Monday, August 31, 2015

Bijou presents: 4K restoration of 'The Third Man'

The Bijou Film Center's next move will be to present the newly restored version of "The Third Man" (1949) at the Byrd Theatre on Sunday, September 6, at 7 p.m. Admission $10.00.

Following the one-time-only screening of the film noir gem an after-party will unfold at the New York Deli, located just two doors west of the movie theater. Gypsy Roots will perform live on stage.

Richmond Magazine's Harry "The Hat" Kollatz, Jr., offers some background on the 4K restoration of the film and its protagonist from Petersburg, Virginia -- Joseph Cotten (pictured above). This movie, set in post-WWII Vienna, is one of several collaborations between Cotten and Orson Welles. Click here to read Kollatz's piece.

Advance tickets for $7.00 are available at Bygones Vintage Clothing and Steady Sounds. To read more on one of the most beloved movies of all-time go here.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

An Over-Awareness of the Camera

Note: This piece was written in 2011. Unfortunately, again this year we're seeing murders presented as stunts. Long before most of us, Paddy Chayefsky saw it coming.

*
Behind makeshift barricades in the basement of a small church there will be 18 people, 17 of which will hostages of a 20-year-old schizophrenic full of sweet red wine and homemade speed. He will have a military rifle with a large magazine with which to threaten his hostages. And, he will also have a portable nuclear device he bought from a Middle Eastern underground arms merchant.

His laptop's camera and microphone will capture and transmit the hostage-taker's cryptic announcement: "I am the Looney Tunes Bomber, my presentation will be a one-reeler." The media covering the on-going hostage story will broadcast his "presentation" live.

The entire nine minutes and 11 seconds of the LTB’s ranting performance will be consumed by a rapt audience; there will be millions of viewers in the final minute. Although he will talk about wanting to kill lots of "deserving Americans," he won't mention how he plans to do it.

After chuckling, “Tha, tha … that’s all folks,” he will set off the bomb.

It will blow Boise, or maybe Baltimore, off the map. Videos of the suicidal bomber’s diabolical stunt will go up on YouTube about a half-hour after the appearance of the mushroom cloud.

Somewhere, in Rio, or Tokyo, or elsewhere, a heart will be beating faster in the chest of an abused and angry boy who will be instantly determined to top the LTB’s bloodthirsty audacity.

We are watching a generation grow up with an awareness of the camera that goes far beyond previous generations. And, we are also witnessing a snowballing of the ability of anyone to transmit words and images about love, hate, religion, style and politics, by way of the Internet, to a worldwide audience.

It’s anybody’s guess where the current generation’s insatiable thirst to record and share voluminous records of their everyday lives will lead ... good or bad. We do already know that revolutionaries everywhere are relying on social media in a way that is mind-boggling.

Meanwhile, more and more we are seeing news stories that are tantamount to stunts staged for willing cameras. While it's fashionable these days to scold the press for its tasteless and excessive coverage of certain events, it's not entirely the fault of media executives and editors. The stories they encounter, in some cases, have been planned and packaged by people who are damn good at planting a story.

A precedent-setter in this area occurred in 1979 with the shameful cooperation that developed between news-gatherers for television and the Iranian "students," who demonstrated on a daily basis in front of the American embassy during the hostage crisis that sabotaged the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Now we know that much of the feverish chanting and fist waving was done on cue. Now we know the camera shots were pushed in tight because the angry horde yelling, "Death to America!" was only a dozen souls deep.

Today, it seems cultural and religious grievances are routinely becoming more heated, here and abroad, by provocative or slanted news coverage. Moreover, much of the reportage these days actually seems designed to inflame situations being covered.

On top of that, in America, the press scrutiny of angry the anti-government firestorm being stoked by some for political gain is surely helping to push some alienated militia types closer to the edge -- the sort that sees Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh as a hero.

Speaking of McVeigh, the future’s bomber in the church basement will have already seen how plenty of sullen murderers have been made into celebrities by the press. So, he'll be confident the television networks and online newspapers would not switch off a live feed from an on-going hostage situation. Sadly, even if they could see they would be magnifying the reach and power of our maniac, it’s hard to believe the mainstream media would be able to deny him his last terrible wishes.

