"IT'S A BEAUTIFUL WEEK FOR A BALL GAME..."

Photo by Lori Shepler/Los Angeles Times

It’s 3:40 p.m., and I’m finally able to take a break from work long enough to check the score. Here it is, Opening Day 2008, and I’m at work—first time in over 10 years, by my guesstimate. And that’s okay, because the Dodgers are apparently having another party out there at Chavez Ravine—they’re bringing it to the lowly Giants to the tune of 5-0 in the seventh inning. And yesterday they shut-out the team whose fans love to harp on that whole “World Champions” thing by a nice and tidy 8-0. That puts the Dodgers over the Red Sox four out of five clashes during spring training—the only one they lost, of course, was the one where I was present, and being able to say I was there for it has definitely taken the sting out of losing a meaningless game. Yep, my friend Doug procured tickets for the two of us and his wife and daughter for Saturday’s big game at the Coliseum commemorating the Dodger’s 50th year since moving from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. It was a thrill to be there, but I can’t imagine surviving having to play there, or schlepping out there as a fan for four years until Dodger Stadium was being built. After a while, I'd want a closer view of the game. But given that only nine games a year were televised 50 years ago (those Dodgers/Giants clashes), if you had the opportunity to see live major league baseball, you went.

If you draw a line at a 45-degree angle from the top of that fella’s cap in the foreground of the picture, you’ll see where our seats were—way the hell out there, to be sure, to the left of the Coliseum peristyle. But it was such a grand spectacle, who could complain? Certainly not me, even though at times it seemed like we were perched in the Coliseum's version of being out in the left field pavilion, where there was no shortage of Dodger and Red Sox fans, pre-lubed with three or four hours of Tecate and Bud Light before taking their seats, and ready to punch out or drench the first poor slob they fixated upon… over an exhibition game.

Even the much-debated shuttle service from Dodger Stadium got a thumbs-up from me, but that had more to do with the fact that I parked my car out there at about 2:00 p.m., when things were still relatively quiet. There were reports of some fans missing two, three innings due to incredibly long, slow-moving lines to hop shuttles originating at the stadium—these fans probably arrived a couple of hours later than I did, at least. By 3:00 I was sitting in the Rose Garden at USC reading a paperback (Scott Smith’s The Ruins, which is living up to its “scariest book of all time” press so far). I did that for nearly three hours—my idea of a pretty perfect day, a scenario that doesn’t get played out much for me these days—until I met Doug and his family around 6:00. It was only leaving the game that I got a taste of what most fans were up in arms about. I got in line to catch a shuttle right outside the Coliseum at about 10:45 p.m. I boarded the shuttle at 12:45 a.m. Whew. At least I was standing behind some pretty amusing close-to-retirees who were talking movies (Man #1: “Who played Jesus in King of Kings?” Man #2: “Uh, I don’t know. Gimme a hint.” Man #1: “He once appeared on Star Trek.” Man #2: “That Priceline.com guy!”). They also passionately discussed why a movie like No Country for Old Men was so good up to a point, and then dumped you with an ending that “couldn’t possibly be understood.” (Don’t worry. I held my tongue.) Anyway, I made it back to Dodger Stadium around 1:00 a.m. and was cozy and snoozing by 2:00. That’s a lot of work to see a baseball game where the field is wedged in like an incorrect answer to a geometry problem.

But it was a tremendous, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I’m glad I could be a part of, and I must thank Doug and Linda and little Reagan for that. I just wish the DVD I had set to record the whole thing would have turned out—all I ended up with was snow. I really wanted to hear Scully reminisce about the Coliseum days and occasionally call the game. But all’s well there too, I suppose—Scully’s on-field remarks before the game had me in tears before the first pitch was thrown. If I were to see the broadcast, I’d probably be too teary to follow the action, especially if I were forced to pay attention to the score.

Update: Saito has the potential third out at the plate with the score remaining 5-0. Looks like a pretty good Opening Day for the Dodgers.


Any idea how I might be voting in this week's poll?

