DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION MONTH CONCLUDES: THE ANIMAL HOUSE EXTRAS DVD COMMENTARY

Why is the sight of this poster a source of agony for the proprietor of this blog? How did it smell in that basement during the infamous toga party? Who was the bass player for Otis Day and the Knights? Was John Vernon as cranky as his character Dean Wormer? Who was it throwing those beer bottles from behind the camera during the party scenes?

The answers to these burning questions and others that are at least of the smoldering variety are answered in an exclusive new podcast that I'm proud (and somewhat nervous, actually) to offer you as the concluding post in SLIFR's Double Secret Probation Month celebration of the 30th anniversary of the release of National Lampoon's Animal House. The podcast consists of Your Humble Host and His Best Friend (Bruce Lundy, an actor currently residing in Eugene, Oregon, known to SLIFR readers as frequent commenter Blaaagh), whose friendship began on the set of the movie 31 years ago when they were both cast as members of the Delta Tau Chi house, reminiscing about what it was really like being an extra on a movie that would become a beloved comedy classic. It's a long file designed to be listened to in conjunction with watching the movie, and if the speakers have done their job it will be as much fun for you, the Animal House fan, to sit through as it was for us to record.

All you have to do is cue up the picture to the first few frames of that familiar Universal Pictures logo field of stars, when the first strains of Elmer Bernstein's score kick in. Either the 1998 20th anniversary edition DVD or the 1993 Double Secret Probation DVD edition should work-- and I suppose if you only have an old VHS copy that'll probably do too. The commentary is not always scene-specific, so if it gets a second or two out of sync you'll probably never even know. In addition to closing out the month-long celebration of all things Faber College round these parts, the podcast also serves as the inaugural post on my new blog site, SLIFR: The Noisy Version, a site devoted to audio treats such as these. Posts here will be muuuuuuch fewer and farther between than what has become the norm on Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, but hopefully that old quality-not-quantity bromide will hold true.

So without further delay, the podcast is ready to go and available by clicking right here. Please feel free, as you always do, to leave comments here and/or on the new site. And if you can provide some kind of proof that you sat through the whole thing, I've got one of those nasty cheeseburgers that Bluto crammed into his mouth, originally procured from the student union Fishbowl and remarkably well preserved from 31 years ago, that I would be proud to put in the U.S. Mail for you as an acknowledgment of your incredible dedication and stamina! Happy listening!

(Special thanks to Eric Gottschalk for engineering the audio on this MP3 recording and making it sound 1000% better than it did right after we first recorded it. Eric, you are the best!)

DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION MONTH: NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE TURNS 30 YEARS OLD TODAY

Updated 7/28/08 10:43 a.m.

Thirty years ago today, just as the summer movie season of 1978 was entering its final phase, National Lampoon’s Animal House premiered for the paying public and became a hit on a scale which probably surprised most everyone involved with making it. But by the time I saw it for the first time, on August 4, 1978, at a special invitation-only premiere held for the local cast and crew in Eugene, Oregon at the old National Theater in the downtown district (long since gone), the movie was already a week old. So the Hollywood luminaries that were in attendance were giddy over the degree to which the movie’s good fortunes had already begun to roll. The only major player I remember being there was director John Landis, who addressed the audience, comprised mostly of the movie’s extras, local and university dignitaries, residents of Cottage Grove (where the parade was shot) and others involved directly or peripherally in the movie’s production, before the movie began. Landis’ typical exuberance was amplified on this night as he told the excited audience of the box-office records the movie had already smashed. My friends and I, fellow extras and some production people I had gotten to know whom I hadn’t seen since school finished up for the year that previous June, couldn’t have been more ready to absorb this movie. And then Animal House unspooled for Eugene for the very first time.

I have to say it was a disorienting experience. Having lived around two months under the umbrella of this production during my first semester of college the previous fall, I had plenty of time to think about what might or might not be in the finished film and what it might look like. Many things I imagined I would see I did not, and the things that I did see for the most part did not end up looking or sounding the way they did when I saw them being filmed. (My best friend Bruce and I made a lot of hay during the school year about what sounded like Karen Allen’s lame delivery of the line she uses to distract the police and save Boone during the parade-- “Officer! Officer! They’re looting the Food King!”-- but, miracle of miracles, it sounded just fine on the big screen.) There was a major gap between the movie that was still playing in my head and the one crafted for the world in Eugene and Hollywood, and over the next 30 years the version that everyone has gotten to know and love has crowded out much of my original notions of what Animal House might have ended up being. And that’s okay, because, frankly, even though it was at times a lot of fun (it was also, at times, scary as hell for a green freshman roaming relatively free in the big world for the first time) and the experience of being there was one I wouldn’t trade away for the upgraded report card I might have earned had I not been so distracted that first term, I didn’t hold out much hope that the end product would be very good. The comedy seemed too broad and the general atmosphere too chaotic to my eyes on the set—I couldn’t see how it could possibly all come together into a coherent package. (And I still marvel when I see footage taken on the sets of movies far more complex to engineer than Animal House, everything from Seed of Chucky to Magnolia to Hairspray, and think about the degree of difficulty involved in crafting a movie with aspirations to style and art and realizing a particular vision.) Also, there was the singularly strange feeling of seeing myself in a movie. I knew where to look, of course, and so I was able to spot myself several times with ease, and of course there were times I was expecting to see myself where I was either just out of camera range or—one big moment, especially, which I’ll relate in the next post— where I ended up, as they say, on the cutting room floor. (I would get a huge charge later that summer when Pauline Kael mentioned the movie favorably in the context of a passel of movies that came out that year and I couldn’t help but think, “She doesn’t know it, but Pauline Kael saw me!”)

