MY VERY OWN RALPH STEADMAN

My family and I spent a lovely, long retreat in San Diego last weekend enjoying the beautiful weather (including some spectacular, short-lived cloudbursts), the beach, LegoLand, some excellent food and drink at my favorite restaurant, and even a couple of movies, one for me and the kids and one just for me. (Our hotel’s incredible in-room movie service was featuring, among about 20 or 30 other interesting titles, Larry Fessenden’s The Last Winter, which I regretfully couldn’t watch while my daughters were in the room.) And while at the restaurant, relaxing over filet mignon and shots of 1921 Reserve Especial, my seven-year-old daughter, sketchbook and pencil in hand, asked me to make a funny face and pose for a portrait. The result was so hilarious and wonderful, and yes, so true to life that I told her I would commission many more in the future, for display here and in my own private gallery of awesome drawings she has created. I know I just sound like a proud dad, but I really think she’s got a great, twisted eye—my very own little Ralph Steadman—and I hope I can bear to look at the way she sees me through her pencil over the coming years.

HE BLOGS! DAVID EDELSTEIN'S THE PROJECTIONIST

Could this mean the return of the Movie Club?

Jim Emerson let on about it a couple of weeks ago, but now it’s my turn to trumpet the return of David Edelstein to Internet-based film criticism with his New York magazine-anchored blog The Projectionist. Edelstein’s regular gig is available on-line, but this is his first real shot at the blogging format, and it sounds like he’s game:

“In my nine and a half years at the online magazine Slate, I got thousands of e-mails from readers. That last one I got here was two months ago. It’s not, I’m convinced, that I’m that much less read. It’s that the distance, literal and existential, between a glossy weekly print mag and cyberspace is vast. I send e-mails to bloggers and online writers often but can’t remember the last time I mailed someone at a glossy, even when I’ve read an article online. My fingers aren’t poised over the keyboard in the same way.

And who knows where this might lead? Movies connect with us on an unconscious level, and blogging is a pipeline to the id. I might even write open letters to filmmakers begging for nude pictures of actresses. As Larry Craig might say, I plan to take a wide stance.”

The film critic appears to be ready and willing, and if he is, his page could be great fun and a great read (two things that don’t always go hand in hand). I’ve been a big fan of Edelstein’s writing since his young punk days at the Village Voice and was thrilled to reconnect with him at Slate a few years ago. He tried “blogging” at Slate before he left for New York, but it wasn’t really blogging as you and I know it— instead, his posts were curiously static, made up only of occasional updates within existing articles, except, of course, when the end of the year came and the critical summit known as the Slate Movie Club got underway. (My favorite year was the one when Mr. E. invited Armond White, whom he diplomatically described as “pugnacious,” to participate, and White agreed.) It also offered no improvement over the only option for interactivity at Slate, the dreaded Fray, which often so quickly devolved into the typical monosyllabic name-calling of any other Neanderthal message board (at least when the topic was movies).

Edelstein’s site looks like a much more open attempt to engage in the spirit of film blogging as it has evolved over the last couple of years—so far the pieces have been informal, engaging and good enough to leave you wanting more. The Projectionist does not, as yet, allow for reader comments—and given some of the comments and e-mail Edelstein has received over the years, I wouldn’t blame him for being a little reticent to jump into that arena just yet. (He once told of a particularly incensed Fray poster who wished on him and his family a cruel death because Edelstein correctly observed that The Mummy Returns was a piece of shit.) I sincerely hope that one day he does open up The Projectionist for comments—he can always, as many do, hold them for posting until he can get a look and approve them for publication—and that if he does, he can engender the kind of tone and quality of response that has been a hallmark of Scanners and Matt Zoller Seitz’s The House Next Door (and, dare I say, this humble site).


And if you haven’t checked out The Projectionist yet, now is an excellent time to do so. Up yesterday are a tantalizing few paragraphs in which Edelstein expands the debate on Brian De Palma’s new Iraq-centered film Redacted, a debate which was begun in earnest in posts like Jim’s Toronto dispatch, which articulated reservations about the film while recognizing its power and importance. Edelstein may have reservations, but they are bracketed by the value he places on De Palma’s rage and urgency and his appreciation for the fine line he sees De Palma walking in order to articulate that rage in a time of what Edelstein terms “our moral lethargy” about the war in Iraq:

“If there’s any justice, the first public screening of Brian De Palma’s Redacted (October 10) at the New York Film Festival will be incendiary. I hope that it makes people livid, that it’s furiously debated. I’m still recovering from it, and I averted my eyes for the last minute, when De Palma shows actual footage of “collateral damage” — bloody corpses of Iraqi civilians, including children and babies. What preceded that epilogue was devastating enough: a dramatization of the events before, during, and after the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl — along with the killing of her family — by American soldiers.”

And here’s Edelstein on the oft repeated charges of De Palma’s misogyny:

“De Palma has always been attracted to material in which women are the victims of male sexual rage. But… his films grapple with the issue in ways that turn the criticism on its head. Simply put: Who better to explore sexual violence onscreen than someone who understands the Male Gaze — and its cinematic legacy — so intimately? Anyone who sees the suffering faces of the victims in Casualties of War and Redacted — or the haunted eyes of Mia Kirschner, already a ghost, in the film-within-a-film in The Black Dahlia — knows that De Palma not only despairs over what he’s showing us but implicates his own medium, his own Male Gaze.”

There’s much more in this new post on Redacted, and this isn’t even an official review yet. It’s a post that makes me hopeful about how David Edelstein will participate in what many of us have come to feel is an online community of bloggers, amateur and professional critics as well as everyday smart fans. The Projectionist is a good reminder of just how sharp Edelstein can be off the cuff, even on those occasions (and there have been plenty) when I’ve thought he was off the mark. And I hope he eventually takes the time to engage with his readers, and that his readers keep him honest with the kind of challenging, informed and interesting commentary that can make the difference between and good film blog and a great one. David Edelstein, welcome to the community!

TARDY! Dennis Finally Turns In Mr. Shoop's Quiz...

Yeah I know. Mr. Shoop posted his summer quiz back in, well, summer, and here I am, as tardy as Jeff Spicoli on a good day, submitting my answers long after the quiz thread has dried up. No, I know you don’t accept extra credit, teacher, and I understand if you dock points for extreme lateness. But at least take a look at my paper so I don’t feel like it was all done in vain!

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1) Favorite quote from a filmmaker


Well, Bunuel has definitely been on the brain lately, as you might have been able to tell by the link to Flickhead’s Bunuel Blog-a-Thon, or by the extensive quote from Bunuel’s autobiography My Last Sigh on my sidebar, or my picking Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie as numbers 7 and 8, respectively, on my Non-English Language Movies ballot. And he’s a very quote-friendly director, a cynical bon vivant raconteur poet, so when you come across one interesting quote from this fella, it’s likely attached to nine or 10 others. But the one I chose had a lot to do with the prevailing spirit, if you will, of Extermnating Angel-- it’s Bunuel exclaiming, in what context I’m not entirely sure, ”Thank God I’m an atheist!” If you find that quote even remotely funny, you should get yourself to Exterminating Angel right away.

But, naturally, a couple of others were floating around the hemisphere of my brain as well. For sheer P.T. Barnumesque braggadoccio, it’s hard to beat legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis touting, during the production of his multimillion-dollar remake of King Kong (best read in your silliest Italian accent): “Nobody cry when-a Jaws die. People gonna cry when my Konk die.”


And there was one I remember from an interview Walter Hill did in Film Comment around the time of The Long Riders. I’ve looked for the interview and come up empty, so I’ll have to paraphrase, but Hill’s line was in response, I believe, to a question regarding how he perceives character in his movies. His answer was something like, “Character, in my pictures, can be measured by how times a guy blinks with a gun stuck in his face.”

2) A good movie from a bad director


Well, as far as I can tell, by his choice of material (The Wedding Planner, Bringing Down the House, The Pacifier and Cheaper by the Dozen 2) and the hamfisted, graceless handling of said material, I would have to qualify Adam Shankman as, if not a bad director, then at least one who has never displayed much of a hint that he was in any way a good one. But his deft, sincere, energetic and keenly observed film of the Broadway adaptation of John Waters’ Hairpsray suggests that, while he may not now, nor may he ever be, the second coming of Preston Sturges, if he takes on more projects in which he seems to have some emotional investment and steers clear of the plasticine Touchstone family fare that has until now defined his directing career, he might just have other good movies inside him waiting to get out.

