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Things to Do: Halloween Movies Edition 10/22-10/31

I’ve got a chicken wing sized bone to pick with my local theater programming directors: Halloween should be playing ever year, on Halloween day, everywhere. Forever, and ever, amen. The Exorcist too! And as much as I love you BAM, The Warriors does not count as a Halloween movie, no matter how scary grown men in overalls on roller skates is. Fine, you’re offering beer, you’re getting warmer. Yet there are a few things to get excited about like a live music accompanied screening of Nosferatu at Nighthawk and midnight screenings of Zombie and House. Here’s a roundup of the best Halloween related screenings coming up! S’Go!!

3:50 pm • 22 October 2011

I met Emahn a few summers ago at a mutual friends’ rooftop BBQ. Our conversation probably began the way most do in New York social situations: through the topic of real estate (“Where do you live?”) or careers (the always abrupt “What do you do?”). Come to think of it, I still don’t know what Emahn does for a living and I like that. Mystery is underrated. Luckily we got past the small talk and at some point the topic turned to movies: Emahn raved about Frankenhooker and Abel Ferrara, I was foaming at the mouth about recently discovering House. The rest, as they say is history. Emahn is one awesome dude who’s got this way of making you feel like you’re the only person in the room. He’s also hilarious and crafty, creating the most well executed New York pigeon Halloween costume last year. I’m looking forward to what he cooks up this time around! Here in no particular order is Emahn’s The Perfect Ten.

12:08 am • 21 October 2011

BONUS: Poltergiest (1982)

Love this trippy Japanese poster for Steven Spielberg’s Poltergiest: a movie that I still haven’t seen due to my self diagnosed Phasmaphobia. Maybe it’s time.

6:10 pm • 20 October 2011

Found Stills: The Exorcist (1979)

Only eleven days till Halloween (!!!)

10:28 pm • 19 October 2011

Hubba Hubba: Diane Lane in Interview Magazine (1981)

9:56 pm • 19 October 2011

Dressed to Kill (1980): Cuts Like a Knife.

Brian De Palma isn’t afraid to open with a slow-mo shower scene. And God bless him. Four years prior we met Carrie in a locker room shower suddenly experiencing the horrors of a girl’s first period. We quickly learned of her character’s isolation when the soft music was broken by the shrieks of her cruel classmates hurling maxi pads at her. It’s an interesting way to introduce a lead. In Dressed to Kill, we first see Kate Miller (played by Angie Dickinson and her bodacious body double) in the throws of rubbing one out in the shower while looking onto a completely uninterested husband. She’s a sexually frustrated housewife who spends her afternoons with her stiff therapist Dr. Elliott (Michael Cane), taking in museums, and on this occasion, engaging in anonymous sex in the back of a taxi cab. Busy Tuesday! This encounter puts her in the wrong place-wrong time cross hairs of a cold blooded killer.

9:56 pm • 19 October 2011

BONUS: Une femme douce (1969)

7:42 am • 12 October 2011

Type: Raising Arizona (1987)

10:44 am • 11 October 2011

Leon, the Professional (1994): How I Could Just Kill A Man.

Leon is a loner. Making friends isn’t exactly part of the life of a seasoned hit man, though he prefers the gentler term “cleaner”. His spends his non killing time in a modest tenement apartment caring for a houseplant, drinking lots of milk and taking in Gene Kelly matinees. All of that changes when his neighbor Matilda lands on his doorstep after her family is brutally murdered. Matilda is completely fascinated by Leon in the most Freudian way: she sees him as both father figure and potential lover. Though she’s only twelve and still figuring out exactly what a lover is. Things stay platonic, and Leon agrees to teach her the ropes of cleaning in exchange for teaching him how to read.

10:39 am • 11 October 2011

In the Realm of the Senses (1976): Wicked Game.

In the Realm of the Senses is an arty excuse to watch two people having lots and lots of sex. Note: unsimulated sex. I knew going into it that the film was controversial, but I didn’t realize exactly how much bumping n’ grinding I would be witness to. Despite this fact, somehow I never found the film to be vulgar. I found it strangely romantic. Maybe it was all of those pretty silk kimonos. The story, based on a true incident, follows the affair turned sexual obsession of a man, Kichizo and one of his servants, Sada. Kichizo and Sada engage in sexual experiments and some next level PDA throughout the film. “Oh please leave the sake over there. Don’t mind us, we’re just putting food into Ada’s vagina. No, you can stay…” I wish I was being facetious, but this really happens.

2:20 pm • 10 October 2011