Scarecrow
Uniting People With Film
The Seasoned Ticket #26
Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. He will be contributing a series of “critic’s notes” to the Scarecrow blog—a chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connecting them to the riches of Scarecrow’s collection.
The latest film by the dean of American documentary filmmakers opens at the Northwest Film Forum this weekend. Monrovia, Indiana is Frederick Wiseman’s 44th feature, or so IMDb tells me, a study of small-town America at a particularly fraught moment. I look forward to seeing the film, and in the meantime offer up a couple of reviews of recent Wiseman pictures that struck me as somewhat smallish in his career but absorbing and very, very enjoyable: La danse (2009) and Boxing Gym (2010). As a former ballet dancer myself (yes, the dirty secret is out), I took great pleasure from the way Wiseman shoots dance in the former film, taking the Fred Astaire approach to showing the whole body; as someone who has never picked up a boxing glove, I took great pleasure in seeing how Wiseman surveys the pugs in the latter film. These were originally published in the Daily Herald.
SHRIEK is THIRST-y
This Sunday, SHRIEK: Women of Horror presents THIRST (BAKJWI), a Korean horror film from Chan-wook Park, the director of OLD BOY!
Some thoughts on the film and spoilers below.
The Seasoned Ticket #25
Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. He will be contributing a series of “critic’s notes” to the Scarecrow blog—a chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connecting them to the riches of Scarecrow’s collection.
A few years ago, when I was the curator of the Magic Lantern film program at the Frye Art Museum, the Frye hosted a traveling exhibit devoted to “The Old, Weird America.” The title came from Greil Marcus’s book about Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes, but the exhibit expanded to include ideas about a certain character of folk America. Along with a lecture I gave about the Westerns of the 1960s and 70s, we showed Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), which fit into the overall theme.
Cinema Jackpots! SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE
by John S.
Cinema Jackpots is a series that reviews films with uncertain origins which ultimately became popular smash hits. Everyone loves a good success story. Join us as we explore how these movies caught lightning in a bottle and triumphed.
THE CONTESTANT: sex, lies, & videotape
THE ODDS: It’s hard to imagine celebrated veteran filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, he of Out Of Sight, Erin Brockovich, and Ocean’s 11-12-13 fame, as a newbie who ever had to struggle for his big break. Yet that’s exactly what he was in the early-to-mid-80s. By 1986, he had moved from Baton Rouge to San Francisco to Los Angeles and back to Baton Rouge, a bit discouraged by the “one step forward, four steps back” nature of business in Hollywood.
The Seasoned Ticket #24
Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. He will be contributing a series of “critic’s notes” to the Scarecrow blog—a chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connecting them to the riches of Scarecrow’s collection.
A season of Jim Jarmusch films heaves into view at the Grand Illusion, beginning this weekend with Stranger Than Paradise, Down by Law, and even a couple of screenings of Jarmusch’s low-rent 1981 first feature, Permanent Vacation. The latter is well worth seeing, according to my distant memory of catching it in the aftermath of the great success of Stranger Than Paradise.
Double Up: Revisionist Vampire Films
by Jeff Williams
Scarecrow Video is an institution, and our 2-for-1 Wednesdays are even more of an institution. To help you navigate the collection is Double Up, a series dedicated to making great (or at least interesting) double features.
Scarecrow Video Picks from the Romanian Film Festival Seattle Staff!
By the Romanian Film Festival Seattle staff
The Romanian Film Festival (5th Edition): “One Eye Laughing, One Eye Crying: Uncanny Worlds” is coming to SIFF Cinema Uptown November 2-4, 2018!
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