Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman, playing on Sundance on Wednesday

A few newly featured things this week, of varying degrees of interestingness. A day of Warren Beatty films on TCM on Monday bring bona fide classic Bonnie & Clyde, as well as his Best Director-winning film Reds and the not-particularly-successful but still interesting Mickey One, among others. A few notable documentaries show up throughout the week in Harlan County USA, Visual Acoustics, and Cropsey. IFC has both parts of Soderbergh’s Che playing back to back on Tuesday, and TCM brings out revisionist western The Wild Bunch on Friday.

Monday, August 9

7:35am – IFC – Spirited Away
Often considered Hayao Miyazaki’s finest film, it’s easily among the best family-friendly animated films in existence, full of magic and wonder, gods and spirits, and shapeshifting spells.
2001 Japan. Director: Hayao Miyazaki. Starring: Rumi Hiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki.
(repeats at 2:15pm)

4:00pm – TCM – Mickey One
This is not a particularly great film, but it is interesting as a pre-Bonnie and Clyde collaboration between Arthur Penn and Warren Beatty, where they’re trying to do some of the same things in terms of bringing European style to an American story. It’s not nearly as successful as Bonnie and Clyde, but it does have its moments.
1965 USA. Director: Arthur Penn. Starring: Warren Beatty, Alexandra Stewart, Hurd Hatfield, Franchot Tone.
Newly Featured!

6:00pm – TCM – Bonnie and Clyde
This is a perfect film. If you have not seen it, see it. If you have seen it, see it again. In either case, rather than write again how much I love it, I will just refer you here.
1967 USA. Director: Arthur Penn. Starring: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons.
Must See

10:00pm – Sundance – Ran
Akira Kurosawa’s inspired transposition of King Lear into medieval Japan, mixing Shakespeare and Japanese Noh theatre tradition like nobody’s business.
1985 Japan. Director: Akira Kurosawa. Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu.
Must See
(repeats at 4:15am on the 10th)

10:30pm – TCM – Reds
Warren Beatty hasn’t directed a lot of movies in his career, but he won an Academy Award for this one, telling the story of John Reed, a real-life radical American journalist who witnessed the 1917 Russian Revolution and tried to bring Communist ideals to the United States.
1981 United States. Director: Warren Beatty. Starring: Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Edward Herrmann, Jack Nicholson.
Newly Featured!

Tuesday, August 10

12:00N – IFC – Harlan County, U.S.A.
Often considered one of the finest documentaries ever put on film, Barbara Kopple’s film documents a 1973 coal miner’s strike in Kentucky which lasted over a year.
1976 USA. Director: Barbara Kopple.
Newly Featured!

12:00N – TCM – Anchors Aweigh
What’s that you say? Your life won’t be complete until you see Gene Kelly dance with an animated Jerry the Mouse from the Tom & Jerry cartoons? Well, you’re in luck with this film. Oh, right, there’s also a story-type thing with Kelly and Frank Sinatra as sailors and Kathryn Grayson as the love interest, but really, it’s all about Gene and Jerry.
1945 USA. Director: George Sidney. Starring: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, José Iturbi, Dean Stockwell.

1:45pm – IFC – Che
Steven Soderbergh’s ambitious two-part epic about South American revolutionary Che Guevara. IFC is playing both parts back to back.
2008 USA. Director: Steven Soderbergh. Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Julia Ormond, Rodrigo Santoro.
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 5:30am on the 11th)

6:30pm – IFC – The Good German
Steven Soderbergh’s attempt using 1940s equipment and filming techniques didn’t actually turn into a particularly good movie, but as a filmmaking experiment, it’s still fairly interesting. And has George Clooney and Cate Blanchett in gorgeous B&W as former lovers/current spies, if you’re into that sort of thing.
2006 USA. Director: Steven Soderbergh. Starring: George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire.

2:00am (11th) – TCM – Kiss Me Kate
It’s hard to improve Shakespeare, but it usually works best to place his stories and words in a new context. Kiss Me Kate does just that by coupling a musical version of Taming of the Shrew with a backstage story that mirrors Shrew’s fighting protagonists. Great supporting work from Ann Miller, James Whitmore, Keenan Wynn, etc. helps out leads Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson considerably, as do Cole Porter’s songs.
1953 USA. Director: George Sidney. Starring: Howard Keel, Kathryn Grayson, Ann Miller, James Whitmore, Keenan Wynn.

Wednesday, August 11

10:20am – Sundance – Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman
Photographer Julius Shulman is renowned for his breathtaking photographs of Los Angeles, capturing the architecture of the city at the height of the Modernist heyday of Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Gehry, and others. This doc profiles Shulman and celebrates his indelible contribution to photography, architecture, design, and Los Angeles itself.
2008 USA. Director: Eric Bricker. Starring: Julius Shulman.
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 4:20pm)

8:00pm – IFC – Blow Out
Sound man John Travolta is recording sound samples one night, and may have accidentally recorded a murder occurring. As he tries to investigate, he’s drawn into a dangerous conspiracy. Inspired to some degree by Antonioni’s photography-based Blow-Up, but this is definitely DePalma’s film all the way.
1981 USA. Director: Brian DePalma. Starring: John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz.
(repeats at 3:00am on the 12th)