Okay, so it’s not just opening week here in Los Angeles. Baseball fans across the land are writing down the scores in permanent ink now as the 162-game season finally gets underway. And to celebrate, this week’s poll (unlike last week’s) is a good one: What is the best baseball movie of all time? I have loaded the poll with six titles that are likely to provide some heavy competition, and this time if you vote “Other,” please use the comments column below to mention the title you like, talk about it a bit, complain or crow about how your team is doing so far, or otherwise just commiserate.

One other thing: I was walking through Vons the other day, and here’s this big display of DVDs set out to catch some of the heat of the Opening Week. Among the titles made available were Bull Durham, Eight Men Out, The Jackie Robinson Story, Field of Dreams, The Natural, with a copy of Hoosiers and Like Mike functioning as token nods to the basketballers who are still either clamoring over March Madness or hoping that the Lakers don’t tank like the Mets did last year. But it made me think: For all the mindless blather on sports talk radio about how boring baseball is and how nobody likes it anymore, especially compared to the NFL or the NBA, why don’t we see display cases pop up in September loaded with copies of Any Given Sunday and The Replacements (or that old chestnut North Dallas Forty, for crying out loud)? This tacit commercial acknowledgement that baseball is still the game most people get passionate about is something, I suppose. And the ratio of good baseball movies to good movies about any other sport seems pretty lopsided in favor of, yes, America’s Favorite Pastime too. (Do I sound like I’m trying to start a fight?) Anyway, that little display just kinda sparked me in a funny way, which I’m sure was not its intent—MGM probably does have quite a few backlogged copies of Eight Men Out that they like to put out there this time of year, just to see if any suckers will bite. Whatever. I just like to be reminded that baseball is back, and I’ll take that news in any shape or form.


P.S. Congratulations to Jon Weisman, the big cheese at Dodger Thoughts, on the arrival of his newborn son, and many thanks for directing his readers to my essay about escorting Sergio Leone to his first baseball game. Kevin Roderick at the esteemed and very well read L.A. Observed was kind enough to do the same. Thanks so much, gentlemen. Your links are even better than those bacon-wrapped street dogs they were selling at the Coliseum Saturday night, and those were damn good!

Final score: Dodgers 5, Giants 0. How could the season start off any better than that?

RICHARD WIDMARK 1914-2008

Richard Widmark, who passed away Monday, March 24, from issues related to declining health at the age of 93, was a fixture in my moviegoing universe. He was there from the first moments of my being cognizant of the movies, or seeing them on television, at least. I was probably three or four years old when my mother caught me gazing in horror at our little 15” black-and-white General Electric portable as nasty little Tommy Udo shoved a old woman in a wheelchair down a dark flight of stairs in Kiss of Death. I had just stumbled upon the scene, and of course my mother wouldn’t allow me to see the rest of the movie. But it was one of those searing, defining moments where one either falls in love with the power of the movies or goes spiraling away from them and the horrors they can so vividly represent. Me, I fell in love, though Widmark’s trademark sinister giggle and evil grin remained signpost images and sounds of ambivalence, of repellence and attraction, of not being able to tear my eyes away from things I sometimes felt shouldn’t be hearing or seeing. As I grew up, however, and movies began to gain the resonance and context and historical significance that escaped me as a four-year-old, Widmark simply stood out as one of my favorites, someone who I knew could be counted on to enrage and enrapture me with his scary, cynical and sometimes even sincere portraits of men on the edge in many landmark films noir and westerns. And as he grew older and retired away from the public eye, I liked to think that the man would never die, but just simply recede into the distance and observe us from afar, the way we held true to the standards and the challenges of storytelling set forth in the kinds of films he made for 50-some years, and the way we, the industry, the critics, the audience would inevitably stray the course.