3) Favorite Laurence Olivier performance
I have fond memories of Larry in That Hamilton Woman, where the theatricality that always seemed a little too BIG for the movies was reined in ever so slightly (or was it just that the grand scale soap operatics of the romantic plot just seemed to fit him better?) But if I’m honest, he was just never my cup of tea as a film actor—his outra-a-a-a-ageous Frawnch aggzent as the doomed French-Canadian trapper in Powell and Pressburger’s otherwise marvelous 49th Parallel is surely what inspired John Cleese to start berating those silly knnnn-iggits, threatening to making castanets out of their testicles already. I liked Larry better when he got older and started taking the paychecks. Though I never have seen his waxworks Douglas MacArthur in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Inchon, I am fond of his impish (sincere) and impish (perverse) turns in A Little Romance and The Betsy. But no other Laurence Olivier performance holds a place in my heart like his Oscar-nominated turn as Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman in the gloriously tasteless adaptation of Ira Levin’s The Boys from Brazil. As I wrote a few years ago upon considering this Sir Lew Grade classic of international intrigue and all-star casting (Gregory Peck! James Mason! Lilli Palmer! Bruno Ganz! Uta Hagen! Rosemary Harris! John Dehner! Denholm Elliot! Anne Meara… Uh, John Rubenstein… errr, Steve Guttenberg…), Olivier’s wild eyes and slightly sibilant Austrian accent “will live in glorious testimony to a great actor’s desire to push the inherent silliness of his calling right up to the edge of the abyss, and then blow raspberries to those already plummeting into the void.” Plus, there’s the absolutely astounding moment during his bloody fight scene with Peck at the end of the picture when Olivier tumbles over backward, cane over keister, and makes a guttural groan that sounds just like Chewbacca. You must see Laurence Olivier in The Boys from Brazil.

4) Describe a famous location from a movie that you have visited (Bodega Bay, California, where the action in The Birds took place, for example). Was it anything like the way it was in the film? Why or why not?


Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, when I still dreamed that owning my own house in Southern California was a practical possibility, my wife and I were looking around neighborhoods nearby where friends of ours lived, and one friend suggested we look for available places in the Seven Hills area of Tujunga, nestled in the foothills of the mountains above the town. We came up over the crest of a hill, the highest point in this fairly recently developed suburban neighborhood, and I decided to turn around to get a look at the view of the city. When I did, by purest accident I duplicated the view from the hills as seen in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. I recognized it immediately, and later that afternoon my friend confirmed that yes, Spielberg shot his film there when that development was first being constructed. And yes, it felt exactly as it did in the film.

5) Carlo Ponti or Dino De Laurentiis (Producer)?
Carlo Ponti married actress Sophia Loren. Carlo Ponti produced La Strada, Le Doulos, Cleo from 5 to 7, Marriage Italian Style, Doctor Zhivago, Blow-Up, Roman Polanski’s What?, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and, of course, The Cassandra Crossing. De Laurentiis produced La Strada (with Ponti), and also Nights of Cabiria, Goliath and the Vampires, John Huston’s The Bible… In the Beginning, Danger:Diabolik, Barbarella, Mandingo, Drum, Serpico, The Serpent’s Egg, Flash Gordon, The Dead Zone, Manhunter, Blue Velvet, Dune and, of course, Body of Evidence. De Laurentiis was married to actress Silvana Mangano. Advantage: Ponti.

6) Best movie about baseball


Ken Burns’ Baseball is a monumental achievement, a life-changing one for me. And Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham is wonderful, if slightly overwritten— the director’s Cobb, starring Tommy Lee Jones as the titular Georgia peach, is far better, a masterpiece, I think--it's as scabrous and brutal as its main character. But Cobb is less about baseball than about the nature of heroism. So, for sheer insight into the nature of American competition, the dynamics of team play, the fissures and cracks in the sport’s support system, and a sharp-eyed look into the subtleties of the game itself, plus just about everything else there is to speak of about children and adults and American life, there is no greater achievement about the sport of baseball than Michael Ritchie’s The Bad News Bears. And by the way, all the talk about how great Field of Dreams and The Natural are tells you just one thing—hard-nosed sports writers and stalwart American male types are just as susceptible to starry-eyed Hollywood bullshit as anyone else, and those two movies are grade-A corn-fed manure if it’s ever been mass-produced.

7) Favorite Barbara Stanwyck performance


My favorite Stanwyck performance is always the one I’ve seen most recently, and that would have to be her startlingly feral, empathetic work in the wild and untamed Baby Face. But I fall hopelessly in love with her everytime I see Ball of Fire.

8) Fast Times at Ridgemont High or Dazed and Confused?


Well, I’ve had lots of discussions about these two movies this summer, in the wake of this quiz, and in the wake of the release of Superbad, a movie I think deserves discussion right alongside these two, and American Graffiti, as portraits of youthful exuberance and restless anxiety. But for me, Linklater’s Dazed and Confused hits all the right notes as a perfect portrait of aimless youth taking joy in aimlessness, of a certain wheel-spinning small-town sensibility circa 1976. I don’t get the accusations tossed this movie’s way that it’s merely a compendium of fuck-you attitudes and you-had-to-be-there pop culture references. It seems obvious there’s a whole lot more going on in this movie, which is not to say that it’s not fueled at least in part by those attitudes and references; it is. That’s just not all that the movie is. And even with the last-minute substitution of Sweet Emotion for the Led Zeppelin track that gave the movie its name, and even though we’re way past the point of saturation vis-à-vis the classic rock radio format and all its permutations, the soundtrack remains definitive.

9) What was the last movie you saw, and why? (We’ve used this one before, but your answer is presumably always going to be different, so…)

In a theater: 3:10 to Yuma.

At work: John Ford’s sublime, Murnau-influenced early talkie Pilgrimage (1933), featuring a wondrous performance by stage actress Henrietta Crosman. For contrast, right now I’m knee-deep in Bronson’s swansong, Death Wish V: The Face of Death.

On DVD: the unrated, extended Death Proof (sans Grindhouse double feature format). Rob Humanick has an excellent piece on this longer version of the film at The Projection Booth, along with some very thought-provoking comments. I’m not ready to toss out the theatrical version (I’m still convinced the Weinsteins have that 5-disc Grindhouse theatrical version plus the longer cuts of Death Proof and Planet Terror just waiting in the wings), but I was surprised how well this extended version played for me. It’s not going to work for those who thought the 90-minute theatrical version was already too drawn-out in its introductions of the characters. But if you get on Tarantino’s wavelength and start digging just the spending time with these annoying, sexy, motormouthed, foulmouthed characters (and what does Tarantino does as a director while you’re spinning your wheels with them—it gets pretty Godardian in there, dude), the unexpurgated Death Proof has plenty to offer, and to me it (mostly) didn’t play like filler, but instead like, well, an extended riff and expansion of visual themes. Rob’s discussion of it has better details, and maybe I’ll write something on it soon. For now, Death Proof is a good rental, and a better buy, to go alongside that Grindhouse package I just know is coming soon.

10) Whether or not you have actually procreated or not, is there a movie you can think of that seriously affected the way you think about having kids of your own?


Ron Howard’s Parenthood-- hey, there’s another good movie by a generally bad director—played a direct role in helping my wife and I along in our decision to start a family. I haven’t seen it since those heady days about 11 years ago, and that has more to do with a sadness that surrounds it that has nothing to do with the movie itself, and also with the fact that, after a long weekend of playing with and corraling and hauling around my own two daughters, I’m in the mood for a movie that has just about anything in it besides more of the same!

11) Favorite Katharine Hepburn performance
I’m less enamored of Hepburn than of just about any of the other great actresses of the screwball comedy era—I’d rather see Carole Lombard or Jean Arthur or, of course, Barbara Stanwyck. That said, there’s just about no better time to be had than watching Hepburn drive Cary Grant “all gay!” in Bringing Up Baby.

12) A bad movie from a good director


Well, I’m going to resist the temptation to shovel more dirt on Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia. Instead, I’ll go to the director De Palma is most often accused of defiling. Alfred Hitchcock made many, many great movies, as you are undoubtedly aware. But one of them was definitely not good. I’ve yet to read a credible defense of Topaz. Hitchcock is so disengaged from this musty espionage claptrap, it’s as if he called in the shots by phone from St. Tropez.

13) Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom-- yes or no?


