Cinefamily Oscar Night Contest Winners!

While the Hollywood elite were busy counting their Oscars on Sunday night, we at The Cinefamily were doing our own balloting. Attendees at our standing-room-only Oscar blowout participated in a contest to guess the outcome of the Oscar awards. In the end, we had a three way tie for first place! Each of the contestants guessed a whopping 15 categories. To break the tie, we sent out a quiz to each of the winners. They were asked to identify photos from ten films that had been nominated for best picture in the past, without winning.

And the winner of the runoff is...

Olivia Widjaya

Olivia successfully guessed all ten of the films in the quiz! Her prize is a year's membership to The Cinefamily. Congratulations, Olivia!

The two runners-up are...

Laura Jansen

&

Ryck Schmidt

They've each won a month's membership to The Cinefamily.

How many can you guess?

Tonight, it's a Black Impostor double bill...

First up, SUTURE at 6pm



Then at 8pm, Wendell B. Harris' CHAMELEON STREET





Finally, at 10:30pm

Christopher Walken in COMMUNION



Director Philippe Mora will be bringing his own personal answer print of the film and will be in attendance for a Q&A.

Buy tickets for SUTURE and CHAMELEON STREET here!

Buy tickets for COMMUNION here!

This weekend-walken, wendell and little wings!

Howdy guys,

First off, Oscar party is on. BYOB (that's "bring your own buffalo wings", of course). We'll open up the patio out back, and generally hang loose with our very big screen TV. And just to make things interesting, we're gonna have a little contest-- whoever picks the most winners gets a free year's membership.

As for movies this week, it looks like we've got some kind of critical mass of goodness this Saturday. Here's how the day breaks down:

First up, a Suture/Chameleon Street double feature. Chameleon Street is a legendary, true life, con-man comedy that took top prize at Sundance in '89 before its writer/director/star Wendell Harris seemingly vanished into thin air. We've got the digitally restored master, plus exclusive previews of Harris' UFO conspiracy movie. Chameleon Street is one of co-programmer Matt's favorite movies-- it was literally his first suggestion to me when we started working together, his dream pick you could say-- and it hasn't been screened in years.

THEN, for our HFS Actors fest: Communion...I'm reserving myself a seat for this Christopher Walken movie, possibly the most insane movie in his whole insane career. His performance, like the rest of the movie, is simultaneously scary and hilarious, and, well, alien. And how often do you hear Chris Walken talk about "rectal probes". Maybe I'm a sick man, but this is my idea of a good time. It's director Philippe Mora's 35mm print, and he'll be there to answer all of your questions, as long as you don't ask about Howling 3: The Marsupials. Then he goes crazy.

Oh, I almost forgot. After Communion is over, the night's not. We're having a not-so-secret-as-of-this-minute music show by LITTLE WINGS at one in the morning. That's 1 AM. Admission is free, but they might put out a donation bucket.

Takashi Miike Yakuza Double Bill!

Tonight at 7pm!

A Takashi Miike double bill...

ICHI THE KILLER



“There’s no love in your violence.”—Kakihara in Ichi the Killer

When a film's title is spelled out in a splash of semen, you know it's going to be unique. One of the most disgusting and sadistic movies ever made, it's filled with blood, gore, rape, torture, and self-mutilation. But Ichi the Killer is also a love story. Clad in a padded superhero suit emblazoned with the number one, Ichi (Nao Omori) is being manipulated by the mysterious Jijii (Tetsuo the Iron Man director Shinya Tsukamoto) into taking down a Yakuza gang. Our hero kills the sadistic lover of Kakihara (Tadonobu Asano), whose subsequent search for Ichi is more about his own desire to experience pain than revenge. It's a familiar story, that of a soldier trying to hunt down his boss' killer, except that our hero is an uber-masochist and his prey is a childlike patsy. Ichi is the Killer is so extreme in its gore that they passed out barf-bags to the audience at the Toronto Film Fest. You have been warned.