My grandma and several of my relatives met him (and Robert Mitchum and Sally Field and Kirk Douglas) on the set of the 1967 western The Way West, which was shot near their ranch in Christmas Valley, Oregon, and my grandma, who knew how movie-crazed I was even by the age of seven, loved to tell me stories of what they saw on the shoot. She told me many times how different Widmark was from his tough bastard screen image, and how he addressed her with kindness and respect each time their paths crossed. He was often critical, in his retirement, of the excesses and quality of what he saw coming out of modern Hollywood. And though The Way West was not a particularly good picture, few left had the credibility and experience to take the town to task the way Widmark did in the years before his death. One tended to take heed the words of the man who was in Road House, Night and the City, Panic in the Streets, Destination Gobi, Pickup on South Street, Hell and High Water, Broken Lance, The Last Wagon, Two Rode Together, How the West Was Won, Cheyenne Autumn, Madigan and Twilight’s Last Gleaming, to expect that, yes, he just might know a thing or two about movies and what they could be. Though he hadn’t been seen on screen in almost 18 years, just knowing he’s no longer there means we’re one more step isolated from a period of Hollywood history for which there are fewer and fewer living witnesses; he will be missed for that reason, and because he was so damn good at what he did when he was on screen.

(Kim Morgan offers a heartfelt good-bye to Mr. Widmark as well on her MSN Movies Filter site.)

REPELLE-DUNDANT REMAKE POLL WINNER: PSYCHO (1998)

In a real squeaker, Gus Van Sant’s Psycho enjoyed (enjoyed?) a last-minute surge in this week’s polling action to steal the title of Most Repelle-dundant Remake away for Marcus Nispel’s apparently quite reviled revisit to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Out of the 94 votes cast, Psycho (1998) received 45 votes (47%) over TCM’s 44 (46%). Only George Sluzier’s ill-advised trashing of his own movie, The Vanishing (featuring a ending that could only piss off those who appreciated the grim horror that capped the original) came anywhere close to challenging the top two—it managed 38 votes (40%). It was a sharp drop to the 17 votes (18%) picked up by Brian De Palma’s ugly take on Scarface, but Martin Scorsese’s uglier take on Cape Fear was close behind with 15 votes (15%). Michael Haneke’s carbon-copy redux of Funny Games garnered 13 votes (13%), and my favorite of the bunch, Paul Schrader’s remake (rethink) of Cat People, which looked like a favorite early on, petered out with only 11 votes (11%).

This poll coincided with Nathan Lee’s article in the new issue of Film Comment entitled “Let’s Do It Again: Horror Remakes from Psycho to Funny Games”. The link takes you only to Film Comment’s web page which does not feature the article online—you gotta buy the magazine to read it. But it’s a worthwhile read if the subject holds any fascination for you at all. Lee has done what I would previously have thought the impossible with his piece—he’s made me curious about Rob Zombie’s Halloween, which I avoided last summer (even though I had a revulsion/intellectual appreciation for The Devil’s Rejects), and he’s made me consider watching Van Sant’s Psycho again. I was one of the many who were put off by what I perceived as the indie director’s perverse performance-art joke, but in his article Lee, who isn’t sure himself if Psycho (1999) was worth doing, has at least made me aware of possible reasons why Van Sant might have felt it was a project worth the trouble of tackling it in the first place:

“Concentrated in Anne Heche’s entrancingly self-conscious turn as (Marion) Crane, Psycho gives off the queerest existential vibe this side of Kaspar Hauser. With its haunted mise-en-scene and awkward doppelgangers, each slotted in its predestined place and barely suppressing, it often seems, the uncanny cognizance of their reincarnated status, Psycho plays like the most expensive trance film ever made.

Remake as mindfuck, the horror film as ontological essay, both pseudo-Warholian gimmick and proto-Gerry conundrum, Psycho teases the brain with squirming semiotic minutiae. Why are the clothing styles less contemporary than the chic duds in Hitchcock’s version? Why follow the letter of the original so closely yet alter, ever so slightly, the letters of Marion’s license plate? What is Van Sant attempting to signify by opting for a prismatic shower curtain in place of the semi-transparent original? The movie fairly demands a companion volume to A Long Hard Look at Psycho, as Raymond Durgnat titled his exhaustive close reading of a text he once praised as ‘a prolonged practical joke in the worst possible taste.’”

