Monday, December 17, 2012

70MM, award seekers and The New York Jewish Film Festival are coming to Lincoln Center


If you haven’t noticed there are two series and a film festival coming up in rapid succession at Lincoln Center over the next month that you should make some effort to atend.

Once the Tom Cruise retrospective finishes up Thursday, the Walter Reade Theater will be taken over by the SEE IT IN 70MM series. This is a series showing films like It’s a Mad Mad Mad World, West Side, Story 2001 and Playtime in the way that they were meant to be seen, in large format widescreen. Yes they have the big titles like West Side Story, but they are also showing un expected films like Khartoum, Lord Jim, Kenneth Branaugh’s epic Hamlet and Tron. If you like Tron, and you’ve never seen it big you MUST see it this way since there are hidden treats hidden in the visuals really can’t be seen on TV. I’m definitely going to one of the Playtime screenings, and I’m trying to work out screenings of several others including a biography of Goya. You really should go to see the films if you can because with the coming inability to run celluloid makes this the equivalent to seeing an endanger species in the wild. Details can be found here

Just after New Year they are running And the Winner is, a collection of foreign films in contention for various year end awards but which don’t have, as far as I know regular release deals in the US. Amongst them is KonTiki which has appeared on several year-end lists as one of the best films of the year. I’m Going to Kon Tiki and The Deep on the 5th. I’d go to more but the series only runs for a couple of days and each film only gets one showing so it’s a imperative that you jump if there is something you want to see. Details are here.

Lastly the New York Jewish Film Festival runs for two weeks starting January 9. I discovered this festival two years ago and it’s amazes me more each year. This year there are any number of great looking films including a biography of Art Spiegelman,  I’m still noodling around with what I’m going to, I have conflicts with real life commitments, so I’m not sure how many films I’m getting to. I do know that I’m going to see Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in one of my favorite Universal Horror films from the 1930’s, The Black Cat. Full of weird sets and weirder happenings I’m leaping at the chance to see the film. ..especially since j Hoberman is going to be presenting a brief lecture on Jewish horror films. Any talk by Hoberman is a must attend and couple it with the film they are screening and I am so there, even if it’s going to be a late train home. Details on the festival can be found here.

No comments:

Post a Comment