The Screengrab : val lewton

Set Your DVR!: October 27 - November 3, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Halloween week means more vintage horror! TCM in particular is even exceeding their own high standards this week, shoehorning in a night of Billy Wilder on Tuesday (nothing is recommended because everything is fairly well-known) and a few film noir classics on Wednesday before cranking up the scary on Thursday. As always, let me know in comments if you see something I shouldn’t have missed!

Mon, Oct 27:

11 am/12 pm: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. As I said last week, it’s not a great movie, but it has a few iconic scenes.

Tues, Oct 28:

5/6 am: The Invisible Man on AMC. Based on Ralph Ellison’s classic novel of race in America... whoops, that’s not right. No one’s ever made that movie. This is James Whale’s classic horror film starring Claude Rains.

6:45/7:45 am: Bride of Frankenstein on AMC. And this is James Whale’s frankenlady movie.

7/8 am: The Desperate Hours on TCM. Neat little thriller about convicts on the lam starring Humphrey Bogart.

11 pm/12 am: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. Repeat.

Wed, Oct 29:

1/2 pm: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. Repeat. Last time I’m going to mention it, in fact.

7/8 pm: Murder, My Sweet on TCM. Killer adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely.

10:45/11:45 pm: Out of the Past on TCM. Film noir classic with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas. Directed by Jacques Tourneur, who also made three of the Val Lewton-produced no-budget horror films we’re recommending this week.

Thurs, Oct 30:

12:30/1:30 am: They Live By Night on TCM. Earlier movie based on the same source material as Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us, which is one of his most underappreciated movies.

3/4 am: House of Wax on CHILLER. Vincent Price’s classic. Note: You will not see Paris Hilton in this movie.

3:45/4:45 am: The Thing From Another World on TCM. Howard Hawks directing an early sci-fi/horror movie. The John Carpenter movie The Thing was a remake.

6:30/7:30 am: The Beast with Five Fingers on TCM. FIVE WHOLE FINGERS! YAAAAAARGH!

7:30/8:30 am: 8 Women on LOGO. Francois Ozon assembles every major French actress of our time for a half-musical/half-murder mystery.

8/9 am: I Walked With A Zombie on TCM. Jacques Tourneur doing horror on a Val Lewton production.

9:15/10:15 am: Curse of the Demon on TCM. Recut version of the horror film Night of the Demon. Directed by Jacques Tourneur applying what he has learned from doing horror on Val Lewton productions.

10:45/11:45 am: Gerry on IFC (repeat at 4/5 pm and on 11/31 at 4:10/5:10 am). I just keep recommending it!

5:30/6:30 pm: House of Usher on TCM. Roger Corman! Vincent Price! Edgar Allan Poe! You might be surprised to learn that this is a tender romantic comedy.

7/8 pm: Dead of Night on TCM. Creepy little horror anthology from Ealing Studios. And no Sir Alec Guinness to be found!

Fri, Oct 31:

A quick note: TCM owns Halloween programming. You can’t go wrong with anything they’re showing all day.

1/2 am: Kwaidan on TCM. A beloved Japanese horror anthology.

3:45/4:45: Spirits of the Dead on TCM. A triptych of short films from Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini (which of these names is not like the others?). I’ve never seen it, but the cast of Jane Fonda, Brigitte Bardot, Terence Stamp, and Alain Delon sounds promising.

6:30/7:30 am: Cat People on TCM. More Lewton & Tourneur!

7/8 am: The Honeymoon Killers on IFC. Still brilliant, still vile.

8/9 am: Freaks on TCM.

8:30/9:30 am: Halloween on AMC. Halloween? Hasn’t everyone seen this? I suspect that some people have forgotten how effective it is with almost no budget and no special effects.

9:15/10:15 am: The Devil Doll on TCM. How many ways can I say “creepy”? This one’s directed by the creator of Freaks, Tod Browning.

2:30/3:30 pm: The Body Snatcher on TCM. More Val Lewton! With Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi!

4/5 pm: Bedlam on TCM. And even more Val Lewton! This one’s with just Karloff.

7/8 pm: The Host on G4. Korean horror movie with great special effects and a cruel sense of humor.

