Thursday, October 01, 2015

I ♥♥♥ FSLC Forever

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I've really got to hand it to the folks at the Film Society of Lincoln Center here in NYC - even besides the New York Film Festival, which we're currently deeply steeped in, the programming that they're lining up for the rest of the year is... well what is the right word here? "Magnificent" seems small, compared to what they have coming. If there's a word that equals "Magnificent, Squared" then, that's what I mean. 
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They just announced their annual "Scary Movies" program and it tipped me over the edge into having to write this post now, immediately, even though I've been meaning to write it for a couple of weeks ever since they announced some other incredible programs ahead but been to busy with the aforementioned Film Fest. The thing is they're hosting a "Night with Bernard Rose" at the end of it, and they're showing both his brand new movie -- a modern-retelling of Frankenstein with Xavier Samuel...

... as well as one of the most important movies of my life, Rose's 1988 fever-dream Paperhouse. I've been posting about Paperhouse for as long as I've been posting anything - it's a cornerstone movie for me, one of the ones that crafted my adoration of the movies, and the opportunity to finally see this film on a big screen (and with Rose there, no less!) is slapping my inner 13-year old punch-drunk silly. I mean, I'm honestly tearing up about it.

The rest of the "Scary Movies" program is looking hot as heck-fire too - I've been hearing great things about The Devil's Candy, which is The Loved Ones director Sean Byrne's loooooong awaited follow up (you guys have seen The Loved Ones by now, right? It is ahhhhhmazing) and which stars a shredded-to-hell Ethan Embry. They're showing two pieces of classic 80s trash by Spanish director Juan Piquer Simón - the sleazy giallo-ish Pieces, which has the single greatest reaction shot in all of cinema...
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... and they're showing his film Slugs, which I've given love 
and is quite simply tremendous, just tremendous.

And that's before you take into account the fact that Slugs was filmed partially in my hometown while I was in Junior High School, and I can see places I walked by all the time up on that screen, preserved forever, covered with slugs.

But wait! There's more! Lots lots lots more! They're also screening several new horror films that I know nothing about yet -- things called The Hallow and Summer Camp and Emelie and several more - but will surely lean myself up on, and they're also showing the documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut, which brings the famous meeting between two directors (and a million film-students' "Introduction to Film Lit 101" course lists) to life, and for the heck of it they're showing several under-screened Hitch movies like Frenzy, The Manxman, and Saboteur.

And that's just the "Scary Movies" program, which runs from October 30th to November 5th. As I said at the start of this hefty post FSLC has several other programs coming over the next few months which are justifying my eternal membership devotion. Later in November they're doing a Todd Haynes retrospective, timed to the release of his latest masterpiece Carol, and judging by the retrospectives FSLC has put on before I think we can assume they'll be showing everything, EVERYTHING, by Haynes, so that's, you know, a massive fucking thrill.

After that in December they're screening seven films by David Lynch along with seven films by Jacques Rivette, directors they apparently feel cover a lot of the same ground. I can't speak to Rivette because I have maybe never seen any of his movies? I know I know, I'll fix it with this series though. It's the Lynch that's got me thrilled - outside of Midnight screenings (which I'm too decrepit to go to anymore) his films somehow never get screened properly here.

AND THEN (yes more still!) I'll be spending a big chunk of my Holidays time with them, because they're doing a gigantic retrospective of Douglas Sirk's work too! We still don't have the schedules for these last couple of series so I don't know exactly what they'll be showing but they do say "This retrospective, the largest in New York City in decades, tracks Sirk’s profoundly influential artistry from his early German films through to his most iconic melodramas, and nearly everything in between," so that sounds promising. As long as I get to see Jane Wyman run over by a car on a great big glorious screen I'll be good! Right, Rock?

In summation... just take all of my money, guys. 
I give it all, every cent, to you.
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3 comments:

Glenn said...

FWIW I will be seeing THE PACK in a couple of weeks and will report as to whether it's worth checking out.

joel65913 said...

OHHHH A Douglas Sirk retrospective!! So jealous. Love almost all his films, if you have the chance you MUST see Lured wherein Lucille Ball plays a dime a dance girl in London who is recruited by Scotland Yard, lead by Charles Coburn, to become an undercover agent to help catch a lonelyhearts ad serial killer. Along the way she has a very strange encounter with Boris Karloff while being romanced by George Sanders!!

Daniel said...

This summer I was at Film Forum nearly every week for their True Crime series, and I am LOVING their de Sica retrospective right now... but this stuff is AMAZING. Saboteur and Frenzy on the big screen?!? A Jacques Rivette retrospective (Celine & Julie Go Boating, PLEASE)?!?! A Todd Haynes retrospective?!? A FUCKING Douglas Sirk retrospective?!?! Well bend me over and screw me sideways and take my wallet now, Lincoln Center.

This is a large part of why I moved to NYC. And also a large part of why I wish I was making more money.