transition

--Couldn't help but feel a "good news/bad news" sensation when I read that the San Francisco Film Society had finally found a year-round theatrical home. As delighted as I am that they've partnered with New People to run their programming in the basement cinema, I guess the space is now formerly Viz Cinema. The space has had a rough go of its own programming of classic and contemporary Japanese cinema, but were starting to revamp their program with a series of weekend matinee screenings. Perhaps I'm being blindly optimistic when I hope that Viz's programming team will continue to have at least a say in what goes up in the space; I've grown more than accustomed to the fresh anime screened there.

--Perhaps I'm being similarly naive with regard to the Red Vic Movie House, but the programs I've experienced there recently (and the sizes of the midweek audiences they've attracted) are not in keeping with the space's numbered days. The thirty-year-old venue is set to shut down next month, and I'm wondering if maybe people are experiencing the place while they can. Monday's screening of Wings of Desire was very well-attended, as was Jesse Hawthorne Ficks' eye-opening Woody Allen program (including two features and a stunning collection of trailers). The dreamer in me believes that this kind of late-inning attendance could save the theatre; the realist in me knows that even if the Red Vic survived, they wouldn't be back.



--Revisiting Wings of Desire was a curious experience. I found in retrospect that I'd both enshrined the film and taken it for granted, happily declaring it a masterpiece while completely forgetting why I'd done so in the first place. And so I became completely swept away in it, moreso than ever perhaps. The story of the angels that walk among us, and one angel's forsaking of his divinity for earthly love, remains absolutely timeless, and every single character in the film remains a cherished friend.

--Sad, indeed, then was it to say goodbye to one of those friends yesterday. May Peter Falk rest in peace. Adios, compañero.

--Sad, too, am I to mourn the passing of comics artist Gene Colan. Among a number of other accomplishments, his Dracula I consider definitive.



--And yet during the writing of this the New York state senate passed the Marriage Equality Act and its corresponding amendment. Some transitions your proprietor can totally get behind.