Sat, Nov 1:

1/2 am: The Host on G4 (repeats at 11/12 am).

1:30/2:30 am: Blood Feast on TCM. Things start getting ugly overnight at TCM. This is a challenger to Plan 9 From Outer Space for the coveted Worst Movie Ever award. Highly recommended! Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, whom you can read more about in our very own Scott Von Doviak’s excellent book Hick Flicks, which is a perfect stocking-stuffer for the film geek in your family.

2:45/3:45 am: 2,000 Maniacs on TCM. A follow-up to Blood Feast. I understand that the name is misleading, as Lewis only had to budget for 1,986 maniacs.

3/4 am: The Blob on CHILLER (Repeat at 6:00 am/7:00 am). Steve McQueen in the no-budget flick that might just be a parable about the insidious effects of CREEPING COMMUNISM! BOOGA BOOGA! Starring Barack Obama’s tax policies as The Blob and Sarah Palin as the small-town mayor who knows how to stop it. If only the people will listen!

5:15/6:15 am: Forbidden Planet on TCM. Ah, the horror is starting to subside. What better way to recover than a movie that puts Shakespeare’s The Tempest in space?

7/8 am: My Darling Clementine on AMC. One of the finest classic Westerns of all time. Starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford.

7/8 am: Sanshiro Sugata on IFC. Akira Kurosawa’s first film, this is a standard issue wuxia film in terms of plot and progression, but with Kurosawa’s unerring eye behind the lens, there’s moments of stunning beauty to be found. Unreleased on DVD, and a must for Kurosawa fanatics.

9:30/10:30 am: The Last Wave on IFC (repeat at 2:45/3:45 pm). Richard Chamberlain’s most shocking role (in which discernible acting can be detected!) about apocalyptic aboriginal weirdness in Australia. Directed by Peter Weir.

Sun, Nov 2:

Happy birthday to my mom and my brother-in-law Jeff!

7/8 am: Solaris on IFC. This is the Tarkovsky original, not the Soderbergh remake. A deeply sad, meditative movie about love and self and Otherness. I’m being purposely vague, but this review is only two sentences, and this movie deserves much more than that.

8:30/9:30 am: Macbeth on TCM. Orson Welles’s Macbeth with the bad accents and great filmmaking.

5:35/6:35 pm: The New World on IFC. Terrence Malick’s film about how struggle defines all human relationships, despite the transcendental indifference of nature. Did I just write that? This is easily one of the best films of the last decade, so just watch it.

8/9 pm: The Proposition on IFC (repeat on 11/3 at 1:15/2:15 am). John Hillcoat’s Aussie Western written by Nick Cave. It wants to be a Peckinpah movie, but it’s not even a Boetticher. That’s not to say it’s worthless, but it bites off more than it can chew. Hillcoat’s the director of the upcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I hope is better than this.

9:45/10:45 pm: The Year of Living Dangerously on TCM. Remember when Mel Gibson could act? Good times. Oh, ok. This is most definitely not a good time. Directed by Peter Weir.

11 pm/12 am (11/3): True Stories on VH1CL (repeat on 11/3 at 7/8 pm). It’s not a good movie, but it’s fun. This is David Byrne’s labor of love, a deliberately quirky look at America from one of its deliberately quirky pop culture figures. The Talking Heads songs aren’t their best, but they’re pretty good, and pretty good looks good from here.

Mon, Nov 3:

3/4 am: Isle of the Dead on CHILLER. Another Val Lewton production! Why is it on after Halloween? Apparently CHILLER has started the Halloween 2009 season early.

5:05/6:05 am: Tom Dowd & the Language of Music on IFC (repeat at 12:30/1:30 pm). Delightful documentary about the man with the golden ear who flawlessly recorded some of the greats of 20th century music.

10:05/11:05 am: The New World on IFC. Repeat.

10:30/11:30 am: The Man From Laramie on TCM. Anthony Mann Western with James Stewart. Not the best Mann Western, but it’ll do.

8/9 pm: Me and You and Everyone We Know on IFC (repeat 11/4 at 12/1 am). Miranda July is cute and a little alienating. John Hawkes learned from Deadwood the fine art of saying everything he has to say with his eyebrows. Somehow, despite the nearly lethal levels of quirk, July has made a movie with an enormous amount of heart.

