Phil Karlson Enters the Fray in June

I was so excited by the Nagisa Oshima film series at the PFA that I overlooked another program there in June. PFA is screening 8 films (4 double features) during Tight Spot: Phil Karlson in the Fifties. The series runs every Friday in June.

I've seen some of the films in the series at Noir City (99 River Street and Scandal Sheet) or previously at PFA (Gunman's Walk). Scandal Sheet and Gunman's Walk have screened within the past six months but I can't blame PFA for screening them again as they were immensely enjoyable.

The lineup is:

Friday, June 5, 2009
Kansas City Confidential (1952)
99 River Street (1953)

Friday, June 12, 2009
Scandal Sheet (1952)
Tight Spot (1955)

Friday, June 19, 2009
5 Against the House (1955)
The Phenix City Story (1955)

Friday, June 26, 2009
The Brothers Rico (1957)
Gunman’s Walk (1958)

Welcome to Phil Karlson’s fifties America, where corruption and cruelty lurk not just in urban back alleys but in sunny resorts and leafy villages, and injustice is not an abstraction but a visceral blow to the body politic. Karlson is known for a particularly stark and punishing brand of noir, but his visual assaults are based in a brutal morality. Although he objected to screen violence for its own sake, Karlson said, “when it belongs, you should show it and you shouldn’t pussyfoot around it. You should put it on there the way it happened.” This fidelity to the physical was part of a pulp naturalism that combined authentic locations and downscale details with weird set pieces and startling twists, uncovering the uncanny in the real.

Born Philip Karlstein, Karlson (1908–86) came of age in 1920s Chicago and was seasoned in that city’s underworld as well as its high culture: he was a bootlegger’s lookout and witnessed a mob killing before attending the Art Institute. Later, to pay his way through law school at Loyola, he took a job at Universal, “washing toilets and dishes and whatever the hell they gave me.” He eventually landed a barely more glamorous position as a director at Monogram on Poverty Row, where he compared himself to “a mechanic that worked on a line”—but “I was experimenting with everything I was making, trying to get my little pieces of truth here and there.” The experiments paid off in the fifties, when Karlson put out the remarkable run of movies we feature here (all but one of which are unavailable on DVD). Join us for four nights of low-budget ingenuity and exhilarating eccentricity, laced with gritty little pieces of truth.

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Between the Oshima and Karlson programs at the PFA, I guess I'll be spending a lot of time in Berkeley this June. Actually, with Hole in the Head running June 5 to 18, June is shaping up to be quite a busy month for me.

Upcoming Nagisa Oshima Film Retrospective at PFA

Last fall, PFA had a fantastic series called Cinema Japan: A Wreath for Madame Kawakita.

It was one of the best film retrospectives I've attended. Two films that stood out were The Ceremony and Boy. Both were directed by Nagisa Oshima.

PFA has recently announced their schedule for an upcoming series called In the Realm of Oshima which screens 25 films by the director from May 29 to July 18. I am truly excited by the scope of the program. Oshima has 54 director credits on IMDB so the retrospective cover nearly half of filmography.

“I do not like to be called a samurai, but I admit that I have an image of myself as a fighter,” wrote one of cinema’s most essential filmmakers, Nagisa Oshima. “I would like to fight against all authorities and powers.” Debuting in 1959 with A Town of Love and Hope, Oshima helped create the Japanese New Wave, infusing traditional film genres with a politicized energy and social fury. Early on, Oshima could still “pass” at the Shochiku studio, making films in the so-called “sun tribe” genre that glorified delinquent youth culture. But his bent was clearly subversive, his focus not on the romanticism of disillusionment but on the politics of despair in postwar Japan, in the context—at first unstated—of the failed protests against the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States. In the 1960s and seventies Oshima’s name was on par with Godard’s as cinema’s most inspired visionary, setting a bar for invigoratingly challenging filmmaking that, even now, has yet to be raised. A restless innovator, Oshima constantly reinvented his aesthetic approach; his Violence at Noon has over 2,000 edits, Night and Fog in Japan fewer than fifty. In the past three decades his work has only grown more surprising, whether connecting sexual and political liberation in In the Realm of the Senses or placing a gay romance within samurai culture in Gohatto. His focus, though, has remained on certain essentials: sex and death, power and control, conformity and transgression, and above all on Japan, its nationalism, politics, conformity, and flaws, especially its treatment of Koreans. No two of Oshima’s films are the same, but all are undeniably Oshima.