Maybe the most grueling two hours I’ve ever spent in a theater (again, my sincere thank you, Sherman Torgan). I would be very careful to whom I recommended this genuinely horrifying, political work of art. But at the same time, as a frank illustration of the extremes of fascist brutality, I have a feeling it would speak to willing viewers 32 years past its original release, if it were only more available. And that lack of availability may speak volumes about this current political climate as well.

14) Ben Hecht or Billy Wilder (Screenwriter)?
I love Billy Wilder. Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole, One Two Three, Ninotchka, Midnight-- what churl would ever complain? But Ben Hecht wrote Underworld, Scarface, Hallelujah, I’m a Bum, Topaze, Twentieth Century, Nothing Sacred, Gunga Din, His Girl Friday, Notorious, Spellbound, Kiss of Death and Howard Hawks’ Monkey Business. So what, you say? Now go back and check out the credits where his name is listed as simply ”uncredited.” On the strength of those “undredited” contributions alone, advantage: Hecht.

15) Name the film festival you’d most want to attend, or your favorite festival that you actually have attended


I been to London (one screening). I been to Lone Pine. But what I really want is to go to Toronto.

16) Head or 200 Motels?
Frank Zappa is one of my musical idols. The Monkees are not, exactly, but they meant a lot to me when I was a goofy seven year old singing “I-I-I-I-I’m not your steppin’ stone” incessantly. Yet Zappa’s movies have always been dicey prospects for me. Head, on the other hand, is a singular beast, a trippy collage response to A Hard Day’s Night that is about as surreal and perverse a movie as was ever released by a major studio in the 1960s. Advantage: Mickey, Davy, Mike and Peter (and Bob and Jack… and that Zappa cameo too!)

17) Favorite cameo appearance
I’ve always been partial to Julie Christie’s nonplussed appearance in Nashville, especially as introduced by the unctuous, name-dropping Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson (“I was talkin’ about the Christy Minstrels just this mornin’, and now we have Miss Julie Christie here!”), sized-up and dressed-down by the catty Connie White (“She can’t even comb her hair!”), and debated on the edges of the frame by Del Reese (Ned Beatty) and John Triplette (Michael Murphy) (“Doctor Zhivago—she was the one that got off the train!”). Then, Haven Hamilton, ever the Nashville goodwill ambassador sends her off with this one: “I hope you’ll remember what film facilities we have here in Nashville!” See frizzy-haired star beat a quick retreat back to her hotel, and safety.

18) Favorite Rosalind Russell performance


Now, I like The Trouble with Angels as much as the next guy, but for me there is no other answer than RR’s Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday.

19) What movie, either currently available on DVD or not, has never received the splashy collector’s edition treatment you think it deserves? What would such an edition include?
I don’t think there’s ever been a decent edition of The Brood on home video. Even the version currently available on MGM DVD barely looks better than the murky VHS and laserdisc versions (the source material may not be in great shape), and it's bare-bones too. What a terrific DVD could be assembled for this movie with a Cronenberg commentary, alongside Art Hindle, Samantha Eggar and, say, Robert Silverman, bundled with some making-of stuff, and perhaps an essay from Robin Wood.

20) Name a performance that everyone needs to be reminded of, for whatever reason
Robert Ryan in Andre de Toth’s Day of the Outlaw. It’s important to be reminded just how good this guy was, every time out.

21) Louis B. Mayer or Harry Cohn (Studio Head)?
In the old days of the studio system, what Columbia Pictures released depended on Harry Cohn's determination of what Columbia Pictures should release. Said Cohn, "When I'm alone in a projection room, I have a foolproof device for judging whether a picture is good or bad. If my fanny squirms, it's bad. If my fanny doesn't squirm, it's good. It's as simple as that." To which Herman Mankiewicz famously retorted, "Imagine, the whole world wired to Harry Cohn's ass!" For this line alone, and because I recently got to walk the walls of the old Columbia Pictures building on the Sony lot where Cohn actually wiggled that ass, advantage: Cohn.

22) Favorite John Wayne performance


John T. Chance, Rio Bravo.

23) Naked Lunch or Barton Fink?


I’ve always been of a mind that Barton Fink only half worked— sometimes it seems like a theme in search of a movie. But those performances—particularly Turturro, Judy Davis, John Mahoney, Michael lerner and Tony Shaloub—are riveting. However, when talking about movies about writer’s block, and the act of writing itself, none has exernalized its processes with such a fascinating, fractured access to its hallucinatory, solipsistic fantasies as has Cronenberg’s movie of Burrough’s unfilmable book. The book remains unfilmed, but what Cronenberg extracted from it is, incredibly, true to Burroughs and his own thematic trajectory as a director.

24) Your Ray Harryhausen movie of choice

No question: It Came from Beneath the Sea. And, of course, Jason and the Argonauts. And here’s a picture of me and Ray Harryhausen!



25) Is there a movie you can think of that you feel like the world would be better off without, one that should have never been made?
Well, as I rule I don’t like the idea of rubbing out someone’s creation just because I think the world would be better off not having seen it. But then I ssee something like Date Movie or Epic Movie and my highfalutin liberal standards go right out the window. Burn every print!

26) Favorite Dub Taylor performance
A few days ago I might have said Bonnie and Clyde or The Wild Bunch. But I just saw the great film noir Crime Wave, directed by Andre de Toth, which begins with Taylor as a slightly fey gas station attendant mooning over Doris Day on the radio just before he gets shot by robbers (including Charles Buchinski, nee Bronson). Rent it and see what I mean.

27) If you had the choice of seeing three final movies, to go with your three last meals, before shuffling off this mortal coil, what would they be?


Breakfast: It’s my last day, so I’ll order an extravagant Japanese breakfast from A Thousand Cranes restaurant in Little Tokyo to dawdle over while I watch one I’ve never seen-- Sansho Dayu (Sansho the Bailiff).


Lunch: A Colossal Double Cheeseburger and Walla Walla sweet onion rings from Burgerville USA and some Cave Creek chili beers while watching The Godfather (Parts I & II).


Dinner: Filet Mignon and giant tiger prawns from El Agave in San Diego, accompanied by lots and lots of 1921 Reserve Especial tequila, while soaking up Nashville for the last time.

28) And what movie theater would you choose to see them in?
I think I’d pick the Vista in East Hollywood.

EXTRA CREDIT:


My pick for Jim Emerson’s Atheist Film Festival: I’m not sure it exactly fits Jim’s criteria, but it seems to me Bunuel’s Exterminating Angel would be a juicy choice.




What advice on day-to-day living have you learned from the movies? Here’s the answer to this question I left on Scanners:

“As far as the ones I can think of off the top of my head, I… thought of the actor William Bogert playing Matthew Broderick's dad in WarGames and the way he buttered his corn with a piece of already-slathered bread. (I think Pauline Kael even referred to the moment in her review.)

Richard Castellano as Clemenza is the natural go-to man for spaghetti sauce, but when I tried it I honestly didn't like it much-- it wasn't nearly so distinct as the scene itself. So I was thrilled to discover the moments in Martin Scorsese's ItalianAmerican when his mother not only shows us how she makes spaghetti sauce, but when the recipe itself shows up in the end credits. (It can also be found here.) It's way better than Clemenza's, and though it can be augmented with various ingredients, such messing around is not necessary to reach the particularly Italian kind of saucy nirvana this recipe promises. I dare say it's even better than the sauces my Italian grandmas used to make-- they routinely used (shudder) canned mushrooms.


But truthfully... for me there really has never been a moment that has edged its way into my everyday life the way Johnny Caspar's shaving tip has.

Here’s Jim:

“Every single time I shave I think of Johnny Caspar. I can't help it. And it's not just because I love the obnoxious little character. And the actor who plays him, Jon Polito. Or that I think Miller's Crossing may be the greatest motion picture of the last 20 years. It's because this one thing Johnny Caspar says near the end of the picture makes sense. I've tried it, and I don't notice any difference, but it seems like it oughta work. It's also the last thing -- a relatively trivial piece of practical advice -- that he utters in the movie, making his exit rather poignant, even for such a repulsive character.

Here's the way Joel and Ethan Coen describe it in their script (though it's not exactly this way in the movie):

... the car pulls into frame to stop at the curb [in front of the Barton Arms apartments] with the camera framed on the driver's window. The driver has a small bandage on his left cheek. We hear Caspar's voice as we hear him getting out the back:

CASPAR
Ya put the razor in cold water, not hot--'cause
metal does what in cold?

DRIVER
I dunno, Johnny.