Set Your DVR!: October 20 - October 28, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

What a great time of year for movies! If you're a fan of vintage horror, that is. Here's the DVR-worthy flicks on cable in the upcoming week.

Mon, Oct 20:

1:30/2:30 pm: The Haunting on TCM. Again, this is the 1963 Robert Wise version.

Tues, Oct 21:

11/12 am: Rio Grande on TCM. Classic John Wayne/John Ford Western.

8:45/9:45 pm: The Public Enemy on TCM. Buncha dirty rats doin' low-down dirty-rat bidness.

Wed Oct 22:

6:45/7:45 am: Batman on AMC. The 1966 version. Shark repellent, my friends. Need I say more?

8:20/9:20 am: George Washington on IFC (repeat at 2:35/3:35 pm). I'm not always going to repeat prior recommendations, but man, I like this movie.

3:30/4:30 pm: The Enchanted Cottage on TCM. I've never seen this, but it is apparently a much-loved, hard-to-see romance between an injured soldier and a lady who isn't much to look at. Unreleased on DVD.

6:15/7:15 pm: Last Days on IFC (repeat 10/23 at 2:00 am).

7/8 pm: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) on TCM. This is the one with Charles Laughton.

Thur, Oct 23:

Start the day (or previous night) with a Val Lewton film festival on TCM!

12:45/1:45 am: Cat People on TCM. The first collaboration between director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton (the king of no-budget atmospheric eerieness). Not exactly horror, but not exactly anything else.

2/3 am: I Walked With A Zombie on TCM. Not just a killer Roky Erickson song, this is another Tourneur/Lewton collaboration.

3:15/4:15 am: Isle of the Dead on TCM. Val Lewton production starring Boris Karloff.

4:30/5:30 am: The Body Snatcher on TCM. Val Lewton production starring Boris Karloff AND Bela Lugosi, directed by Robert Wise, and based on a Robert Louis Stevenson short story, of all things.

5:45/6:45 am: Shattered Glass on IFC. Some people missed this 2003 film in which Hayden Christiansen plays a character who is - get this - supposed to be wooden. Based on the true events around the fantasist Stephen Glass's deception of The New Republic

7:35/8:35 am: Manderlay on IFC (repeat at 1:35/2:35 pm). Lars von Trier's follow-up to Dogville is about a Southern plantation in the 1930s that has never freed its slaves. Do you like von Trier? Then you'll probably like this.

2:15/3:15 pm: D.O.A. on TCM. Film noir classic.

UPDATE: 8 pm (not sure of the time zone): Red Sun on Retroplex (free on Comcast Digital). This is a Western starring Charles Bronson, Ursula Andress, Alain Delon, and Toshiro Mifune. Whoa! Thanks to Janet for the hat tip.

Fri, Oct 24:

4:15/5:15 am: Manderlay on IFC (repeat).

Sat, Oct 25:

2:45/3:45 am: 200 Motels on TCM. Frank Zappa's wacky movie. Are you a fan of Zappa? No? Then you'll hate it. Unreleased on DVD.

5:15/6:15 am: The Curse of Frankenstein on AMC. Classic Frankenstein movie starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

7/8 am: Kiru on IFC (repeat at 1:50/2:50 pm). Samurai comedy! Yep.

8/9 am: Night of the Living Dead on SCIFI. Oh, you know this one already? You must have brains. Braaaaaaains.

11:30 pm/12:30 am: Catwoman on OXYGEN. Perhaps the scariest movie of the Halloween season. This movie has Halle Berry in the lead! (BWA-HA-HA!) And she’s trying to be sexy/sultry/non-robotic! (AAAAAAAH!) Actually, this is far too scary for anyone to view.

Sun, Oct 26:

12:45/1:45 am: The Honeymoon Killers on TCM. Brilliant and utterly repellent movie based on the true story of the Lonely Hearts Killers, who preyed on divorced women in the late 40s. Between this and Mad Men, you get the feeling that the mid-20th century wasn't such a great time to be an independent women.