An assessment, it sounds, which isn’t far from how many of us perceived the Psycho remake when it came out; practical joking (if a multi-million dollar joke can in any way be termed “practical”) even seems like a possible subtext for Lee’s own perceptions, that apparent pointless tweaking of the license plate being the only cited example out of many. I was entranced by Gerry’s gliding death march, fascinated and repelled by the vision Van Sant brought to Elephant, and drawn in by the half-heard murmuring at the doomed heart of Last Days (I have yet to see Paranoid Park); I wonder if an appreciation of these films will in any way shed light on the director’s motives behind Psycho (1999) and whether my receptivity to that moody triptych will make me more inclined to respond positively to this reviled remake if I should choose to see it again. Sounds like an interesting experiment…

P.S. Lee again, on Michael Haneke’s Americanized Funny Games, just because I think the writing is funny (I have yet to see the new version):

“Haneke’s facile stabs at the spectator (direct address, self-reflexive platitude) were tired in 1997; 10 years and much American atrocity later, we may well deserve a meta-cinematic kick in the nuts, but I’m not convinced Her Epater Glum, Ph.D., is the man for the job…

…Funny Games is Hostel for the NPR set, a prolonged practical joke in the best possible taste… (Nice fold-back on Durgnat! – DC)

…This frame-by-frame exercise generates none of the odd indeterminacy of Psycho, since Van Sant channeling Hitchcock, misguided as it may be, posits at minimum a montage of sensibilities, whereas Haneke doing Haneke is by definition an act of navel-gazing redundancy.”

Redundant. There's that word again.

UPDATE 3/24/08 4:27 p.m. Janet Leigh vs. Anne Heche-- who scrubs up best? I think we probably all know the answer to that question already, but in the spirit of supermarket taste testing, here's an opportunity to see the 1960 and 1998 Psycho shower scenes side by side. See for yourself the degree of Van Sant's fidelity to Hitchcock's seminal horror sequence, and maybe take note of a few more instances of "semiotic minutiae" that drove Nathan Lee crazy. The picture quality isn't the best, but YouTube poster "lewschoen" has put together a fascinating exercise in film study nonetheless.

HADDA CUPPA BAVA: Four Times That Night and more!

Well, the American Cinematheque’s Mario Bava retrospective “Poems of Love and Death” is now a matter of the past; this evening saw a big triple feature blow out of The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970) and Caltiki the Immortal Monster (1959) to end this feast of fun and other freak-outs. Time and other commitments prevented from attending any but one night of the festival, and lucky for me it was the one I most wanted to see. I was there this past Friday night for A Bay of Blood (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve, 1971), the movie template from which all slasher films from Black Christmas (1974) forward owe at least a nod of respect. (Sean Cunningham and Friday the 13th owe Bava a lot more than that.) Blood remains a nasty, ironic stunner, and the print we saw Friday night, supplied by producer Alfredo Leone, was a beauty, accentuating all the ripe color schemes and visual tropes of Bava's trickster poetry. (Bava was, as he often was, his own cinematographer on this film.) The movie was introduced by Eli Roth (Hostel, Hostel Part II) who gave the movie its due props, and then introduced actor Brett Halsey, who worked with Mario Bava twice, both times in genres atypical for the director—a western, Roy Colt and Winchester Jack (1970), and a comedy, the night’s second feature, Four Times That Night, the Rashomon-inspired sex farce about four different perspectives on a wild date between Halsey and ex-Miss Italy Daniela Giordano.

This candy-colored absurdity was a real hoot, genuinely erotic, with some good laughs and lots of visual invention, especially for a set-bound bon-bon like this one. Four Times also highlights some nice comic turns by Halsey, Giordano, Valeria Sabel as Giordano’s mother, and Pascale Petit as a goldilocked lesbian who, in one version of the night’s adventure, sets her sights on Giordano. That the fixation goes unconsummated was an audible disappointment for several men and women in the audience. In reference to the movie’s obviously cribbed structure, Roth actually asked Halsey if he and Bava sat around the set discussing Kurosawa, to which the nonplussed Halsey responded in perfect deadpan, “No, not really.” I bumped into Halsey coming out of the men’s room after the show and if I’d had my wits about me I would have asked, was it incredibly maddening doing nude scenes with the super-sensuous Giordano, or was it as much fun as it seemed while watching this surprisingly genial, if slightly overlong, romp? But I suppose I did have my wits about me, for I chose not to ask him yet another dumb question, figuring that Roth had done his duty in that regard for us all. (I did enjoy the director's enthusiasm as a moderator, however.) I’ll be seeing Four Times again soon, as it is the second feature attached to the DVD I have coming from Netflix of the other Bava feature in the series that I very much regret missing, Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970), featuring the breathtaking giallo icon Edwige Fenech. I also regretted missing Planet of the Vampires on the Egyptian’s big screen, but apparently even those in attendance didn’t really get a chance to see it. Apparently the print that the Cinematheque expected to receive was rerouted elsewhere, so they ended up having to use a “digital source” to project the film—a real disappointment, to be sure.

