2010 marks the 20th anniversary of David Lynch’s legendary TV series, TWIN PEAKS, and to celebrate the Brattle will be presenting the complete series in segments over the course of the year. To kick off this momentous event, we’re screening the complete first season over four days (2 episodes per day) starting on the anniversary of the pilot’s broadcast! Join us in revisiting the quirkiest town in America and one of television’s most engrossing mysteries – the murder of town sweetheart Laura Palmer.
Thur 4/8: Pilot + Episode 2 at 7:00 PM; Episodes 3 + 4 at 9:30 PM Fri 4/9: Episodes 3 + 4 at 10:00 PM Sat 4/10: Episodes 5 + 6 at 10:00 PM Sun 4/11: Episodes 7 + 8 at 10:00 PM
*If you all don't mind, I'm gonna overlook where I was when I first watched the show, as it is making me feel freakin' geriatric. Plus, I need to leave my hotel and see if Durham has any damn fine coffee. Or pie.
To celebrate the end of a week that began with Easter hosting and Hitchcock screening, I give you the supremely silly The Peeps. Is it all that clever? No, but I giggle helplessly every time another peep lands on the jungle gym. Enjoy the weekend!
OK, guys. When were you gonna tell me about Dana's Home Theater? That's right, videos wherein Slate film critic Dana Stevens champions a favorite recent DVD release. I only found three more to join Fox above, but they're A Serious Man, Bright Star, and In the Loop. Why not give 'em a watch and throw some traffic Stevens' way, so she'll do more?
One day I'll get to Orphans, which moved from Columbia, SC, to NYU with Dan Streible. "Not a festival, not a conference, but a symposium," Orphans brings together academics, archivists, and artists together to, um, geek out.
A glossary of terms:
Narrowly defined, an orphan film is a motion picture abandoned by its owner. More generally, the term refers to all manner of films outside of the commercial mainstream: silent and sponsored films, independent, industrial and avant garde work, home movies, advertisements, and other ephemeral moving images. The films on display are rediscovered gems, orphans that have been adopted and saved from neglect and deterioration.
Plus, they brought the world Ro-Revus. [See above.] And would you check out some of the highlights from this lineup, which kicks off at 8 p.m. tonight with a screening of the first flick on the list.
-Gustav Deutsch’s Film ist. a Girl and a Gun (2009), a narrative collage constructed using fragments from several European film archives, as well as the Kinsey Institute
-The premiere of a new restoration of the landmark independent documentary The Cry of Jazz (1959), with filmmaker Edward O. Bland
-With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain (1938), the first film by noted photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, presumed lost until recently rediscovered in NYU’s Tamiment Library
-From Argentina, film archivist-curators Paula Félix-Didier and Fernando Peña (discoverers of the complete 1927 version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis) unveil previously unseen cinema from the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires
-The premiere of Andy Warhol’s Uptight #3 -- David Susskind (1966), newly preserved by the Museum of Modern Art and the Warhol Museum
-Orson Welles’ Sketch Book (1955), a rare program made for British television and housed at the Munich Film Museum
I am particularly gutted to miss the films of this year's Helen Hill winner,* Jodie Mack, having fallen in love with her "Yard Work Is Hard Work" at IndieGrits last year. Also, Bill Descasia Morrison will be co-presenting excerpts from nitrate !!! films, including Pathé's stencil-colored The Life of Christ (1908).
And then there is the music. Ganked directly from the Orphans blog, because it works up to a punchline too funny to paraphrase:
Since
orphan films are often discovered without sound, a score, or even
information on how they were originally screened (assuming they were
screened at all), there is always a question of how to present the
films to an audience in a way that will be both authentic and
entertaining. Many of the pieces featured in this year’s Orphan Film
Symposium fall into this silent dilemma, including a variety of works
from the silent era and amateur films recorded without sound. After
careful discussion on how to best screen each film, decisions were made
to present several with an appropriate soundtrack or live accompanist,
provide a lecture or narration for others, and to keep a few (very
short) films completely silent. Music was the preferred option whenever
possible, which lead to a few controversial choices.
One of these situations involves providing piano accompaniment for the historical stag film The Janitor (ca.1930,
Kinsey Institute Film Archive). While perhaps not historically
"accurate" (was a pianist present at this type of screening?) the
music, performed by Ed Pastorini, will certainly relieve some awkwardness associated with watching pornography with our colleagues in total silence.