With few of his films available on DVD or video, much of Oshima’s work has existed more as legend than presence; this series, organized by James Quandt of Cinematheque Ontario, is the first North American retrospective in over twenty years. More than a series, In the Realm of Oshima is a landmark, once-in-a-generation event.

In this December post, I mention an Oshima series at PFA in March 2009. Maybe I misheard her if she said May. Regardless, I'm looking forward to The Summer of Oshima.

Taking Inventory as of April 20

Dogs of Chinatown (2008) - Official Website
Made in USA starring Anna Karina; directed by Jean-Luc Godard; French with subtitles; (1966)
Wild Boys of the Road; directed by William Wellman; (1933)
We Work Again short film; (1930)
Tokyo! directed by Joon-ho Bong (Shaking Tokyo), Leos Carax (Merde) and Michel Gondry (Interior Design); Japanese and French with subtitles; (2008) - Official Website
Tokyo Sonata directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa; Japanese and French with subtitles; (2008) - Official Website
Gabriel Over the White House starring Walter Huston and Franchot Tone; directed by Gregory La Cava; (1933)
The Road Is Open Again short film; (1933)
Hell-Bent for Election animated short film; directed by Chuck Jones; (1944)
I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale documentary; directed by Richard Shepard; (2009)
Dog Day Afternoon starring Al Pacino, Charles Durning and John Cazale; directed by Sidney Lumet; (1975)
Mister Scarface starring Jack Palance; dubbed; (1976)
Chained Heat starring Linda Blair, John Vernon, Sybil Danning and Stella Stevens; (1983)
Vigilante starring Robert Forster, Fred Williamson and Woody Strode; (1983)
Raw Force starring Cameron Mitchell; (1982)
Lady Terminator (1988)

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I saw films all over town the past few weeks. I visited the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts screening room for the first time last Saturday when I watched Mister Scarface and Chained Heat.

I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale and Dog Day Afternoon screened at the Vogue. Director Richard Shepard answered questions about his documentary on John Cazale. He was interviewed by SF Chronicle movie critic Ruthe Stein.

I Knew It Was You was followed by Dog Day Afternoon. Sadly, it was projected from a DVD.

I watched Tokyo! at the Landmark Opera Plaza and Tokyo Sonata at the Landmark Bridge.

Dogs of Chinatown screened at the 4-Star.

Made in USA, Vigilante, Raw Force and Lady Terminator played at the Castro.

Wild Boys of the Road and Gabriel Over the White House were part of PFA's program titled From Riches to Rags: Hollywood and the New Deal. The four film program explored how Hollywood filmmakers responded to FDR’s New Deal.

We Work Again, The Road Is Open Again and Hell-Bent for Election were short films that preceded the feature films in From Riches to Rags: Hollywood and the New Deal.

Mister Scarface, Chained Heat, Vigilante, Raw Force and Lady Terminator (along with Escape from New York which I did not watch this weekend) were part of the Alamo Drafthouse's Rolling Roadshow Tour. Austin's famed movie house periodically takes some of its film prints on tour. On this trip, they stopped in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.

Vigilante, Raw Force, Lady Terminator and Escape from New York were co-presented by Midnites for Maniacs.

Movie Puke

I was at the Landmark Bridge Theater this past weekend to see Tokyo Sonata (great film by the way).

As I was milling about the lobby, I noticed some tri-folded pieces of 8.5 x 11 paper. I picked one up at there was a picture of Corey Haim and Corey Feldman on the cover with the subtitle "Corey vs. Corey The Ultimate Battle." The rest of the "tiny zine" was an introduction of the Two Coreys phenomenon in the late 80's. Does anyone remember the commercials for the Two Coreys chat room? After setting up the Coreys Craze, the unsigned author proceeded to give thumbnail descriptions of her favorite bad movies starring one or both of the Coreys. I thought it was entertaining and can relate to a fellow "bad movie connoisseur" as well as her adherence to grammar and spelling.

The title of the 'zine was Movie Puke - A Tiny Zine for Cinemasochists - clever word play.

Going back to the table with the handouts, I found two more Movie Pukes - Issue #2 titled "Revenge of the Beach Comedy" and Issue #3 titled "The Girly Issue." Both 'zines brought back memories from my teenage years or introduced me to films so obscure/bad that I wouldn't watch them as a hormonally overactive teenager.

Anyway, Movie Puke has a Myspace page. There is even a photo of Issue #4 called "Dance Dance Dance."