FUDOH: THE NEW GENERATION



Widely regarded as his first crossover hit, this Yakuza revenge/high school melodrama was made for video but landed in less reputable theatres throughout Japan. Riki Fudoh (Shosuke Tanihara) is a high school student by day and Yakuza boss by night. Out to avenge his brother’s murder, Riki starts a war with the adult world mafia—with his father as the ultimate target. His rag tag team of young enforcers, includes handgun-toting tots and a comely young teen who shoots deadly blowdarts from her vagina. When the mob sends a tough fixer named Nohma (Riki Takeuchi) to snuff Riki out, the conflict gets lethal. Fudoh is bloody, surreal and booby-trapped with moments of perverse comedy. An audacious, adrenalized genre film about Oedipal rage, backed up with lots of ammo.

Buy advance tickets here!

The Silent Movie Theatre is at 611 N Fairfax Ave. (one block south of Melrose.)

Don't forget to park for free across the street at the Fairfax High School Parking lot!

Tonight- ORNETTE: MADE IN AMERICA

Tonight at 8pm!

Shirley Clarke's ORNETTE: MADE IN AMERICA



Shirley Clarke cemented her place as one of the key figures of the American independent film movement with her films The Connection (1961) and The Cool World (1963), both of which had strong jazz elements. Before retiring from filmmaking in the '80s, Clarke returned to the jazz scene for her final work, making this brilliant documentary on the decades-spanning career of multi-instrumentalist Ornette Coleman, a towering yet humble figure whose "free jazz" innovations rocked the world upon the release of his album "The Shape Of Jazz To Come" in 1959. Highlights include Coleman's homecoming performance of his "Skies Of America" symphony in Fort Worth, Texas (a town whose segregated past Coleman longed to escape as a child), and footage of Coleman's fusion group Prime Time overlayed with 8-bit video game effects!



Buy advance tickets here!

The Silent Movie Theatre is at 611 N Fairfax Ave. (one block south of Melrose.)

Don't forget to park for free across the street at the Fairfax High School Parking lot!

Tonight- John Barrymore in DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE

Tonight at 8pm!

DR. JEKYLL AND MR HYDE
Accompanied by Bob Mitchell on the organ





Though Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale has seen countless incarnations, Barrymore's version is accepted as unmatched, nearly a century after its release. No surprise that history's consummate split-personality archetype would be so expertly manifested by a man famously torn between his overwhelming successes and the carnal proclivities that would eventually kill him. Impressively creepy prosthetics enhance the unsettling performance, and Barrymore's convulsive scenery-chewing is at its most potent during Jeckyll's grotesque transformations-- they're masterful slices of silent cinema that fortunately forego subtlety in favor of atomic theatrics. Nita Naldi, then known as the female Valentino, makes a notable appearance as a dance-hall temptress whose delicious wardrobe malfunctions still have the power to summon the Hyde in us all.

Buy advance tickets here

Don't forget to park for free across the street at the Fairfax High School Parking lot!

Pat O' Neill- THE DECAY OF FICTION

Tonight, at the Silent Movie Theatre...

LA Film Forum and The Cinefamily present Pat O' Neill's The Decay of Fiction & Squirt Gun Step Print

Pat O’Neill is Los Angeles’s true avant-garde master, creating beautiful, moody films with floating mattes, variable film speeds, ghostly layering, wry wit, and masterful soundtracks, all working together to form a fractured almost-narrative, a reflection on the lost spaces and times of our city.

Rarely seen in Los Angeles since its premiere several years ago is Pat O’Neill’s brilliant, haunting film noir set in the decaying remains of the now-demolished Ambassador Hotel.

“While depicting the relentless passage of time with a power that few other films have captured, The Decay of Fiction sustains a mood of almost gothic sadness….The Decay of Fiction is so infatuated with vintage film lore that it leaves you with a disturbing sense of the power that the Dream Factory exerts on the historical imagination.” – Stephen Holden, NY Times

The show starts at 8pm.

Buy advance tickets!

Tonight- IMITATION OF LIFE and WORLD'S GREATEST SINNER

Tonight at 7:30pm,

Douglas Sirk's IMITATION OF LIFE



And, at 10:30pm,

Timothy Carey's THE WORLD'S GREATEST SINNER




Buy advance tickets for IMITATION OF LIFE

Buy advance tickets for WORLD'S GREATEST SINNER

The Silent Movie Theatre is at 611 N Fairfax Ave. (one block south of Melrose.)

Don't forget to park for free across the street at the Fairfax High School Parking lot!