This entirely run by uncompensated staffers and volunteers fest just announced the slate for its 8th iteration a week ago, and they keep adding more films, bless their celluloid hearts.
The cinetrix first attended the Independent Film Festival of Boston in its second year, but this spring marks my third in a row. I'd love this festival even if it weren't in my old home town. IFFBoston treats filmmakers well, and it shows. Moreover, the programmers have a definite and recognizable sensibility, and the Q&As -- I'm thinking especially of those with Harmony Korine (2008) and Kevin Corrigan/Robert Siegel (2009) -- frequently verge on the sublime and the surreal.
It also allows me to eat at favorite restaurants and play catch up with friends, family, and films that have been making the festival circuits. Among the narrative features, I can't wait for the chance to finally see Cairo Time, Father of My Children, Hipsters, I Am Love, The Killer Inside Me [if I'm feeling brave], Tiny Furniture, and Winter's Bone. Not to mention Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee and The Good, The Bad, The Weird.
When it comes to docs, where to start? How about with American, the oral history of my birthdate-mate, Bill Hicks, and Lemmy, and piece of work Joan Rivers? Or, I dunno, Marwencol? Taqwacore? The Parking Lot Movie? Um, yes, please. [A dozen others will have already played at ATL and FF. And, surprising no one, Family Affair screens here, too. Will it be this year's We Live in Public? That is, is it about an uncomfortable-making scenario, and can I manage to miss it at every festival I attend? Tune in and see!]
There are also flicks I'm apt to skip unless persuaded otherwise. Partisans on behalf of Down Terrace, Harmony and Me, Life During Wartime, Lovers of Hate, The Freebie, please speak up.
Now in its fourth year, the IndieGrits Film Festival takes place from April 14-18 in the same city that gave birth to the Southern Circuit [the only regional tour for indie filmmakers in the country] more than three decades ago. It boasts an amazing, dedicated staff and a singular, well-defined mission. Rather than simply bring in flicks that played bigger fests, IndieGrits programs films with ties to the south, whether filmmaker, location, or theme. Where else would you find a doc on the founder of South of the Border? The same place you'll find movies about barbecue, tobacco, visionary artists, cotton, evangelicals, Hank Williams, and pecan pie, yes, but also ones about drag queens and jihadists, not to mention plenty of experimental shorts and animation. And at IndieGrits, first-time media makers can end up on the same bill with vets of SXSW and other fests.
Last year I was lucky enough to serve as a juror. This year, ATL overlaps, so I can only make it to one night. I'm gutted to miss flicks like Passenger Pigeons, but I am elated to catch Gideon Kennedy and Marcus Rosentrater's short doc Clandestine and Aaron Katz's wildly acclaimed new feature Cold Weather, which screen out of competition.
Guys, have you seen the Ebertfest 2010 lineup? Drool city. According to his Rogerness,
The 12th annual festival will be held April 21-25 at the landmark
1,600-seat Virginia Theater in Champaign-Urbana, and for the first time
ever, all festival Q&A sessions and panel discussions will be
streamed live on the Internet.
Eeeeee! That means those of us unable to come on and feel the Illinoise won't have to miss out on Barbet Schroeder, Michael Tolkin, my polymath boyfriend Walter Murch, or Charlie freakin' Kaufman [does Filmbrain know about this]? What we will not get to experience, however, is Alloy Orchestra accompanying Man with a Movie Camera. Oh, and just "the only surviving 70mm print of Pink Floyd the Wall (1982), the rock
opera by Roger Waters. It's a loan from the British Film Institute." Plus, robot Roger: "Thanks to my computer-generated voice, I plan to play a larger role onstage this year."
But the film I'm saddest about not seeing -- again* -- is the doc Song Sung Blue. Here's Ebs:
The festival traditionally closes on Sunday afternoon with a film
followed by a live musical performance, and do we have a discovery this
year! We'll show Greg Kohs' documentary "Song Sung Blue" (2008), about
a Milwaukee husband and wife duo named Lightning and Thunder, whose
tributes to Neil Diamond and Patsy Cline won large, loyal audiences. Then "Thunder," Claire Sardina, will perform, and trust me on this: She's dynamite.
*I stupidly chose to see something else at IFFBoston when it played. Speaking of which, that's where I'll be during Ebertfest again this year. More on that soon.
