Friday, July 13

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Frankenstein at Film Forum

What’s Showing Today? Friday, July 13
Click venue names for ticket info & directions

Featured Screening: Frankenstein at Film Forum

Today Film Forum begins it’s jam-packed celebration of the centennial of Universal Pictures with two classics that happen to be a perfect match for the Friday the 13th start date, Dracula and Frankenstein.

The success of Dracula compelled Universal to bring Frankenstein to the screen. It’s not a direct adaptation of novel so much as a riff on a play adapted by John L. Balderston—author of the Dracula stage production which became the Universal movie—from an earlier work by Peggy Webling. It was originally insisted Bela Lugosi play the monster with Robert Florey at the helm, but after the success of James Whale‘s Waterloo Bridge the young filmmaker was given the choice of directing any Universal property and opted for Frankenstein. Florey went on to make Murders of the Rue Morgue and Lugosi—who had wanted to play Dr. Frankenstein rather than the monster—went along with him to play Morgue‘s own mad scientist. Whale was from a poor working-class British family and began directing theater in POW camp during WWI, which led to a successful post-war career in increasingly lucrative theater gigs before heading to Hollywood. It’s speculated his unabashedly open homosexuality and even more so his perceived class envy led to an interest in outsiders and the macabre; whatever the case, his Universal monster movies continue to stand head and shoulders above any before or since in no small part due to their tinge of camp, iconic makeup by Jack Pierce and dazzling electrical effects by Kenneth Strickfaden. And Boris Karloff, barely recognizable yet in his defining role, so completely upstages his fellow actors that to this day one can barely recall who plays the title role—Colin Clive as the doctor.

Though it’s not part of the 2-for-1 double feature, the studio’s 1925 Phantom of the Opera adaptation starring Lon Chaney also runs today in a print containing the original Technicolor sequences.

Also Noted

Tonight’s VHS offering at the Museum of Arts and Design is Jerusalem, a disquieting 2003 work by James Fotopoulos shot on 8mm tape and VHS with the feel of an uncanny found artifact—”In place of opening credits, viewers are trated to an overture of voices emerging from visual static, recounting frightening alien counters, strange dreams and emotional traumas.” Fotopoulos will be in attendance for discussion with Rebecca Cleman, who discusses the work and others like Lost Highway and Videodrome in a recently published article for Moving Image Source—”Ghosts in the Machine: Domestic horror and the nostalgia for analog video.”

Spectacle continues to present the 1990s work of obscure Spanish auteur Julio Médem, whose filmography is saddled with Hitchockian thrills, chaptered segments, cosmic humor and strange conceits. Lovers of the Arctic Circle shows tonight at 8:00 pm, and the film, shot in Spain and Finland, explores a fledgling love affair between young step-siblings. As curiously frowned upon as that may be, it’s nothing compared to the sub-vile debasedness of Tenement, which shows at 10:00 pm as part of the Bronxploitation series. This gory thriller from notorious pornography and exploitation filmmaker Roberta Findlay pitched amid the apocalyptic ruins of the South Bronx follows a group of slum housing tenants under siege from the savage squatters they unsuccessfully tried to have removed from their basement. Making Assault on Precinct 13 and Last House on the Left seem like self-important nonsense, the thing plays like a sick, agitational joke that somehow ends up being by virtue of its existence a telling indictment of an urban population left to its own ruin. Featuring music by synth pioneer and unlikely producer Walter E. Sear. Film scholar Jay Leyda‘s 1931 pre-student film A Bronx Morning, an idyllic amateur city symphony of an area which in his own estimation had been “hitherto untouched by a movie camera” will be shown as a pre-show palette cleanser.

And if you can’t stand the city heat, there’s a Rednecksploitation Double Feature at 92YTribeca featuring prints of rarely shown southern country sleaze including moonshine, car theft, country western radio and Shelly Winters as a seedy motel proprietor named Big Bertha in a movie described as “rape-heavy.”

Today

Rednecksploitation Double Feature at 92YTribeca
Evening Details • 2-for-$12

  • Poor Pretty Eddie (Richard Robinson & David Worth). 35mm. 1975. 92 min. 8:00 pm.
  • Redneck Miller (John Clayton). 35mm. 1977. 9:45 pm.

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York: The First Decade at Anthology Film Archives
Series Details

  • Lourdes (Jessica Hausner). Details. 35mm. 2009. 96 min. 7:00 pm.
  • Our Daily Bread (Nikolaus Geyrhalter). Details. 35mm. 2005. 92 min. 9:15 pm.

Dirty Looks: On Location at Abrons Art Center, 466 Grand Street
Series Details

  • Cobra Woman (Robert Siodmak) with Jungle Island (Jack Smith). 8:30 pm.