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I notice that before screenings at Landmark Theaters, an employee will come out and thank the audience. S/he doesn't always comment on the film but they do thank the audience for coming. It's a nice touch in tough economic times. The Sunday 3:10 showing of Tokyo Sonata had a good crowd - there was probably over 50 people in the audience on Easter Sunday.

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I notice several films at the upcoming 2009 San Francisco International Film Festival are being shown in previews trailers at Landmark Theaters. Tulpan, Tyson and Rudo y Cursi are three that I'm aware of.

I am violating my previous pledge to skip the 2009 SFIFF completely. I bought a ticket to see Rembrandt's J'Accuse at the PFA on April 26. One of the first "independent" films that I saw in a theater was Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover during the summer of 1989 when I was living in Los Angeles. I cannot remember the name of the theater but it was extremely wide. It might have been an IMAX screen although I don't think the film was IMAX. I'll never forget two scenes from that film. I'll never forget Helen Mirren and Alan Howard being spirited out of the restaurant (coitus interruptus) and having to make their escape in a meat van with dead pigs hanging off of hooks. Of course, the final scene where The Lover is literally roasted and served to The Thief. Roasted penis anyone?

“Just because you have eyes does not mean you can see,” challenges the great director-contrarian Peter Greenaway in his new cine-essay, which reveals the mysteries hidden in plain sight in one of the most famous paintings of all time, Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. Where most see only a great work of art, Greenaway dissects the Dutch masterpiece to uncover an indictment, a conspiracy and a murder mystery sweeping across the ruling elites of Amsterdam’s Golden Age. Hosting the proceedings like a well-mannered 21st-century judge, Greenaway “investigates” each of the painting’s 34 characters, their poses and costumes, as well as the picture’s setting and lighting, to discover clues to Rembrandt’s fascinating take on, and indictment of, the power struggles of 17th-century Amsterdam. In the process, Greenaway moves far beyond narrative and documentary filmmaking (further beyond his already out-there early works like Drowning by Numbers or The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover) to level his own j’accuse on contemporary visual illiteracy. With actors (including Martin Freeman of British TV’s The Office) restaging certain scenes and Greenaway’s clever intellectual side-notes and diversions (the development of candle-making in relationship to painting aesthetics, for instance), Rembrandt’s J’Accuse will change how you view art, and the world.

Actually, this film reminds me of an annual tableaux vivant event in Orange County called Pageant of the Masters in which paintings are recreated by real people in costumes, sets and make-up to match the paintings. I've never been able to attend but would like to see it one day.

Rita Hayworth Burns Up the Screen

A co-worker mentioned this story to me today. The Stanford Theater was evacuated Friday night due to a fire. The cause of the fire was an old nitrate film getting jammed in the projector. Nitrate film stock is very flammable; it is even more dangerous as the film gets older and less stable. There have been several incidents of film vaults catching fire due to nitrate films. A few years ago, as a demonstration, a guy from France lit a small piece of nitrate film at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the combustion was impressive.

It was very fortunate that no one was injured or that the Stanford Theater wasn't seriously damaged. Nitrate fires can be difficult to put out and they produce toxic smoke. I assume the theater is open for business. The website still lists the upcoming film program.

The film that was screening when the fire broke out was Cover Girl (1944) with Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth. I know that Rita Hayworth was hot but this is ridiculous.

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Speaking of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF), I read in the Chronicle that Steven Salmons is stepping down as its Artistic Director after 17 years. Salmons and his wife Melissa Chittick were the co-founders of the festival. It's a little surprising that Salmons would step down. I don't know the circumstances but Salmons is the public face of the festival. He introduces each film and seems to enjoy the limelight (or at least the Castro Theater spotlight). In my mind, Salmons (along with Eddie Muller of Noir City) are indelibly linked to their respective festivals. Executive Director Stacey Wisnia (pronounced Visnia) is staying on at SFSFF and Anita Monga is coming on board as Acting Artistic Director.

Monga is a living legend in the San Francisco film community. She was for many years the programmer at the Castro Theater. After having been unceremoniously fired a few years back, has made her presence known on the festival circuit. Wisnia was the manager of the Castro who resigned after Monga's firing.

Monga co-programs Noir City and IndieFest. She helps selects the annual Mel Novikoff Award winner at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF). She and Balboa Theater owner/Telluride International Film Festival Director Gary Meyer are close friends and both were acolytes of Novikoff.