But overall the whole thing just made me feel discombobulated. (It didn’t help that, as a guest of Universal, I accepted an invitation extended to everyone to stay at the National afterward and see the studio’s other big summer release, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, gratis. Talk about discombobulated.) I wouldn’t begin to get a real charge out seeing the movie in the real world until the Labor Day Weekend, when the Friday newspaper trumpeted a full-page ad which I still have in a trunk in my garage somewhere that was packed to the margins with blurbs from the rave reviews the movie was getting. And when my parents took me back to Eugene for my sophomore year in the fall they both wanted to see it. In fact, it was the first movie I am aware of that my dad sat through, screaming with laughter, twice in one night. And it wouldn’t be the last time he’d see it in a theater either, a fact I find remarkable—you would too if you knew my dad. Of course when I came back to school that fall, suddenly being able to say you were in Animal House was something that meant something to the rest of campus. Back in the fall of 1977, people just offered odd looks to the kids with the out-of-date haircuts roaming around classes. But now everybody wanted to talk about the movie, and see it multiple times too (sometimes dressed in togas even), and if you could say you were in it, well...

There are a couple of bits of celebration left to come in this Double Secret Probation Month celebration of the 30th anniversary of Animal House. I have a couple of stories left to tell, I’m still hoping for last-minute responses to interview requests which have not as yet materialized, and there is that special project I’ve occasionally hinted at which, if all goes well, should come together tonight for your enjoyment sometime Wednesday or Thursday. For now, however, I thought it might be fun to share some pictures I took in June 2006 when I was visiting Eugene. Bruce and I took friends Katie and Scott on a tour around campus—Katie and Scott are Corvallis residents who had never seen the University of Oregon, so we seized on the opportunity to show them some of the most recognizable locations that were used in the movie. Here then is the University of Oregon, well-known as the home of Steve Prefontaine and the Olympic Track and Field Trials, but also a movie star of some repute, its greatest role of course being its brilliant portrayal of Faber College in National Lampoon’s Animal House. Time to go back to school…






The Delta House, as seen in National Lampoon's Animal House, was actually a rundown halfway house that was still functioning as such at the time the movie began shooting in the fall of 1977. It was situated along East 11th Avenue just off campus, on a lot located directly in between the houses that were used as the Omega House, on its right (the name of the fraternity that actually lived there escapes me), and the Sigma Nu house on its left, which served multiple functions for the production. The Delta House itself, originally the home of pioneering Eugene citizen A.W. Patterson and at one time a fraternity house itself, was torn down in the '90s and replaced with this office building. This plaque, placed on the street at the front of the lot where the Delta House once stood, commemorates the house's history as well as the movie.


The Sigma Nu house, in addition to being the central hub for the production when filming was taking place on 13th Avenue, had two separate functions as a location. The interior of the house was used in the film as the interior of the Delta House (no actual filming took place inside the Patterson house that served as the familiar Delta House exterior). The exterior of the house served as the exterior of the sorority house of which Babs and Mandy were members-- it was through the windows of this house that John Belushi peeked while on his ladder. Bruce might have further details, but when I was last in Eugene this past February the Sigma Nu house looked as if it had been abandoned and fallen out of use.


I cannot remember the name of the fraternity that lived in the house that would eventually be known as the Omega House, but it still stands pretty much as you see it here.




The building which Dean Wormer called HQ was Johnson Hall, the actual site of the dean's office and other administrative offices on the University of Oregon campus. It was up these steps that Belushi, along with Bruce McGill and Stephen Furst, led Neidermeyer's horse to his final resting place. I tried to get Scott, Katie and Bruce to strike a Belsuhi-esque pose, but they chose this moment to access their modesty.


This campus building, Gerhlinger Hall, served as the exterior and interior location of Emily Dickenson College, where Otter put the moves on Fawn Leibowitz's roommate, Shelly Dubinski. Eeeewwww!




The Erb Memorial Union Fishbowl, a student recreation and cafeteria facility, looks, with only a little modification, pretty much as it did at the time of the movie's famous food fight scene. It was at the window table above (seen from outside) that John Belushi introduced his anthropomorphized acne bomb to the world.


