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Lincoln Film Society Screening

By The Editor
December 31, 2008 - 07:09

The Film Society of Lincoln Center will host director David Fincher on stage for the culminating event of its Walter Reade Theater film series, Under the Sign of Fincher, Jan. 1- 4. The showcase highlights four of Fincher’s key works: “Se7en,” “Fight Club,” the rarely screened director’s cut of “Zodiac” and his much-anticipated 2008 release “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” from Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros., starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. They are paired with three milestone films handpicked by Fincher as formative influences: “Mary Poppins,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “Chinatown.”

On Sunday, Jan. 4, the director will join Kent Jones, associate director of programming at the Film Society, for Behind Button: David Fincher on the Making of his Newest Curiosity, an onstage conversation on the making of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” at the Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, at 7:30 p.m. The conversation follows a screening of the film at the Walter Reade Theater at 3:00 p.m.

The other films in the series are screening in unique double bills. Through the Film Society’s special Back-2-Back ticket offer, New York film lovers can see any two films screening together for the price of one. The result is a fresh and engaging perspective on a prodigious American artist whose “technical expertise is combined with peerless storytelling, a jeweler’s eye for detail, and a special gift for giving form to the mysteries of time’s passing,” says Jones.

The series opens on Thursday, Jan. 1, with Fincher’s breakout police thriller “Se7en” screening alongside the Disney musical favorite “Mary Poppins.” On successive days, Fincher’s celebrated Chuck Palahniuk adaptation “Fight Club” screens together with George Roy Hill’s Western landmark “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and the director’s cut of the procedural masterpiece “Zodiac” screens with Roman Polanski’s celebrated neo-noir “Chinatown.”

Born in Denver in 1962, David Fincher began his filmmaking career as a teenage assistant at George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic, followed by a lauded career as a director of commercials and music videos for clients including Nike, Aerosmith and Madonna. Overcoming on-set difficulties and the box office disappointment of his cinematic debut, “Alien 3” (1992), Fincher has gone on to establish one of the most acclaimed and creative careers in modern American cinema.

“I don’t know how much movies should entertain,” he says. “To me, I’m always interested in movies that scar. The thing I love about ‘Jaws’ is that I’ve never gone swimming in the ocean again.”

Single screening tickets for Under the Sign of Fincher are $11; $7 for Film Society members, students and children (6-12, accompanied by an adult); and $8 for seniors (62+). With the Back-2-Back Double Feature offer, audience members can buy a ticket to any screening and stay for the following film on the same day (excludes “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”). Tickets are available at both the Walter Reade Theater box office and online at available at the Walter Reade Theater box office and online at filmlinc.com. No Walter Reade Theater series pass is available for this series. For more information, call (212) 875-5601.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center was founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, to recognize and support new directors, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility and understanding of film.

Advancing this mandate today, the Film Society hosts two distinguished festivals. The New York Film Festival annually premieres films from around the world and has introduced the likes of François Truffaut, R.W. Fassbinder, Jean-Luc Godard, Pedro Almodóvar, Martin Scorsese, and Wong Kar-Wai to the United States. New Directors/New Films, co-presented by the Museum of Modern Art, focuses on emerging film talents.

Since 1972, when the Film Society honored Charles Chaplin in person, the annual Gala Tribute celebrates an actor or filmmaker who has helped distinguish cinema as an art form. Additionally, the Film Society presents a year-round calendar of programming at its Walter Reade Theater and offers insightful film writing to a worldwide audience through Film Comment magazine.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater is located at 165 West 65th St. between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway. Please note: Due to construction work taking place around Lincoln Center, access to the Walter Reade Theater is near Amsterdam Avenue. Once there, take the escalator, elevator or stairs to the upper level.

Under the Sign of Fincher, Jan. 1-4

Schedule at a Glance (Detailed Program Information Follows)

All screenings and events are at The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, except where noted.

Thursday, Jan. 1

2:40                Se7en

5:15                Mary Poppins

8:00                Se7en

Friday, Jan. 2

3:15                Fight Club

6:00                Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

8:15                Fight Club

Saturday, Jan. 3

2:00                Zodiac

5:15                Chinatown

8:00                Zodiac

Sunday, Jan. 4

3:00                The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

7:30                            Behind the Button: David Fincher on the Making of his Newest Curiosity
(at the Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of at Jazz at Lincoln Center)

All times p.m.
 

Under the Sign of Fincher, Jan. 1-4

Detailed Program and Schedule Information

Thursday, Jan. 1

Se7en

David Fincher, USA, 1995; 147m

Two detectives (Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt) must track down a serial killer who dramatizes the seven deadly sins with each new killing. Se7en is a film of textures, some disturbing, some gruesome and all elegant. Shot by Darius Khondji, co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey and R. Lee Ermey.

