By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Screening Gotham: July 21-23, 2006
My scarcity around these parts culminates in a few heavy deadlines Monday; I hope to return next week with something resembling regularity, or at least utility. Meanwhile, as per Reeler custom, here are a few of this weekend’s worthwhile cinematic goings-on around New York:
–BAM continues its Great Villians in Cinema series with about as disparate a trio as you can conjure. James Cagney stars today in White Heat (right), the crime saga showcasing the actor’s turn as sneering, wretched gangster (and unapologetic mama’s boy) Cody Jarrett. For anyone who missed A Clockwork Orange earlier this month at the Museum of the Moving Image’s Kubrick retrospective, you’ll have an encore opportunity Saturday to see Malcolm McDowell’s eyelids peeled back in the name of rehabilitation. Finally, Sunday brings Michael Powell’s voyeuristic lady-slayer Peeping Tom. And if all that unrepentant nastiness is just too much of a karmic burden, you can always check in on the more lovable puzzle nemesis Will Shortz in Wordplay, also now playing right in the same building.
–I swear I am not on Celebrate Brooklyn’s payroll; the Prospect Park arts series just has that much going for it in consecutive weeks. You will remember Yo La Tengo chiming and shimmering last week over the underwater films of Jean Painlevé, and tonight, the Alloy Orchestra takes the Bandshell to perform its score to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1929 silent-film swan song, Blackmail. Probably most famous for its British Museum chase sequence and its concurrently made talkie version, Blackmail is even more notably the dynamic, accomplished work of a master director barely 30 years old. As I prepare for my own 30th while flailing away on a fucking blog, I will try not to be too resentful.
–Catastrophe, camp or classic? You be the judge as misunderstood genius M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water opens with all the grace of a picnic on a shooting range.