Ka-boom!

Post-ka-boom, can’t you hear the executives explaining their decisions? "Hey, if we didn’t cover the story in real-time, the other networks would have..."

-- 30 --

Friday, August 14, 2015

The Bijou presents: "The Third Man"


The Bijou Film Center will present the newly restored 4K version of "The Third Man" at the Byrd Theatre in Carytown on Sun., Sept. 6, 2015, at 7 p.m. With The Byrd's new 4K projector and its deluxe sound system the beloved gem of a movie promises to look and sound better than ever.

"The Third Man" (1949): B&W. 104 minutes. Directed by Carol Reed. Screenplay by Graham Greene. Music by Anton Karas. Cast: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard. Note: This film noir classic is basically a who-dunnit murder mystery set in crumbling post-WWII Vienna. Or, is the real mystery a matter of who was murdered? Since each of the principal characters is hiding something, well, the truth lurking in the shadows isn’t so easy to see ... much less, to grasp.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the late Roger Ebert's review of Reed's masterpiece: 
  • "Has there ever been a film where the music more perfectly suited the action than in Carol Reed's 'The Third Man'?"
  • "Of all the movies I have seen, this one most completely embodies the romance of going to the movies." 
Click here to read Ebert's entire review. A second review of the movie is here. To see the new trailer go here.

Admission: Tickets at the box office will be $10.00. The proceeds from this one-time-only special screening will be split between the Byrd Theatre Foundation's "Journey to the Seats" and the Bijou Film Center.

Advance tickets are now available online at Eventbrite for $7.00 (plus a processing fee of $1.38) each. Paper advance tickets will be available for $7.00 (cash or check) at Bygones Vintage Clothing and Steady Sounds until the day of the show.

The After-Party will unfold at the New York Deli following the screening. Gypsy Roots will perform live on stage. Appropriate food specials will be available. Admission will be free.

-- 30 --

Thursday, August 13, 2015

1974: A Year of Unexpected Changes


The most obvious change in the air in 1974 was the unraveling of the presidency of Richard Nixon. While that was happening the culture shifted. Tastes in music, clothes, politics, movies, drugs, and you-name-it, took off in new directions. Among other things, it was also the year in which social causes went out of style for most of the baby boomers.

Going into 1974, no one would have guessed the most popular gesture of group defiance on campus -- the protest march -- would morph into spontaneous gatherings to cheer on naked people, as they ran by. Yet, in the spring of 1974, streaking on college campuses became a national phenomenon.

Richmond’s police chief, Frank Duling, announced that his department would not tolerate streakers running around in the city’s streets, alleys, etc. He didn’t care whether they were students, or not. But the VCU police department said if it took place on campus, streaking was a university matter and would be dealt with by its personnel.

The relationship between Richmond and VCU was somewhat awkward in this period. Leading up to this point, there had been a series of confrontational incidents on, or near, the VCU campus. Perhaps the most bitterly remembered of them occurred on Oct. 12, 1970, after Allen Ginsberg spoke at the VCU gym. The city police used overkill force to break up a street party in the area of the 1100 blocks of Grove Ave. and Park Ave. Debris was thrown, a cop was hit by a brick and police dogs were set loose in the crowd. 

So, leading up what happened on the 800 block of W. Franklin St. on the night of March 19, 1974, Richmond’s police department had some history with what might have been characterized as the anti-establishment crowd based in the lower Fan District.

Several groups of streakers had made runs before four naked kids rode down Franklin in a convertible at about 10 p.m. The crowd of 150-to-200 cheered as the motorized streakers waved. The mood was festive. I know this firsthand, because I was in that crowd. This scene played out a block from the Biograph Theatre and I had walked over to the commotion with Biograph usher Trent Nicholas to see what would happen.

Seconds later a group of some 50 uniformed policemen stormed in on small motorbikes and in squad cars from every direction to arrest those four streakers in the car. No VCU cops were involved.