The University of Oregon Library. On this quadrangle stood the statue of Emil Faber (beheaded in a lost sequence from the movie) which bore the logically indisputable legend "Knowledge is Good." In the movie this location is also seen when Katy and Boone walk with Pinto the home of Professor Dave Jennings and discuss Pinto's sex life.


This dormitory, known as Carson Hall, is where I spent my sophomore year and the first term of my junior year as well. (My room is the one furthest to the right on the fourth floor.) Carson Hall is the building (seen at night) featured under the title of the movie as it comes up during the opening credits.

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UPDATE 7/28/08 10:43 a.m.: Take this quiz written by Rachel Sauer of the Palm Beach Post, wherein resides my good friend Larry Aydlette, which will tell you which Animal House animal best suits you. Thanks, Larry!

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DA BOMB: MAMMA MIA!, THE MOVIE

Allow me some admissions right up front: I’ve always loved ABBA’s “S.O.S.,” one of the most infectious, insidiously hummable pop hits of the ‘70s. I find “Knowing Me, Knowing You” a pleasant-enough concoction. Why, even after Muriel’s Wedding I still don’t mind hearing “Dancing Queen” when I come across it on the radio, or when one of my daughters insists on hearing it in the minivan CD player. The overdubbed vocals of that song (and most of their other hits) layered one on top of the other, sometimes in harmony, sometimes creating a synthetic chorus of two voices multiplied seemingly ad infinitum on the same line, lend themselves splendidly to warbled accompaniment in one’s shower or automobile. (The voices on the records themselves are often artless and unabashed enough to already seem like sing-alongs to songs on which the real lead vocalists have been banished, karaoke style.) And though I was never completely taken by ABBA’s brand of bombastic, phonetic-English disco machinery, I’ve never resented that they existed or that they have been such a consistent and bankable worldwide success. Until now, perhaps.

Mamma Mia, the movie version of the runaway stage cash cow in which a dozen-and-a-half or so ABBA songs are clumsily jerry-rigged and slotted into a flimsy plot revolving around a young girl who surreptitiously invites three of her mother’s former lovers, one of which may be her father, to her Greek island wedding, ought to test the resolve of anyone who ever held a tune like “Fernando” or “Honey Honey” dear. And the movie certainly ought to offend anyone who cares anything about the quality and enduring legacy of movie musicals. For it turns out that Mamma Mia is shockingly bad as both a musical and a movie. The big numbers are often girded with a near-subliminal chorus that sings along with the stars (the original ABBA recordings have been shelved) in order to beef up their tepid voices and provide sonic reassurance of the familiar ABBA-style vocals, while the cast and dancers cavort on the beaches and byways of this movie-fantasy Greek paradise guided by a cheerleading troupe’s idea of choreography. What’s worse, the songs don’t express anything about the characters or their feelings—they’re used to goose the audience, and the movie, with a specious sort of plasticized exuberance that the filmmakers (a term used very lightly here) hope will be easily mistaken for a good time. (The movie’s artifice is further blemished by memories of the other movie in 2008 to feature familiar and not-so-familiar rock and pop tunes successfully reinterpreted and given new meaning by unlikely voices, the flawed but moving documentary Young at Heart.)

Meanwhile the songs, stripped of the arid, slightly robotic production values which gave the original recordings their eerie energy, and put into the mouths of a cast of actors whose vocal talents range from thin, lovely fragility (Amanda Seyfried) to confidence (Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski) to ghastly ineptitude (Pierce Brosnan, Julie Walters and just about everyone else, none of whom could find their way around a tune even with the assistance of the most advanced G.P.S. tracking system), are themselves exposed as goofy at best, but more often just gross, dumb and fatuous. And the actors fare even worse. Oliver Reed jack-hammering his way through Tommy at least had that movie’s stylish excess to help elaborate the pub-crawling creepiness of his vocal characterization. But first-time director Phyllida Lloyd, working from Catherine Johnson’s script (both are veterans of the original stage production), leaves folks like Streep and Brosnan, and Walters and Baranski and Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgaard twisting atonally in the Mediterreanean breeze. And she brings near-zero sense of filmmaking craft to bear on the tenuous connective tissue that passes for dramatic scenes in between each big musical fizzle. What are we to make of Streep’s character, the titular mamma who spends the first half hour of the movie reunited with her insufferable pals in gales of fake laughter, pouring on the forced high spirits of middle-age reclaiming lost youth? (This is the movie’s M.O. in a nutshell). The way this woman vacillates between excitement and distress and hysteria when she finds out those three men from her past have arrived for the wedding borders on split-personality psychosis. (The inconsistency is exacerbated by the performance of the chirpy title tune, which is shoehorned in between Streep’s fits of fretting and hand-wringing to produce yet another literally show-stopping sequence.) The Oscar-winner is so busy selling her character’s free spirit that she never bothers to ground her in a recognizable human scale of emotion—every note, both sung and spoken, is infused with a fine actor’s attempt to breathe some kind of life into this gossamer-thin conceit, but the end result is fussy, strained, overmodulated, and not just a little embarrassing.

