AUG 2012

AUG 2012
FILM
FRI, AUG 3, 9:30 PM
MAGIC
A primary inspiration for this series, Magic plays like Psycho
distorted through a funhouse mirror, plunking Anthony Hopkins
down to tread water in the same sea of sexual retardation Anthony
Perkins swam and swapping out the infamous specter of Norman
Bates’ mother for an overbearing ventriloquist’s dummy who has
a penchant for murder. William Goldman’s bold, lunatic script
(adapted from his own novel) giddily demands that the audience
join him in demented leaps of logic while Richard Attenborough’s
complimentarily assured and controlled direction makes it at
all possible for the audience to buy in for the ride. A virtuoso
dual-performance by the young Hopkins as both the shy, nebbish
ventriloquist Corky Withers and his uncontrollably obscene,
foul-mouthed puppet Fats (alongside amazing turns by Burgess
Meredith and Ann-Margaret) make every moment in this dark
satire of fame and madness worth watching. Ted, eat your heart out.
Director: Richard Attenborough. 107 min. 1978. 35mm.
TUE, AUG 7, 7:30 PM
Pauline Kael described Jeff Bridges as “the most natural and least self-conscious screen actor that has ever lived,” and since his breakout role in
1971’s The Last Picture Show, Bridges has been someone you can’t stop watching. He has had several iconic roles, none more so than The Dude
in The Big Lebowski and exploring Bridges’ work by decade unearths a worthy crop of films, some of which have not gotten the attention they
deserve. For this series we present a selection of some of our favorite Bridges films and looks (from fresh-faced kid to ‘80s dream hunk), all made
before The Dude lost his Creedence tapes.
WED, AUG 1, 7:30 PM
WED, AUG 15, 7:30 PM
THE FISHER KING
AGAINST ALL ODDS
“Mr. Bridges, always a fine intuitive actor, has never displayed a
greater range.” – Janet Maslin. Shock jock Jack Lucas’s (Jeff Bridges)
career as a vitriol-spewing radio personality comes to a halt after
one listener is inspired to go on a killing spree. Wallowing in
an alcohol-infused depression, Jack sets out to off himself when
he is startled by hobo Parry (Robin Williams), a one time man
of prestige undone by the same tragedy which resulted in the
loss of his wife. Jack aims to redeem himself by aiding Parry in
two pursuits – one being the heart of his new love (Amanda
Plummer) and the other being the Holy Grail, which he figures is
in Manhattan somewhere. Terry Gilliam infuses the story with his
unusual visual style and sense of humor.
Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward max out the sexiness in this steamy
‘80s hit! A hunky ex-football player (Bridges) is hired by a superslimy nightclub owner (James Woods) to go to Mexico to track
down his spurned lover (babe-of-all-babes Ward), but his mission
is complicated when he falls for her too. Director Taylor Hackford
infuses this update of Out of the Past with the best of the ‘80s by
utilizing two of the hottest leads in Hollywood, gorgeous locales
(sex in a Mayan ruin has never looked more alluring), and yes, that
monster Phil Collins song.
Director: Terry Gilliam. 137 min. 1991. 35mm.
WED, AUG 8, 7:30 PM
CUTTER’S WAY
Jeff Bridges and John Heard dominate as Santa Barbara burnouts
in this post-Vietnam masterpiece. A volatile, one-eyed veteran
(Heard) and his best friend, a part-time country-club gigolo
(Bridges, never looking better), attempt to blackmail a local tycoon
who may have murdered a young girl. The premise is straight out
of Film Noir 101, but it’s only the set-up for a quietly devastating
and altogether unclassifiable character study. Strong performances,
sensitive direction from Czech émigré (and former Milos Forman
collaborator) Ivan Passer and cinematography by one of the all-time
great cameramen Jordan Cronenweth (Blade Runner) make this
pretty much the definitive statement about the post-’60s hangover
and the dissolution of the American Dream.
Director: Ivan Passer. 105 min. 1981. 35mm.
Director: Taylor Hackford. 128 min. 1984. 35mm.
WED, AUG 22, 7:30 PM
STARMAN
The same year Jeff Bridges appeared bearded and smokin’ hot in
Against All Odds he achieved new, weird levels of foxiness as an
alien in human form.