Universal 100 at Film Forum
Series Details • Dracula and Frankenstein 2-for-1

  • Frankenstein (James Whale). Details. 35mm. 1931. 70 min. 1:00, 4:00 and 8:50 pm.
  • Dracula (Tod Browning). Details. 35mm. 1931. 103 min. 2:30, 5:30 and 10:20 pm.
  • The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian). Details. Includes Technicolor sequences. 35mm. 1925. 98 min. 7:00 pm.

Invitation to the Dance: Gene Kelly @ 100 at Film Society of Lincoln Center
Series Details

  • Cover Girl (Charles Vidor). Details. 1944. 107 min. 4:00 pm.
  • On the Town (Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen). Details. 1949. 98 min. 6:15 pm.
  • It’s Always Fair Weather (Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen). Details. 1955. 101 min. 8:30 pm.

Japan Cuts 2012 at Japan Society
Series Details

  •  Hard Romanticker (Su-yeon Gu). Details. 35mm. 2011. 108 min. 6:30 pm.
  • Let’s Make the Teacher Have a Miscarriage Club (Eisuke Naito), The Big Gun (Hajime Ohata) and Henge (Hajime Ohata). Details. HDCam. 2012/2008. 145 min. 8:40 pm.

An Auteurist History of Film at MoMA
Series Details

  • Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu). Details. 1953. 135 min. 1:00 pm.

Premiere Brazil! 2012 at MoMA
Series Details

  • Dirty Hearts (Vincente Amorim). Details. 2011. 107 min. 5:00 pm.
  • Heleno (José Henrique Fonseca). Details. 2011. 107 min. 8:00 pm.

VHS at Museum of Arts and Design
Series Details

  • Jerusalem (James Fotopoulos). Details. Fotopoulos in discussion with Rebecca Cleman. 2003. 7:00 pm.

See It Big! at Museum of the Moving Image
Series Details

  • Apocalypse Now Redux (Francis Ford Coppola). Details. DCP. 1979/2001. 202 min. 7:00 pm.

Julio Médem at Spectacle
Series Details

  • Lovers of the Arctic Circle. Details. Digital. 1998. 112 min. 8:00 pm.

Bronxploitation at Spectacle
Series Details

  • Tenement (Roberta Findlay) with A Bronx Morning (Jay Leyda). Details. Digital. 1985/1931. 105 min. 10:00 pm.

North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock) at IFC Center. Details. DCP. 1959. 136 min. 11:00 am.
Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud) at Riverside Park. Details. 8:30 pm.
The Mountain (Edward Dmytryk) at The Rubin Museum. Details. Introduced by climber Fritz Selby. 1956. 105 min. 9:30 pm.

Midnight

The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi) at Film Society of Lincoln Center. Details. 35mm. 1981. 85 min.
Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku) at IFC Center. Details. HD. 2000. 114 min. 11:55 pm.
The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme) at IFC Center. Details. 35mm. 1991. 118 min.
Blue Velvet (David Lynch) at IFC Center. Details. 35mm. 1986. 120 min. 12:10 am.
Mannequin (Michael Gottlieb) at IFC Center. Details. 35mm. 1987. 90 min. 12:25 am.
Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn) at Landmark Cinema. Details. 2011. 101 min.
48 Hours (Walter Hill) at Nitehawk. Details. 1982. 96 min. 12:20 am.
Love in the Real World at Spectacle. Details. 70 min.

Ongoing

It’s the Earth Not the Moon (Gonçalo Tocha) at Anthology Film Archives. Details. Video. 2011. 183 min. 7:30 pm.
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock) at BAMCinématek. Details. 35mm. 1954. 112 min. 2:00, 4:30, 6:50 and 9:15 pm.
Easy Money (Daniel Espinosa) at Film Forum. Details. 2010. 120 min. 1:00, 3:45, 6:30 and 9:15 pm.
Annie Hall (Woody Allen) at Film Forum. Details. 35mm. 1977. 93 min. 1:10, 3:10, 5:10, 7:10 and 9:10 pm.
Ballplayer: Pelotero (Ross Finkel, Travor Martin & Jon Paley) at Maysles Cinema. Details. 2011. 73 min. 7:30 pm.
Invisible (Michal Aviad) at MoMA. Details. 2011. 90 min. 7:00 pm.

Galleries

Museums

Below listed North-South

Chelsea

Downtown

  • Rose Kallal “START BEGIN FEEL AGAIN” at Participant, Inc., 253 East Houston Street. Open Wednesday-Sunday, Noon to 7:00 pm. Ends July 22.
  • Imbue at LMAKprojects, 128 Eldridge Street. Work by Sabrina Gschwandtner and others. Open Wednesday through Sunday 11:00 am to 6:00 pm. Ends July 27.
  • Luther Price at Callicoon Fine Arts, 124 Forsyth Street. Open Wednesday to Sunday, Noon to 6:00 pm. Ends July 27.
  • Santiago Sierra “NO, Global Tour” at Team Gallery, 83 Grand Street. Open Tuesday-Saturday 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Screening at 10:15 am, 1:00 and 4:00 pm and Fridays at 7:00 pm. Ends July 27.

Brooklyn