8:00pm – Sundance – The Discreet Charm of the Bourgoisie
Luis Bu˜uel made a career out of making surrealist anti-bourgeois films, and this is one of the most surreal, most anti-bourgeois, and best films he ever made, about a dinner party that just can’t quite get started due to completely absurd interruptions.
1972 France. Director: Luis Buñuel. Starring: Fernando Rey, Paul Fankeur, Delphine Seyrig, Stéphane Audran, Jean-Pierre Cassel.
(repeats at 1:25am and 12:00N on the 12th)

Thursday, August 12

8:00pm – TCM – The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
There’s a musical version of this story from the 1950s, with powerful vocals from tenor Mario Lanza, but this silent version is much stronger and more evocative – likely because of director Ernst Lubitsch. Latin heartthrob Ramon Novarro plays the prince trying to ignore his royal duties when he falls in love with barmaid Norma Shearer.
1927 USA. Director: Ernst Lubitsch. Starring: Ramon Novarro, Norma Shearer, Jean Hersholt.
Newly Featured!

10:00pm – TCM – Private Lives
A sparkling battle-of-the-sexes comedy from the witty pen of Noel Coward. Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery play a divorced couple recently remarried to other people – until they end up honeymooning in adjoining suites and can’t manage to stay away from each other. It’s deliciously pre-code in dialogue and innuendo. It is pretty clearly early in the sound era, though, which tends to make some of it come across a little shrill.
1931 USA. Director: Sidney Franklin. Starring: Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Reginald Denny, Una Merkel.

Friday, August 13

9:45am – IFC – The Station Agent
One of the most pleasant surprises (for me, anyway) of 2003. Peter Dinklage moves into a train depot to indulge his love for trains and stay away from people, only to find himself befriended by a loquacious Cuban hot-dog stand keeper and an emotionally delicate Patricia Clarkson. A quiet but richly rewarding film.
2003 USA. Director: Thomas McCarthy. Starring: Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, Bobby Cannavale.
(repeats at 2:25pm)

7:15pm – IFC – Pulp Fiction
Tarantino’s enormously influential and entertaining film pretty much needs no introduction from me. Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta give the performances of their careers, Tarantino’s dialogue is spot-on in its pop-culture-infused wit, and the chronology-shifting, story-hopping editing style has inspired a host of imitators, most nowhere near as good.
1994 USA. Director: Quentin Tarantino. Starring: Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, Tim Roth, Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames.
Must See
(repeats at 3:00am on the 14th)

9:00pm – Investigation Discovery – Cropsey: The Urban Legend
Documentary-style horror films are nothing new, but Cropsy claims to be the real thing, as the filmmakers investigate urban legend stories after one from their own childhood seems to be actually true. I’m not 100% sure how much to believe all this, but I haven’t seen the film – it’s been getting pretty good press on the festival circuit.
2009 USA. Directors: Barbara Brancaccio and Joshua Zeman.
Newly Featured!

1:15am (14th) – TCM – The Wild Bunch
One of several westerns in the sixties and seventies preoccupied with aging cowboys and their displacement as the world moves on around them – and one of the best, with a level of grit and violence that hadn’t really been seen up to this point. Uncompromising direction from Sam Peckinpah plus a cast that knew their way around traditional westerns make this one to remember.
1969 USA. Director: Sam Peckinpah. Starring: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O’Brien, Ben Johnson.
Must See
Newly Featured!

Saturday, August 14

6:30am – IFC – Hannah and Her Sisters
Though I love Manhattan and Annie Hall to bits, I throw my vote for best Woody Allen movie ever to Hannah and Her Sisters. It has all the elements Allen is known for – neurotic characters, infidelity, a tendency to philosophize randomly, New York City, dysfunctional family dynamics, acerbic wit – and blends them together much more cogently and evenly than most of his films do.
1986 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Barbara Hershey, Mia Farrow, Carrie Fisher, Michael Caine, Dianne Wiest, Woody Allen.
Must See
(repeats at 2:35pm)

Sunday, August 15

8:05am – Sundance – Curse of the Golden Flower
One of the weaker entries in Zhang Yimou’s series of historical martial-arts-on-wires films, but it still has its moments – and the production design, as usual, is flawlessly beautiful. Definitely worth a watch if you’re a fan of the style.
2006 China. Director: Zhang Yimou. Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Gong Li, Jay Chou, Ye Liu.
(repeats at 3:45pm)

3:45pm – TCM – Meet Me in St. Louis
The ultimate nostalgia film, harking back to the turn of the century and the year leading up to the 1903 St. Louis World’s Fair. Judy Garland holds the film and the family in it together as the girl who only wants to love the boy next door, but it’s Margaret O’Brien as the little willful sister who adds the extra bit of oomph, especially in the manic Halloween scene and the violent Christmas scene that carries the film from an exercise in sentimentality into a deeper territory of loss and distress.
1944 USA. Director: Vincente Minnelli. Starring: Judy Garland, Tom Drake, Lucille Bremer, Margaret O’Brien, Leon Ames, Mary Astor.
Must See

5:35pm – IFC – The Proposition
Australia’s answer to the western; Guy Pearce must hunt down and capture his brothers for the law in order to save his own skin. Gritty and violent almost to a fault, and it definitely brought new life to the Western genre.
2005 Australia. Director: John Hillcoat. Starring: Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone.
(repeats at 1:35am on the 16th)