I only know of the snafu because longtime SLIFR reader Mr. Peel, writer and proprietor of the excellent blog Mr. Peel’s Sardine Liqueur told me so. Mr. Peel’s site currently features some excellent readables on Bava, The Young Girls of Rochefort and director Fred Dekker-- in order words, it’s all over the place, kinda like another blog I know… Anyway, I was sitting there thumbing through the new Film Comment waiting for the lights to go down when this gentleman who I’d never met before came up to me and asked me if I was Dennis Cozzalio. Usually this inquiry is followed by the sound of clasping handcuffs, but he looked friendly enough. So I admitted my identity, Mr. Peel identified himself and we had a nice little chat before show time. This was the first time I’d been recognized from this blog (to my knowledge, anyway), and it was a really nice experience, helped immeasurably by the fact that Mr. Peel has been a frequent and friendly commenter here as well as a writer of a fine site of his own. And when I read my e-mails on Saturday, I was surprised to hear from Nate Y. who said he was at the Bava screening Friday and also recognized me, citing the ever-present ball cap as evidence. Nate Y., and anyone else who reads this here journal, if you ever do see me at a screening in the future, I do hope you’ll introduce yourself, as Mr. Peel did. My enormous ego could use the massage!


As a way of saying good-bye to Bava on the big screen here in Los Angeles, I’ve got what I hope will be a special treat for the director's fans. There’s a new site in town, a free high-res video stop-and-shop called Hulu, and among their somewhat meager selection of movies which one can watch in their entirety, for free, there is a Mario Bava title. It may not be of the caliber of Blood and Black Lace or Lisa and the Devil, but it is Bava just the same. So if you have the time to spare, sit back, press play and enjoy, at no charge, this full-length feature starring Vincent Price, Fabian and (watch out!) 1966-vintage Laura Antonelli, the sequel to the AIP smash-hit Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine entitled Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs. (You'll have to hit the link to see the feature-- I tried embedding it, but the code played havoc with the 2.35 aspect ratio, which is preserved when you see the movie directly at the Hulu site. Enjoy!)

WHAT THE MOVIE PAGE USED TO LOOK LIKE (1961)

(click image to enlarge)

Here's a page from the Los Angeles Times movie page circa 1961 (I don't know whether or not they called it the "Calendar" section back then). The opening of The Innocents at the El Rey is notable (the El Rey still exists; it's now a live performance venue), and there are other interesting things to take in about this picture. But I love that ad for One Two Three, one of my favorite movies, and how it plays upon a rather melancholy image of Billy Wilder holding three balloons. It tells you absolutely nothing about One Two Three-- shouldn't at least one of them be emblazoned with the legend "Yankee Go Home!"? But seen simply as an unusual image, and as evidence of the emerging cult of the director as even recognized by the United Artists marketing whizzes, to say nothing of Andrew Sarris, it's kind of fascinating. Longtime Los Angeles residents will undoubtdly also have another sort of melancholy fun noting how many old theaters listed on this page, including drive-ins, are no longer in existence circa 2008 in this most movie-est of towns.

CRUMBS FROM THE SLIFR NOTEBOOK

A few moments, related and unrelated, spent with some of the things of cinema on my mind in the past few days...