We hear the back door slam and Caspar appears in the front passenger window.

CASPAR
. . . 'Ats what I'm tellin' ya. It contracts.
'At way you get a first class shave.

DRIVER
Okay, Johnny.

As Caspar walks off, the driver slouches back, pulls his fedora over his eyes and folds his arms across his chest."

How nice to be able to reminded of a movie I love during such a routine chore, and it happens every time I reach for my can of Edge gel. However, thank God I didn't take Johnny's parenting advice to heart!

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HOW DO I GET TO THE BUNUEL BLOG-A-THON?

Back from a brief vacation…

“In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.” – Luis Bunuel.

Flickhead has officially launched the week-long Luis Bunuel Blog-a-Thon!

In addition to links from all of the contributors who have participated (including himself), Flickhead has a Bunuel poster gallery, links to worthy books and DVDs regarding the master director, and several terrific photos available on his site. (Dig, if you will, these two.)

Bunuel has lately been a fascination of mine, one I’ve come to late in the game, so I look forward to digging through all the links Flickhead will undoubtedly accrue over the next few days. I hope to contribute myself in some small way, but if I can’t, then at least I will have been one of the many fingers pointing the way toward this celebration of one of cinema’s most enduring and wickedly funny legacies.

WHEREFORE ART THOU, SATYAJIT RAY? ANNOUNCING THE TOP NON-ENGLISH 100 LIST!

Satyajit Ray's The World of Apu: Better Luck Next Time!

A couple of months ago, in the wake of another list-making exercise, film blogger par excellence Edward Copeland wondered aloud to the virtual room if anyone would be interested in participating in a vote in an attempt to compile a list of all-time great foreign films. Everyone who elected to participate (and it was quite a nominating committee) submitted a list of 100 films—each film to receive at least three votes would be put on a master list, from which each voter would then picks 25 for submission to make the top100 choices.

And now those choices have been revealed on
Edward’s site—it’s a list he cheekily refers to as The Satyajit Ray Memorial Anything-But-Definitive List of Non-English Language Films, his way of remarking on the fact that Ray, the great director of The Apu Trilogy and Distant Thunder among many others, went entirely unrepresented on the final of 122 titles.

Not only does Edward provide a handy introduction to the list, he also devotes a very nice page to the 22 films that didn’t quite make the rarified cut of the more round-sounding 100, which leads up to the big show: the list itself, which Edward has formatted with beautiful stills and a nice series of quotes from all the participants (including Yours Truly) to accompany each title.

About a month or so ago I made a somewhat masochistic list (based on the first collection of nearly 500 titles) of all the foreign-language films I haven’t seen, a humbling exercise, to be sure, but also one to inspire a whole new Netflix queue. And looking at the final product of Edward’s labor of love, I find myself inspired in much the same way. I’m going to print out the entire list of 100 and leave it conspicuously near my DVD player, checking off every title, even the ones I’ve already seen, until I’ve familiarized myself anew with old favorites and made up for all the lost time in my cinematic journey by acquainting myself with those I have yet to see. (Jim, Sansho dayu is on its way to my mailbox as we speak.) This was definitely a list worth compiling, one that’s going to be fun to read and contemplate for a long time. And no embarrassing aftertaste!

Many thanks to Mr. Copeland, and to everyone who participated, for words well written, films well evoked and a job well done.

For what it’s worth, here’s a list of my final 25 picks. I have left them in the order in which I ranked them, but I admit to a certain top loading of my favorites into the first 10 choices in a bald-faced attempt to bolster their standing on the final list. In some cases, the movies (Rules of the Game, for instance) didn’t need my help. In most cases, (Amarcord, for one) it didn’t really make much difference. This is just my semi-rational way of saying that the rankings here are about as arbitrary as they could possibly be, that a #1 for Amarcord doesn’t mean that I think it’s a better film than Rules of the Game or Seven Samurai or Madame de…. They are really ranked for purposes of the game only. All 25 are firmly anchored in my heart.

1) Amarcord-- Surely not the "best" of the movies on this list, and maybe not even Fellini's "best"--- but there's something about this film that transcends Fellini's nostalgic view of his own boyhood and becomes, for me, something more about what it was to have been Italian, in those days, and what it means sometimes in these.

2) Pierrot le fou-- The kind of movie that, if you see it at the right time in your life, might have to power to change the way you look at movies forever. Belmondo and Karina (likable/unlikable/charming/maddening) spin through Godard's fractured cinematic landscape with sensual abandon and absurd wonder; the film is a masterpiece that marked the first turn toward the more didactic, essay-driven obsessiveness that has driven Godard's career ever since.

3) Rules of the Game-- Renoir's prescient pre-war drama of societal collapse sneaks up on you and works on you from the inside out with a kind of unbearable lightness of feeling. Everyone should quit complaining that it routinely shows up in the top two of all these All-Time Best lists, just accept its greatness and bask in it.

4) Tokyo Story-- A beautiful, peerlessly perceptive poem of the separation of two generations in a Japanese family. Ozu's genius is in unobstrusive observation and the unexpected, often painful insight that rises up from it.

5) Nights of Cabiria-- Fellini's tale of an outsider's outsider moving through a series of whimsical and haunting adventures and disappointments in post-war Italy is his most nakedly emotional film, as well as a bitterwsweet farewell to the neorealist tradition in which he began his career. The movie is anchored by a great perfromance from Guiletta Masina.

6) M-- Were there ever darker shadows than the ones in Fritz Lang's grim expressionist noir? Or a performance as skin-crawlingly sympathetic as the work Lorre does here?

7) Exterminating Angel-- I just saw it for the first time last week, and it instantly became my favorite Bunuel movie. Lots of nasty, sacreligious fun to be had watching a slice of upper-crust society panic and crumble when their support systems, as well as every belief they hold dear, inexplicably disappear. One of the best, bitterly ironic endings ever.

8) The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie-- Bunuel had mellowed in temperament by the time of this companion piece to Angel, but his brutal wit is still much in evidence, and he's still got plenty to say about class entitlement and power and getting a good bite to eat.

9) The Seven Samurai-- Kurosawa's supremely entertaining, durable and expansive action epic has probably gotten better with age, standing proudly near the top of the heap watching filmmaker after filmmaker try, and usually fail, to approach its timeless mixture of personal drama, broad comedy and surging, emotional adventure.

10) Woman in the Dunes-- Teshigahara's adaptation of Kobe Abe's novel was one of the first movies to open my eyes to the expressively designed visual possibilities of film. An agonized, desperate echo of despair, obsession and madness ringing out for no one, and everyone, to hear, rendered in aridly beautiful, claustrophobic imagery.

11) Aguirre the Wrath of God-- Everything that is great about Herzog's recent spate of documentaries-- his obsession with those who must peer into the abyss, and his willingness to join with them-- was there all along in his superb 1972 adventure tale. Paced like no other film, and certain acted like no other, this is a movie carried along on rippling heat waves of hallucinatory images and sounds into a very personal heart of darkness.

12) Beauty and the Beast-- Hallucinatory images again (a recurring motif on this list, perhaps) crossed with dark romanticism power Cocteau's ambitious and lovely fairy tale, a rich evocation of place and spirit, a superb achievement of the imagination.

13) Open City-- I first saw Rossellini's clear-eyed neorealist masterpiece when I was in college trying to sort of the aftermath of Vietnam in my head and facing down a future of possible wars. The way in which this movie taps into the primal brutality of fascist occupation during WWII still has the power to enter my dreams and turn them into nightmares.

14) Belle de Jour-- Bunuel powers the story of a bourgeois housewife who inexplicably takes up prostitution with an erotic dream logic that takes full advantage of Catherine Deneuve's sleepily sensual screen presence.

15) The Seventh Seal- Bergman's consideration of the existence of God. The movie's images are iconic and so often parodied as to now be beyond parody, and the device of a chess game with death frames a story that is existentially chilling and at the same time ironically light on its feet.

16) Ugetsu monogatari-- An essential Japanese ghost story by Kenji Mizoguchi that swirls around the inevitability of greed and the betrayal of love. The unsettling mood of this movie is one of the most subtle and insinuating of any movie like it ever made. It was J-horror when J-horror wasn't cool.

17) Ikiru-- This powerful story of a dying man's hope to leave a piece of himself in the world should be required midlife crisis viewing. Kurosawa directs Takashi Shimura to one of the great performances in screen history.

