PAUL TAYLOR: DANCEMAKER, SPARKLE, USED CARS and More Set for Film Society of Lincoln Center, Feb 2013

THE GAMBLING MAN
Directors: Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly
Film is a portrait of Albert Hurwit, an 80-year-old retired doctor who could not read or write music, yet composed an award-winning symphony.

Film Comment Double Feature
Early Zemeckis: I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND and USED CARS
Wednesday, February 6 at 6:00PM in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center

I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND (1978) 104min
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Country: USA
This frenetic and madcap debut from Robert Zemeckis showcases the comedic and pop culture-conscious sensibility that underpins and thankfully grounds the director's subsequent career as a master of large-scale, high-concept, and special effects-driven spectacles from ROMANCING THE STONE to BACK TO THE FUTURE and beyond. It's 1964 and America is in the first flush of Beatlemania. Led by soon-to-be-married Pam (Nancy Allen), four girls from Maplewood, NJ head for the Big Apple, intent (for a variety of reasons) on infiltrating the hotel where the Fab Four are staying prior to their legendary appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in order to secure a personal audience with their idols. Enter Eddie Deezen as Beatles fanatic Richard "Ringo" Klaus, in full Jerry Lewis mode.

USED CARS (1980) 113min
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Country: USA
Despite the lambasting of the Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale-scripted 1941, executive producer Steven Spielberg backed his protégés once again with this caustic, rapid-fire satire about the sharp-practice rivalry between two used-car dealerships. In a career-breakout bravura comic performance, a pre-John Carpenter Kurt Russell plays sleazy hotshot salesman and aspiring politician Rudy, the king of the New Deal lot, owned by Luke Fuchs (Jack Warden). Luke's cut-throat rival and twin brother Roy (played-you guessed it-by Warden) runs the lot on the opposite side of the highway, where he hatches a plot to do away with the competition... with extreme prejudice. The ensuing battle royale between Rudy and Roy is a non-stop tour de force of kinetic, ever-more-elaborate gags and a tribute to the greed, duplicity, and mean-spiritedness that made America great.