First things first: Thanks to all of you who have offered such positive thoughts and support regarding my teaching exam. I got through it on Saturday well enough, I think. I did not, to use Bill’s colorful metaphor, kick it squarely in the balls; in fact, the blow during the science and math section may have been a bit off the mark—if I have to redo any part of the test, it’ll be that part. But the rest was much more solid—I started off with English/History, which went well, surprisingly so did the history part. I actually had a glimmer of a panic attack after answering about 10 questions, but then marshaled my nerve and carried on. At that point I thought about doing the math/science section first. But I’d already started English/History, so I just kept going. I took a little more time that I should have on Math/Science—the multiple choice section was better than the essays here. I could reason through most of the math and come up with an answer that was among those answers offered, so I felt pretty confident. But having to create mathematical expressions in the essays to illustrate how I came to my answers was much tougher than I expected, and I have to say I floundered on those questions. I was behind on the clock when I began the third section, which turned out to be Physical Ed/Theater Arts! Suddenly I was glad I got the other sections done first. As you can imagine, the essay questions in this section came much easier, and having to answer multiple choice questions like “The difference between a theatrical performance and a film is…” was not a mind-bending challenge. So the test ended on an up note at least. I’ll find out my actual grades on April 7, and though I don’t have the sense that I aced it, I still think I did well enough. And if I do have to go back, for Math/Science or even English/History, I’ll know what to expect.


From last year's Mission Tiki opener: Death Proof under the stars...

After I finished the test, I really needed to unwind. First a long nap. Then I took the girls out on what the local weather geniuses assured us was going to be a cold and rainy night to start another drive-in season off at the Mission Tiki Drive-in in Montclair, California. The Mission Tiki is, of course, the hub of activity for the Southern California Drive-in Movie Society, about which I’ll have more to say in a later post. I took my daughters out for a double feature of Horton Hears a Who! and the movie that just won’t go away, Alvin and the Chipmunks. (I will not confess to you, without plying by alcohol, just how many times I’ve seen this film.)

We got to the drive-in late, which on any other Saturday night would have spelled disaster in terms of finding a decent spot on the lot. But since the weather was up till even then still threatening, many folks who would normally be packing the pavement were not out and about. So when we pulled in at 7:00 for a show that started at 7:30, we joined a stalwart band of families, their minivans pointed hatches toward the screen, and settled in. The snack bar was relatively quiet for the same reason, which gave us ample time to treat up and return to the van before the previews started. The night air was chilly, and the sight of the snow-covered San Gabriel Mountains looming behind the drive-in lot was spectacular in the dying sunset. But though it was cold, it did not feel like rain, and the late arrivals that eventually filled the lot must have realized this too. My daughters and I jumped in the back of our van, loaded up with sleeping bags, pillows and blankets, porta-pottie at the ready, and snuggled in for what turned out to be a terrific double feature. After a potent line-up of trailers including Speed Racer, Nim’s Island, Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (in 3-D), Kung Fu Panda and Iron Man (scored, to my eight and five-year-olds’ delight, to the Black Sabbath classic), Horton unspooled and turned out to be a delight. As A.O. Scott observed in his otherwise too dismissive review, Horton breaks the Dr. Seuss movie curse by turning out, unlike the live-action Grinch and Cat in the Hat atrocities, not to be one of the worst movies ever made, but instead an inspired CGI comedy that honors the spirit of the good doctor’s story even as it expands upon it thematically. It was, to our eyes, as good as we could have reasonably hoped, and the laughter from all three of us rung out into the chilly night air for 85 solid minutes. I was less engaged in Alvin, though my girls continue to love it. I settled for reclining back on a pillow and allowing my girls to tuck in on either side of me, watching, laughing and occasionally bursting into choruses of “The Christmas Song” (“We can hardly stand to wait/O Christmas, don’t be late!”). As tempted as I was to stay and see Horton a second time, we packed up and drove home after watching the Speed Racer trailer again (Some have derisively described the preview as looking like the second coming of Tron, which is not a bad thing in my book, though I will admit it does look like a movie that, if it goes bad, will do so painfully.)

The next morning I took the little ladies to breakfast at a diner on Eagle Rock Boulevard in Glendale called Pat and Lorraine’s. A tiny greasy spoon serving ridiculously portioned, delicious, authentically Mexican-influenced early-morning dishes, Pat and Lorraine’s is also famous for being the restaurant where the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs was filmed, the diner where the famous tipping debate took place.