After a lull in the action, the Richmond cops inexplicably charged into the assembled bystanders. A few of those bystanders were dragged into the middle of the street. One kid was knocked off of his bicycle and slammed repeatedly against the fender and hood of a police car. Others were beaten with clubs or flashlights.

The Richmond cops were acting like Brits in Belfast or Derry, free to abuse the gathering, at will. That the unprovoked brutality was about terrorizing fad-driven streakers on a college campus made it all the more absurd -- 17 people were arrested. Most of them were bystanders, not streakers.

In person, I've never seen so many cops go crazy violent. More important, it was without being in response to any threat to people or property. It was a shocking scene.   

Crazy violent cops made bigger news at the Cherry Blossom Music Festival (which was headlined by the Steve Miller Band and Boz Scaggs) on April 27, 1974, at City Stadium. That was where the war between Richmond's partying hippies and its police force escalated beyond all previous clashes. When police officers attempted to arrest pot-smoking members of the audience, things got out of hand. Way out of hand!

Several police cars were destroyed in what turned into a four-hour battle. In all, 76 people were arrested. This unprecedented melee, which I missed, put the kibosh on any outdoor rock 'n' roll shows in Richmond, with alcohol available, for several years.

1974

Jan. 2: To conserve on gasoline President Richard Nixon signed a bill mandating a 55 mph speed limit, coast-to-coast.

Feb. 4: Patty Hearst was abducted; eight days later the Symbionese Liberation Army told the extremely well-to-do Hearst family it had to give $230 million in food aid to the poor.

Feb. 11: Richmond's Biograph celebrated its second anniversary with free movies and free beer and a wee prank. Once all the seats were filled for the 6:30 p.m. show thousands who had lined up around the block were turned away. For more on this event see "The Devils & the Details." 

Mar. 2: Nixon was named by a federal grand jury as a co-conspirator in the Watergate cover-up. At this point it was still hard to see that he wouldn't last out the year.

Apr. 8: Playing for the Atlanta Braves outfielder Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record with his 715th round-tripper. Later we found out about the death threats Aaron had received leading up to his feat.

Apr. 15: According to photographic evidence Patty “Tania” Hurst seemed to be helping her captors rob a bank at gunpoint. Nobody knew what to make of it.

May 15: Richmond-based A.H. Robins Co. yielded to pressure from the feds to take its contraceptive device, the Dalkon Shield, off the market.

June 28: One of the best films ever made, "Chinatown," premiered at the Biograph Theatre. It was owing to a lucky quirk of business that allowed the independent cinema to play several of Paramount's top first-run pictures that spring and summer. 


July 27: The House Judiciary Committee voted 27-11 to impeach Nixon. Three days later the Supreme Court said Nixon had to surrender tape recordings of White House meetings that had been sought by the Watergate investigation’s special prosecutor. Nixon's presidency was in a death spiral.  

Aug. 8: Nixon resigned in disgrace; President Gerald Ford was sworn in. Millions of hippies celebrated Nixon's downfall; some of them stayed too long at the party.

Aug. 12: The Biograph Theatre closed to be converted by a 24-hour-a-day construction crew into a twin cinema in four weeks. The after-hours Liar's Poker games were the stuff of legends.

Sept. 8: Ford pardoned Nixon, which all but sealed Ford’s defeat when he ran for reelection in 1976.

Oct. 29: Muhammad Ali regained the world heavyweight boxing crown he had lost by refusing to be drafted into the army in 1967. In Zaire, Ali defeated the heavily favored champion George Foreman by a knockout in the eighth round. 

Nov. 13: Yasir Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, addressed the UN with a pistol strapped to his waist. Supporters of Israel cringed. Israel's enemies puffed up their chests. Lovers of peace weren't necessarily encouraged, but hoped for the best.

Dec. 12: Georgia governor Jimmy Carter announced he would run for president. Nobody noticed. Outside of his immediate circle of friends and advisers, who could have imagined it would matter?