The director “opens up” the stage show in every obvious, clunky way—characters spend a lot of time running along beaches and up steep pathways—but Lloyd never tailors the material for anything resembling the real world; everything is played as though the cast were projecting to a neighboring island dotted with fake trees. And the whole of the movie feels like someone’s shapeless home movies of an exotic holiday in which all sense of the location’s beauty is dumped (has the Greek coast ever before looked so nondescript and unappealing on film?) in favor of a grueling chronicle of the host’s every drunken moment of karaoke glory. (Like most booze-inspired public warbling, this movie would seem to require severe inebriation as a prerequisite for proper appreciation.)


But as lost as Lloyd is as a storyteller, she is equally clueless at staging music and dance. The big production numbers (“Dancing Queen, Does Your Mother Know?, Voulez-vous”) are bad enough—one gets the idea that the director’s input amounted to getting her cast hammered and telling them to just go out there and feel it, baby. But it’s those intimate ballads, back-loaded into the film’s second half, where Mamma Mia careens from the merely misconceived to the genuinely grotesque. The movie’s finest, most delicate, most convincing moment is the unadorned staging of “Slipping through My Fingers,” as Streep’s (Ma)Donna reluctantly helps her daughter Sophie (Seyfried) prepare in the moments before the wedding. Here Streep’s strenuous attempts at acting the song work because the effects—a plaintive glance, a bittersweet smile, a laugh-- are scaled down. They build the emotion of the moment rather than work against it. And the song, a relatively restrained, uncharacteristically delicate ballad, is a good showcase for the vocal talents of Streep and Seyfried, easily the best singers in the cast. Unfortunately, “Slipping through My Fingers” is preceded by Brosnan braying his way through “S.O.S.” (My head hung several times out of sheer embarrassment), so some of its potential power is diminished by the after-effects of the actor’s rummy, undisciplined tenor still ringing in the ears. Worse, however, is the fact that the genuine connection between Streep and Seyfried, a moment where the movie actually delivers on the examination of mother-daughter dynamics to which it has up to now only paid facile lip service, is undermined by what follows-- the absolute nadir in a musical already packed to the rafters with low blows. On the way to the picturesque hillside chapel Brosnan confronts Streep about their shared past, and Streep counters with “The Winner Takes It All,” in which she pushes her timid director aside (Lloyd seems plenty content to just flip the camera’s “on” switch and walk away) and overacts the already bombastic tune with a battery of grandstanding gestures and italicized, boldfaced sincerity that might make Ethel Merman blush. The “winner” here, as it turns out, is Brosnan, who had the good sense to keep far enough away from Streep during this number that he spends a goodly portion of it off-screen.

There’s no pleasure in denigrating an obvious disaster like Mamma Mia. But there’s even less pleasure to be had in sitting through it. I sincerely hoped this movie might be as much fun as was last summer’s Hairspray, a movie for which I had no expectations whatsoever. But where Hairspray’s every moment was suffused with the genuine giddy joy of performing, the cheerful enthusiasm on display in Mamma Mia couldn’t be more synthetic and predigested. I can absolutely believe that the stage show might feel completely different. The very fact of Mamma Mia’s existence under a proscenium automatically lends a degree of forgiving stylization to this gussied-up revue that is completely beyond Phyllida Lloyd as a film director—she displays absolutely no sense, moment to moment, of what makes a film work, what makes a film a film. My wife, in that way she has of summing up things succinctly (a quality which makes our co-existence pretty hilarious in itself), said Mamma Mia reminded her of nothing less than a wide-screen Mentos commercial run amok, and by God, that’s precisely what it feels like. As the post-wedding party winds down (don’t worry—I wouldn’t dream of revealing the movie’s shocking twist!), stunned and disillusioned by the whole experience, I welcomed the plaintive vibrato of Seyfried’s tender, unaffected voice as the ballad that began the movie seemed to now end it. Would that it were so. The end credits are underscored by Streep and gal pals doing the obligatory and frightening liquored-up-chicks-doing-“Dancing Queen”-in-gaudy-‘70s-costumes bit, followed by Brosnan and the other leathery boy toys joining them for “Waterloo,” both numbers punctuated by the most skin-crawling shattering of the fourth wall ever committed to film. If, after all this, you can still say you were entertained by Mamma Mia, then God bless and may you enjoy it countless times in the privacy of your own home on DVD. But I have to believe that any movie that invites comparison with Can’t Stop the Music, any movie that makes me wish even for a second that I was watching Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band instead, deserves my heartiest derision. Mamma Mia? Madre de dios!

