B MUSICALS AT THE FILM FORUM. Think of it as the Bruce Goldstein challenge: Goldstein crams more than 45 obscure musicals into a three week series, leaving it to the rest of us to try to identify the ones we most want to see. [Flash: The series will be covered on WNYC's Soundcheck at 2 pm today.]

One way to figure it out is to comb through the series for the talent: Frank Loesser, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Douglas Sirk--they're all represented. Buffs will want to set aside the Sunday, April 15 Vitaphone Varieties program featuring rare short subjects paired with the rediscovered Song of Love (1929), notable for a rare film appearance by Belle Baker as well as the debut of Eve Arden (billed as Eunice Quedens). Thursday, April 12 is a triple bill including the Marilyn Monroe movie Ladies of the Chorus and Minstrel Man, with Joseph H. Lewis (Mr. "Always Steal from the Best") directing Benny Fields and John Raitt. If you want a triple dose of the nearly forgotten hillbilly craze, try the Monday, April 9 Judy Canova mini-festival featuring Joan of Ozark, Sis Hopkins, and Hit the Way.

But over here at Blog About Town, I've run the material through IMDB looking for the top-ranked movies. A bunch haven't received ratings yet, but here are some of the IMDB ratings-based highlights. (Note that the single highest-ranked movie is Mister Big, showing on the April 16 program.)

Tuesday April 10
7.9 Start Cheering (Broderick Crawford, Jimmy Durante, Three Stooges)
7.2 Hips, Hips, Hooray (Pre-Code with Thelma Todd and Ruth Etting)
6.7 Crazy House (pictured, top; Tarantino favorite with Count Basie, Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce)
7.3 AVERAGE

Monday April 9 (Andrews Sisters)
7.9 Give Out, Sisters (with Donald O'Connor and Peggy Ryan)
7.1 Buck Privates (with Abbott & Costello)
6.6 Argentine Nights (with the Ritz Brothers)
7.2 AVERAGE

Saturday March 31
7.4 Sweater Girl (Eddie Bracken, with music by Jule Styne and Frank Loesser)
6.8 Double or Nothing (Bing Crosby, Martha Raye, William Frawley, Andy Devine)
7.1 AVERAGE

Monday April 16 (Donald O'Connor-ama, with Peggy Ryan and Gloria Jean)
8.6 Mister Big
7.5 The Merry Monahans
4.2 Get Hep to Love
6.8 AVERAGE

Sunday April 1
7.0 Torch Singer (pre-Code Claudette Colbert)
6.5 Sitting Pretty (Jack Haley, Jack Oakie, Ginger Rogers, Thelma Todd)
6.75 AVERAGE

Wednesday April 4
7.0 Moonlight and Pretzels (pictured, right)
6.5 Melody Cruise (Phil Harris, Charles Ruggles)
6.75 AVERAGE

Friday April 13
7.0 King of Burlesque (Alice Faye, Fats Waller)
6.1 Hooray for Love (Ann Sothern, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Fats Waller)
6.55 AVERAGE

Also of note: San Antonio Rose (IMDB 7.2 with Eve Arden, Shemp Howard, and Lon Chaney, Jr.) on the Monday, April 2 triple bill and Eadie Was a Lady (IMDB 7.0) on the Ann Miller triple bill (also featuring Duke Ellington, Count Basie, the Mills Brothers, and Frank Sinatra) in Reveille with Beverly on Tuesday, April 3.

Here are stills (courtesy Film Forum/Photofest) from Ladies of the Chorus, Hit the Hay, and Reveille with Beverly.

KILLER OF SHEEP. The best student film ever made? Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (1977) must be one of the top contenders. Its repertory "revival" (after being largely unavailable for years due in part to soundtrack permission issues) takes place on Friday at the IFC Center--fittingly, it overlaps with this season's New Director/New Films series (with the DVD scheduled for November 13, 2007). The screening schedule for Austin, DC, and elsewhere can be found here.

Shot on a low budget in Watts and made as a UCLA MFA thesis film, this black-and-white movie spends about 80 minutes depicting life in an economically depressed American community where the kids are at play but the adults seem overburdened by their bleak milieu.

Burnett's photography carries the film. Watching Killer of Sheep is like viewing a set of intimate community photos (by, say, Diane Arbus and Gordon Parks) magically imbued with sound and motion.

Dialogue is sparse, but the soundtrack enriches the experience in surprising ways. An outstanding example is the use of the Paul Robeson version of "The House I Live In." The song is widely known as a patriotic paean to diversity and tolerance, but here it seems to comment regretfully on the shabby conditions of the houses the characters live in.

I was surprised by how some aspects of the film reminded me of David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977)--which, I realized, was made at about the same time. The two films--very, very different in mood--turn out to have much more in common than I would have suspected. And now I notice that J. Hoberman writes, "In retrospect, it can be seen that the two great independent features of the late '70s were Killer of Sheep and Eraserhead." Hoberman also notes, as I did, that "Language police should note that the zesty vernacular includes ample use of the N-word."

Here is the trailer for the re-release of Killer of Sheep.



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Here is a clip with "After the Love Has Gone" [Crap! It's actually "Reasons"!] by Earth, Wind & Fire.



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Here is a short trailer for Eraserhead.



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And here is the Oscar-winning Frank Sinatra version of "The House I Live In." The song is by Abel Meeropol (using the pseudonym Lewis Allan), writer of "Strange Fruit." Bear with the video--and note that the group of kids doesn't seem to be very diverse from an ethnic point of view. That kind of limited message wasn't, apparently, what Meeropol had in mind.



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