Notes From The Program Director | Week of August 18th, 2023

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Notes From The Program Director

Week of August 18th, 2023

Melissa Tamminga

Rich Text

Hello, friends!

Barbie and Oppenheimer continue for another week here at the Pickford -- the Barbenheimer madness has legs! -- and it’s a reminder of how good it feels to have not one, but two hits on our hands. At the Pickford, we rely on a couple of big movies every year in order to sustain our arthouse and indie roots: the really big films enable us to champion those “smaller” films that will never make it big in the commercial cinema space but are often the most artistically interesting films of the year, films like EO, The Quiet Girl, Eight Mountains, Joyland, Broker, Corsage, or Showing Up. Hits like Barbenheimer also enable us to continue to showcase very special series films, like the Women’s History Month series from this past March, where we can celebrate the underseen but brilliant work of filmmakers like Kinuyo Tanaka. So even if you’ve seen Barbie and Oppenheimer--perhaps even seen them a couple of times each like me--and you’re ready for something new, hang tight and celebrate with us the gift of these wonderfully popular (and also very good!) films, particularly in the midst of the writers’ strike in Hollywood, where a halt has been put on the production of new films and we may see some slim months ahead in the next year or so. In the short term, new fare will be here before we know it -- I’ve got a whole line of wonderful films ready to go on our screens -- so it’s an ongoing delight for now to be able to enjoy the multi-layered bounty that is Barbieand Oppenheimer.

Mixed in with the Barbie and Oppenheimer cinematic richness, however, we’ve also got several special events for you this week:

Our Kid Pickford selection this month is Puss in Boots from 2011, the witty film following Shrek that charmed critics, delighted audiences, and eventually spawned a couple of sequels. While Pixar is often held up as the pinnacle of American animated entertainment, DreamWorks has also consistently offered smart, funny, imaginative fare, and Puss in Boots is right in there among the very best from DreamWorks, along with films like Shrek, Megamind, How to Train Your Dragon, Chicken Run, and Kung Fu Panda. The love for cats and a cat-like point of view that permeates the film is never not equal parts delightful and hilarious, and the beautifully animated action choreography, the voice work of especially Antonio Banderas as Puss and Selma Hayak as slinky Kitty, and the clever dialogue -- tongue in cheek but never cloying -- make Puss in Boots a joy for both kids and adults, just like all the best “kids’ films” should be. Puss in Boots plays this Saturday at 1:30 pm, Sunday at 10 am, and Wednesday at 10 am. Tickets, as always for Kid Pickford films, are just $6.

Our Third Eye selection of “staff-curated cult classics” this month is the 1992 gem Singles, set among 20-something Seattleites in the height of the grudge era and directed by the often underrated Cameron Crowe (Say Anything, Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire). Our curator this month, Joshua Russell (PFC janitorial staff), writes this about Singles: "A moment in time for Seattle (1992), captured in a story about being single in your twenties, pre cell phones and google maps. Except it does much more than show us what stays the same and what changes - this film documents the grunge music scene at its pre rock star formation. For context, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was released in 1991, when this film was in production. You get to see the members of Pearl Jam act (not bad at all) and Alice in Chains and Soundgarden play (amazing and sad) and Tad just being Tad. It remains a fair representation of a time, in a city, when it still felt like a small town and your rock heroes shopped at the same grocery store as you." Like Kid Pickford, Third Eye films are just $6, and we’re grateful to our neighbors Cheba Hut, our sponsors for the series! Singles plays this Saturday at 10 pm.

Also this week, we’ve got our latest installment of National Theater Live (NTL)with Fleabag playing on Wednesday, August 23, 7:45 pm (and then again on Sunday, August 27, 11 am). Fleabag, a creation of the brilliant Phoebe Waller-Bridge, also screened with us back in the fall of 2019, one of our most popular NTL selections, and it’s a joy to have it back with us for a special encore screening. Most of us, I suspect, were first familiar with the TV series version of Fleabag(which I confess I have watched and re-watched several times), but if you’ve not had a chance to see Waller-Bridge’s original one-woman stage-play, which inspired the TV series, now’s the opportunity!

Finally, in recognition of the passing of the great Paul Reubens and in honor of his life and most iconic character, we’re playing Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, a film that felt practically ubiquitous in my own Gen X childhood -- a viral phenomenon before internet virality was a thing -- and a film that many critics simply did not know what to do with at the time. It’s hard not to giggle at some of the indignant and outraged reviews from 1985: Vincent Canby for the New York Times wrote, “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is the most barren comedy I’ve seen in years, maybe ever”; the Timereviewer wrote, “The movie could induce terminal boredom in adults and rot the minds of the young”; and Gene Siskel for the Chicago Tribune wrote, “I wanted to leave Pee-Wee`s Big Adventure after five minutes. I stayed, much to my pain, for all 92. I think I’ll go see I Spit on Your Grave to try to cheer up” and gave the film “no stars.” But audiences didn’t pay these sour critics any mind, and for the critics who did get the film and were able to get on its zany and wonderful wavelength, reading back on their often incredulous pleasure in the film is a delight all its own. Stephanie Zacharek for Salon wrote, “Everything about Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, from its toy-box colors to its superb, hyper-animated Danny Elfman score to the butch-waxed hairdo and wooden-puppet walk of its star and mastermind, Pee-wee Herman, is pure pleasure”; the TV Guide reviewer wrote, “Inspired lunacy, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is one of the most inventive films in recent memory”; Jay Carr for the Boston Globe wrote, “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is a shrewdly observed, deftly executed looney tune”; and Michael Wilmingon for the LA Times wrote, “The wrong crowd will find these antics infantile and offensive. The right one will have a howling good time.” And I suspect that you all, as discerning Pickford patrons, are exactly the right crowd and that we shall hear howls coming from the theater this coming Sunday at 12:15 pm. R.I.P. Paul Reubens. You were one of a kind.