{"id":34210,"date":"2016-06-29T08:31:43","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T13:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=34210"},"modified":"2020-07-26T16:56:35","modified_gmt":"2020-07-26T21:56:35","slug":"manhattan-wrapup-rhapsodes-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2016\/06\/29\/manhattan-wrapup-rhapsodes-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Manhattan wrapup: RHAPSODES and more"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RZA<\/a><\/p>\n

Aliza Ma and RZA at Metrograph, introducing screenings of Five Element Ninjas<\/strong> and House of Traps<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

DB here:<\/p>\n

We’re about to leave NYC after three months. I’ll miss all the movies and museums and food and friends, but I won’t miss the noise and congestion. I especially won’t miss the obliviousness of New Yorkers on the pavement–frowning into their cellphones as they nearly collide with you, steering baby assault vehicles as big as WW II half-tracks, and letting their longleashed pooches stray across streams of pedestrian traffic (there but for the grace of dog go I).<\/p>\n

Okay, no more geezer complaints. Remarkable, the calming influence of an onion bagel with lox and cream cheese.<\/p>\n

Our last days here have been really busy. Kristin gave a talk to the Egyptological Seminar of New York, “Beyond Thutmose: The District of Sculptors’ Workshops at Amarna”<\/a> at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Thursday. On Friday, I participated in a Film Comment<\/em> podcast <\/a>with critics Violet Lucca<\/a> and Nick Pinkerton<\/a>. We had a good time, talking about my book The Rhapsodes<\/em> and other stuff. Here they are afterward in the Film Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Violet<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking of The Rhapsodes<\/em>, Saturday I went to the Museum of the Moving Image<\/a> in Astoria, where David Schwartz had mounted a four-film series tailored to the book. The first screening, Citizen Kane<\/em> in a nice 35mm print, brought out a fair number of people.<\/p>\n

\"MoMI<\/a><\/p>\n

Several people told me it was their first viewing of the film on the big screen, and indeed scale helps with this movie. It becomes more looming, from that screen-filling title onward, and you can see little details cunningly embedded. I noticed a couple of new items that I may write about later this summer. (Early in our stay, I already did a Welles birthday tribute here.<\/a>) You always find more filigree in Kane<\/em>; it looks forward to all our modern movies with in-jokes and Easter Eggs.<\/p>\n

After Kane<\/em> and a book signing (thanks, customers), I rushed off to Metrograph<\/a>, a new venue with a consummate programming policy. There I met Aliza Ma, Jake Perlin, and their colleagues before catching the Chang Cheh double bill <\/a>curated by none other than RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan. You see him with Aliza, in Scope of course, at the top of today’s entry.<\/p>\n

\"Jerry<\/a>On Sunday I caught up with Subway Cinema<\/a>\/\u00a0NY Asian Film Fest<\/a> co-founder Goran Topalovic and critic-filmmaker Eddie Mullins (Doomsdays<\/em><\/a>) at a wonderful Serbian restaurant. Much talk of Hong Kong film, of course.<\/p>\n

Later that day, after seeing Hong Sangsoo’s latest, we had a late dinner with 125% cinephile Michael Barker<\/a>, Co-President and Co-Founder of Sony Pictures Classics<\/a>. Amidst talk of great 30s and 40s films, we learned that SPC is gearing up several new releases, notably the Cannes hit Toni Erdmann<\/a><\/em> for December.<\/p>\n

During my stay, The Rhapsodes<\/em> came out and got several reviews<\/a> already. It just picked up another, a wide-ranging, idea-packed discussion<\/a> from one of Cinema Scope<\/em>‘s best writers, Andrew Tracy.<\/p>\n

Our last nights have been devoted to catching up with friends we’ve missed in earlier weeks. Above are Jerry Carlson<\/a> and Deb Navins<\/a> with Kristin in front of the Royal Tennenbaums<\/em> house in their neighborhood. Below is a shot of Kristin and me with my college friend, film publicist and director’s representative Lucius Barre<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"All<\/a>Our time here has just flown by. I finished a decent-ish draft of my 1940s book, but I haven’t done as much on other projects as I’d wished. I did, though, give talks at the Columbia Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation<\/a> (thanks, Bill Luhr, Cynthia Lucia, and Krin Gabbard), Sacred Heart University<\/a> (thanks, Sid Gottlieb and Sally Ross), Tufts University<\/a> (thanks, Malcolm Turvey), Videology<\/a> (thanks, Erik Luers and Austin Kim) and the 92nd Street Y<\/a> (thanks, Alicia Harris-Fernandez). Going Upstate, as we New Yorkers call it, I gave the James Card Memorial Lecture<\/a> at George Eastman Museum (thanks, Paolo Cherchi Usai and Jared Case), did some film viewing there, and visited the annual conference<\/a> of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image. No less fun: I met Paolo Gioli at the Harvard Film Archive<\/a> (thanks, Haden Guest; blogged here<\/a>) and re-met Terence Davies at MoMI (thanks, David Schwartz; blogged here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

And to round things off, my blog entry on Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day<\/em><\/a> is now available in Chinese here<\/a>. Thanks to Jiahan Xu.<\/p>\n

When I get back to Mad City, I must buckle down and revise the 40s book and, I hope, write a blog on types of film criticism today. Also, too: at our Cinematheque, another series <\/a>dedicated to The Rhapsodes<\/em>. (Yeah, the PR steamroller is relentless.) I’ll give an introductory talk and introduce the movies.<\/p>\n

Is it lunchtime yet?<\/p>\n

\"DB<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aliza Ma and RZA at Metrograph, introducing screenings of Five Element Ninjas and House of Traps. DB here: We’re about to leave NYC after three months. I’ll miss all the movies and museums and food and friends, but I won’t miss the noise and congestion. I especially won’t miss the obliviousness of New Yorkers on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,34,290,210],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-comments","category-people-we-like","category-society-for-cognitive-studies-of-the-moving-image","category-the-rhapsodes-american-film-critics-of-the-1940s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34210"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45149,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34210\/revisions\/45149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}