Pick of the Week:

Night Tide (1963) starring the late Dennis Hopper is at the Brattle tonight at 7:30pm.
Directedby the always interesting Curtis Harrington this is a odd gothic story of a sailorman who falls in love with a side show mermaid, doesn't quite rise to the weirdness level of "Carnival of Souls" but what the hell does?

Oh thank Gawd...

The State Senate has voted to ban smoking in any future gambling casinos that might be built here in the Commonwealth.
Thus bankrupt gambling addicts will be forever spared the horrors of nicotine dependence, they may die of starvation having put the mortgage the grovery money all on fourteen black, but they won't croak off of lung cancer, not if the Massachusetts State Senate has anything to say about it.
Yeah I know, it is heavy handed sarcasm to say the least, but those of us in the anti-casino cohort have little sway over the state legislature and are reduced to snarkage as the Commonwealth fatefully lurches towards legalized gambling.

Pick of the Week:

Still, the Harvard Film Archive Seventies Sci Fi retrospective.
Tonight the standout revival is "Deathrace 2000" an admirable prophecy of reality TV in every way and an odd prediction of the coming wave of opportunistic Francophobia as well.
Tomorrow night it is "Glen and Randa", a post apocalyptic movie that almost never gets revived on the big screen and then Sunday it's "Solaris", all in all a tasty schedule, can't tell you which to pick as they are all so good.

If the Red Line was any slower this morning

the damn train would've left me off in Park Street just in time for the Morlocks to finish off the Eloi in the World Cup finals of the year 800,000 AD.

Honestly, if there is a serious delay or situation the PA system on the Red Line is set to "hoarse whisper" but whenever the train operator feels a need to share their panic and whiny frustration with us, the damn loudspeakers "go up to eleven".
The slightest puff of wind, birds on the wires, not enough birds on the wires, the tracks are too wet the tracks are too try, the ground is too close...and the whole of the Red Line grinds to a miserable self pitying halt.
They say San Francisco is run by gays and hippies, but the damn trains run on time and it's in an earthquake zone too.

Pic of the week:

Dark Star (7pm) and Westworld (9pm) are both playing at the HFA tonight. Never did see "Westworld" on the Bi-ig indoor screen...
Since "Jonah Hex" isn't playing at any drive in within sane distance of my home, ah guess ah opting fer th' Crimson tonight.

Pick of the Week:

Fritz Lang's Metropolis izzat the Capitol in East Arlington.
Yup this might be yer only chance to see a classic silent movie on the Bii-ig Indoor Screen in Arlington, th' way Ghod intended it to be seen!
Let us face facts, Fritz Lang invented the fembot, Rhoda the Robot,Seven of Nine, Helen O'Loy, Dr. Evil's fembots etc etc are all descendants of the original Maria (AKA "Sweet Parody").

I took one look at the...

Soap box racer derby that went off on Eastern Ave in Glorious Arlington and thought to myself "Why didn't someone think of this before??!!!"
For the initiated, Eastern Ave in Glorious Arlington, runs straight and true at a good thirty five to forty degree angle for almost a half mile, a nigh perfect soapbox racer course assuming the many connecting streets can be blocked off safely.
The drizzle hardly dampened anyone's ardor to race it seems...Plenty of parents and kids underfoot, looked like fun to this jaded forty seven year old.

Donovan's Reef (1963) or how I learned to stop worrying and Love John Ford

The great movie houses must one day fall, like the topmost towers of Illium. The Mendon Twin Drive In, The Capitol, the Coolidge Corner, that fortress known as the Brattle all will go to smash under the deluge of download culture.
Entropy favors Dunkin Donuts.
And when it becomes time to make my last stand on behalf of the Big Indoor Screen, I know that fate will reserve me a seat at the Harvard Film Archive.
Because only the Harvard Film Archive is willing to hazard all on a screening of John Ford's filmography, the monuments and the misfires.
Completism is a becoming irrelevant in the shadow of Youtube and Facebook, the HFA will have none of that though, they will show it all and compel all and sundry to make up their own minds.
So when it came screening "Donovan's Reef" Ford's 1963 "comedy" starring John Wayne, Lee Marvin and Elizabeth Allen, these are the life lessons I derived from this the master director's south seas swan song.

1.) It is quirte possible for John Ford to drink heavily and steadily through out the entire film making process and still produce an aimless charming derelict of a movie.

2.)Life is about brawls, grown adult men express their love by beating up their friends within an inch of stupidity.

3.) Life is also about drinking, chiefly beer and brandy at all hours of the day and even on Christmas, especially on Christmas.

4.) When in doubt lie to a woman, when really in doubt manipulate and evade if need be, take her water ski-ing over dangerous jumps.

5.) These United States are ruled by a King and he is Lee Marvin.

6.)Prim hawties from Boston will flirt with Cesar Romero but always settle for John Wayne no matter how old and battered the Duke may look.

7.) Modern engagements are sealed with a spanking on the affianced' female's backside...

So there you have it, the very nub of the Fordian Zeitgeist, a code by which to live and love the movies in good times and bad, inebriation and damning sobriety.