A would-be movie producer (Griffin Dunne) strives to convince a self-help guru (Dennis Hopper) to let him film his book. As the guru is only interested in money, the producer solicits the help of a shady businessman (Christopher Walken) and the guru’s own secretary (Ileana Douglas), who wants to write movie scripts (a horror story about brain-scraping monsters). -John SackstederRead More »
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While drag-racing through the American Southwest in a Chevvy 150, a driver and his mechanic cross paths with an alluring hitchhiker and the inexperienced, tall tale-spinning driver of a GTO.Read More »
Synopsis:
Brothers Vincent (rich) and Clay (poor) meet up for the first time after their father’s funeral and remark on how similar they look. But unknown to Clay, who thinks his life is taking a turn for the better, Vince is actually plotting to kill him with a car bomb and pass the corpse off as his own, planning to start a new life elsewhere with his father’s inheritance. But Clay survives the blast and has his face, memory and identity restored in hospital… but are they the right ones?Read More »
Stephen Torino (Wilde), who is tricked by his brother Marco (Adler) into an arranged marriage with tempestuous Annie Caldash (Russell). Annie is willing to give the union a go, but Torino wants none of it.Read More »
In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.Read More »
THE SCREEN IN REVIEW; ‘ The Gay Sisters,’ Featuring Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Donald Crisp, at Strand
T. S.
Published: August 15, 1942
The New York Times
What a long, gray and pretentious film “The Gay Sisters” is! Another pointlessly caustic inquiry into the lives of the eccentric off-spring of a once grand family, the new film at the Strand not once offers the slightest reason to warrant the telling of its involved and trivial story. Read More »
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Between 1958 and 1960 Walter Hess and Manny Kirchheimer shot black and white 16mm film from Wall Street to midtown New York to the Delaware River. They documented the activities at a huge construction site, street life in Hell’s Kitchen, New York harbor traffic, and rare glimpses of nature. Then the footage was left unedited. In 2017 Kirchheimer (DISCOVERY IN A PAINTING, TALL: THE AMERICAN SKYSCRAPER AND LOUIS SULLIVAN, STATIONS OF THE ELEVATED) took up the challenge of editing it. Once the picture was set he searched for music and sound effects that would mesh with the surrealism of the material. The result is a dynamic and compact symphony of a city.Read More »
THE GEORGETOWN LOOP
(Ken Jacobs, 1996, 11m, widescreen 35mm film, black and white, silent)
Originally photographed in 1903, US Library of Congress collection. New arrangement in 1996 by Ken Jacobs, assisted by Florence Jacobs. 35mm optical rephotography by Sam Bush, Western Cine, Denver.
I’ve been raiding the Paper Print Collection of the Library Of Congress in Washington, DC, since the late 1960s with TOM, TOM, THE PIPER’S SON. It’s a preserve of early cinema. Until 1912, in order to copyright film, one deposited with the library a positive from the negative printed on paper, unprojectable, but – unlike nitrate prints – capable of weathering the years without Crumbling into chemical volatility. And there the stacks rested, safely out of mind, hundreds and hundreds of silent rolls most less than 30 meters, many Edisons, American Mutoscope And Biograph, Gaumont, Lubin, Vitagraph ; cine-snatches of life as it was lived, vaudevillians, proto-dramas, and too many state parades.Read More »
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Jonas Mekas’ The Brig is a fake documentary about ten confined soldiers in a U.S. Navy ship and the three guards who beat and humiliate them. After the title of the film, “The Brig”, the next title is “March 7, 1957 – U.S. Marine Corps – Camp Fuji, Japan – 4:30” Then Mekas goes on showing the daily lives of the soldiers, which consists of beatings, degradations, unnecessary cleanings and senseless rituals. The audience is expected to constantly question the reality of what is on the screen while being moved by the illusion.Read More »