THOUGHTS INSPIRED BY BLOCKBUSTERS AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM (or are in them…)

THE CRIMES OF MSSRS. EDELSTEIN AND UHLICH

Just how big an offense is it to not love (or lurrrrrrvvvvv) The Dark Knight? Well, David Edelstein and Keith Uhlich might have some thoughts on that. I have not yet seen the film myself, and though I very much appreciated Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s first foray into Gotham City geography, I find it strange how predigested the anticipation has been about this blockbuster, so much so that fans who hadn’t even seen the film yet were roasting Edelstein for not rubber-stamping their excitement and the other pre-release raves. And of course those that had seen it and took exception to a dissenting view let both Edelstein and Uhlich know just how unqualified they were as reviewers because of their opinions.

What’s odd/amusing/disturbing about the (over)reaction here is that many of the folks who have condemned these writers have done so on grounds of highfalutin’ pretentiousness, usually sparked by the critics' use of big words (words that these angry mobsters probably don’t understand themselves—Edelstein dared invoke George Bernard Shaw and a vocabulary that included words like “verbiage”). The commenters are, essentially, pissed off at these guys for taking this movie seriously, something which, I suppose, would be okay if their own views on it were being validated. Personally, I understand the hype that surrounds just about any big Hollywood release as being the work of masterful publicity machinations which seep into the blood of those prepared to dig the scene—that’s business as usual. But there’s something different going on here, and fan reactions to dissenting views like Edelstein’s and Uhlich’s often seem more like Joker-esque dementia than protectiveness over a pet film. (Not all, of course—some who like/love the film and find Edelstein and Uhlich’s arguments weak have said so with relative eloquence and lack of fury, but they seem to be the exception.) Does a spectacular with a $185 million production budget, probably at least that much in an advertising budget, and a record-breaking opening weekend really need such a vehement, hypersensitive defense? I mean, my goodness, on the other end of this scale rave reviews for this film have not been exactly hard to come by, and the most enthusiastic of them are tossing around phrases like “masterpiece” and “best American film so far this year” and “best American film since The Godfather Part II.”

So why the rage when one or two critics offer a dissenting perspective? (One of my favorite comments comes from Edelstein’s blog The Projectionist, where he ends with this: “*Note to readers: You blunt the force of your attack when you write to an author to say, “No one cares what you think” — because, uh, at least one person does.”)

When I do see The Dark Knight, if I’m as enthralled by it as some seem to be I will have no qualms in saying so. But in the face of such build-up, forgive me if I allow myself not to get swept away just yet, because I will have just as few qualms about saying so if I end up not.

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FILM CRITIC AS PHYSICIST

Eric Riddle of NBC-TV, Seattle would like us to know something about the new family-oriented action epic Journey to the Center of the Earth (3-D) that may rattle the very foundations of those quantum physicists who couldn’t get tickets to see The Dark Knight this week and instead found themselves putting on a pair of keen polarized glasses for a Saturday matinee:


Who knew that just another Brendan Fraser CGI epic would have such serious repercussions for decades of scientific theory? But how exactly is 3-D redefined? Will I be able to actually touch the molten lava that erupts from the volcano, or feel the hot breath of the T rex as it stomps its way into my popcorn bucket? Shrek 4-D already exists, as we well know, so that’s out. Is Riddle intimating some fifth dimension waiting to explored? No, we’ve already checked that out by way of a beautiful balloon. Then what? If only Hal Fishman were alive, he’d be on this tighter than Christian Bale’s bat suit. But his bosses would still make us wait for the report until after sports and the scheduled 10:56 p.m. report on the water-skiing squirrel. Guess I’ll just have to take my girls and find out what 6-D is all about…

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MAKE UP YOUR MIND, JEAN-PAUL SARTRE!

Maybe that whole redefining 3-D thing has something to do with being two opposing things at once:


Or is this just the first existential movie blurb? Oh, well, by itself or in a group, Hellboy II: The Golden Army was truly enthralling, a spectacular fantasy epic that feels almost hand-made...

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THE SWEDE WHO WOULD BE REUBEN KINCAID

I find it interesting that, in all the discussion about the merits of Mamma Mia (or lack thereof), no one has yet mentioned the movie’s single most disturbing and inexplicable occurrence—somehow Stellan Skarsgard (far right-- click to enlarge) has become Dave Madden.


My thoughts on Mamma Mia coming soon...

DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION MONTH: THE MARK METCALF INTERVIEWS

Douglas Neidermeyer may have been killed by his own troops in Vietnam, but the man who played him is doing quite nicely for himself in the year 2008, in Wisconsin, as it turns out. Mark Metcalf, who so ably embodied the psychotic heart of the Omega House as Neidermeyer in National Lampoon’s Animal House, is now, in addition to his occasional duties as an actor, a restaurateur in Mequon, Wisconsin and a raconteur-reviewer-columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. Recently, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the release of Animal House, which debuted 30 years ago this coming Monday, July 28, Metcalf reconnected with some of his old cast mates and interviewed them for his column. The result was a series of informal, unruffled and very entertaining profiles which I am glad to direct you to now as part of SLIFR’s own Double Secret Probation Month celebration.