7/8 am: The Ghost of Yotsuya on IFC. Ghosts! Samurais! Spurned Wives! Revenge!

10:00/11:00 am: The Flower of Evil on IFC. Directed by the Hitchcock-influenced Claude Chabrol. I haven't seen this one, but I run hot and cold on Chabrol movies.

1/2 pm: Kiss of Death on FMC. Fantastic film noir.

2:30/3:30 pm: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. This isn't a great movie, but it has a few great - I'd go as far as "iconic" - scenes, most notably David Naughton's transformation into the title monster. Does AMC cut for content? I often skip movies showing on AMC because I hate watching commercials during films. And I don't know if the movies are running uncut with commercials or cut down for size. Let me know in comments if you have a better idea about what AMC is doing.

Mon, Oct 27 (ze spillover from Sunday):

1:30/2:30 am: Vampyr: Der Traum des Allan Grey on TCM. Now this is a great movie, Dreyer’s 1932 vampire epic. One of the greatest vampire movies ever made, in fact, up there with Nosferatu. I don't know how it will look in this cut, but I believe that time and neglect have left all existing prints somewhat faded.

3/4 am: Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte on AMC. Horror film starring Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten, and Agnes Moorehead. Sounds like a recipe for overheated Southern goth to me, but it's pretty highly rated, so what do I know?

11 am/12 pm: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. Repeat.

Set Your DVR!: October 13 - October 20, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Here’s upcoming Movies of Interest in the next week! I realized that last week’s entry gave all times in Central Time. From here on out, I’ll do the Central/Eastern thing. I will also spill things over to the following Monday, because several great movies show on Sunday night. Finally, let me know in comments if you see something I missed!

Other than that, the rules are the same: I’m trying to avoid recommending obvious movies, but I know you’re a knowledgeable reader, so some of the ones here might seem large and unsubtle to you. But that’s alright. I’m using an in-law test: I’ll stick with movies that my in-laws have most likely never heard of. And no premium channels, because I’m too broke to afford them.

Mon, Oct 13:

10:30/11:30 am: The Circus Queen Murder on TCM. Pre-code murder mystery starring Adolphe Menjou. Not available on DVD.

11:00 am/12:00 pm: George Washington on IFC (repeat at 4:15/5:15 pm and again on 10/14 at 4:30/5:30 am). Slow and thoughtful take on African-American youths in a go-nowhere Southern town directed by the guy who made Pineapple Express. Obvious influences: Terrence Malick and Charles Burnett.

2:00/3:00 pm: Vanishing Point on FMC. The lesser of the two great existential car movies of 1971 (Two-Lane Blacktop is the other). This one’s still a pop culture point-of-reference, especially for Tarantino movies. Definitely worth a viewing.

5:00/6:00 pm: Dave Chappelle’s Block Party. As mentioned last week, this one is a fun and light take on the concert film, directed by Michel Gondry and built around Dave Chappelle’s general awesomeness.

7:00/8:00 pm: My Man Godfrey on TCM. Now that we’re headed into a genuine financial depression, take a moment to consider one of the great films about the repercussions of the Great one.

Tues, Oct 14:

5:15/6:15 pm: Gerry on IFC (repeat at 7:45/8:45 am and 12:45/1:45 pm). I mentioned this one last week, too. And I think it’s on again next week. No matter, though, because it’s just brilliant. Since I mentioned it last, Scott Tobias at the AV Club wrote a great article on it.

Wed, Oct 15:

12:00/1:00 am: The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. on TCM. Dr. Seuss’s live-action insanity. Check it out!

5:00/6:00 am: Shall We Dance on TCM. Fred & Ginger. Score by the Gershwins. A dance scene on roller skates.

10:00/11:00 am: The Legend of Drunken Master (aka Drunken Master II) on G4 (repeat 10/16 at 1:00/2:00 am). It seems hard to believe now, but long before teaming up with Chris Tucker, Jackie Chan made movies that were actually funny. I mean, there’s ass-kicking galore, but the gags he stole from Buster Keaton are just delightful.

10:30/11:30 am: Carefree on TCM. More Fred & Ginger. More dancing. More joking around.

12:00/1:00 pm: Room Service on TCM. Not a bad movie for delving a little deeper into the Marx Brothers.

