Some outfit called the California Independent Film Festival, which I've never heard of despite its being 12 years long-in-the-tooth, is bringing Tippi Hedren to its screening of The Birds at the Orinda. This is Hitchcock's entry in the horror genre, and an effective one at that. I remember it as being essentially Night of the Living Dead with, um, birds. And, of course, more of a budget. Whether it contains as astute social commentary as Romero's film I disremember. I do know that I'd much rather see a film at the Orinda (it's right off BART, folks!) than at the UA Berkeley, where Birds was shown recently. Not that I've been to the Orinda since micro-chain Rheem took over operations and canned the union, but they always used to put a nice flat image on screen, though their 'scope never looked so hot and their splices were downright ugly.
In a week's time The Birds will show at the Stanford, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. The next four days feature Hitch's Ben Hecht-penned nukular-age thriller Notorious, which is book-ended by two of cinema's great party scenes and whose cast includes Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, and Claude Rains, coupled with Suspicion, in which Joan Fontaine comes to suspect that her husband (Grant again) is... well, that would be telling. I'm sure I've seen the latter film and liked it to boot, but damned if I can remember anything of it. I'll have to see if I can squeeze in a trip South one of these days.
But tonight will find me at the PFA, watching Christopher Lee in the Brit-crime She Played with Fire and William Klein's "portrait" film Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther, which looks like it will dispense with the usual niceties of the puff-piece documentary and pit its maker's agenda against its subject's. Diatribes will ensue.
TBC...