MoMA CELEBRATES THE 75th ANNIVERSARY OF THE NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE BY INVITING MEMBERS TO SELECT FILM FOR 12-WEEK EXHIBIITON Critical Favorites: The New York Film Critics Circle at 75 July 3—September 25, 2009 The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters & The Celeste Bartos Theater NEW YORK, June 19, 2009 —The Museum of Modern Art celebrates The New York Film Critics Circle’s (NYFCC) 75th anniversary with a 12-week series of award-winning films, from July 3 to September 25, 2009, in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters. As the nation‘s oldest and most prestigious association of film critics, the NYFCC honors excellence in cinema worldwide, giving annual awards to the ―best‖ films in various categories that have all opened in New York. To mark the group‘s milestone anniversary, each member of the organization was asked to choose one notable film from MoMA‘s collection that was a recipient of a NYFCC award to be part of the exhibition. Some screenings will be introduced by the contributing film critics. Critical Favorites: The New York Film Critics Circle at 75 is organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film, in collaboration with The New York Film Critics Circle and 2009 Chairman Armond White. High-resolution images are available at www.moma.org/press. No. 58 Press Contacts: Emily Lowe, Rubenstein, (212) 843-8011, [email protected] Tessa Kelley, Rubenstein, (212) 843-9355, [email protected] Margaret Doyle, MoMA, (212) 408-6400, [email protected] Film Admission: $10 adults; $8 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D. $6 full-time students with current I.D. (For admittance to film programs only.) The price of a film ticket may be applied toward the price of a Museum admission ticket when a film ticket stub is presented at the Lobby Information Desk within 30 days of the date on the stub (does not apply during Target Free Friday Nights 4:00–8:00 p.m.). Admission is free for Museum members and for Museum ticketholders. The public may call (212) 708-9400 for detailed Museum information. Visit us at www.moma.org # # # SCREENING SCHEDULE For schedule of introductions by selecting film critics, please visit www.moma.org Friday, July 3 7:00 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. 1936. USA. Directed by Frank Capra. Screenplay by Robert Riskin. With Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, George Bancroft, Lionel Stander. ―Forget the abysmal 2002 Adam Sandler remake. The original, directed by Frank Capra and written by Robert Riskin, is a screwball delight. This comedy pithily pits small town values against big city opportunism and mendacity. Nice guy Longfellow Deeds (Cooper), a greeting card versifier from a small town in Vermont, is probably Capra‘s least complicated hero, while Babe Bennett (Arthur), the newspaper reporter who falls in love with him even as she‘s writing exploitative stories making fun of his rube-like ways, is among his most conflicted and complex heroines‖ (Leah Rozen, People Magazine). NYFCC Best Picture, 1936. 115 min. Saturday, July 4 4:00 Far from Heaven. 2002. USA. Written and directed by Todd Haynes. With Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson. ―Why did the New York critics vote a movie about a 1957 Connecticut housewife as 2002‘s best? Because Far from Heaven is pure cinema. Because Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid, as her gay husband, are in peak form. And because director Todd Haynes, channeling Douglas Sirk‘s magnificent obsession with shadows and symbols that define character, creates an imitation of life from half a century ago that holds up a cracked mirror to the here and now‖ (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone). NYFCC Best Picture, 2002. 107 min. 7:30 Fargo. 1996. USA. Directed by Joel Coen. Screenplay by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen. With Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare. ―Fargo stands at the top of [the Coen brothers‘] oeuvre: funny, violent, and dark, set in a universe where a kidnapping plot‘s venal miscreants are forced to live by Murphy‘s Law. Frances McDormand delights as the unflappable Police Chief Marge Gunderson, who calmly cleans up messes and solves the case. Snowy but never cold, this film still dazzles with its unpredictability and harsh sense of justice. Oh yeah—and the woodchipper‖ (Marshall Fine, Star Magazine). NYFCC Best Picture, 1996. 98 min. Sunday, July 5 2:00 The Best Years of Our Lives. 1946. USA. Directed by William Wyler. Screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood. With Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright. ―The Best Years of Our Lives was released in 1946, as American servicemen returning from the war struggled with readjustment to civilian life. But the picture isn‘t just a dated time capsule. It resonates today, largely because the performances—from Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Frederic March, Teresa Wright, and Harold Russell—are so uniformly superb, and so piercing. Cinematographer Gregg Toland‘s framing underscores each character‘s sense of isolation and, ultimately, connection‖ (Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com). NYFCC Best Picture, 1946. 