The Mark Metcalf Interview Archive includes:


Karen Allen on being the Delta Tau Chi Voice of Reason…


Otis Day (the artist formerly known as Dewayne Jessie, who so identified with his role as the Delta’s favorite bandleader that he had his name legally changed…)


Stephen Furst remembers being tagged “worthless and weak” and demands an apology…


Peter Riegert explains it all for you, and he’s on a roll…


Martha Smith reveals exactly what is in store for those who dare to ask for Babs…

Earlier this summer I sent an e-mail with some questions of my own for Mark Metcalf, which I hoped would form the spine of a mini-interview of my own for this feature, but as of this writing I have not yet heard back from him. If perchance I do before the end of July and our little tribute, I’ll definitely share that with you. But for now, these five interviews oughta do!

THE SLIFR-ANIMAL HOUSE OPEN FORUM

Several participants in the most recent SLIFR film quiz, when asked to name what they felt was the most “important” film comedy of the last 35 years, bandied about National Lampoon’s Animal House as a contender. The film was most frequently earmarked as “important” not only because of its popularity, but because of its influence, for good, bad and worst, on the trajectory of American film comedy, introducing heretofore unheard-of levels of profanity and raunchy humor into mainstream movie theaters. (I’ll never forget my rather sheltered aunt’s reaction, after a screening in my hometown, expressing genuine shock over the contents of Otter’s black medical bag.) In honor of Double Secret Probation Month here at SLIFR, I’m throwing the question open to further discussion.

In what ways has Animal House been a good thing for film comedy?

What are some of the elements rippling through movie culture that have roots in the film’s popularity which you could have done without over the past 30 years?

What is your favorite moment in the movie? Your favorite line?

What is the best post-Animal House movie comedy that bears the obvious stamps of its influence?

And what is the worst, most crass attempt to cash in on the glory of Delta Tau Chi?

These are all questions on which I hope we shall ruminate over the weekend in the comments column as commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the movie’s release on July 28 draws nearer. Now drop and give me 20!

DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION MONTH: ON THE SET OF ANIMAL HOUSE WITH JOHN BELUSHI AND JOHN LANDIS

During the filming of the parade sequence in Cottage Grove, Oregon, local Eugene television station KEZI (Channel 9) sent a film crew down to gather a load of footage to be used for various stories focusing on the shooting of National Lampoon’s Animal House. Other than on local broadcasts, I was unaware of seeing any of this footage until the release of the 20th anniversary DVD in 1998. On that DVD, as part of a fine added-value feature entitled “The Yearbook: An Animal House Reunion” (which makes another appearance on the “Double Secret Probation” edition of the Animal House DVD released in 2003), some of that footage resurfaced, and it paints a vivid picture in motion of what life was like on the set. You can even glimpse me in it a few times, shuffling around the periphery again in that goddamned ubiquitous yellow sweater-- check out the nerd on the sidewalk behind John Landis, Tim Matheson, Ivan Reitman and company around minute 24.

(Seeing that footage made me really annoyed at myself for not shooting more photos on the set. I have a couple of shots taken inside the Cottage Grove armory, which served as headquarters for the cast and crew during the filming of the parade, and one or two photos of the second unit crew setting up one of the cameras outside a pharmacy, but otherwise no other pictures from the set.)

In this clip from that footage, John Belushi, at the insistence of his director, does some impromptu mugging for the KEZI news camera and creates an indelible portrait of the actor’s easy-going manner and flexibility as a comic performer.

DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION MONTH: THE POLITICS OF ANIMAL HOUSE

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules or took liberties with our female guests. We did. (Otter winks at Dean Wormer, who returns a pinched look of confusion, unaware that his wife has spent the night with this slickster, but half aware of what the sharp jab in his ego from Otter’s wink means.) But you can’t hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few sick, perverted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg, isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do what you want to us, but we’re not going to suit here and listen to you bad-mouth the United States of America! Gentlemen!”

-- Eric “Otter” Stratton, leading the boys on yet another stupid, futile gesture (and Tim Matheson’s finest moment) in National Lampoon’s Animal House

The members of Delta Tau Chi have been hauled up before the Pan-Hellenic Disciplinary Council, on which sits Greg Marmallard, Omega nasty, Douglas Neidermeyer, sergeant-at-arms (and chief Omega nasty) and even perpetually chipper and buoyant Babs Jansen, cheerfully taking steno notes as if her bouffant were filled with helium. Charges have been filed against the Deltas, including “two dozen reports of individual acts of perversion so profound and disgusting that decorum prohibits listing them here.” The Deltas know that further flaunting of procedure and rules, further defiance of the mandates coming down around their heads issued by Dean Wormer, will result their suspension and likely expulsion from school. And yet Animal House is a movie over which hangs the pall of Vietnam and the draft, so there is so real heft to the Deltas’ rejection of the values of Faber College, or rather their insistence on their own pointedly mindless indulgences.