5:00/6:00 pm: Swing Time on TCM. And even more Fred & Ginger!

Th, Oct 16:

Got nothing for today. Go to the park!

Fri, Oct 17:

1:00/2:00 am: Kiss of Death on FMC. Film noir classic with a great turn by Richard Widmark.

Sat, Oct 18:

3:00/4:00 am: Them! on CHILLER. I don’t know what CHILLER is, but apparently it is a channel I have. Them! is a classic monster movie, complete with proto-environmentalist themes, officious foolishness from the authorities, and monsters deserving of a pronoun and an exclamation point and nothing more.

6:30/7:30 am: Gods and Monsters on LOGO (repeat at 1:00/2:00 pm). Lots of biopics want to wallop you over the head with their themes (hey, did you catch that drugs and womanizing might have affected Ray Charles’s life? I wonder if his brother’s death had anything to do with that), but Gods and Monsters, which is about the horror film director James Whale, has a lighter touch.

7:00/8:00 am: Samurai 3 on IFC. The apex of the Samurai trilogy, also known as Duel on Ganryu Island. Toshiro Mifune is in top form, and the climactic battle is the template for Quentin Tarantino’s understanding of Japanese cool.

12:30/1:30 pm: The Day The Earth Stood Still on AMC. Y’know, fuck Keanu Reeves. Go to the source.

11:00 pm/12:00 am: Dick on Oxygen. I mentioned last week that this movie is hilarious. It still is.

11:45 pm/12:45 am: Crash on IFC. This isn’t the noxious Oscar-bait Crash, but the deeply perverse Cronenberg movie based on the J.G. Ballard story.

Sun, Oct 19:

11:00 pm/12:00 am: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) on TCM. The silent version starring Lon Chaney. Yes, indeed.

Mon, Oct 20 (the overnight spillover):

1:00/2:00 am: Eyes Without A Face on TCM. Georges Franju’s horror classic that is guaranteed to give you the creeping heebie-jeebies. It's also well-written, well-shot, and well-acted, so what are you waiting for?

5:00/6:00 am: Kongo on TCM. Pre-Hayes Code movie that must be seen to be believed. A celebration of depravity loosely based on Conrad’s The Heart Of Darkness. As envisioned by Michel Houellebecq. There’s no DVD, so watch it while you can.

6:45/7:45 am: Ghost Ship on TCM. A Val Lewton production, this little horror film was on the losing end of a lawsuit that kept it out of the public eye for most of the last century. N.B. This is not the CGI craptacular from a few years back.

8:00/9:00 am: The Seventh Victim on TCM. Another Val Lewton production. I’ve never seen this one, but I know the Lewton name means it’s a moody little no-budget horror film that will stick with you for days.

1:30/2:30 pm: The Haunting on TCM. My good friend David Smay (author of the 33 1/3 book on Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombones album, which you should buy and read and, preferably, love [plug!]), notes that when I mentioned this movie last week, I failed to include the following information, all of which increases your need to see it: (a) the coolness of Claire Bloom's sapphic sexy psychic, and (b) that she was lovers with Philip Roth for a long time (and then briefly married him). Also, if you've never seen her in James Joyce's Women then you should, because her performance of Molly Bloom's soliloquy at the end of Ulysses is AWESOME. Thanks, David! I will!

Attack of the Half-Assed Hollywood Remakes of Asian Horror Movies

Phil Nugent — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:00:00 GMT

With the new Hollywood remake of the Pang brothers' The Eye arriving in theaters this coming Friday — and with the new Hollywood remake of Takashi Miike's One Missed Call hustling out to make room for it — Terrence Rafferty ponders this thing called the glut of American remakes of recent Asian horror pictures. (Not everything gets a pithy term around here.) The success of Gore Verbinski's The Ring (based on the Japanese film Ringu, and Takashi Shimizu’s The Grudge, the director's English-language remake of his own Ju-On, guaranteed that there will many more films of this kind, even though, whether taken individually or as a singular continental phenomenon, adapting Asian horror movies for the Hollywood assembly line is a precarious business. Not that there aren't worse ways to go about it: as Rafferty notes, back in "the Stone Age of exploitation-movie history, shrewd Hollywood producers would simply have done what they did with the Japanese monster movies of that era: chop them up, hastily dub them into English and — if the repackagers were feeling particularly frisky — shoot a few minutes of new footage with a minor, familiar and presumably desperate American actor. Say what you will about remakes, they seem, all in all, a better option than Raymond Burr in Godzilla."

