Coming attractions

Here’s what to expect from Cinema Salon, both as website and film club:

Here online, I'll post in the next few days a composite review covering recent films such Monsieur Lazhar and The Master; then my near-complete retrospective of Paul Newman’s career; and finally, in time for the 8^th anniversary of this blog on New Year’s Day, a tour “Around the World in Eighty Films,” which will highlight my choices for the best of world cinema over the past decade.

At the Clark, I anticipate film club screenings most Fridays through the winter, January through March.  Many will coordinate with the official Clark film series running through those months, a series of Saturday matinees called “Widescreen Wonders,” six films in high-definition extra-wide formats, each of them a Best Picture Oscar-winner, cumulatively earning 47 Academy Awards.  So for example, when I am showing The Bridge on the River Kwai on Saturday, I’ll show two other David Lean films on Friday.  On alternate weeks, I will typically be showing double features highlighting foreign directors, recent and classic, such as the Dardennes brothers, Almodovar, Wong-Kar Wai, Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray, and Max Ophuls.  I haven’t yet consulted either the Clark’s calendar or my own, but will update programs as the schedule develops.

At Images Cinema, I plan to be available for post-film discussion after the 3:00 pm screening of Lincoln on Sunday, December 30.  I think the film is exceptionally good, Daniel Day-Lewis sublime, and I’ve just finished reading Team of Rivals, the Doris Kearns Goodwin book on which the film is based, as well as re-watching John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln and other cinematic portraits, so I will definitely be primed to talk about the subject.  And I’m eager to see the digital projection upgrade at Images.

Lincoln

After almost eight years, I am finding it harder to keep this blog fresh and current, but I’ve just seen a new film that urges me to break silence and make a strong recommendation.  Even though the last Steven Spielberg-Tony Kushner collaboration (Munich) was a film I abominated, and though I tend to find Daniel Day-Lewis admirable but over-mannered, Lincoln (2012, MC-86) is not just my pick for the best film of the year so far, but the most convincing and moving portrayal ever of Lincoln, or indeed of any President.  Not to mention the most truthful depiction of Congressional debate, the liveliest reenactment of historical controversy, and a riveting entertainment to boot.  My highest praise is that it did not strike me as Spielbergian at all, until a few over-emphatic wobbles near the end.  Beyond Day-Lewis and his uncanny verbal and physical impersonation of old (semi-) Honest Abe, David Strathairn is excellent as William Seward, Tommy Lee Jones a delight as Thaddeus Stevens, and Sally Field a revelation as Mary Todd Lincoln.  As a trio of shady political operators buying votes for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment (freeing the slaves for real after the wartime expedient of the Emancipation Proclamation), James Spader, John Hawkes, and Tim Blake Nelson shine in small but significant roles.  As do a host of faces familiar from excellent tv series, Gale from Breaking Bad, Lane from Mad Men (as Grant!), Boyd from Justified, Arnold Rothstein from Boardwalk Empire, even Lena Dunham’s creepy boyfriend from Girls, among other notables.  While such familiarity might have been distracting, they each look and act the part in a way that simply makes it easier to keep such a crowded canvas coherent.  I confess that I am a sucker for the Civil War as a subject (and the antebellum era even more), but that only makes me more impressed with the quality and truthfulness of historical representation in this movie.  I would have sniffed out phoniness and withheld any suspension of disbelief.  As it was, I was enraptured, transported, convinced.