Grief-stricken Jenny Hayden (Karen Allen) wakes up to find a
rapidly aging child in her living room who quickly grows to look
exactly like her dead husband. He speaks and moves awkwardly but
gets the point across that she must get him to Arizona as quickly as
possible, so the roadtrip begins. Meanwhile the Feds try to figure
out what their missile fire brought down in Wisconsin, ignoring
alien expert for-hire Mark Shermin (Charles Martin Smith) when
he reminds them that a Voyager message invited extraterrestrial
neighbors to visit Earth. A chase ensues, and along the way Jenny
transitions from feeling captured to captivated by the starman’s
warmth and surprising humanity.
Director: John Carpenter. 115 min. 1984. 35mm.
DON’T LOOK NOW
Nicolas Roeg adapts Daphne du Maurier’s (Rebecca, Jamaica Inn,
The Birds) chilling and grief-stricken psychic thriller about a
British couple relocating to Venice to heal in the wake of their
young daughter’s tragic drowning. But a killer is stalking local
women, bodies are surfacing in the canals and a ghostly figure
bearing the telltale red raincoat of the dead child haunts the
decadent, labyrinthine alleyways of this relentlessly unnerving
masterpiece of Trauma Cinema. When the couple becomes
separated and the husband reports his concerns to the police
about his wife’s whereabouts, elements of the classic Hitchcockian
wrong-man scenario become refracted through the kaleidoscopic
lens of nightmare illogic championed by Italy’s contemporary Gialli
film culture. Out of print on DVD in the U.S., Don’t Look Now
still holds the honor of including the most cathartically humane
sex-scene ever put to celluloid, an experimental, fragmentary,
achronological hyper-montage set-piece that brought as much
notoriety upon having orgasms as Psycho did upon taking showers.
Director: Nicolas Roeg. 110 min. 1973. 35mm.
THU, AUG 9, 7:30 PM
PHASE IV
From Hitchcock’s long-time poster- and titles-designer comes an
insectoid response to the Master’s own famous avian thriller. If The
Birds proposed global annihilation by an irrational swarm, Phase IV
imagines our apocalypse via an ultra-rational force of hyper-intelligent
ants. One computer-logician races to crack the hive’s language in time
to avert mankind’s doom, but he’s deterred by an increasingly mad
scientist and a beautiful naif during the unpredictable course of this
underrated Sci-Fi thriller in which each image is more graphically
striking than the last. What else would you expect from one of the
most renowned visual geniuses of the century? A calculated use of
color and a groovy electronic score round out a cinematic package
surreal enough to live up to its Dali-inspired promotional imagery (of
a single drone burrowing forth from a pained, clutching hand). If Bass’
heavy reliance on unsettling Macro photography of the colony doesn’t
leave your skin crawling for weeks afterwards, the hive-mind has
probably already subsumed your brain!
Director: Saul Bass. 93 min. 1974. 35mm.
TUE, AUG 14, 7:30 PM
THE GAME
What do you get for the man who has everything? For zillionaire
investment banker Nicholas Van Orton, a surprise birthday visit
from his prodigal younger brother yields the unwanted gift of
invitation into an ultra-exclusive alternate reality “game” offered
by the deeply mysterious Consumer Recreation Services. Prideful
curiosity becomes begrudging involvement for Van Orton until
the purportedly interactive entertainment gives way through everincreasing hostility to an apparent criminal manipulation of him, a
potentially lethal set-up to gain access to his fortunes and reduce
him to nothing. David Fincher masterfully pulls the strings in an
increasingly destabilized narrative about existence-as-pyschologicalthriller whose rules grow less and less clear by the minute. Featuring
a hairpin plotline with as many oscillations as the vertiginous San
Francisco escalations that provide its topography, The Game combines
the reliably unexpected twists and immaculate formal showmanship
of a Hitchcock classic with Fincher’s own updated palette and
wickedly deadpan humor. Michael Douglas, Sean Penn and Deborah
Kara Unger are in on the joke with fantastic performances.
Director: David Fincher. 129 min. 1997. 35mm.
TUE, AUG 21, 7:30 PM
DRESSED TO KILL
Alfred Hitchcock. First, his name became synonymous with suspense.
Then, his carefully cultivated and marketed brand of storytelling
grew into its own veritable sub-genre of psycho-sexual thrillers.