18) The Blue Angel-- A film school classic that is about as unmusty and exciting as an early talkie can be. In this film Von Sternberg unleashes Dietrich as we will always know her, and by the end the audience is as devastated as poor obsessed Emil Jannings. Because whatever Lola wants...

19) Au hasard Balthazar-- Bresson’s vision of the poetry of submission to the everyday, of the sacrifice of saintliness, a religious allegory centered around the titular donkey, witness to life, made all the more powerful by how the director's style amplifies, without self-consciousness, a clear-eyed vision of utterly ordinary events touched by the sacred.

20) Madame de...-- This story of the passing along of a pair of disregarded earrings is so lush and nimble in its imagistic poetry, so buoyant in its dark comedy of manners that it could truly be termed a visual symphony. That's certainly only but one of many things that Max Ophuls' lovely, probing, heartbreaking drama so vibrantly is.

21) In the Mood for Love-- The most erotic paean to sustained, unfulfilled desire I've ever seen. Wong Kar-wai manages to convince us, through the palpably lovely cinematography and his own will to gaze into their souls, that Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung are perhaps the most beautiful people to have ever lived, rendering their isolation even more tragic.

22) Sonatine-- Takeshi Kitano's inexplicably funny, terrifying and elliptical gangster movie is all about the decptive lulls, the digressions, diversions, and the stoic faces of a group of gangsters that sit quietly, all between sudden acts of savage violence. Kitano's movie has a peculiar rhythm all its own-- volumes are spoken in the few extra seconds he lets a take run after a shock, or a laugh, or a shot to the head.

23) The Umbrellas of Cherbourg-- An everyday romance given the pulse and expansiveness of an extended pop aria, Jacques Demy's bittersweet tale of two lovers whose desire is thwarted by circumstance is rendered entirely in Michel Legrand's songs, or rather his rendering of Demy's deliberately mundane dialogue in soaring, lilting, transcendent melody. Catherine Deneuve may have never been lovelier on screen, and that's saying something.

24) Spirited Away-- Hayao Miyazaki's supreme achievement, an act of glorious, unrestrained imagination that may well be unplumbable. The long, sorrowful nighttime train ride Chihiro takes across what seems to be an endless ocean, accompanied by a silent masked spirit, must be one of the great sequences in any animated film.

25) Day for Night-- The joy of making cinema, and the agony, and the comedy, and the futility, and the nonsense. Truffaut knows of what he speaks. One of his most unabashedly delightful movies.

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THIS HALLOWEEN (EVE), GET A LOAD OF CHUCKY!

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Word to my homies! They say that Halloween night is the big night come end of October. But if you live in the Los Angeles area, this year you can back that one up 24 hours. Because on Tuesday, October 30, Halloween Eve if you will, the American Cinematheque, in conjunction with Outfest, will be presenting a rare opportunity to see the underrated fifth chapter in the saga of Chucky the killer doll, Seed of Chucky (2004), on the big screen at the Egyptian Theater.

Ah, big deal, I can see it on DVD or cable TV, you might be saying, and you’d be right. But DVD or cable is no substitute for joining up with a theater full of like-minded horror fans who recognize that Seed, in completing the swing from the fairly literal-minded satire of the original Child’s Play to the subversive camp and social commentary that began with Bride of Chucky, has redefined and expanded of one of horror’s most durable, and now flexible, series. Rather than settle for rehashing well-trodden ground in the manner of the endless perpetuation of cookie-cutter Halloween and Friday the 13th sequels, writer-director Don Mancini has fashioned the most recent Chucky movies into a new breed, starting with the self-awareness of Bride and culminating with the radical evisceration of some fairly sacred cows (family values, celebrity vanity, artificial insemination conducted by a formerly inanimate object, et al) that propels Seed. And what makes this screening very special is that Mancini, along with Bride and Seed star Jennifer Tilly (my nominee for Good Sport of the Century), will be there at the Egyptian in person to conduct what promises to be a funny, irreverent and, why, even informative question-and-answer session after the show.


Only locusts, hail or a rain of frogs could possibly make me miss this night at the American Cinematheque, and if you’re in Los Angeles for Halloween and are looking for a way to ring in that most evil of holidays with style, I invite you to come along. And if you want to join the group I’ll be escorting to the show, you are most welcome. Just drop a line in the comments column or send me an e-mail and let me know if you can come. I’m hoping to bring along a sizable cheering section to help make my friend Don’s night a Halloween Eve to remember!

Mark your calendar now! Seed of Chucky, October 30 at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, sponsored by the American Cinematheque and Outfest.



Heh-heh. It said "Loading"...

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SATURDAY NIGHT SPECIAL

Another Saturday night…

The weekend just doesn’t mean what it used to. I know, I know, when you become an adult (and I’ve been one now for a couple of years) many things don’t look the same as they did from the vantage point of a wild and crazy youth. But even through love and marriage, new jobs, tragedy, too much work, not enough work, and blessed parenthood, it always seemed as though there were enough hours to carve away 17 or 18 of them (not counting straight shots of sleep, the very best reward) to do with what we (or I) would on a Saturday and Sunday.

Ever since I went back to school, though, the weekend, as it has been traditionally defined in my mind, has officially lost its meaning. Saturdays, and often Sundays (and much of what’s left of the day during the week) must now be devoted to the time-consuming, exhausting, mentally challenging pursuit of the credential that will unlock a whole new chapter in my life as a teacher.

Saturday nights like this one, however, and the one that came around this time last week, are often the only time I'll have (for at least the next year and a half, most likely) to devote to my all-time favorite pursuit— that of sitting my ass down in front of a big screen at some local cineplex, waiting for the lights to go down (and the incessant “pre-show entertainment” to come to a merciful end), and hoping for the best.

These days, when I get less than the best, as happened last Saturday, I end up a little foul in the temper department. I remember not going to the movies for a couple of months after my first daughter was born, and when I finally did get a chance to go out and relax with a picture, I made the terrible choice to see Jet Li in Romeo Must Die. Last Saturday a Herculean study project prevented me from making it to the drive-in club tailgater (apparently it was a huge success—there should be pictures up soon), so I decided to treat myself to a splashy action picture to make myself feel better. I had a choice between 3:10 to Yuma, which is what I would have seen at the drive-in that night, or the tempting new action comedy Shoot ‘Em Up with Clive Owen, Monica Bellucci and Paul Giamatti apparently sending up (and outdoing) every action movie and action movie cliché on the books. I was tired, Shoot ‘Em Up was shorter and undoubtedly more caffeinated, so I went with guns and irony.

After about five minutes of Shoot ‘Em Up’s relentless and knowing disregard for coherence, and its insistence that the only good parts of the post-Hard-Boiled action movie occur when weapons are blazin’ outrageously, I knew I’d made a mistake. The cast is having fun, but the movie plays too cynical by half, with a sense that it thinks its about twice (or even three-and-a-half times) more exciting and fun than it actually is. I’ve seen all the same action thrillers that writer-director Michael Davis has, and none of them were as cluttered and annoying as his straight-up send-up. Clive Owen is a can’t-miss chunk of action sculpture that most ladies (and quite a few men) won’t want to ignore. Monica Bellucci functions the same way for those of us who long for the days when Sophia Loren was routinely captured in motion pictures wearing the slightest, sexiest wardrobe the costumers could concoct, though Davis never finds anything comparably witty to do with her stunning figure the way Christopher Gans did in his loony werewolf action thriller Brotherhood of the Wolf. And who knows, even Paul Giamatti’s Elmer Fudd to Owen’s carrot-chomping, indestructible Bugs Bunny superhero might end up tickling someone’s fancy. Alas, not mine. I got as much joy from gawking at Bellucci’s image on the one-sheets and in stills than I got from any two actual minutes of Shoot ‘Em Up. She’s the only reason I would recommend anyone go see it, even taking into consideration that deliberately absurd, again not-nearly-so-funny-as-the-filmmakers-seem-to-think-it-is sex scene between Owen and Bellucci where humping and two-fisted gunplay get all tautologically tangled up with each other. In the end, Bellucci gets off, and Owen gets to come both literally and metaphorically, but I ended up feeling cheap and used.

