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January 10,
2008 – Election Year Special
* *
* Special 6 PM start! Star-Spangled To
Death
(1956-60/2003-04 / 440
minutes) Fifty years in the works,
Ken Jacobs' epic assemblage juxtaposes found sound and image mixed with
personal journal. Jacobs creates a
history of New York from the "beat" 1950s through the 9/11 decade. With Jack Smith as The Spirit Not of
Life But of Living. February 14, 2008
Zabriskie Point (1970 / 110 minutes / 2.35:1) The allure of American consumerism
stalks dissident students in Michelangelo Antonioni's visually arresting and
politically caustic rumination on sorrow and alienation. Secret Ceremony (1968 / 109 minutes / 1.66:1) A weird triangle of longing, doubles
and obsession boils between prostitute Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow, and her
step-father Robert Mitchum in Joseph Losey's unnerving psychodrama. March 13,
2008 – Welcome to Year Four!
Kurtlar vadisi – Irak / Valley of the Wolves: Iraq (2006 / 118 minutes / 1.85:1) Billy Zane and Gary Busey star (dubbed)
in this controversial Turkish action adventure movie based "on fact" and
popular TV show. Despair (1978 / 119 minutes / 1.66:1) Set in 1930s Germany, Rainer Werner
Fassbinder's English language film of Vladimir Nabokov's novella, written for
the screen by Tom Stoppard, concerns a chocolatier (Dirk Bogarde) who murders a
tramp so as to assume a new identity. April 10,
2008 – What did you do for Lent? Nazarin (1958 / 94 minutes / 1.33:1) Luis Bunuel's ambiguous narrative of a
priest wandering in a rotting, secular landscape. Living an imitation of Christ, his good works hasten the
degradation of the world. The Rapture (1991 / 100 minutes / 1.85:1) Mimi Rogers goes from being a swinger with Patrick Bauchau
to a fundamentalist with David Duchovny and does not find happiness at either
extreme. Written and directed by
Michael Tolkin. May 8, 2008
– Children and Art
Vincent
and Theo
(1990 / Four
51 minute episodes, totaling 204 minutes / 1.33:1) The original cut of Robert Altman's lush and atmospheric
miniseries about Van Gogh (Tim Roth) and his brother (Paul Rhys). June 12, 2008
– Aesthetics, or what are we to do
about that chap Aristotle? Wittgenstein (1993 / 75 minutes / 1.66:1) Derek Jarman's nimble vaudeville
biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein is shot in full costume on a black soundstage
with Michael Gough as Bertrand Russell and Tilda Swinton as Lady Morrell. Desperate Remedies (1993 / 93 minutes / 1.66:1) Stewart Main and Peter Wells' opulent, Romantic gloss on La
Forza del Destino and Middlemarch. The Thief (1952 / 85 minutes / 1.33:1) "Excitement Beyond Words!" Ray Milland stars in Russell Rouse's
experimental, dialogue-free film noir following a spy with a guilty conscience. July
10, 2008 – Let's not forget you-know-who was elected . . .
* *
* Special 6 PM start! Hitler
– A Film From Germany (1978 / 442 minutes / 1.33:1) Hans-Jurgen Syberberg's overwhelming and transfixing
phantasmagorical meditation on the German state and its most enduring figures
(Ludwig of Bavaria, Karl May, Richard Wagner, Adolf Hitler). August 14,
2008 – Stockhausen Syndrome, Day 7 People on Sunday (1929 / 73 minutes / 1.33:1) Realist Berlin street film from Curt Siodmak, Robert
Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Fred Zinnemann, Billy Wilder and Eugen Schufftan. Sunday In The Park
With George
(1986 / 146 minutes
/1.33:1) Terry Hughes directs Stephen Sondheim and
James Lapine's Pulitzer Prize Winning Musical for TV. Act 1 follows Georges Seurat's 1884-6 creation of his most
famous painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.
Act II traces a 1986 conceptual artist named George seeking to connect
to his feelings and history. With
Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. September 11,
2008 – Let Us Keep Abortion Safe and a Woman's Right to Choose Legal Rain Without
Thunder (1993 / 93 minutes / 1.33:1) Cautionary direct address docudrama of
a future where abortion is illegal.
Stars Carolyn McCormick and Betty Buckley. The Handmaid's
Tale (1990 / 109 minutes / 1.66:1) Natasha Richardson, Robert Duvall, Faye
Dunaway and Aidan Quinn star in Volker Schlondorff's film of Harold Pinter's
adaptation of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel set in a future where
reproductive rights lay in the hands of a Christian theocracy. October 9,
2008 – What do we do with the killers we create? Body Snatchers
(1993 / 87 minutes / 2.35:1)
Abel Ferrara's paranoid, erotic and tense reshuffling of Jack Finney's
oft-filmed novel of alien invasion and metaphor. With R. Lee Ermey, Forest Whitaker and Meg Tilly. Uncle Sam (1996 / 90 minutes / 2.35:1) William Lustig's caustic horror film of
Larry Cohen's satire about Gulf War Vet Sam Harper returning from death by
"friendly fire" in Kuwait to reek havoc on draft dodgers, flag burners and tax
cheaters back home on the Fourth of July.
With Timothy Bottoms, Robert Forster, P.J. Soles and Isaac Hayes. The Ravager
(1970 / 74 minutes / 1.33:1)
Traumatized Vietnam Veteran terrorizes the homefront with explosives in
Charles Nizet's misanthropic exploitation movie. November 13,
2008 – Protest Vote The Man (1972 / 93 minutes /
1.37:1) "It took an accident to
make this man President of the United States. What they do to him now won't be an accident." James
Earl Jones becomes the first black President of the U.S. in Joseph Sargent's
satirical movie penned by Rod Serling from the novel by Irving Wallace. With Martin Balsam, Burgess Meredith
and Lew Ayres. Hail
(1973 / 88 minutes / 1.33:1) "No more
Congress! No more Supreme
Court! Just me!" The paranoid, power-mad President of
the United States plans assassinations and creates secret prisons in this
hilariously chilling Dr. Strangelove-like allegory from the Nixon
era. December 11,
2008 -- Strangers In The Night . . . When Strangers
Marry (1944 / 67
minutes / 1.33:1) William Castle
directs Robert Mitchum as Kim Hunter's ex-boyfriend searching for her missing
husband (Dean Jagger) in World War 2 era Greenwich Village. Stranger's Kiss (1983 / 94 minutes / 1.85:1) Thriller about art imitating life
behind the scenes of a 1950s film noir not unlike Stanley Kubrick's Killer's
Kiss. With Peter Coyote, directed by Matthew
Chapman. Never Pick Up A
Stranger (1979 / 83
minutes / 1.33:1) A troubled man
escapes his grisly small town past by becoming a habitue of the Deuce in Joseph Zito's first feature as a
director (credited to pseudonym "Joseph Bigwood"). |