Jonathan Levine’s crowd-pleasing (in terms of audience awards at festivals, not in terms of uplifting Hollywood endings) film The Wacknessopens in limited release tomorrow. In case you haven’t noticed from the ads and the soundtrack, it takes place in the New York City of 1994, a special time for the place because Rudy Giuliani had just become mayor and was beginning to clean up the city, Goldie Wilson-stylee (OK, not really Goldie Wilson-stylee, but who doesn’t love a good BTTFreference?).
NYC in the ’90s was quite special for me. It’s when I moved here. And moved here a second time (I’ve since moved here a third time), and watching The Wackness made me nostalgic for the decade. It also made me think of some of the other films from or set in that period, a number of which kind of define my experience with the city.
Though it’s long past the point of Cloverfieldbacklash, I was only recently beginning to think the J.J. Abrams-produced monster movie could actually suck. I thought: this really is just going to be like TheBlair Witch Projectmeets Godzilla, isn’t it? This is really not much more than a movie based around an idea. This is just a camcorder-shot sci-fi action movie, and it’s not going to be pulled off well enough to hold my attention all the way through. It didn’t help that the widely read review on AICN makes the movie sound so awesome that it’s writer, Neill Cumpston, sounds like a plant. I’ll admit that I skipped most of the review to avoid spoilers, but Stu’s excerpt at The Reelerwas enough to convince me that NOTHING can be as cool as Cumpston makes it sound. It was just another thing that made me realize that no matter what, I’m going to be disappointed with the reality that will be my experience with the film.
Then I watched this new TV spot that comes to us courtesy of Movieweb (via Cinematical), which shows us that Cloverfield will not just be this hand-held-video perspective of chaos. Well, actually, it will technically just be this hand-held-video perspective of chaos, but it will at least be more expansive than I previously assumed it would be. Check out the cityscape shot from atop the roof, for instance. I didn’t expect to see jets in action. Nor did I think there’d be much action at all, not like those ground troops shooting at the monster. Am I being once again suckered by the hype? Maybe, but I enjoy playing hokey pokey with movie marketing and this time I have my right foot in. Any day now I’ll be back to the part where I take my right foot back out, but it’s very possible that by the movie’s release date, I’ll be at the point of having my whole body in, and shaking it all about.
I’m swooning this morning over a 16-page PDF, advertising the fall programming schedule for Los Angeles’ Silent Movie Theater, which has recently been remade as a full-service rep house. Growing up in Los Angeles, the old Silent Movie was a key constellation on the moviegoing map, along with the New Beverly, the Nuart, the Music Hall, that shitty discount Cineplex Odeon on Fairfax and Beverly, and the (recently-shuttered) Rialto in Pasadena. Now that I’ve been spoiled by New York theaters like Film Forum and the Pioneer, I understand that none of these places were all that adventurously programmed when I was frequenting them in the mid-to-late 90s, but within Los Angeles’ oppressive strip mall non-culture, there was something exciting about watching something like King Kong with live organ accompaniment at the Silent, or even just getting a car full of people to drive out to Pasadena to see a print of Ghostbusters that actually had scratches on it.
But with the new Silent Movie, Los Angeles finally has the rep house that it probably doesn’t deserve. The program for the remainder of 2007 is wildly exciting. I’ve listed some highlights after the jump; you can download the gorgeous PDF program here.
