Repost: Stalker (June 15th and 17th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[STALKER screens Thursday June 15th at 6:45 pm and Saturday June 17th at 8:45 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Okay, this is emperor-has-no-clothes time. Where I must throw mud on some world-cinema masterpiece everyone else reveres. No wonder my rare job interviews never lead anywhere. All some venal boss or human-resource harridan has to do is Google my writing, see the evidence, and broadband their shocked verdict to the world: "CHARLES CASSADY THAT UGLY M*@%!KER DIDN'T LIKE TARKOVSKY'S STALKER THE F&^!@ING SON OF A WHORE! NOBODY F%@!*ING HIRE THE BASTARD FOR ANYTHING! THAT'S A F#%*!ING DIRECT ORDER." And that's just when I apply at the Catholic Diocese.

My Perestroika (March 25th at the Wolstein Bulding Auditorium on the CWRU campus)

[MY PERESTROIKA screens Monday March 25th at 5:30 pm at the Wolstein Building Auditorium, on the CWRU campus.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Someday I do hope that Ken Burns or Ric Burns or someone else in the Florentine Films stable does a massive, multi-episode Cold War docu-history, interviewing all the major players on both sides - the Kremlinologists, the KGB Boris Badenovs, the turncoats, the peaceniks, the Reaganites, the proxy-war guerilla leaders in the Third World, etc. Bet the stories they have will set your blood boiling. I've heard some of them. CIA agents were apt to set cats on fire and let the agonized, dying felines run through Cuban cane fields, torching the crops to spoil Castro's harvest quotas (remember that next time ARGO or TV's 24 glorifies the Agency). Dick Cheney - who still defends the Iraq Invasion - allegedly ordered a major stand-down in US war-footing against the Soviets. Supposedly, in the mid-1990s, as the USSR fell apart, Cheney watched a Pentagon computer-simulation of how a full nuclear-missile exchange between the United States and the faltering Russia would play out, and he basically said, okay, game's over, let's not waste any more time on this.

My Name is Ivan (September 15th and 16th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[MY NAME IS IVAN screens Saturday September 15th at 5:15 pm and Sunday September 16th at 8:20 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

People who stumble across my writing on this blog have had two reactions to me: 1: “Charles Cassady? You’re still alive?” And 2: “You don’t like Andrei Tarkovsky? What are you, un-American?” Okay, sorry, on both counts. In the latter case, much as there’s the mandate to be world-cinema-alt/foreign-University-Circle-pseudo-intellectual dressed-all-in-black pretentious, I just can’t get enthused about the late Russian filmmaker (1932-1986) and his extraordinarily long-winded philosophical musings and endless camera takes. Don’t get me wrong, some of his material I rather enjoyed (THE MIRROR, especially), but most of the time I feel like the Communist Party officials who must have watched his SOLARIS readied for the international film-festival circuit in 1972 and said to each other, “We’re sending THIS as the Proletarian’s response up against decadent Kubrick’s 2001 – A SPACE ODYSSEY? Comrades, our system is doomed. Ronald Reagan could beat us!”

Hipsters (June 29th and 30th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[HIPSTERS screens Friday June 29th at 9:15 pm and Saturday June 30th at 6:50 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Ever had false-memory syndrome? I think I just did; probably the reason I'm not being called as a witness at the Jerry Sandusky child-abuse trial. Besides, as far as Jerry Sandusky goes, I say anyone named after an Ohio city is automatically guilty. Movie director Chris Columbus? Guilty as hell, whatever he did. Give him the maximum.

But I had false memory syndrome of actually having seen the 2008 Russian musical HIPSTERS a few years ago. Nothing definite, just a sense that I beheld and enjoyed the nostalgic tone and the cast and all that; it was a real crowd pleaser, and I smugly predicted it would go on to become Russia's DIRTY DANCING, and a worldwide smash. I probably told all of you to go buy those shares of stock in the studio or anything that Russian director Valery Todorovsky touched if you all wanted to get rich, like everyone else was getting in early 2008, remember?

Stalker (October 23 at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[STALKER screens Sunday October 23 rd at 7:00 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Okay, this is emperor-has-no-clothes time. Where I must throw mud on some world-cinema masterpiece everyone else reveres. No wonder my rare job interviews never lead anywhere. All some venal boss or human-resource harridan has to do is Google my writing, see the evidence, and broadband their shocked verdict to the world: "CHARLES CASSADY THAT UGLY M*@%!KER DIDN'T LIKE TARKOVSKY'S STALKER THE F&^!@ING SON OF A WHORE! NOBODY F%@!*ING HIRE THE BASTARD FOR ANYTHING! THAT'S A F#%*!ING DIRECT ORDER." And that's just when I apply at the Catholic Diocese.

Battleship Potemkin (Feb. 10th, 12th and 13th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN screens Thursday February 10th at 6:45pm, Saturday February 12th at 9:40pm and Sunday February 13th at 6:30pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Hello, it's me, Charles again. Bob Ignizio, esteemed founder of this website, was supposed to do this review of Sergei Eisenstein's classic BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN But Mr. Ignizio confessed he had no fresh take about this legendary, almost transcendent work of cinema. More pressingly, he wife went into labor with their first child. So the review is delegated to me...In other words I am in COMPLETE control here. Attica! Attica! No justice, no peace! Attention passengers, this is a hijack! This blog is going to Havana, Cuba! I have absolute power and can say anything I please. What I quite desire is revenge on people who have hurt me. Or, through inaction, have allowed hurt to come upon me (back when I used to hang out with left-wing artists and similar bad company a drunken gang of local Democrats laughed and said I talk like a robot; it's only fair I get to invoke Isaac Asimov).