News

Zeros and Ones"The fact that we’re still making movies is a fucking miracle."—Abel FerraraAbel Ferrara has, for most of his career—most of his life, really—been more comfortable amid scum and sewage and sin, the tawdry, oil-slick sleaze of pre-Giuliani New York, than he has polite society. He was, in his youth, into middle age, even now, at 69—a family man and ten years sober after a lifetime of insalubrious activities—not one to give a fuck. He's more 42nd Street than 54th, and yet he got a nice retrospective at MoMA a couple years ago. He cut his teeth on porn and exploitation that, while just as schlocky as anything else with a similar budget and penchant for perversity, is obviously made by a mad genius, one who doesn't entirely fit in with the other weirdos of New York. Consider the ferocity of his early films,...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film Forum

“Decolonizing Cinema” has features from Sembène and The Battle of Algiers.

Last Year at Marienbad has been restored, while The Dybbuk screens on Sunday.

A League of Their Own plays this Saturday and Sunday.

Film at Lincoln Center

An Ester Krumbachová retrospective brings Czechoslovak New Wave classics.

The new restoration of War and Peace returns.

After Cat Chaser, Abel Ferrera was reluctant to give up final cut again, not without a fight anyways. The erotic thriller’s 1989 theatrical release, complete with a clunky voiceover ghosted by another actor because leading hunk Peter Weller refused, has a fundamentally different character from Ferrera’s director’s cut currently housed in the basement at Anthology Film Archives. Last Tuesday, Anthology screened the only known copy, on video with time code, a rough audio mix, and without a score, for the first time maybe ever since it played on the Fox lot to studio bigwigs in the ’80s. That’s the last […]...

After Cat Chaser, Abel Ferrera was reluctant to give up final cut again, not without a fight anyways. The erotic thriller’s 1989 theatrical release, complete with a clunky voiceover ghosted by another actor because leading hunk Peter Weller refused, has a fundamentally different character from Ferrera’s director’s cut currently housed in the basement at Anthology Film Archives. Last Tuesday, Anthology screened the only known copy, on video with time code, a rough audio mix, and without a score, for the first time maybe ever since it played on the Fox lot to studio bigwigs in the ’80s. That’s the last […]...

“If images don’t do anything in this culture,” I said, plunging on, “if they haven’t done anything, then why are we sitting here in the twilight of the twentieth century talking about them? And if they only do things after we have talked about them, then they aren’t doing them, we are. Therefore, if our criticism aspires to anything beyond soft-science, the efficacy of images must be the cause of criticism, and not its consequence—the subject of criticism and not its object. And this,” I concluded rather grandly, “is why I direct your attention to the language of visual affect—to the rhetoric of how things look—to the iconography of desire—in a word, to beauty!” I made a voilá gesture for punctuation, but to no avail. People were quietly filing out.  —Dave Hickey, The Invisible Dragon.

“Originally, the embeddedness of an artwork in the...

Writer/director Charles Matthau, son of actor Walter Matthau, will adapt the 1988 crime novel "Freaky Deaky" by author Elmore Leonard.

Matthau will direct from his own script with actor William H. Macy attached to star.

To be set in 1974, premise of "Freaky Deaky" follows a radical 1960's couple who became activists, then 'explosives experts' for hire.

Several of Elmore's books have been adapted to film, including "Hombre" (1967), "Get Shorty" (1995), "Rum Punch" (aka "Jackie Brown") (1997) and "Out of Sight" (1998).

Other Elmore novels turned into films include "Mr. Majestyk" (Charles Bronson), "Valdez Is Coming" (Burt Lancaster), "52 Pick-Up" (Roy Scheider), "Stick" (Burt Reynolds), "The Moonshine War" (Alan Alda), "Last Stand at Saber River" (Tom Selleck), "Gold Coast" (David Caruso), "Glitz" (Jimmy Smits), "Cat Chaser" (Peter Weller), "Touch" (Christopher Walken), "Pronto" (Peter Falk), "Be Cool" (John Travolta) and the Toronto-lensed "Killshot" (Mickey Rourke).

"Freaky Deaky" starts shooting in 2011.

Click the images to enlarge...

Dear Abel,

Happy birthday. I guess the respectable thing—the relevant thing—would have been to wait to until a milestone year, to wait until your 60th to write this letter. But you'll have nothing of respectability or relevance, so neither should I. What kind of a fan would I be if I only remembered your birthday once every decade?

Are you ever gonna get Jekyll and Hyde made? It seems like a good project for you, because you're one of the last directors to believe in evil (but then again, you're the director of lasts: The Addiction, the last true "post-war" film; Cat Chaser, the last film noir). Out of all of the versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I like yours the most, and I find the ending the most terrifying, because what wins out is not the unthinking alien force, but the human capacity for evil.