NotComing.com’s partnership with 92YTribeca, a monthly film series spotlighting older, often unpopular, and sometimes unknown films we all love, continues this spring. Editors Rumsey Taylor, Leo Goldsmith and Jenny Jediny will introduce their selections of arty, exotic, or otherwise hard-to-see specimens from the world of cinema.
On Saturday, March 20 at 7pm, writer/director Tom Schiller will appear in person to present his exceptionally offbeat film, Nothing Lasts Forever, starring Zach Galligan, Lauren Tom, and Bill Murray. Future screenings include Douglas Sirk’s suburban melodrama There’s Always Tomorrow, starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, on April 17. More information may be found at 92YTribeca.org or our Facebook event page.
One of the original writers for Saturday Night Live, Tom Schiller is best known for his short films starring John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Phil Hartman and Chris Farley. Nothing Lasts Forever, Schiller’s still-unreleased feature film, takes place in a futuristic Manhattan run by the Port Authority, where bureaucratic testing regulates the lives of the island’s inhabitants. His creative hopes dashed after failing the artistic licensing exam, idealist Adam Beckett seeks a way out, resulting in a journey through the subterranean channels of the city and then to the moon. Inspired by Orwell and Art Deco and composed of b&w, color and 30s stock footage, Nothing Lasts Forever features the inspired cast of Zach Galligan, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sam Jaffe and Lauren Tom.
Director: Tom Schiller. 82 mins. 1984. 35mm.
Tom Schiller will appear in person to introduce several of his Schiller’s Reel shorts, including The Acid Generation, Don’t Look Back in Anger, Perchance to Dream, Java Junkie and La Dolce Gilda.
Michael Streeter, author of Nothing Lost Forever: The Films of Tom Schiller, will attend the screening of Nothing Lasts Forever and the book will be available for sale.
To purchase tickets or for further details, please visit 92YTribeca.org or our Facebook event page
Distinguished for his inimitably subversive dialogue and fatalistic narratives, Russ Meyer is one of the true champions of independent film, having written, financed, cast, photographed and directed almost all of his features between 1959 and 1979. And within his singular body of work, Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! remains one of his most seminal films—a lean, mean road movie with enough wit, punk glamour and lethal karate chops to fill an entire career. Greeted by a lukewarm audience upon its 1965 release, the film has come to be known as not only a quintessential exploitation film, but one of cinema’s true benchmarks. Full review.
This screening will be preceded by a sampling of trailers from other Russ Meyer films.
Director: Russ Meyer. 83 mins. 1965. 35mm.
To purchase tickets or for further details, please visit 92YTribeca.org or our Facebook event page
“Looks like catfood for constipated French rabbits!” Peter Greenaway’s hearty, lurid helping of Jacobean nastiness stuffs the eye (and all the other senses) with enough sex, gastronomy and haute couture for a half-dozen films. With subtlety thrown violently to the wind, the film is beautiful, demanding and appalling in equally meticulous measure, an overstuffed canvas with music by Michael Nyman, cinematography by Sacha Vierny and costumes by Jean-Paul Gaultier. Bursting through all of this scatological splendor are the electrifying performances of the elite of ’80s West End theater, featuring Michael “Dumbledore” Gambon as the monstrously violent and boorish restaurateur Albert Spica, Helen Mirren as his adulterous wife and Tim Roth and Ciarán Hinds in very early film appearances. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is a sensorially overwhelming experience from one of the most talented, imposing, erudite and reviled filmmakers in the history of the cinema.
Director: Peter Greenaway. 98 mins. 1989. 35mm.
To purchase tickets or for further details, please visit 92YTribeca.org
Few films earn the adjective “notorious” as fully as does Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie—the director’s second feature (after his debut hit, Easy Rider) and very nearly his own last movie in Hollywood. Ostensibly a fractured fable about the corruptive influence of American moviemaking on a Peruvian village, the film almost becomes an enactment of the same, as Hopper slips out of character and deeper into unscripted, drug-addled madness in front of befuddled locals, co-stars and extras. But chaos and hubris aside, Hopper’s film remains a fascinating, spectacular crash-and-burn from a filmmaker as cozy with the Hollywood establishment as with experimental filmmakers like Andy Warhol, Bruce Conner and Alejandro Jodorowsky (whom Hopper at one point asked to edit the film). Also featuring cameos by Peter Fonda, Sam Fuller, Toni Basil and Kris Kristofferson, performing his tune “Me and Bobby McGee” the same year Janis Joplin made it a hit.
Director: Dennis Hopper. 108 mins. 1971.
To purchase tickets or for further details, please visit 92YTribeca.org
A “city symphony in reverse” (J. Hoberman, Village Voice), Thom Andersen’s Los Angeles Plays Itself dismantles not only popular stereotypes about The City of Angels, but also its most famous trademark, Hollywood. Packed with clips from nearly 200 films set in Los Angeles (not L.A., the nickname despised by the film’s narrator), Andersen’s immersive cine-essay divides and examines the city threefold: as background, character and subject. Drawing us into a fanatical, almost secret urban history Los Angeles Plays Itself is at once a hilarious travelogue and mesmerizing experience.
Director: Thom Andersen. 169 mins. 2003.
To purchase tickets or for further details, please visit 92YTribeca.org
Once upon a time, in an age henceforth known as “the Eighties,” film enjoyed a fundamental revolution: the “Home Video Boom.” You could watch almost anything at any time you wanted, at home, on a VHS tape. A considerable proportion of these films fell in the horror genre – cheap, chilling and decidedly horrible – all with lascivious cover art, ham-handed critics’ quotes, terrible puns and blatantly deceptive copy.
On October 31st, we will harken back to this fondly remembered era in cinema by screening a double feature of horror films—on VHS. There’ll be no new-fangled Blu-Ray quality here. As accompaniment, we’ll be screening some of our favorite trailers (and animated distributor logos) from other VHS horror titles.
One beer included with the admission price, so you’ll be set to play drinking games!
Killer Workout: “This Workout’s a Real Killer.” A textbook ’80s Slasher film, only with a unique pitch: the action takes place entirely around an aerobics gym. Death scenes, scare chords, laughable dialogue, ’80s dance music and a title track that cannot be missed.
Director: David A. Prior. 85 mins. 1986.
Chopping Mall: “Where shopping can cost you an arm and a leg.” An illicit, after-hours “slumber party” at the local mall goes horribly awry when a gaggle of horny teenagers meet the shopping center’s new security system: killer robots! A great electro-nerd-pop soundtrack, winking dialogue and incessant explosions make this exercise in sci-fi-consumerist horror a real bargain.
Director: Jim Wynorski. 77 mins. 1986.
To purchase tickets or for further details, please visit 92YTribeca.org
Trent Harris’ The Beaver Trilogy begins with a serendipitous encounter in a random parking lot in Salt Lake city between the filmmaker and a young, exuberant young man obsessed with Olivia Newton-John. Their exchange is repeated three times during the course of the film, first in nonfiction footage shot in 1979, then in two reenactments (starring Sean Penn and Crispin Glover, respectively) that expand, clarify, or distort the events of the first installment. The result is a uniquely bizarre and yet astonishing work that demonstrates the very nature of cinema as a process of rehearsal, performance and reiteration. Full review.
Director: Trent Harris. 83 mins. 2000.
To purchase tickets or for further details, please visit 92YTribeca.org
Leo Goldsmith / © 2010 notcoming.com
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Leo Goldsmith
Posted on
14 March 2010
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