fiancée of a German soldier he killed. This week's gem is Frank Borzage's HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT (1937, 97 min, 16mm; Wednesday, 8pm). With cinematography from the unmatched Gregg Toland and Borzage's unreproducible romanticism, which aptly and impossibly mixes comedy with an emotional melodrama, HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT will break your heart. WS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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Sergei Paradjanov's ASHIK KERIB (Retrospective)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday & Sunday, 3:15pm
Sergei Paradjanov's last full-length feature, ASHIK KERIB, is a lot like the stained-glass windows that figure prominently in its mise-en-scene: abstract fragments juxtaposed to form a cohesive whole. The movie, an extravagant fairy tale, is dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky, whose artistic influence here is indirect but crucial. Paradjanov would go on to work on one more film but was unable to complete it before passing away. (1988, 73 min, 35mm). Note to those who have been keeping up with this series so far: Some interesting footage from KIEVSKIY FRESKIY, a 1966 Paradjanov movie that was halted by Russian authorities mid-production, can be found here. KH
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
x GREASE (Outdoor Screening / Contemporary Revival)
Chicago Outdoor Film Festival (Grant Park) – Tuesday, 8:03pm (FREE)
Back before John Travolta became an "actor" and Olivia Newton-John got Physical, there was GREASE. And GREASE is the word, and the word was good. Perhaps it's hard to explain to the youngsters of today the illogical and all-consuming attachment some people developed for this decidedly mediocre film, but there it is. Yet its lack of cinematic style is beside the point—it has become one of those films that has insinuated itself into the national psyche and has become a touchstone for a generation. As a musical, even with its "dirty words" and explicit sexual innuendo, it's closer to the 1940s Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland "let's put on a show" movies than it is to other "mature" musicals of its day. This was still a time when Newton-John's good-schoolgirl-gone-bad Sandy could be just teasingly naughty and not Whoops-I-Did-It-Again slutty. And when Travolta still had a reckless charm and vitality rather than his now inescapable ironic smugness—his Danny is a 1950s bad boy which owed more to lingering Vinny Barbarino cockiness than to James Dean angst. Okay, it's really just about the songs. (1978, 110 min, 35mm) PF
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More info here.
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MORE SCREENINGS & EVENTS:
The Portage sticks to vintage entertainment films this week. On Friday The Silent Film Society concludes their Silent Summer Film Festival with "Kings of Comedy 2," a program of shorts featuring Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, Douglas Fairbanks, W.C. Fields, and Harold Lloyd (1915-1925, unknown runtime, 35mm; 8pm), with live organ accompaniment by Dennis Scott. The nuclear paranoia (implicit or explicit) of 1950s giant insect films makes Saturday's triple feature perfect for a Los Alamos drive-in. Grasshoppers (BEGINNING OF THE END; 5:45pm), scorpions (BLACK SCORPION, 7:45pm), and ants (THEM!, 9:15pm) all cause a bit of B-movie havoc. The Portage's weekday matinee series features the MGM star-vehicle SAN FRANCISCO (1936, 115, 35mm; Wednesday, 1:30pm), in which Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy vie for the singing Jeannette MacDonald while the city quakes. PF
Also Playing at the Film Center's Black Harvest Festival: The Geman/Italian HEART OF FIRE (2008, 94 min, 35mm; Friday 6:15pm & Tuesday 6:15pm) follows an African girl raised by Italian nuns. FAUBOURG TREMÉ: THE UNTOLD STORY OF BLACK NEW ORLEANS (2008, 68 min, DigiBeta; Saturday 6:15pm & Monday 6:15pm) is a documentary about the titular New Orleans neighborhood; the filmmakers will be present for both screenings. Two period films, the Depression-set THE GILDED SIX-BITS and the 1900s-set THE DOLL (2006, 66 min, DVCAM / 2007, 19 min, BetaSP; Sunday 5pm & Wednesday 6:15pm) will be screened as a double feature with the directors of both present for discussion. CAUGHT IN THE GAME (2008, 104 min, BetaSP; Friday 8:15pm, Monday 8:15pm & Thursday 6:15pm) is a locally-made money laundering thriller. IV
Paul Verhoeven's SHOWGIRLS, one of contemporary cinema's most hotly-contested properties, gets the trash treatment from the Music Box this Saturday night (10:30pm) in a sleazoid spectacle entitled "Showgirls Gone Wild" (just desserts, many a viewer would say). Alternately celebrated/derided as "camp," worshiped as cinematic panoply par excellence, puzzled over as a "joke" that initially went over and later under MGM's head (which the filmmakers may or may not have been in on), admired as incisive satire (Jonathan Rosenbaum), and dismissed as one of the medium's ugliest train wrecks (C-F contributor Martin Stainthrop), the film is a must-see (and a must-rewatch) for cinephiles eager to find an angle. Our recommendation for first-timers: pick up a DVD or hold out for a revival that provides the opportunity to evaluate the movie on its own terms. DW
PAL JOEY, starring Rita Hayworth, Kim Novak, and Frank Sinatra, screens Saturday, 8pm at the Bank of America Cinema. Dave Kehr: "Rodgers and Hart's pioneering bitter musical, from John O'Hara's play about a backstabbing nightclub star, was considerably softened for its 1957 screen version. A pity, because the cast... might have been brilliant."
Alongside Facets' contextualized presentation of Haskell Wexler's MEDIUM COOL during their week-long '68 series, the Music Box will host matinee screenings of the film throughout the week (Saturday & Sunday, 11:30am; Wednesday, 12:30pm). Additionally, Backstory Cafe (6100 S. Blackstone) presents a rare screening of LORD THING (1970, video projection; Sunday, 8pm), which also blurs the line between documentary and fiction while examining the progressive attitudes of the Lawndale neighborhood's Conservative Vice Lords gang.
Bike-In Cinema presents a free outdoor DVD double feature of Jacques Tati's comic masterpiece MON ONCLE and raunchfest 1980 sex comedy LITTLE DARLINGS, Wednesday, 9pm at "Reba Rar Rar's Side Yard" (1441 W Cullerton). More info here. |