Tonight, however, I rectified that mistake, and after I finished this week’s all-day paper-writing session, I made my way out to see 3:10 to Yuma. This has been a very good late summer for dismantling my preconceived notions about adaptations of Broadway musicals and now remakes of movies than were pretty damn good to begin with. I’m speaking, of course, about Delmer Daves’ original 1957 version of Yuma, starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin as a hardened killer and the beleaguered rancher who signs up to deliver said villain to the train that will take him to prison. Daves’ movie was an outdoor western with an interior sensibility—the scenes I remember from it most were the ones that took place in dusty saloons, cramped dining rooms and quiet, shadowy hotel rooms. The sense of claustrophobia the movie imparted went well with the psychological taunting Heflin undergoes at Ford’s hands in the name of a sense of personal justice and morality. Director James Mangold’s remake features scenes that are structural correlatives of those memorable sequences from the 1957 film, but they are welded to a visually expansive template that emphasizes, post-Leone, post-Eastwood, the treacherous topography (rendered frighteningly beautiful by cinematographer Phedon Papamichael) that actively reflects and contains the wary gamesmanship of Ben Wade (this time played by an insinuatingly entertaining Russell Crowe) directed toward the weary, stubborn Dan Evans (Christian Bale, as subjugated to his physical performance as ever, and brilliant all around). Mangold tests the patience of those of us who routinely complain that if directors and studios continue to insist on tampering with the past, then they should make a pact to remake only movies that were failures to begin with and leave the memories of the good ones alone. With his version of 3:10 to Yuma (again based on the short story Elmore Leonard undoubtedly didn’t get paid enough to write 50-some years ago), Mangold has demonstrated how a good remake of a good movie is done. He’s trumped all us whiners by making a movie that is, in its own way, as good as Daves’.

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Speaking of whining, there was a point to trotting out all my woes at the beginning of this post, and that is to apologize, in retrospect and in advance, if the offerings on SLIFR have or will come to seem somewhat skimpier than usual. I look over the past few months and quietly cringe at the amount of real writing that has been committed to these electronic pages. But I’m living in a different world now, at least for the next year, one that is defined by all that I must do in order to achieve, for myself and my family, the kind of goals that will allow us to find a better place or ourselves in this world, a place whose exterior is more comfortable and productive in general, and whose interior resembles the peace of mind best reflected (for me, anyway) by the picture of that boy sitting dockside with a fishing pole in his hand. I hope I can continue to strike a balance between what I want to do (write copiously for this blog) and what I must do (which, come to think of it, qualifies as a “want-to-do” too, thank God). I have not yet “gone fishin’,” but someday I hope I will. Until then, I thank you for sticking around and hoping that I come up with good reasons for you to continue to do so as I walk through this very interesting and challenging phase of my life.

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Coming soon: My picks for the 25 Best Foreign Language Films, my own answers (FINALLY) to Mr. Shoop’s Summer Quiz, a very special interview with an SLIFR favorite, an announcement about a special screening tied to that interview, AND the much-anticipated Winter Quiz (Professor TBA), and God knows what else!

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THE MATTER OF COMEDY

“Good comedy confronts, it embarrasses, it hurts, bewilders, delights, teases and provokes… Comedy matters, even when we never take it seriously.”

Peet Gelderblom has created a fine new short film for Comedy Central, a montage manifesto for the network that, as a labor of love intended only for internal use at the network, is far more circumspect, measured and thought-provoking than what we usually get from a promo department used to selling South Park and Reno 911! in 30-second burps and farts. This is the kind of work that looks simpler to manage than it actually is, if it is to feel cohesive and relevant, anyway (just ask Chuck Workman). Peet pulls off this feat, a summation of why comedy matters, like an extended feather-light dance through some hilarious (and decidedly not-so-hilarious) moments in world history as well as that of cinema— his vivid illustration of the familiar equation “comedy = tragedy + time” will test even the most iconoclastic view of the limits of laughter. Have a giggle.

Thanks, Peet!

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JIM EMERSON ON THE TORONTO BEAT

When it comes to film festivals, I’m not exactly well traveled. Way back in 1993, my wife and I were honeymooning in London, and due to happy coincidence the London Film Festival was up and running at the same time. So we got a copy of the schedule and managed to make it one screening, of a strange Spanish comedy bearing the influence of David Lynch entitled La Ardilla roja (The Red Squirrel), directed by Julio Medem, who would go on to direct Sex and Lucia. Oh, and we bought a souvenir T-shirt which my wife still sports now and again.

Time shift straight ahead from 1993 to 2006, when I attended my first, and so far only, actual film festival, meaning I traveled a short distance in order to see a bunch of films with like-minded filmgoers, and that’s essentially all I did for an entire weekend. It was the 2006 Lone Pine Film Festival—granted, not exactly Cannes or Venice, but for someone who likes his oaters the way I do, it was exhilarating to see these grand (and some not so grand) western movies screened just a couple of miles from where they were actually shot, under blue skies blooming with clouds and just a hint of the oncoming winter in the air. (I anticipated the festival here and followed up that post with a diary of the festival itself, as least as I saw it.)

It was nice to have Lone Pine to call my own, but around this time of year the one film festival that has beckoned to me many years before I ever had a serious thought/hope of actually attending has been the Toronto International Film Festival. I’ve always wanted to see Toronto, of course, and to be able to experience it while devoting a week or so to seeking out new films, writing about them, and enjoying the company of others who share my enthusiasm for the setting. Sounds like a pretty wonderful way to spend some time. And I’ve always appreciated the TIFF because, unlike a media circus like Cannes, Toronto is still accessible to the public as well as celebrities, critics and other cognoscenti. I dream of one day getting my own press pass, of course, but even without one you can still get to a lot of great cinema in Toronto without ever varying from your own agenda. I still haven’t made it there, and I still pine to, but I’ll tell you, getting to know some writers over the past few years that do go regularly hasn’t eased those pangs of envy! Fortunately, there are lots of sources for good reportage about the prestigious festival. And my favorite is the work being turned in by favored film critic, journalist and all-around good guy Jim Emerson of Scanners, who is posting wildly enthusiastic reports from the Canadian epicenter of cinema all this week. The best thing about Jim’s schedule of posts is that he’s nowhere near finished, and already, since September 4, he’s given us the following firsthand accounts of what he’s deeming (so far) an unusually good crop of films:

A personal note in preparation for leaving for Toronto

A hilarious account of what it took to get there

The first actual report, on the Mexican suspense thriller The Orphanage

A Coen Brothers update

A first look at George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson in Michael Crowley

The latest from octogenarian director Eric Rohmer

Sean Penn’s honorable rendering of a tragic true story

From Ramin Bahrani, the director of Man Push Cart, comes Chop Shop

Cronenberg returns to Toronto

Does what played in Cannes play in Canada? A look at Palme D’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days

Finally, Jim unlocks his thoughts on No Country for Old Men

And this just in tonight: a timely report on the element of surprise and the value of blissful ignorance at a festival like Toronto.

(Jim also has been filing all his Toronto 2007 reports in this handy filing cabinet for your easy reference.)

Jim’s reports make the festival and the festival scene come alive to me because they’re about what I care about—the films—and not what studio bigwig is floating on a yacht just off shore, or what insane publicity stunt Movie Star X pulled to draw attention to a movie that won’t even be in competition. That kind of action isn’t what Toronto is about anyway, but I get the feeling that if Jim did file from Cannes it might be a little about the madness, but a whole lot more about movies and why he’s excited about them, or why he’s not. Jim’s voice is a valuable one to have coming back from this festival, even if you’re trying to maintain a measure of that blissful ignorance he talks about, because he has a knack for conveying enthusiasm, and disappointment, without making you feel like there’s no point in seeing the movie for yourself after reading the piece because he’s regurgitated the whole experience for you and wrapped it up in a nice, neat package. No, what’s most enticing about Jim’s reports is how they get you more excited to see the movie than to satisfy your basic instinct toward instant gratification by reading more. This is why I’m going to see No Country for Old Men as soon as possible. Because if Jim Emerson, who holds Cormac McCarthy and Miller’s Crossing in as high regard as I do, loves it (no, he lurrrrrvvvvs it!), then I don’t want to know more. I want to see it for myself so the correspondence can begin.

Related: Here's a look at the red-band trailer for No Country for Old Men. You'll have to sign in to verify that you're old enough to see it (...), but it is worth the annoyance.

And some keen pics I found on the TIFF web site that to me convey the excitement and joy that must be the Toronto International Film Festival. Enjoy with me vicariously for now. But I hereby vow that I will make it to the TIFF before I'm 50! I will! I will!






Jim, hurry back safely, but not before seeing many more great movies!