What neither remaking or recutting can easily finesse is the special mood — a haunting, eerie gloominess that seems to link a familiarity with ghosts to a lack of faith in any long-term future on this earth — that permeates so many of the original films. When Takashi Shimizu agreed to go through the chore of making Ju-On again — a task that he must have found to be a congenial one, since he's also made sequels to both the Japanese and American versions and is about to bring forth The Grudge 3 — he was canny enough to have Sarah Michelle Gellar, Bill Pullman, Clea DuVall and William Mapother come to Japan, rather than risk trying to make the story's underpinnings take root in, say, Boston. (Rafferty singles out Dark Water starring Jennifer Connelly and directed by Walter Salles, as a rare example of an uprooted Asian ghost story that works rather well in its new setting — a damp, crumbling fortress of an apartment complex on Roosevelt Island.) Then there are the special idiosyncrasies of some of the filmmakers who have been drawn to this material. There has to be an easier way to make a living than trying to render a Takashi Miike screenplay clear and understandable to a mass audience — didn't it ever occur to Eric Valete, the director of the American version of One Missed Call, that he might be happier walking through open fields in Eastern Europe, to see if there were still active land mines in the area? Nor is there any need to translate the remarkable work of the Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who is less a formulaic genre filmmaker than a nightmare poet (and a disciple of Val Lewton) working out his own fantasies of isolation and apocalyptic loneliness, into incoherent junk like the recent Pulse, with Kristen Bell.

As for The Eye, Rafferty detects "a half-detectable increase in optimism" in the new version, which means that the haunted quality that makes the original so hard to shake off may have been lost in translation: "That stranger-in-a-strange-land feeling might be induced by, say, the production values of the American version of The Eye, which, in their relative luxuriousness, suggest a happier, more hopeful view of the world than the starker sets of the Pang brothers do; or by the casting of sunny-looking Jessica Alba as the heroine, played in the original by the beautiful but grim-faced Lee Sin-je. The role is essentially the same: A young blind woman has her vision restored by cornea transplants and begins to see, along with the ordinary sights of everyday life, disturbing, unaccountable visions of shadowy afterlives. Ms. Alba looks unpleasantly surprised; Ms. Lee looks shaken to her core (though somehow less surprised)."

The Rep Report (December 13 - 24)

Peter Smith — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: Thursday, December 13, Film Society of Lincoln Center has an intriguing double bill: Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows, a new documentary directed by the critic Kent Jones, and produced and narrated by Martin Scorsese, will be shown along with the classic Lewton production I Walked with a Zombie. Installed on the RKO lot and given his own production company and a bagful of nickels, Lewton developed horror films in his own distinctive house style, long on angled shadows, underpopulated sets, and the tingly dread that talented directors like Zombie's Jacques Tourneur could create out what remained unsaid and unseen. Jones will be on hand to talk about his own movie and introduce Zombie.

On Sunday the 16th, Lincoln Center has another double bill, this time starring the face that launched a thousand bathtub-gin parties: the iconic flapper heroine of the silent era, Clara Bow. The Film Society, with a little help from the Library of Congress, will be showing Helen's Babies, a 1924 comedy starring Edward Everett Horton, and James P. Hogan's newly restored melodrama Capital Punishment. Live musical accompaniment will be provided by pianist Donald Sosin.

The period of Woody Allen's career when he seemed to be the New York Times' officially selected poet laureate of the Upper East Side may have peaked with the 1986 Hannah and Her Sisters, a sprawling (for Woody) family comedy-drama that includes one of Allen's finest performances as Woody Allen, given a few years before he started to look a little too old for the part. Film Forum brings it back for an eleven-day run starting December 14. On the 14th, the 7:40 P.M. screening will be introduced by Eric Lax, author of the new Conversations with Woody Allen. — Phil Nugent