What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m finally diving into this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts with the Best Live Action and Animated Short programs at Cornell Cinema tomorrow and Saturday respectively. They and the Best Documentary Short nominees are also at Cinemapolis all week, as is Pillion, which I’m hoping to catch as well.
Also in Theaters: I’m hearing good things about EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, which opens at the Regal Ithaca Mall today and Cinemapolis tomorrow, so hopefully it will run awhile: three trips to the movies is my limit this week! The best new release on Ithaca big screens that I’ve already seen is probably Send Help, which continues its run at the same two venues.
As if all the Oscar-nominated shorts weren’t enough, the Ithaca Experimental Film Festival is also happening this week with three programs at Cinemapolis and Cornell Cinema on Friday and Saturday. Other special events include three free events at Cornell Cinema: the screening of Onlookers this evening will be followed by a conversation with filmmaker Kimi Takesue, Waste Land is there on Tuesday, and the screening of ¿Are We There Yet? -A Compassionate Exploration of Contemporary Migration on Wednesday will be followed by a conversation with filmmaker Thomas Hoebbel. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include The Godfather Part II at Cornell Cinema on Saturday, Yi Yi there on Sunday, plus Pulp Fiction at the Regal on Tuesday and Breathless at Cinemapolis on Wednesday.
Home Video Recommendation: There’s also a bit of a rediscovery effect that corresponds to the Criterion Collection’s 2020 Blu-ray/DVD release, but responses to Dance, Girl, Dance seem to fall in two general camps: either it’s amateurish and uneven or a groundbreaking masterpiece by and for women. But why not both? Here’s what I said on Letterboxd:
A great example of what I call an “art gallery movie”: you judge it by the quality of the handful of standout scenes that it’s known for, not the white paint on the walls surrounding them. It’s like The Jazz Singer with feminism instead of sync sound!
How else do you reconcile extreme silliness like Maria Ouspenskaya’s Madame Basilova being killed by rear projection:
Co-existing in the same film as the impassioned, male gaze-shattering speech by Maureen O’Hara that deserves to be just as familiar to movie montage afficionados as Peter Finch’s “mad as hell” tirade from Network?
Dance, Girl, Dance leaves the Criterion Channel on Saturday, and while it has come and gone from this platform before, now’s a fine time to spend some time with it in between binging on the shorts in local theaters!
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 