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JOE ZAWINUL: OFF TO BIRDLAND 1932-2007

With Jaco Pastorius, Peter Erskine and Wayne Shorter, from a 1978 Stadthalle Offenbach concert.

Joe Zawinul was jazz fusion to me for as long as I knew what the two words meant together. I haven't listened to a Weather Report album in a while, but I think the time might be right to get to know Heavy Weather and 8:30, and Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, on which Zawinul played, all over again. Thanks, Joe, for the wonderful, arresting, demanding, maddening, wonderful sounds.

EXTRA! Found! LOST NIXON PRESS CONFERENCE!

The lost Nixon press conference has been unearthed. Take note, GW, and make sure that family heirloom bulk eraser is in good working order.

(Thanks to the tireless journalists at The Onion for doing what it takes to fill in these gaps in the history of our long national nightmare.)

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WIDE OPEN SPACES: Cars, Stars & 3:10 TO YUMA

The good folks at the Mission Tiki Drive-In will once again be hosting the Southern California Drive-in Movie Society tomorrow (Saturday) night, and they’ve invited the Inland Mopars Car Club to come out and join the fun as well. It’s a SoCalDIMS tailgater, which means SocalDIMS and Inland Mopars members and their guests will be rumbling through the gates for early admission at 6:30 p.m., so as to get the best spots on the lot to see James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma, the updating of the 1957 western which starred Glenn Ford and Van Heflin. (It's Russell Crowe as Ford and Christian Bale as Heflin in 2007.) Lots of car gawking, heavy snacking (the snack bar will open early) and socializing amongst drive and car geeks—er, fans!—will take place between arrival and show time, so get there early. The tailgaters are always fun (the first one we had earlier this year, for Grindhouse, really set the standard), and if you’re in the Los Angeles area we really hope you can bring your cooler, your blankets, your Nerf badminton set and, of course, your bad self and make this tailgate party the centerpiece of your Saturday night.

Related: Here’s a great piece featuring commentary by SoCalDIMS’s own Sal Gomez on The Vineland Drive-In which appears in this week’s issue of the L.A. Weekly.

THE SLIFR 100: #10 HIS GIRL FRIDAY

What’s new that can be said about His Girl Friday, Howard Hawks’ lightning-speed newspaper comedy which employed the genius tactic of making The Front Page’s previously XY Hildy Johnson the ex-wife (Rosalind Russell) of full-throttle city editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant)? Well, I’m not entirely sure, but since it’s number 10 on my chronologically ordered Top 100 list, I had intended to revisit it and talk a little bit more about this movie so filled with glorious talk. But again, what can be said about that glorious talk that hasn’t already been said before, and brilliantly, by the likes of Molly Haskell and
Tom Powers? Danny Peary’s entry in his original Cult Movies book was also illuminating. And you know what? I’d absolutely love to read what Campaspe might have to say if she turned herself loose on this great film.

I was about to undertake what I feared would be just another testimonial to the movie’s enduring magnificence when Fate intervened in the form of a YouTube clip I spied on Bad for the Glass this morning. The Shamus had pointed the way toward a new way of looking at this 67-year-old comedy masterpiece that was just the refreshing change of pace I was looking for. My favorite gumshoe blogger poses the question: “What would His Girl Friday be like without the famous Hecht and MacArthur rat-a-tat dialogue?” He then introduces the clip featured below, an experimental, literal deconstruction of the film that excises every word of that celebrated verbiage, leaving in only the few dead spots—the sneezes, the wheezes, the grunts, the pauses and “Cary Grant’s delightful laugh.” All spoken words removed, the 92-minute movie is shrunken down to about 8 minutes and 20 seconds. As the Shamus observes, if one knows the plot of His Girl Friday backward and forward, this reductio ad absurdum has the unexpected effect of highlighting the subtle touches of staging that Hawks could bring to even such a set-bound film as this. But I also found myself noting the visual space created by the actors, their level of comfort with each other, and within the frame, and how that space eventually gets pummelled into bits as the "movie" progresses. (Some of these inadvertant edits and resulting "reaction shots" are hilarious too.) This strange little edit of His Girl Friday has the unexpected effect of underscoring the simple, yet teasingly complex appeal of Grant, Russell, Ralph Bellamy, John Qualen, Gene Lockhart and the rest of the cast, as actors, personalities and graphic entities, by charting them in shards and compressed in time, shorn of the one element-- their very entertaining speech-- most viewers would seize on first when mounting an appreciation of the film.

This “between the lines” edit is surely no replacement for enjoying His Girl Friday at full length, but it is valuable and entertaining as a different perspective, and it will definitely whet your appetite to see the unexpurgated megillah, words and all.



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THE SLIFR 100: #55 THE DEVILS (and some thoughts on the Dark Ages B.B.-- Before Betamax)

Is it some kind of heresy, or blasphemy, or out-and-out idiocy to admit that sometimes I miss the dark ages before instant gratification became an expectation, an entitlement in the long shadow of VHS, DVD, Blu-ray and whatever configuration is next up on the horizon to make whatever format you’re backing obsolete? Remember those headless pre-VCR days when you’d go to see a movie in a theater—didn’t matter if it was The Searchers, or The Harrad Experiment, or Mildred Pierce, or Circus World, or The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three-- and have no idea if or when you’d ever get a chance to see it again? Of course, it mattered more to think this if you liked the movie—honestly, there weren’t too many of us who saw S*P*Y*S or Saturn 3 on their original releases who much cared whether we ever crossed paths with those mongrels ever again.

But when you came floating out of a screening of Lawrence of Arabia, or Fiddler on the Roof, or Straw Dogs (did anyone ever float out of a screening of Straw Dogs?), there might have been a pang of regret upon imagining that was the last time you’d probably ever see the movie on the big screen. (Almost worse was imagining re-encountering a bloodied and mangled version of a favorite film after the surgeons at the ABC Sunday Night Movie got through with it.) One way I used to deal with this problem, being a resident of a small town in the Eastern Oregon desert who felt lucky whenever our local theater played anything unusually good, was to load up on screenings the week the movie played. When movies like Dirty Harry, The Poseidon Adventure, American Graffiti, The Seven-Ups, The Groove Tube, Car Wash, Escape from New York, Tron, The Stunt Man, The Fury, Blazing Saddles and Kelly’s Heroes played their Wednesday through Sunday engagements, I and my friends ponied up for at least three shows each, sometimes more if we could. We had no idea we were living in the dark ages, and that in 10 years or less we would find ourselves taking for granted the kind of decadence that would allow you to cough up $1,500 for a 95-pound slab of whirring, wheezing machinery called a Betamax that would play back a limited selection of prerecorded movies, or movies cut and mixed with commercial breaks that you could tape off of TV yourself (with a blank cassette that only cost about $20.)

In the mid ‘70s we movie geeks certainly never expected we’d get to a point where we would have if not the whole, then at least a goodly chunk of film history at our disposal whenever we wanted to see it. And if you think about it, neither did the people who made the movies themselves. As screenwriter Lem Dobbs observes in an upcoming documentary on the early films of John Ford, none of these filmmakers ever imagined a life for their work beyond the initial theatrical run, which makes the lasting poetics of someone like Ford, or the diamond-sharp wit of a Hawks or a Wilder, or the roguish splendor of a Walsh even more notable in how it stood out from the chaff of the day. Sure, even up through the ‘70s every once in a while a popular hit might get reissued—that’s how many of us got the opportunity to see big MGM blockbusters like Gone With the Wind, Doctor Zhivago, Ryan’s Daughter and, yes, even 2001: A Space Odyssey on the big screen for the first time. But more often than not, studio product was treated like studio product, and unless a movie ended up on the bottom half of a smelly double bill somewhere down the line, one didn’t have many chances to see it before some new picture (and they made a whole lot more of ‘em 40 and 60 and 80 years ago than they do now) came along and took its place.

Conversely, in an age where digital technology is often the tail that wags the dog, some filmmakers may even be making and editing films thinking less about the big-screen experience and more pointedly on how the film plays on home theater wide-screen TVs. In a recent post on the shaky-cam verisimilitude of the Bourne films, particularly the last two directed by Paul Greengrass, Jim Emerson had an illuminating thought:

“In the middle of the movie, when I should have been into the movie, I found the pile-on style so abstract and distancing/alienating (a Brechtian espionage thriller?) that I began to wonder if Greengrass had actually shot the movie with an eye for the small(er) screen rather than the big one. Perhaps on a reduced scale, even on a large HDTV set, the illusion would be less distracting and more involving. Disorientation can only be pushed so far before it all becomes a blur, like taking a hand-held video camera on a roller coaster.”

