“The cinema is always as perfect as it can be”

Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ July calendar is now available as a .PDF from their website. Highlights for me include a Sunday night series devoted to Richard Widmark that features three films I haven’t seen and one I’ve been meaning to revisit (Pickup on South Street [1953]), a screening of a “rare 35mm print” of Les Carabiniers (1963), and the local premieres of three films that played at Cannes last year, Jellyfish (2007), Mister Lonely (2007), and My Brother Is an Only Child (2007).

I’m looking forward to the Widmark series the most. As the tributes piled up after his death on March 26 of this year (David Hudson has gathered many of them together at GreenCine Daily) I became increasingly chagrined by the fact that I’ve seen only one of his films, Pickup on South Street. Here’s a chance to do something about it. Kiss of Death (1947), in addition to being my second Widmark film, will also be only the second movie I’ve seen that was directed by Henry Hathaway (after Call Northside 777 [1948]).

I’m also pretty psyched to see The Carabiniers (1963). In preparation for a graduate course on late Godard that I’m taking in the fall, I’ve been trying to spend some time with his early work, so the timing is perfect. I’ll try to at least start reading Richard Brody’s Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard by then, too.

Of the three Cannes ‘07 films, I’m most interested in My Brother Is an Only Child. I only recently decided that I wanted to see this film after . . . let’s say the fourth time I saw a preview for it. Even the most negative review of it on Metacritic, by Michael Atkinson (writing for the Chicago Reader), calls it “a peppery pleasure.” All I’m hoping for is a solid film, so that’s a good sign. I’m curious about Mister Lonely. It might have “the power to touch, to unsettle and to charm” (that’s what A.O. Scott says in the New York Times), but it might be “insufferably twee” (as TVGuide.com’s Ken Fox has it); maybe I’ll think it’s both. I guess we’ll see!

The best of the rest: OSS 117 (2006) might be fun, The Singing Revolution (2006) might be interesting, the screening of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985) on July 3 is free (more info in my calendar entry for this event), and July’s Film Kitchen features tENTATIVELY a cONVIENCE, one of the more prominent local avant-garde filmmakers.

As a nice treat, this month’s calendar also gives us a sneak peak of what’s on tap for August. There’s some great stuff on the way, including Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World (2007), Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg (2007), and a terrific Sunday night series called “Life on Mars” (the theme of this year’s Carnegie International), proving once again that August is only a bad month for moviegoing if you restrict yourself to the multiplexes.

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