It’s been quite a week. I come home from vacation to discover that my site has been hacked and is infecting PCs. I cleaned out the infection immediately (or more precisely, someone at Bayflicks’ host, IX Web Hosting, did it), but making sure it doesn’t happen again feels like a full-time job. You can read about my problems in Bayflicks Hijacked and Technical Problems and Apologies and Technical Issues. But I also managed to tell you about Cocteau and Kahlo at SFMOMA and the Jewish Film Festival.
The Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival opens Friday and runs through Sunday. This year, the festival
centers around the studios in the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC). This Edison-led trust, made up of nine leading studios, controlled the American industry during some of its formative years. Most historians don’t look upon the trust favorably; its cautious policies slowed the art’s development and proved, in the long run, economically short-sighted. But filmmakers struggling with the MPPC’s rules, including D.W. Griffith, helped develop the art. The festival will screen seven collections of shorts (no features) [I stand corrected. Six of the seven programs contain a feature in addition to the shorts], each from a different MPPC company. Each series will be presented by a historian and accompanied by a member of the Museum’s regular stable of pianists.
The Frameline LGBT Film Festival also continues through Sunday. Read my preview here.
DOUBLE BILL: Duck Soup & Animal Crackers, Stanford, Wedneday through next Friday. In Duck S
oup, a blatantly corrupt politician becomes the country’s all-powerful leader on the whim of the wealthy elite. Once in office, he cuts benefits for the working class, fills important positions with unqualified clowns, and starts a war on a whim. But how could a comedy made in 1933 be relevant today? The Marx Brothers at their very best. Like its predecessor The Coconuts, Animal Crackers is just a photographed stage play. But this second time before the cameras, the brothers perform in top form, in a play that really rides on their strengths. Technically crude, but wonderful in every other way.
North By Northwest, Cerrito, Saturday, 6:00; Sunday, 5:00. Alfred Hitchcock’s light masterpiece,
not as thoughtful as Rear Window or Notorious, but more entertaining than both of them combined. Cary Grant plays an unusually suave and witty everyman mistaken by evil foreign spies for a crack American agent, and by police for a murderer. And so he must escape almost certain death again and again while chased from New York to Mount Rushmore. On the bright side, he gets to spend some quality time with a very glamorous Eva Marie Saint. Danger has its rewards.
Iron Man, Red Vic, Wednesday and Thursday (and next Saturday). Director Jon Favreau and his team of writers insert all the requisite thrills into a story strong enough to support the pyrotechnics rather than get buried by them. After a close 
brush with violent death, weapons tycoon, genius, and all-around jerk Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) wants out of the death business. But he’s conflicted about his new-found pacifism, so he secretly builds the ultimate one-man weapon–an armored, flying suit with guns and missile launchers attached–to help him keep the peace. Favreau knows better than to fill his movie with wall-to-wall action, and always ties the well-choreographed fighting to the story. See my full review for details.
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