Animal House is a movie widely recognized for its qualities as an enduring laugh machine, but its political bent has been far less recognized and explored in the 30 years since the movie’s release. Steven Hart hits on this angle in relating his own personal experience with the film in his essay ”Animal Magnetism”, and back in 2003 Fredrich on the 2 Blowhards blog approached the subject head-on in a post entitled "The Politics of Animal House". Both the post and the comments that follow open up the movie to a perspective I’d wager might have been lost on some of the generations embracing the film successive to those who were the same age as the movie’s early ‘60s college students. For Fredrich, Otter’s speech, which many take to be just another example of the character’s slippery cleverness and charm, the main reason why the Deltas look upon him as their leader, amounts to “a serious political utterance,” one which establishes the theme of the movie’s radical positioning of the notion of the American pursuit of happiness as a social statement, a working out of the ideals of drunken revelry as a position on society as viable as any of the more obvious, “fundamentally frivolous” political expressions of the mid-‘70s, as they devolved from the ideals of the ‘60s, that the writer experienced during his own college days.

What do you think? Is Fredrich on to something? Can we take its association with the more politically oriented National Lampoon of the ‘70s (when, as Hart says, “the words National and Lampoon above a title were an enticement instead of a warning”) as evidence that there is something afloat in this perspective? Or is Animal House best viewed as the greatest toga party of all time and left at that?

DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION MONTH CONTINUES: THE DAY I MET JOHN BELUSHI

Eugene, Oregon, Fall 1977. I was a first-term freshman trying to squeak out at least a 3.0 GPA my first time at bat at the University of Oregon. Movies had been up to that point such a huge part of my interest, of my existence, really—my friends and I had made a few Super-8 trifles up to this point, but we knew movies primarily as creations to be seen, delivery systems for a world far more interesting than the one we called home in the desert of Eastern Oregon. I had enrolled in the film studies department, officially proclaiming it my major, fully expecting to broaden my horizons by seeing a lot of films to which I had never had the opportunity to be exposed. But I also hoped to log some production time as well—at this point I still harbored a desire to direct movies myself someday. I had no way to anticipate that during my first semester in college I would end participating directly in the production of an honest-to-God Hollywood motion picture, one that would allow me to be introduced to a budding comic actor whose star was just beginning to rise that autumn.

I remember seeing the ad in the Oregon Daily Emerald, the University of Oregon newspaper. It said something about an open audition for a new movie produced by National Lampoon and Universal Pictures called Animal House. The auditions were to be held in the ballroom of the student union on campus, and there were specific instructions to “dress ‘60s.” I had no idea how to go about putting together a ‘60s costume, but I did know that I had some pretty nerdy pants, a plaid short-sleeved shirt and a completely out of fashion yellow button-up sweater that I could pull directly out of my closet—I knew they were in there because I’d recently done laundry, and they were among the dirty clothes I’d worn to class the previous week. I made my way into the ballroom, and after a brief orientation from the woman in charge of local extras casting (her name was Katherine, and I would get to know her well over the course of the next two months) we were instructed to fill out some general paperwork and file past the casting director, Michael Chinich, who was sitting at a long table near the front of the room. Several thousand college kids plodded through the room that day, and most of them ended up going back out the door very soon after they first arrived. But some of us stayed a little longer. When I approached Chinich, who was sitting next to a woman holding a Polaroid camera, he looked at me up and down very quickly and said to the woman, “Delta pledge. Take his picture.” I had no idea what that cryptic message actually meant, but I ended up standing there for a quick round of magically instant Polaroid photos, me in my “’60s costume,” and afterward the woman led me back to a smaller group of about 50 being corralled by Katherine in the corner. Katherine then split us up into smaller groups—there were Omegas, Omega pledges, Deltas and then my group, Delta pledges.

At this point we were informed that we were being hired by Universal Pictures to be in the movie and given mysterious pieces of paper called W-2 forms to fill out, along with vouchers to get our hair cut at the student union salon, where pages from some long-past yearbook hung in front of the cutting stations to be used as models for the stylist from which to carry out the assault on our everyday ’77 dos. That evening I got a call from Katherine with instructions to be ready to be picked up early the next morning for a photo session. When the car picked us up, we were taken to the film’s headquarters at the Rodeway Inn just off the I-5 in Springfield, where I, along with another young freshman named Greg who I dare say looked even greener than I did, was fitted with a moth-eaten jacket, shirt and tie and shuttled away with two of the movie’s main players, gentlemen by the name of Tom Hulce and Stephen Furst (neither of whom meant anything to me at the time, of course.) We headed out to a photo studio in Springfield where individual faux senior portraits of the four of us would be taken for some unknown future purpose. The ride to the studio and back was spent joking and openly speculating with the actors about the film’s director—it was on this ride that I found out Animal House was to be directed by John Landis, a name with which I was familiar from Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and a King Kong parody he directed entitled Schlock, and who also had a hit movie in theaters opening in Eugene that very same Friday, a picture entitled Kentucky Fried Movie. We made our way back to the Rodeway Inn, traded in our jackets for our regular school duds and got bussed back to campus, but not before getting our final instructions to show up on the set at the Sigma Nu house on 13th Street at 7:30 Monday morning and report to Ed Milkovich, the film’s second assistant director, among whose many jobs it would be to greet the extras, give us our assignments and dismiss us at the end of the day.

