Tonight’s feature was arguably the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. Our audience was enthralled, to say the least. What kind of imagination comes up with this kind of thing? Well, obviously that of Mike Cheslik. If you feel like being thoroughly entertained by 108 minutes of unrelenting visual thrills, gags, and slapstick, please watch Hundreds of Beavers.
Of course, our short feature tonight had to be Evil Beaver!
28 years later, Swingers remains relevant, even though the answering-machine is pretty much a thing of the past. I mention the aforementioned device, because it plays a huge role in one of the cringiest and funny scenes in the movie. Poor Mike! (not to worry though… happy ending alert!)
Our crew was held enraptured, as happens most NewScreen nights. So happy I got this one off my to-show list!
Our short tonight was Tasty Fish, a music video that I directed in the early 90’s for The Other Two, after the split up of New Order. Is it ok that I featured my own work two weeks in a row???
The weather tried it’s best to shut us down tonight, but we prevailed. Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall was a transfixing view, and Sandra Hüller was at her finest. She managed to even be funny, in the face of everything happening to her. I got a bit excited, and considered re-visiting Toni Erdmann (her big breakout role). Probably not next week, but…
I watched this beautiful film with friends on a warm night last summer, on the big outdoor screen upstate, and kinda filed it away for “later”. In the meantime, a lot of glittering gems pushed their way into my queue. But with it’s Best Picture Oscar nomination, Celine Song’s Past Lives came back into sharp focus for me, and tonight was the perfect “later”.
It’s hard to say what makes this story so moving… but it manages to touch a few places that are difficult to access, in a very non-Hallmark way. Greta Lee was perfectly cast as Nora, although she did seem to have aged significantly more than her childhood sweetheart Hae Sung (Teo Yoo). In the end, though, it doesn’t really matter. The bond between them is totally palpable. Of course I cried.
Lovely to see new guests here tonight, along with our loyal regular crew.
Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave is certainly a beautiful, well crafted work, adored by critics, but somewhat hard to follow. A detective investigates a murder, the prime suspect of which is the victim’s beautiful Chinese wife, Song Seo-rae: a foreigner in Korea. She is quite “un-shocked” by the death of her husband, further cementing her prime suspect status.
Detective Jang Hae-joon, however, is seduced by her beauty and isn’t really able to concentrate on solving the crime. Jang also happens to be married, and his wife looks remarkably like Song. Further confusion. Anyway… I still love the movie, and in particular, the way “the affair” ends.
Thanks to my loyal guests for sharing a memorable evening with me, once again.
Returning to NewScreen (well technically not, since it was first screened at MovieNight) some 15 years later, Head-On remains as thrilling and sexy as ever, and this week, served as a little German lesson for the Whitehouses. Happy to do my part.
The Survivalist was director Stephen Fingleton’s first feature length film. A taut, breathtaking thriller, beautifully realized by cinematographer Damien Elliot. I have been in love with this movie for some time now and it seemed like a perfect vehicle to jump back towards the present after our two week excursion into eighties cinema. Good call! Our NewScreen “gang” was enthralled, and I don’t think I’d be wrong to assume that most are still thinking about this one today. And… Mia Goth!
We also enjoyed a pretty sexy pre-movie short tonight. Wet by Ecole des Nouvelles Images. Take a look
Also… a surprise appearance from one Andrew Kozak tonight. Long time no see!
Not a very big crowd this week, but what a great night! I can find De Palma’s work to be a bit over the top sometimes, but this was one of his very best. It was an honor to share it on the big screen with some who hadn’t ever seen it.
Ironically, and totally unintentionally, this was the second movie shown here in a row in which an awl was featured as a murder weapon. I always have one in my toolbox, but had never thought to use it in that manner!
The advent of the smartphone has put an extremely capable camera in many of our pockets. This has enabled an great amount of creativity to blossom, while at the same time proliferating an abundance of mundane imagery. “Everybody’s a photographer these days!” as they say.
Well… turning the clock back to the late nineteenth century, photography wasn’t easy at all, and creative expression was often not part of the craft. Lucas, the Danish priest dispatched to Iceland to build a church is obsessed with photography, but (often comically) wouldn’t know a good picture if it slapped him in his stoically dopey face. For example, the playful younger sister tried so hard to help him take a good picture, but…
And the horse gave up too, and walked away before he could get a picture.
This is a gorgeous film, and we enjoyed a good turnout tonight. NewScreen continues to shine!
Another great screening tonight. Jukka-Pekka Valkeapää’s Dogs Don’t Wear Pants has been described as a black comedy, but the romantic in me sees it as a love story, albeit not your average love story – not that you would ever see an average love story on our screen.
Sadly, I mistimed my banana ripening this week, so no banana bread tonight. They were just too green! However… Borodinski bread with rollmops to the rescue. Fancy schmancy!
I found nothing new suitably inspiring enough to be the short for this week, so I went “digging in the crates” and found a gem: Pursuit by Gesaffelstein. Always exciting.