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On April 16, the Vogue Theater is presenting I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale, a 40 minute documentary about the actor. Cazale, best known as Fredo Corleone from the The Godfather and The Godfather II, had a short but blindingly brilliant screen career before dying in 1978 at the age of 42. He made five films and all of them were nominated for Oscars. In addition to the two Godfather movies, Cazale appeared in Dog Day Afternoon, The Conversation and The Deer Hunter. What a filmography - directed by Francis Ford Coppola (3 films), Sidney Lumet and Michael Cimino, co-stars include Al Pacino (3 times), Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Gene Hackman, Harrison Ford, Christopher Walken and Meryl Streep.

After the screening of I Knew It Was You and a Q&A with director Richard Shepard, they will screen Dog Day Afternoon.

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Last month, I attended a few screenings of the Mostly British Film Series at the Vogue Theater. All the films screened February 26 through March 5 except Easy Virtue which screens May 14. I thought it was odd that one film screened so long after the others. After seeing the program guide for the 2009 SFIFF, it makes sense. Easy Virtue is screening May 6 and 7 at the SFIFF (both screenings at the Sundance Kabuki). They scheduled the screening because the print will be in the Bay Area the week before. I wouldn't be surprised to see it screened elsewhere in the between May 7 and 14. Easy Virtue stars Kristen Scott Thomas, Colin Firth and Jessica Biel.

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The 4-Star Theater has been advertising The Beast Stalker for several months. I predict The Beast Stalker will open at the 4-Star sometime after April 29 because that is the last time it screens at SFIFF. The Beast Stalker, a Hong Kong thriller starring Nicholas Tse, is getting three screenings at SFIFF - April 24, 26 and 29. All screenings are at the Kabuki.

Red Vic - May Calendar

I picked up the April/May calendar for the Red Vic Movie House. I noticed they are having a Tuesday special. You can see movies on Tuesday night at the matinee price ($7). That's a $2 saving over the regular evening price. That means you can see movies for $5 on Monday nights at the Roxie, $5 on Tuesday nights at the Castro or $7 on Tuesday nights at the Red Vic.

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I've already previewed the April schedule at the Red Vic but a few films on the May and early June calendar look promising.

The only director out of the Philippines I am familiar with is Brillante Mendoza (Slingshot at the 2008 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival). On May 22 & 23, the Red Vic is screening Mendoza's Serbis (2008).

From the film's official website - The Pineda family operates a run-down movie house in a city in the province, which shows dated sexy double-feature films. The family has taken up actual residence in the old building as well. The matriarch Nanay Flor, her daughter Nayda, son-in-law Lando and adopted daughter Jewel take turns manning the ticket booth and the canteen. Her nephews Alan and Ronald are the billboard painter and projectionist respectively.

Nanay Flor had filed a bigamy case against her estranged husband and is attending the court hearing today when, after a number of years, the decision will be finally handed down. It is within this context that the story unfolds. As the rest of the members go about their daily activities, we get a glimpse of how they suffer and deal with each other's sins and vices -- relational, economic or sexual.

Alan, who is financially unprepared for marital responsibility, feels oppressed by his pregnant girlfriend's demand of marriage. Nayda, who entered marriage out of tradition, is torn between marital fidelity and her ambiguous attraction towards her cousin Ronald. Nanay Flor, who loses the case, feels betrayed not only by the court judge but also by her son who testified in favor of his favor.

Preoccupied with their personal demons, the family in unmindful that inside the movie theater, another kind of business is going on between the "serbis" boys (male prostitutes) and the gay patrons.

From May 29 to June 2, they are screening A Wink and a Smile (2008).

An intoxicating mix of private thoughts and public behavior, the feature length documentary A Wink and a Smile exposes more than the human body by putting gender, power, sexuality and social identity under the glittery spotlight, as it follows the lives of ten "ordinary" women who do something extraordinary - learn the art burlesque dancing and striptease.

Students of Seattle's Academy of Burlesque have just six weeks to peel and reveal their hidden talents with little more than a tassel and a twirl. Seasoned burlesque divas strut on stage in their own entertaining, satirical and beautiful performances to illustrate the candid and often hilarious lectures by the Academy's headmistress, Miss Indigo Blue.

As director Deirdre Timmons draws back the velvet curtain providing a rare glimpse into the intimate experience, audiences watch with glee as Miss Indigo's budding divas learn to shimmy, shake, bump and grind their way into our hearts. Through their adventures, we see how a homemaker, a reporter, a doctor, an opera singer, a taxidermist and a college student, join the American cultural revival of burlesque, as it moves from fringe fascination to mainstream obsession, engaging a world where performance art and showgirl spectacle, music, theater and sensuality crash into over-the-top glamour - a world where many want to go, but very few dare.