163 min. Monday, July 6 4:00 Sideways. 2004. USA. Directed by Alexander Payne. Written by Payne, Jim Taylor. With Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh. ―Sideways may look like a standard midlife crisis, buddies-on-the-road movie, but don‘t be fooled. It‘s remarkably sweet and funny and sad. At a time when most Hollywood comedies are little 2 more than gagfests peopled by joke-bots, its humanity should be doubly prized—even if, unlike Paul Giamatti‘s wine connoisseur, you like Merlot‖ (Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor). NYFCC Best Picture, 2004.126 min. Wednesday, July 8 8:00 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. 1936. USA. See Friday, July 3 Thursday, July 9 4:30 The Best Years of Our Lives. 1946. USA. See Sunday July 5 8:00 Far from Heaven. 2002. USA. See Saturday July 4. Friday, July 10 4:30 Sideways. 2004. USA. See Monday, July 6. 8:00 Fargo. 1996. USA. See Saturday, July 4. Saturday, July 11 2:00 Chicken Run. 2000. USA/Great Britain. Directed by Peter Lord, Nick Park. Screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick, based on an original work by Lord and Park. With Mel Gibson, Julia Sawalha, Miranda Richardson, Jane Horrocks. ―In their first full-length feature, Nick Park and the distinctive Aardman claymation artists behind Wallace and Gromit conjure a perceptive, funny, detail perfect fable about group effort and Anglo-American relations among fowl of the Greatest Generation. If The Great Escape or Stalag 17 were retold with animated chickens—and the chickens had lips (and the voice talents of Mel Gibson and Imelda Staunton, among any)—well then, a great war epic might look something like this‖ (Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly). NYFCC Best Animated Film, 2000. 85 min. 5:00 La Dolce Vita. 1960. Italy. Written and directed by Federico Fellini. With Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimee, Yvonne Furneaux. ―To address Fellini‘s La Dolce Vita in seventy-five words is blasphemy—a quickie replacing an orgy. The sensual 1960 masterpiece is expansive, a feast, the definition of what it was to live the good life in postwar Rome for a people who knew suffering and deprivation, and defiantly chose life. Anita Ekberg is Venus incarnate, a statue that has stepped off her pedestal into the audience‘s open arms—and those of the magnetic Marcello Mastroianni! Magnifico!‖ (Thelma Adams, Us Weekly). NYFCC Best Foreign Film, 1961. In Italian; English subtitles. 174 min. 8:30 Umberto D. 1952. Italy. Written and directed by Vittorio De Sica. With Carlo Battisti, Maria-Pia Casilio, Lina Gennari, Ileana Simova. ―The heroic era of Neorealism reached its climax (and box-office disaster) with this wrenching portrait of an elderly, middle-class pensioner slowly losing his home and his dignity. With its episodes of deliberately undramatic activity, Umberto D. comes close to achieving an ideal announced by André Bazin—the perfect aesthetic illusion of reality—and 3 foreshadows the observational cinema of filmmakers such as Hou Hsiao-hsien and Chantal Akerman. With its unabashed emotion, it also breaks your heart‖ (Stuart Klawans, The Nation). NYFCC Best Foreign Film, 1955. In Italian; English subtitles. 89 min. Sunday, July 12 12:30 Shoah. 1985. France. Directed by Claude Lanzmann. ―The NYFCC named Claude Lanzmann‘s magisterial nine-and-a-half- hour account of the extermination of six million Jews the best documentary of 1985. Shoah is an historic documentary as well as a great, unique film and, in addressing the issue of representation, a rigorous work of film-philosophy. Refusing to ―reconstruct‖ the past, Lanzmann compels viewers to imagine the unimaginable. For all its devotion to detail, Shoah is a film that ultimately unfolds in the mind‘s eye‖ (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice). NYFCC Best Nonfiction Film,1985. 564 min. with a one-hour intermission. Monday, July 13 4:30 Umberto D. 1952. Italy. See Saturday July 11. 8:00 La Dolce Vita. 1960. See Saturday July 11. Wednesday, July 15 4:30 Spellbound. 1945. USA. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Ben Hecht, Angus MacPhail. With Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Rhonda Fleming, Leo G. Carroll. ―Bergman won the NYFCC‘s Best Actress award for Alfred Hitchcock‘s thriller and The Bells of St. Mary’s, released, along with Saratoga Trunk, at the height of her popularity in late 1945. Cast as a dishy ‗dream detective‘ who unlocks shell-shocked vet Gregory Peck‘s unconscious to solve a murder, it‘s a stylish, fascinating window into contemporary attitudes toward psychiatry, as filtered through the disparate sensibilities of Hitchcock, producer David O. Selznick, screenwriter Ben Hecht, and Salvador Dalí, who designed the famed fantasy sequence‖ (Lou Lumenick, The New York Post).