Today, his uniquely recognizable personal style and tone continues to
influence generations of filmmakers’ tendencies as well as filmgoers’
expectations. This Aug, 92YTribeca and MUBI present six of our
favorite movies influenced by the Master of Suspense (all on 35mm
film): Jonathan Demme’s early exercise in paranoia amidst a world
of double-crossing special agents; Richard Attenborough’s distorted
reimagining of Psycho with a terrifying ventriloquist’s dummy sitting in
for Norman Bates’ mother; Saul Bass’ sole directorial outing about a
killer swarm (ants, not birds); an eminently elegant and dryly sardonic
neo-noir mindgame from David Fincher; Nicoloas Roeg’s own take on
a story by frequent Hitchcock inspiration Daphne du Maurier; and a
mid-career classic of voyeurism and murder from the most devoted
heir to Hitchcock of them all, Brian De Palma.
Jonathan Demme’s delirious Hitchcock riff rivals the work of
Brian DePalma in its dazzling technique and power to transcend
borrowed storytelling. Following his wife’s tragic death and a stay
in a sanitarium, secret agent Harry Hannan (Roy Scheider) tries
reentering his life but can’t shake that a conspiracy is afoot. As
Hannan is thrust into a world of deadly games, backstabbers and
Aramaic death wishes, Demme executes several thrilling set pieces
(from a crowded train station platform to the edge of Niagara Falls)
and evokes nearly every one of The Master’s films for this veritable
amusement park of a thriller. Features an excellent cast that includes
Janet Margolin, Charles Napier, John Glover and Christopher Walken.
“There’s all kinds of ways of getting killed in this city—if you’re
looking for it.” In Brian De Palma’s 1980 re-imagining of Psycho,
the story’s iconography has shifted to the city (New York) and
its simultaneous promise—and threat—of romance and violence.
Angie Dickinson portrays a trophy housewife cruising the
metropolis to augment her unsatisfying marriage with a casual tryst
and attempts to explain the city’s coiled, seductive but terrifying
energy—first by her psychologist (Michael Caine), then by her
amateur sleuth son and finally by a blonde hooker drawn into the
plot (Nancy Allen)—fail in the face of an urban vulnerability that
conducts a pervasive sense of both potential... and fear. Each space
(public and private) might be observed, spied upon. From each
personal encounter might spring excitement or horror, a meet-cute
or an irrational murder. De Palma’s mid-career classic represents the
2nd generation of Hitchcockians—a loose group which includes
De Palma, alongside Claude Chabrol, Dario Argento and David
Lynch—who were directly inspired by Hitch’s hybrid explorations
of perspective, psychology and perversion.
Director: Jonathan Demme. 102 min. 1979. 35mm.
Director: Brian De Palma. 105 min. 1980. 35mm.
FRI, AUG 3, 7 PM
LAST EMBRACE
Order online and pay no service fees at 92YTribeca.org or call 212.601.1000
All screenings are $12 unless otherwise noted. 92Y Tribeca Film Club members get $4 off all tickets. Visit 92YTribeca.org for updates and additions.
Join the 92YTribeca Film Club! Enjoy discount admission, secret screenings, discounts in the cafe, and more!
Check 92YTribeca.org/FilmClub for details. 200 Hudson Street (just south of Canal) | An agency of UJA-Federation
ROCKY III
WHAT ABOUT BOB?
THU, AUG 2, 7:30 PM
8 PM
MIX TAPES FEATURING
MUSICCRAFT
HARD TICKET TO HAWAII
“Hawaii – it’s a great place to visit….
but you wouldn’t want to DIE there!”
An evening of rare musical ephemera. Featuring segments
from archives, personal collections and bootlegs, Mix Tapes
is an opportunity to share enthusiasm for bands as captured
on video. For this installment we present a program from
MusicCraft, a series that curates rare concert footage from
iconic musicians.You’ll see Blondie, The Cure and The Clash
back when they were shiny and new. Plus some other shared
surprises!
In 1985, independent filmmaker Andy Sidaris scored a home
video and pay-cable hit with Malibu Express, a traditional
action film starring a television hunk as an Americanized
James Bond. That film’s direct sequel – Hard Ticket to Hawaii
– made some significant changes to the action cinema format.
Hard Ticket relegated the muscular male to a supporting role
while making a pair of former Playmates the primary action
heroes of the film. Special Agent Donna Hamilton and her
partner Taryn square off against the forces of the sinister Mr.