But I digress. (Boy, how I digress!) My original thought, about a kind of longing for the days before the glories of VCRS and DVD and the home theater revolution, probably wouldn’t have been jogged out into the open had it not been for a couple of screenings I had the pleasure of attending this past summer courtesy of the American Cinematheque in Hollywood. Both films were hotbeds of controversy when they were released, in 1971 and 1975, respectively, neither had I seen, on big screen or small, in close to 20 years, and after seeing them again in 2007 they both made my personal Top 100 List. And in the aftermath of compiling that 100, I decided I would pop in at random points on the list and take a closer look at each title, with whatever attendant thoughts may be inspired by it. I am looking forward to writing about the far more disreputable of the two, Richard Fleischer’s Mandingo very soon.

However, the experience that got me ruminating about the dark ages when our movie-going and consuming habits were so much different came about when the Cinematheque screened Ken Russell’s hysterical, perhaps blasphemous and inescapably brilliant The Devils for one night only about a month ago. When this film made its bowdlerized way across American screens during the summer of 1971 I was seven years too young (legally) to see it—it had been rated X by the MPAA, even sans the notorious “Rape of Christ” sequence. Consequently, it became one of those holy grails for me—a film I was just a few years too late to see, a film not well-championed by critics here, and one rarely revived. Though I had seen Warner Bros.' VHS (!) release first, sometime during the mid ‘80s, it wasn’t until 1987 that I actually saw The Devils on a wide theatrical screen. Twenty years later, I saw it again. And in those 20 years the movie had expanded in my head into a unique masterpiece I was almost afraid to see again, for fear the actual thing would not live up to my vivid, horrible memories of it.

From the first appearance of the hyper-clear Panavision images shot by David Watkin (The Boy Friend, Chariots of Fire, Out of Africa), even when attended by the slight dust and speckle of the print, I felt a sensation, a frisson, if you will (and if I must), that seemed connected directly to the fact that seeing this movie was a special event, something that doesn’t happen every day, that couldn’t happen (for the time being, anyway) courtesy of Netflix or (ha!) Blockbuster. The very Russell-esque pageant of twisted, intermingled sexuality, politics and religion that opens The Devils was itself a tonic-- an impatient Cardinal Richelieu awaits an audience with King Louis XIII, with whom he hopes to discuss the impending campaign to bring down the walls of the fortified city of Loudon, a self-sufficient city led by the theologically and sexually liberal Father Grandier (Oliver Reed), whose sway over the citizenry (and the libidos of a demented sect of nuns) threatens to swing the city even further away from the harsh influence of the Catholic Church. The event that keeps Richelieu waiting, rolling his eyes and pinching himself to stay awake, is a grotesque performance in which King Louis XIII unveils himself as the lead in a musical staging of Boticelli’s The Birth of Venus. The sequence is deliciously unsettling and sets an approrpiately cross-wired tableau for the conspiracy of these perverse fanatics over setting upon Loudon a militaristic religious assault bent on destroying the priest’s influence, and perhaps even the city itself. This initial sequence has an almost jolly formalism (which Russell would expand into a feature-length exploration of the musical form in his next film, The Boy Friend) compared to the relentless hysteria with which the rest of the film is infused. Russell’s movie, based on Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudon, is all about the degree to which power corrupts, to which power is corrupted, and the lengths to which those in power will go, with motivations both religious and secular that are equally rooted in the tangled logic of madness, to preserve the belief systems to which they’ve staked their reputations and their souls.


Russell, of course, sides squarely with the sexually ambiguous spiritualism of Father Grandier, even though he makes clear there’s more than a whiff of megalomania about how Grandier conducts himself within the city walls, both rejecting and basking in his increasing role as spokesperson—and martyr candidate—for the doomed citizenry. But Grandier’s hypocrisies and denials are no match for the force of corruption set against his own brand of moral lassitude. The dogs of Richelieu’s religious forces are unleashed—first in the person of a sneering, silver-tongued Baron De Laubardemont (Dudley Sutton), an officer in the royal army, and eventually that of the fairly rabid Father Barre (Michael Gothard), an exorcist whose hysteria for the Host of Hosts frequently crosses the line into wanton, animalistic fury. (As does Gothard’s performance; a friend who saw the movie with me suggested that Gothard, with his slender build, long hair and granny glasses, was Russell’s tip of the cap to the younger generation that was, at the time the movie was released, fueling a resurgence in movie attendance, especially for risky ventures like this one. And it’s true—Gothard comes across like the necessarily unholy offspring of Ray Manzarek and Warren Zevon.)


But Grandier is beset from within Loudon’s walls as well, most relentlessly by the pathological attentions of Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave), whose own sexual obsession with Grandier will set into motion the political and religious forces that will bring him down. Redgrave’s performance is much more of a piece with the more outré, baroque stylistic indulgences that Russell brings to the table—Reed, as Grandier, is comparatively quiet and introspective, especially for Reed, and quite powerful. His ace in the hole is the simmering anger underneath his posture of theological rectitude, which eventually comes bursting through in the film’s fiery conclusion, when Grandier must finally address the twisted hypocrisy that the Church brandishes as “truth,” a truth by which, if confesses, he will condemn himself in a bed of satanic lies. “If the Devil's evidence is to be accepted,” he rages to his persecutors, “the most virtuous people are in the greatest of danger, for it is against these that Satan rages most violently. I had never set eyes on Sister Jeanne of the Angels until the day of my arrest, but the Devil has spoken, and to doubt his word is sacrilege.”


Redgrave is as riveting as she is repulsive here. Her hunchbacked Sister Jeanne has become so debased by her own delusions, and her own twisted entanglement of religious servitude and sexual passion, that she has transmitted her own madness into the fragile minds of her convent mates, until they all serve themselves up, heaving and screaming and wretching, on the altar of carnal desire for Grandier. From her first moments, gliding toward the camera through the halls of the convent, which recall the dank catacombs of Marat-Sade (the film’s sets were designed by Derek Jarman), she punctuates her fervent tones of prayer with an incongruous cackle that makes you laugh and sends chills through your sternum, and from that moment on the movie belongs as much to her wide, hallucinatory eyes as it does to her director’s all-encompassing vision of hell on earth.

Surely, The Devils is not for the faint of heart, nor for anyone who isn’t already predisposed to see the Catholic Church as a somewhat less than effective (or sincere) vessel for the Gospel of Christ. But it is undeniably powerful, in its excesses and sometimes despite them. In its insistent renderings of nuns masturbating to the memory of would-be lovers recently burned at the stake, the full-on hysteria of those possessed not by demons, or even sundry madness and plague, but by the intoxicating delusions of religious mania, and the mechanics of medieval torture, The Devils remains, 36 years after its release, horribly potent. It is one of the view movies, especially (I would imagine) seen in the uncensored British cut featuring that sensational “Rape of Christ” sequence in which Sister Jeanne and friends have their way with Christ on the cross, that would just as easily warrant and receive an NC-17 rating today as it did an X in 1971. As Danny Peary noted in his 1986 book Guide for the Film Fanatic, the movie’s “repulsive imagery [may be] overwhelming at times, but for once Russell’s seemingly out-of-control, hallucinogenic style is appropriate for his subject matter.” Or, as Sister Jeanne more than aptly puts it, “Satan is ever ready to seduce us with sensual delights.” As one who has perhaps more of a taste for Russell’s indulgences than does Peary (and surely many more than just him), I would still agree that Russell is at the height of his powers in The Devils, a movie as deeply rooted in pictorial classicism and movement as it is in heightening its pitch and tone to match the hollow screaming and heaving madness of its midsection. It is a brilliant consideration of the ghastly potency of extremity, particularly when that extremity betrays strains both political and religious, a brutal, searing, splendidly expressionistic specimen of filmmaking that takes full advantage of the scale and power of the wide screen to present a story that no studio would ever have the fortitude to release today. I almost wish it would never find its way to DVD, so powerful is it as a movie that can exist only in the forever affected memories of those who have seen it, a testament to what it was like to experience movies before the rise of the digital realm.

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For more on The Devils, check out Iain Fisher’s Savage Messiah Web site. There is also much information about the “uncut” version of the film available from Mark Kermode at the BFI as well as here at Seen and Heard International. And if you absolutely must, click here to sign a petition calling for the release of The Devils on DVD. (I probably will too!)

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