The will be live performances and Q&A following the 7 PM performances from May 29 to 31. I guess my interest in burlesque has been piqued since watching the short film No Strings Attached at this year's Indiefest - A Wink and a Smile Official Website

On June 5-6, Psych-Out (1968) is screening. Filmed in the Haight Ashbury, the movie stars Susan Strasberg, Dean Stockwell, Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern.

Jennie (Strasberg) travels to San Francisco to locate her hippie brother Steve (Dern). She meets Stoney (Nicholson) in a coffeehouse and he helps her look for Steve, who Stoney has seen in his various attempts to start a rock & roll band. Stoney and his pals transform the square girl into a swinging hippie chick, complete with a mod miniskirt. Along with their buddy Dave (Stockwell), they search for Steve amidst the psychedelic splendor of the Haight-Ashbury hippie haunts. Dave is killed by a car when he wanders around in an STP-induced stupor. LSD, marijuana, and the good and the bad sides of hippie life are illustrated with non-judgmental accuracy.

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While pedaling the stationary bike at the gym this evening, I was watching TV. The TVs are built into the bike. As I was flipping channels, I came across The Brothers Warner on KQED.

2009 Hole in the Head - Early Press Release

Yesterday, SF Indiefest issued a press release announcing the 2009 Hole in the Festival.

The festival runs June 5 to 18 at the Roxie.

Among the films mentioned in the press release are -

The best description of the bunch (as well as best title) is Joseph Guzman’s Run! Bitch Run! Catherine and Rebecca are two Catholic School girls going door-to-door selling Religious paraphernalia in order to pay for their books and education. Things go horribly wrong when they knock on the wrong door in the wrong neighborhood. After she is brutally raped and left for dead, Catherine awakes with one thing on her mind: revenge.

In addition, they are presenting a Takashi Miike film - Crows Zero. Miike cuts through the subject matter [high school gang violence] at high-octane speed for a stylized, action-packed, and entertaining schoolyard brawl of a movie. The story centers around the character Genji Takaya (Shun Oguri), a newcomer to Suzuran High School who aims to conquer Suzuran. Genji makes a deal with his father, Hideo Takitani (Goro Kishitani) — if he can conquer the school, he will be allowed to succeed his father as the head of his yakuza syndicate.

Also, Indiefest is presenting Kurando Mitsutake’s Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf which screened at this year's Cinequest. While camping in the desert a family gets attacked by a notorious psychopath. The wife and daughter are slaughtered, and the man is forced to remove his own eyes. Eight years after the massacre, the man has returned to the desert town, now a highly trained samurai swordsman ready to seek justice. But he doesn't know there awaits seven assassins hired by his sworn enemy who want the bounty on his head. Set in nowhere, no time, this bloody modern day fable is a new age hybrid action film with a classic samurai essence and a spaghetti western spirit.

Morgue Story - Sangue, Baiacu, & Quadrinhos directed by Brazilian Paulo Biscaia. Ana Argento, an accomplished cartoon artist frustrated with her relationships meets two other lonely characters with peculiar lives. Tom is a chronic cataleptic who makes his living selling life insurance. Daniel Torres is a sociopath and rapist coroner. Their lives could only intersect in one place: the morgue.

Black Devil Doll directed by Jonathan Lewis. A young, moist, buxom teen vixen finds herself hurled into an odyssey of forbidden sex and unspeakable violence after an innocent evening dabbling in the occult. What started as a simple child's game has now become a fight for her life. What is this evil that she has summoned from beyond? And why does it have a ‘fro? What kind of horrific acts will she be subjected to? And what price will her super-hot, half-nude friends have to pay? But more importantly, how much Caucasian blood will have to be shed to stop the Black Devil Doll?!!"

The Pig People starring rapper and former Oakland resident Master P. After multiple unsolved murders took place in a rural community, myths began to spread about pig people who lived in an abandoned cabin hidden deep in the forest. A group of precocious college students decide to research and investigate the legend and head into the forest armed only with a camera and delusions of exposing the Pig People to the world.

Blood River - A nuanced fable that combines horror, drama and western influences. Clark and his pregnant wife Summer are driving through the Nevada desert on the way to deliver the news to her parents when their car breaks down. Taking refuge in a ghost town, the two meet a lone drifter who believes he is God’s avenger and sets his sites on the two to answer for their supposed crimes.

It looks like a good line-up. The festival pass is $100 and individual tickets are $10 (not including handling fee) so I will have to see 10 films to break even.