New York Times: Robert De Niro has his own film festival. Why shouldn’t Paul Giamatti? After all, it’s been 15 years since Mr. De Niro was nominated for an Oscar; Mr. Giamatti made it to the big dance just last year (with a supporting actor nomination for “Cinderella Man”). The Brooklyn Academy of Music agrees: Beginning Wednesday it presents “PAUL GIAMATTI SELECTS,” an eight-movie series, stretching over six weeks, chosen by Mr. Giamatti, the actor’s actor and Brooklyn Heights resident. In keeping with the smart but less-than-sunny characters he is known for playing, these films share an — anxious? clammy? all right, paranoid — outlook and a tendency toward the darkest of dark comedy.
This week’s selections are the necktie-murder-and-mistaken-identity shocker “Frenzy” (1972), Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate film, on Wednesday, and the sainted nuclear-war satire “Dr. Strangelove” (1964) on Thursday. Later films in the series are less familiar: the Robert Altman oddity “Brewster McCloud” (1970) on Aug. 27, the film-noir newspaper mystery “The Big Clock” (1948) on Aug. 28 and the atmospheric Mark Robson thriller “The Seventh Victim” (1943), starring Kim Hunter and produced by Val Lewton, on Sept. 4. Best of all: on Sept. 10, the seldom-seen 1978 “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” Philip Kaufman’s terrifically witty and scary farewell to the American counterculture. To put it in terms Mr. Giamatti’s best-known creation, the tortured oenophile Miles Raymond, would understand: If that were a wine, it would be 100 percent pinot noir.
For more information check the BAM Website
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