Art and Movies: Rambling
March 10th, 2008Despite the fact it may forward the curse, I watched the rest of Roadhouse this weekend, then followed it with The Great Moment (out-of-character Sturges heroic dentist biopic) and Real Life (showcasing Albert Brook’s horrifying shoulder fur)
My parents were in town, briefly, and I went to the Met (museum, not opera) with them. They’ve renovated the 19th/18th Century painting area (I can’t remember what the old gallery looked like… I probably could reconstruct the layout of the National Gallery in DC from memory, though). The three temporary shows were a parade of snooze and yuck though… Courbet,Poussin, and Jasper Johns: Gray.
However, on Sunday, I have found a new obsession. I’ve been a cranky snob about the last couple years about the revival schedules put up at Film Forum. They flipflop from being paint-dryingly dull retrospectives of the third-best forgotten masters of Japanese drawing room dramas where 2/3 of the movie is people emotionlessly staring at each other or, the UA screening coming up, so broad and mainstream that every movie on the ticket is available at your local blockbuster. Although, I really do applaud Film Forum’s ability to work my favorite movie “One, Two, Three” into EVERY series. Hooray!
Anyway, due to a listing in the New York Times (that I was only reading because my parents had a copy in their hotel room), I saw the New-York Historical Society (I don’t know why it’s hyphenated) was showing a double feature of silents. Turns out this group—Silent Clowns—has been showing extremely rare silents for the last 10 years. I finally found a film series nerdy/unpretenious enough to meet my specific film needs.
They seem to have a show once a month from fall through spring—there’s only two showings left this month. Next month is some guy with a mustache but the next one after that is Laurel & Hardy (meh) shorts AND a female slapstick duo and I’m intrigued. One is tall and one is short and in the promo picture they seemed to be tied together at the waist with a guilt look on their faces—that says “comedy” to me!