The Sag Harbor Cinema will show films by three Academy Award-winning directors this week, starting Friday at 8 p.m. with Joel and Ethan Coen's "Fargo" (1996), which took Oscars for best original screenplay and best actress (Frances McDormand).
Set unforgettably in Minnesota in 1987 — oh, those accents! — it stars William H. Macy as a car salesman so in debt that he hires two thugs to kidnap his own wife. The plan collapses when the thugs shoot a state trooper. The film exemplifies the Coens' propensity for film noir and dark humor, both of which come into play when Steve Buscemi, one of the bad guys, winds up in a wood chipper.
Carter Burwell, who has scored 17 films directed by the Coens, will speak after the screening.
Stanley Kubrick's 1956 film "The Killing," the third feature by the multiple-Oscar nominee, is an account of an ambitious racetrack robbery that ultimately goes awry. Nominated for a BAFTA Award for best film from any source, and written by the pulp novelist Jim Thompson, it stars Sterling Hayden as a career criminal, Ted de Corsia as a crooked police officer, and Elisha Cook Jr. at the betting window.
Quentin Tarantino told The Seattle Times in 1992 that "The Killing" was an influence on "Reservoir Dogs," calling his film "my 'Killing,' my take on that kind of heist movie."
The photographer James Hamilton will introduce the film and take questions after the screening, which will happen on Monday at 7 p.m.
Before "Titanic," before the "Avatar" films, James Cameron directed "The Abyss" (1989), which stars Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as petroleum engineers and Michael Biehn as a Navy SEAL, working against time and Soviet vessels to recover a sunken American submarine.
The screening, set for next Thursday at 6 p.m., will feature "The Abyss: Special Editions," an expanded cut of the director's science-fiction epic. Given Cameron's body of work, it's no surprise that the diving team encounters a mysterious and otherworldly intelligence while underwater.
After the screening, Gale Anne Hurd, producer of "The Abyss" and several other Cameron films, will discuss the demanding underwater shoot and the film's groundbreaking visual effects, which earned an Academy Award in 1990.