“The filmmakers stick to their vision with such dedication and persistence that something indelible comes across—something ethically and artistically superior to The Silence of the Lambs that refuses to exploit suffering for fun or entertainment.” —Jonathan Rosenbaum

Thu Jan 1: 2:40pm and 8:00pm

Mary Poppins

Robert Stevenson, USA, 1964; 139m

Like many who grew up in the 1960s, one of Fincher’s key formative experiences was seeing this famous Disney adaptation of P.L. Travers’s beloved novels. The film is as fresh and lively as ever, from its glorious musical numbers to its beautiful flight into an animated Sunday paradise. With Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, Karen Dotrice, Matthew Garber, David Tomlinson, Glynis Johns, and a formidable supporting cast that includes Elsa Lanchester, Arthur Treacher, Reginald Owen, Ed Wynn and Jane Darwell, in her final role.

Thu Jan 1: 5:15pm

Friday, Jan. 2

Fight Club

David Fincher, USA/Germany, 1999; 139m

Edward Norton’s anti-hero searches for a transcendent exit from his Ikea-catalogued existence via his enabler, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt).

“What's exciting about Fight Club is that it ‘screws around with your bio-rhythms’—to borrow a phrase from the Chuck Palahniuk novel of the same name which has been adapted with considerable fidelity by Fincher and screenwriter Jim Uhls. Like the novel, the film disrupts narrative sequencing and expresses some pretty subversive, right-on-the-zeitgeist ideas about masculinity and our name-brand, bottom-line society—ideas you're unlikely to find so openly broadcast in any other Hollywood movie.” —Amy Taubin

Fri Jan 2: 3:15pm and 8:15pm

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

George Roy Hill, USA, 1969; 110m

This 1969 film is so much fun that you can easily forget how beautifully crafted it is. George Roy Hill and his cinematographer, the great Conrad Hall, created a lasting vision of the American West in which mythology and realism walk hand in hand. Credit is also due to William Goldman and his deft, funny screenplay, and two actors named Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Don’t forget the score, by none other than Burt Bacharach. This is the movie that gave us “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.”

Fri Jan 2: 6:00pm

Saturday, Jan. 3

DIRECTOR’S CUT

Zodiac

David Fincher, USA, 2007; 162m

Fincher’s brilliant 2007 film about the still unsolved Bay Area killings of the late ’60s and early ’70s. With Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Robert Downey Jr., John Carroll Lynch, Chloe Sevigny and Brian Cox.

“Fincher’s complete control and inside-out understanding of his material allows him to make a movie of large-scale excitements generated by small-scale events and activities…It’s one of the most hopeful films I’ve seen in years, and one of the most satisfying.” —Kent Jones

Sat Jan 3: 2:00pm and 8:00pm

Chinatown

Roman Polanski, USA, 1974; 131m

Roman Polanski and Robert Towne’s disturbing story of water and money in 1937 Los Angeles is perfectly crafted on every level, and Polanski’s control is so complete that every off-screen sound and onscreen gesture registers with dramatic potency. Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway are both stunning in the lead roles. The formidable supporting cast includes John Hillerman, Diane Ladd, Perry Lopez, James Hong, the director in a memorable cameo, and an indelible John Huston. Last but not least, the film was photographed by the late John A. Alonzo, a true and relatively unsung artist.

Sat Jan 3: 5:15pm

Sunday, Jan. 4

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

David Fincher, USA, 2008; 137m

“I was born under unusual circumstances.” And so begins “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” adapted from the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards:  A man, like any of us, who is unable to stop time.  From New Orleans at the end of World War I in 1918, into the 21st century, on a journey as unusual as any man’s life can be, the film tells the grand tale of a not so ordinary man and the people and places he discovers along the way, the loves he finds and loses, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s clever, arch short story about a man born old who grows physically younger has been moved from Baltimore to New Orleans, pushed ahead 50 years and expanded into a 20th century epic. It has also been re-fashioned by Fincher and screenwriter Eric Roth into a quietly heartbreaking meditation on time and aging, as Benjamin (Brad Pitt) contemplates the passing of time through his own peculiar looking glass. A remarkable display of craft and storytelling prowess. Co-starring Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas and Tilda Swinton.

Sun Jan 4: 3:00pm

Behind Button: David Fincher on the Making of his Newest Curiosity

The filmmaker joins Kent Jones on stage to discuss his work, with a special emphasis on the technical processes behind the creation of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Sun Jan 4: 7:30pm

Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of at Jazz at Lincoln Center

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12