Chang, a drug smuggler. Undercover as the beautiful pilots of
the Molokai Cargo Company, Donna, Taryn and their team
use rocket launchers, machine guns, kung fu, throwing stars
and a razor-tipped Frisbee to bring Chang’s gang – and a
radioactive mutant snake—to justice. Hard Ticket to Hawaii
is the seminal film of the “Girls with Guns” genre and is one
of the best examples of Sidaris’ “Triple B” formula: Bullets,
Bombs and Babes.
BLONDIE/1978
Filmed for the German TV show Musikladen, this September
1978 performance is as high-energy as it gets. Full-throttle
Blondie performances on the tour of their second album.
THE CURE/1979
This very rare Cure television broadcast was filmed at Theatre
de l”Empire in Aug 1979. Catch a band on fire in its earliest of
days and a very young Robert Smith in hot pink trousers.
8 PM
THE ‘BURBS
Director: Andy Sidaris. 96 mins. 1987. 35mm.
9:50 PM
THE CLASH/1980
This rare live footage was filmed in 1980 for the French TV
program Chorus and captures the band at their peak, touring
in support of their album masterpiece London Calling.
THU, AUG 2, 9:15 PM
ROCKY III
30th anniversary screening!
Part of the series Before They Were Expendable.
Sylvester Stallone returns as Rocky Balboa (and writer/
director) for the third story of the Italian Stallion. Softened
by success, our hero languishes in luxury and finds that his
drive has diminished. Clubber Lang (Mr. T) taunts him in
public, accusing him of only fighting weaklings to ensure the
title remains his. Rocky decides to step into the ring again
but is easily taken down by Lang in the second round. Enter
Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), this time as a friend, leading the
training montage to get Rocky back to his full potential for a
rematch with Lang. This is the one for which Survivor wrote
“Eye of the Tiger,” plus it has Hulk Hogan!
Director: Sylvester Stallone. 99 min. 1982. 35mm.
SAT, AUG 4, 8 PM, $10
THE IRON MULE SHORT
COMEDY FILM FESTIVAL
The Iron Mule Short Comedy Screening Series was founded
in April, 2002 under the name First Sundays at the Chicago
City Limits Theater in NYC and has been screening monthly
ever since. We are a collective of filmmakers and film lovers
who meet monthly to celebrate funny and inventive short
cinema among friends. Join us if you dare! This month’s Iron
Mule features animation by twins and English people, an
Australian film about attempted suicide, an Irish film about
a murderous cat, helpful tips about accident preparedness, a
documentary about an Amish drifter and more! Our guest
judge this month is comic, actor and playwright Katherine
Williams.
ANDY SIDARIS
DOUBLE FEATURE:
HARD TICKET TO HAWAII
AND PICASSO TRIGGER
Producer Arlene Sidaris in person!
“Killing is an art form.”
The sequel to Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Picasso Trigger sees
Donna Hamilton and Taryn return to take on the notorious
spy and double agent known only as “Picasso Trigger.”
The action takes on an international stage, from Europe to
the bayous of Louisiana, Las Vegas and expectedly, Hawaii.
Sidaris ups the ante considerably by doubling the number
of Playmates and tripling the number of low-budget James
Bond gadgets and modes of conveyance, including a hovercraft
chase scene ripped straight from The Spy Who Loved Me. The
villains come at our heroines from all sides, including from
within as the deadly “Pantera,” a sultry assassin, infiltrates the
team. Sidaris called Picasso Trigger “a splashy, easy-read comic
book for grown-ups.” The same could be said of all his films,
but Picasso Trigger is certainly one of the high-points of his
career.
Director: Andy Sidaris. 99 mins. 1988. 35mm
THU, AUG 16, 7:30 PM
WHAT ABOUT BOB?
Part of the series Overdue, programmed by
Nick Pinkerton and Nicolas Rapold.
AUG 2012
Director: Frank Oz. 99 min. 1991. 35mm.
CREEPY NEIGHBORS
DOUBLE FEATURE:
THE ‘BURBS AND THE PEOPLE
UNDER THE STAIRS
Part of the Beer Goggles series.
Guest curated by Fangoria’s Samuel Zimmerman.
FILM
Director: Joe Dante. 101 min. 1989. 35mm.