As my young daughters and I walked into the small dining room, I noticed a Reservoir Dogs poster on the wall near the kitchen. Below it there was also a poster for another movie starring film noir icon Lawrence Tierney (who appeared memorably in Reservoir Dogs). It was the one-sheet image for Robert Wise’s nasty 1947 thriller Born to Kill, which my daughters watched with me late one night a couple of weeks before Christmas. We stood waiting near the door for someone in the crowd of young hipsters and Mexican-American families to finish up at a table so we could get seated, and as we did my youngest daughter caught sight of the poster and pointed. “Hey, I saw that movie!” she yelled with excitement. Many of the people in the restaurant looked first at her, then up to the wall where the Reservoir Dogs poster slightly dominated the ad for the older film. I looked sheepishly back as many pairs of eyes met mine with a look of “How could you, you irresponsible bastard?!” bolting out of them like icy knives. I thought of protesting, but then decided to just take the medicine of the misunderstanding. Somehow, I reasoned, it probably wouldn’t have made much difference if I’d defended myself by saying, “No, she didn’t see Reservoir Dogs. She’s talking about seeing Born to Kill!” The delight I took in my daughter responding to an old classic likely would not have translated, so I kept quiet and took my psychic lumps. The huevos rancheros were awesome, however.

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In the wake of my oldest daughter’s enthusiasm for Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat in The Crimson Pirate, I’ve been trying to expand her palate a little bit in the hopes of honing her appreciation for classic films. I bought The Crimson Pirate for her birthday, along with the other Lancaster/Cravat vehicle, The Flame and the Arrow, directed by Jacques Tourneur. We haven’t got to it yet, but I’m sure she’ll love it. Both daughters now know the Star Wars films backward and forward, and they love the 1980 Flash Gordon too. I’m developing a list of movies to show them, include Buster Keaton, Jackie Chan and some screwball comedy of the ‘30s and ‘40s. But I fear I may have inadvertently undermined myself slightly here. In the afterglow of the initial Crimson Pirate screening, I pulled out What’s Up, Doc? (1972), figuring they’ve have a good time with it. They did, and they showed a remarkable patience for what I thought was a bit too clunky and graceless set-up (the first two-thirds of the movie!) for the big slapstick chase finale through the streets of San Francisco. They movie is far patchier than I recalled from having seen it on its release, and despite it being well received it is nowhere near the grace, timing and generally divinity of the movie that inspired it, Bringing Up Baby (1937), not to mention just about any other slapstick screwball comedy of the period. I just wonder if I haven’t done a disservice to the possibility of my girls enjoying Baby by serving up the canned, Color by Deluxe homage first…

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When fans and cineastes alike talk about great war movies, certain arguable titles always come up-- All Quiet on the Western Front, They Were Expendable, The Steel Helmet, Paths of Glory, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Das Boot, Saving Private Ryan, The Big Red One, to mention just a few. But one that ought to be on that short list is very rarely mentioned, and it deserves to be. Samuel Fuller, who directed The Big Red One and The Steel Helmet delivered Merrill’s Marauders in 1962, and having just seen it on the big screen recently, I am flummoxed as to why this movie hasn’t a reputation as being one of the best war movies ever made. Built around Jeff Chandler’s raw, sympathetic final performance as the titular Brigadier General Frank Merrill, it showcases Fuller’s idiosyncratic staging and nail-tough editing to full advantage. Merrill leads a group of volunteer soldiers on a brutal endurance test of a mission across Burma, and the movie’s style, lean and crisp to begin with, gets more fevered, off-center and lyrically delirious as the men’s stamina, and their minds, begin to wither. Yet Fuller delivers the goods, as might be said of a great action director, and his stylistic concessions to the dementia and horror of war is never self-conscious; it’s practically subliminal. Merrill’s Marauders also represents some of the best work ever from its prodigious cast of character actors, including Claude Akins, Ty Hardin, Peter Brown and Andrew Duggan. And the movie affects you in ways you may not even be aware of until you start hashing over sequences in your head on the way home. I hope you get a chance to see this on the big screen, but a nicely packaged top-drawer Warner Brothers DVD release would certainly suffice.

UPDATE: 3/31/08 5:44 p.m. Guess what! Yes, it seems to be true. My only reservation is Amazon's listing of the aspect ratio being 1:33:1. I sincerely hope that's just a typo and that Warners have not made a very atypical blunder in