The L Magazine Presents Summerscreen

For the third year running, The L Magazine presents Summerscreen, our free outdoor summer film series in Williamsburg/Greenpoint's McCarren Park Pool, every Tuesday night from July 8-August 26, at around sundown.

I shouldn't, I don't think, have to sell you on the powerful awesomeness of spending a summer night outdoors watching a fun movie with a couple thousand of your closest friends, so let's just get to this year's lineup:

July 8: Wes Anderson's Rushmore, selected by the rationale that we've been skating around the very basic core of our demographic for a couple years now and we should just come right out and say it: this is a movie series for people who consider Rushmore a cultural and emotional ur-text.

July 15: Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides. Are people really consciously aware of what a whispery, elusive, lovely movie this is? Anyway, come on the first two weeks for a boy-girl double feature about

July 22: Wet Hot American Summer. Bring your own sweater.

July 29: Desperately Seeking Susan. Man, remember how cool downtown Manhattan used to be?

August 5: Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets. Man, remember how scary downtown Manhattan used to be?

August 12: Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later... We needed to show something scary. This movie is very scary.

August 19: Todd Haynes's Velvet Goldmine. We know that there has been an enormous, though not particularly extroverted cult building up around this movie for about a decade now. We think it's about time we brought this thing above-ground.

August 26: David Lynch's Blue Velvet. You would actually be surprised at how much of a party movie this can be.

So that's that. We've got adolescence rendered with sensitivity and au courant taste, top-this sketch comedy, NY-centric pop and badassitude, screams, glam-rock extravaganza, and David Lynch at his most... most. You should come, it'll be awesome.

I'd also like to address the Brooklynvegan commenters who have, as usual, knee-jerked themselves into a spasm. Specifically, the ones who called us all lazy hipsters and asked why we're not showing, like, Jean-Luc Godard movies. Well. Firstly, and sadly,  "no subtitles" was one of our criteria — they just doesn't play on our screen, and in our kind of festive atmosphere. Secondly, there is a five-week series featuring literally every single movie Jean-Luc Godard made during the 1960s currently playing at Film Forum. So that would perhaps be somewhat redundant. Which brings me to: Thirdly, Godard : Cinephiles :: Rushmore : Hipsters. It's meat-and-potatoes, playing-to-the-base stuff, just for a different crowd.

Also, the commenter who asked: "Remember when you played The Swimmer? Or how about Love Streams? Or Style Wars? And Night of the Hunter? At least it seemed like you were trying then..." Coincidentally, all four of those selections (and Love Streams was scratched at the last minute due to print availability, actually) originated from the same since dearly departed L Mag editorial staffer... Jason, is that you?

(If it isn't, thanks, dude/dudette, for valuing the more adventurous selections and associating the series with that kind of attitude; we try to strike a balance, and we're trying to do it with the overall attitude rather than with, like, a "one for you, one for us" alternating schedule.)

Anyway, you should all come, it's a marvelous time in my experience.