10 PM
THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS
Buried under his three landmark horrors, Wes Craven boasts
a host of varied, weird and rich works, that despite the
early 90s-aesthetics, still feel fresh, poignant and completely
ridiculous. His darkly comedic take on the terrors of classism,
gentrification and the increasing gap between the haves and
have-nots, The People Under the Stairs, is informed by grungy
creature kids, severed ears, heartwarming winks, incestuous
suburbanites and a GIMP Dad. Way more fun than some New
York Times trend-piece type deal.
Come early for Happy Hour! An hour before the screening,
our café will offer $2 off most beer and wine for movie ticket
holders. And you can bring your drink into the screening, too!
THU, AUG 23, 8 PM
FLASH GORDON
Part of the series Basic Cable Classics.
From the producer of Barbarella comes this equally campy popart fantasy, a candy-colored adaptation of the 30’s pulp comic
updated for the disco age, like Studio-54-in-space for adolescent
boys. Playgirl beefcake Sam J. Jones stars as lantern-jawed NY
Jets quarterback “Flash” Gordon, inexplicably rocketed to
far-off planet Mongo with a plucky Girl Friday in tow, only
to find himself pitted against fiendish Ming The Merciless
(Max von Sydow, arch-eyebrowed and infectiously over-thetop). Eager to stop Ming from sending an unending rain of
“hot hail” onto planet Earth, Flash must first fend off a flying
squadron of barrel-chested Hawk-men, a swashbuckling rogue
in green leggings (Timothy Dalton in full hands-on-hips Errol
Flynn mode) and a bevy of dark-eyed voluptuous seductresses.
Thundering pomp-rock soundtrack courtesy of Queen.
Director: Mike Hodges. 111 min. 1980. 35mm.
Bill Murray raises neurosis to new levels of larfs and lovability
as the unstoppable yet paralyzed-by-anxiety nut Bob
Wiley, who finds liberation through uptight star shrink Dr.
Leo Marvin (an appealingly apoplectic Richard Dreyfuss).
Latching on to Dreyfuss like an overgrown toddler at the
first day of kindergarten, Murray breaks with doctor-patient
protocol by following Dreyfuss and the fam on their lakeside
vacation, slowly driving the man mad. Watch Murray as he
wrings comic potential out of every line with the slightest
twist in timing and nuance, making the holy-fool scenario
sing. A Murray classic, from before he was “rediscovered” as
a “deadpan genius” and an underappreciated comedy from
director Frank Oz (coming off Eighties rib-tickler Dirty
Rotten Scoundrels). “Gimme, gimme, gimme, I need, I need,
I need!”
HARD TICKET TO HAWAII
The angry villagers of Universal Monsters’ heyday may have
transformed into complacent cul-de-sac inhabitants, but
they’re no less prone to frenzied mob mentality when a family,
the classically creepy Klopecs, move to Hinkley Hills and
start digging. Monster kid Joe Dante’s tale of just how nuts
everyone on the block really is, is the most fun, and becomes
even more so through a sud-soaked lens.
Director: Wes Craven. 102 min. 1991. 35mm.
PICASSO TRIGGER
FRI, AUG 17, 8 PM
FRI, AUG 10, 8 PM
FLASH GORDON
THE ‘BURBS
THU, AUG 24, 7 PM
THE SOLDIER
Presenting a very rare 35mm film screening for the 30th
anniversary with director James Glickenhaus in person!
Following the success of the 42nd street classic The
Exterminator, director James Glickenhaus upped the ante
with this slick, thrilling actioner in which Russian terrorists
plant a nuclear bomb in a Saudi Arabian oil field and
threaten to destroy half of the world’s oil supply unless Israel
pulls out from the West Bank. With time running out, the
US government calls on their top operative (Ken Wahl),
codenamed The Soldier, to neutralize the threat by any means
necessary. Featuring eye-popping stunts and mayhem across
four continents, a blazing Tangerine Dream soundtrack,
the best ski sequence ever committed to celluloid, and the
immortal tagline, “You don’t assign him.You unleash him,” this
is the quintessential ‘80s action flick.
Director: James Glickenhaus. 96 min. 1982. 35mm.
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THE SOLDIER
Order online and pay no service fees at 92YTribeca.org or call 212.601.1000
All screenings are $12 unless otherwise noted. 92Y Tribeca Film Club members get $4 off all tickets.
Visit 92YTribeca.org for updates and additions. Join the 92YTribeca Film Club!
Enjoy discount admission, secret screenings, discounts in the cafe, and more!
Check 92YTribeca.org/FilmClub for details. 200 Hudson Street (just south of Canal)