The Connection (June 13th and 14th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[THE CONNECTION screens Friday June 13th at 7:15 pm and Saturday June 14th at 9:00 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

I'm sure we whose hearts have been broken by movies for so long have undergone this experience: finally getting around to seeing some "masterpiece" of world cinema only to find it lacking. Primitive, inert, perhaps ahead of its time, sure, but only a little bit interesting and unduly hyped. In my POV that's often - not always, but often - happened with pics in the "experimental" and foreign realm. The big heartbreaker for me was Jean-Luc Godard's BREATHLESS. Some Godard titles I have found quite diverting. And you'll get no argument from me that Jean-Paul Belmondo is an icon (he outgrossed E.T. - THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL when those two went head to head in France) but that grainy talkfest (BREATHLESS, I mean) just bored me silly. This is the masterwork that ignited the French New Wave and changed cinema forever? I don't get it!

A Great Day in Harlem (May 17th and 18th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM screens Saturday May 17th at 5:15 pm and Sunday May 18th at 4:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM is a nicely-tuned hour, sweet and nostalgic stuff for the eyes and even to viewers for whom jazz music holds minimal interest.

The 1994 short feature tells the story behind the famous Esquire Magazine photo of 1958, for which young shutterbug Art Kane put out a call to all the great jazz artists in New York City to gather for a single group portrait on a Harlem stoop at 10 a.m. in the morning on August 12. Kane was amazed when practically all of the notoriously night-owl musicians (it was said jazz players didn't know there were two ten o'clocks in one day) really did show up.

The Fitzgerald Family Christmas (now on video)

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

I hope your Christmas went well, but for those of us for whom the holidays prove to be an ordeal, writer-director-actor Edward Burns does a public service with THE FITZGERALD FAMILY CHRISTMAS. Whatever we went through pales in comparison to this ensemble.

Burns, of course, rose to prominence with THE BROTHERS MCMULLEN, a rare case of a crossover art-house sleeper. Here Burns makes another trip to the well of working-class NYC Irish-American family dynamics and dysfunction (same thing, sometimes), plainly directed, and heavy on the ethnic flavor.

The Apartment (August 9th at the Palace Theatre on Playhouse Square)

[THE APARTMENT screens Friday August 9th at 7:30 pm at the Palace Theater on Playhouse Square.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

I'm so dull. If I were to ever get hired in a nice office job, I'd probably get fired for downloading articles from the Playboy.com website. Yes, downloading the articles. Not dirty pictures, just the articles.

I'd be too tempted by, say, the hot, steamy, previously-unpublished Norman Mailer essay about Fidel Casto and cache it from Playboy at a work computer on company time. "Loser!" the kiddie-porn chickenhawks and Asian-girl S&M fanciers sitting smugly at their own cubicle-terminals will call me, as I'm marched out by security thugs.

Limelight (now on video)

[LIMELIGHT is now available on home video.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

My wife knows just about all the "Saturday Night Live" running characters and their catchphrases. I wish this were a marketable skill. There does exist, in fact, a "Saturday Night Live" board game, thank you Lorne Michaels (or is he now "Lorne Michaels (TM)"?), and it is possible that some high rollers might play it for money...somewhere. But at the moment it's just her preoccupation. And one SNL running character she quotes is `Stefan,' the effete NYC club-kid shown on the Weekend Update segment. Surely you know this one? His schtick is to come on and advise visiting tourists on Manhattan night life, always with the same routine: "For the ultimate New York experience, look no further. The hottest club in New York is (unpronounceable). The brainchild of performance-artist and prostitute (unpronounceable), this former haunted mortuary reopened as a retro-future-contemporary-punk-hip-hop-redneck-country-line-dance-nonalcoholic speakeasy and opium den. Look! Who's that in the corner, Kate Moss? No, just a chalk-body outline..." And so on.

Prince of Broadway (now on home video)

[PRINCE OF BROADWAY is now available on home video.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Writer-director Sean Baker teamed with producer-director Lee Daniel, the latter best known for PRECIOUS (or PRECIOUS SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING SAPPHIRE; I really should be hanging out with Seth MacFarlane, in an alternate universe) to make PRINCE OF BROADWAY. It's an improv-heavy street drama telling another unglamorized, urban NYC drama set amidst the city's ethnic crazy-quilt, this time the seamy side (as opposed to the seam-y side) of the Garment District. The film played the Cleveland International Film Festival, but otherwise home-video (on which it loses nothing, fortunately) is your chance to see it.

Repost: Bill Cunningham New York (September 3rd and 4th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK screens Saturday September 3rd at 7:25 pm and Sunday September 4th at 8:25 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady Jr.

Having just been laid off by a daily paper I may be oversensitive, but - hell! - don't let any newspaper publishers, especially from The Plain Dealer, watch BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK. The documentary feature directed by the aptly named Richard Press and partially produced by the eminent New York Times itself lovingly profiles one of the Times' own star writer-photographers. And dig it: Bill Cunningham is an elderly bachelor with no personal life, dependents or intimates - just work. He didn't even deposit his paychecks from one filthystinkingrich employer (the same Newhouse family that owns the PD) on principle of retaining his creative control. He doesn't partake of offered freebies and refreshments (not even water).

Repost: Bill Cunningham New York (July 8th and 10th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK screens Friday July 8th at 7:30pm and Sunday July 10th at 3pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady Jr.

Having just been laid off by a daily paper I may be oversensitive, but - hell! - don't let any newspaper publishers, especially from The Plain Dealer, watch BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK. The documentary feature directed by the aptly named Richard Press and partially produced by the eminent New York Times itself lovingly profiles one of the Times' own star writer-photographers. And dig it: Bill Cunningham is an elderly bachelor with no personal life, dependents or intimates - just work. He didn't even deposit his paychecks from one filthystinkingrich employer (the same Newhouse family that owns the PD) on principle of retaining his creative control. He doesn't partake of offered freebies and refreshments (not even water).

Bill Cunningham, New York (now playing in Cleveland exclusively at the Capitol Theatre)

[BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK is now playing in Cleveland exclusively at the Capitol Theatre.]

Review by Charles Cassady Jr.

Having just been laid off by a daily paper I may be oversensitive, but - hell! - don't let any newspaper publishers, especially from The Plain Dealer, watch BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK. The documentary feature directed by the aptly named Richard Press and partially produced by the eminent New York Times itself lovingly profiles one of the Times' own star writer-photographers. And dig it: Bill Cunningham is an elderly bachelor with no personal life, dependents or intimates - just work. He didn't even deposit his paychecks from one filthystinkingrich employer (the same Newhouse family that owns the PD) on principle of retaining his creative control. He doesn't partake of offered freebies and refreshments (not even water).