I was, of course, terrified as I walked from my dorm on the eastern end of campus all the way across to the Sigma Nu house on the other end. I remember spending the entire weekend nervously anticipating what was going to happen when I got there. There were rumors that Chevy Chase was in the movie, and John Belushi and Dan Akyroyd too, all of whom where heroes of just about everyone of college age at the time from Saturday Night Live, which was just entering its third season and approaching the height of its popularity. Being on the set was indeed terrifying at first, but coming straight from the dull-drums of high school in Southern Oregon it was also like some kind of forbidden, otherworldly movie paradise. There were so many actors on the set who I would encounter who were familiar to me, and even the ones I didn’t know who I saw on the set that first morning carried an aura of excitement about them from being connected to the project. I recognized Tim Matheson right away (I had no idea that him being there meant that Chevy Chase would not be), and I eyeballed Stephen Bishop, whose inescapable tune "On and On" was a top-40 hit at the time, making his way around outside where the crew was setting up in front of the old house next door to the Sigma Nu digs. (This decrepit manor would serve as the exterior of the Delta House, whereas all interiors of the Delta house were shot inside the Sigma Nu fraternity.) After some time on the set, when I began to get a sense of everyone who was in the movie, I even discovered a strange thread that ran through the cast—Donald Sutherland (Prof. Jennings), John Vernon (Dean Wormer), Verna Bloom (Mrs. Wormer), even Tim Matheson (Otter), all had worked with Clint Eastwood. (Imagine the questions a doughy, green kid thought to ask them…)


Inside the Sigma Nu house is where all Delta House interiors were shot. The exterior of this house was used as the exterior of the sorority where Mandy Pepperidge lived. The familiar beaten-down exterior of the Delta House was represented by a rundown halfway house that was situated just next door to the Sigma Nu property. It was torn down a few years ago.

I had been milling around outside waiting for instructions for about two hours on that first day when I saw John Belushi for the first time. He was walking down 13th Street through the crowd of extras, crew members and spectators, not purposefully calling attention to himself but also unable to be conspicuous either. He made his way toward the Sigma Nu house where interiors of the Delta party that opens the film were about to commence (shooting night interiors during the day—it was movie magic!) In fact, that opening party was the first major scene in the movie that I worked, and eagle-eyed viewers can see my pudgy figure (a relatively slim one compared to the 2008 model, to be sure) darting out the front door, up the stairs and seated on the floor in the middle of the inaugural madness, all in a quick succession of continuity-busting shots. And Belushi was there, holding court and creating the spirit of the set that would hold firm for the entire shoot. Spotting Belushi on the set was as easy as turning around—he was everywhere, as yet completely unfazed by encroaching fame (or the heinous influence of cocaine) and as approachable as any wide-eyed extra. He could always been seen hanging around on the periphery of the action, yelling obscenities and trying to crack up the actors on camera, or just hanging out and making friends with all the crew and lucky Eugene residents with whom he didn’t think twice about engaging as if the whole experience was one big party occasionally interrupted by the duties of acting. I remember one afternoon, killing time between takes in the Sigma Nu recreation room, sitting on the floor with Belushi, his wife Judith and about 15 other extras, watching Taxi Driver (my first time) on a weird technological oddity called HBO.


And in my big scene in the movie, when Pinto and Flounder are rousted out of bed, smacked down onto a line of dazed Delta pledges and made to take the oath of loyalty to their new fraternity (“I pledge allegiance to the frat…”), I actually got to share screen time in the same frame with Belushi. During rehearsals for the scene I stood two rumpled kids down from Flounder awaiting bestowal of my Delta Tau Chi name. Belushi got to me and unceremoniously ad-libbed my new name, Douchebag. I burst out laughing, but I could tell from the looks on the faces of Landis, Milkovich, and mostly the deathly intimidating visage of first assistant director Cliff Coleman, who only helped stage the spectacular action in The Wild Bunch and several other Sam Peckinpah features during his career, that to crack up on film would not be a good thing. I spent lunchtime, in between rehearsal and shooting of the scene, utterly terrified that I would do just that, which is why, in the finished film, I end up looking so strangely unaffected—- I was putting every ounce of energy I had into not spewing up guffaws when Belushi finally made his way to me. Well, of course, in the finished film the action cuts away as soon as Kent Dorffman is dubbed Flounder, so I guess I needn’t have worried. And I still got to be in the same shot as Belushi—I’m pretty clearly down the line during the entire sequence, but most especially on the tighter shot of Bluto and Flounder. I even got a nice beer bath for my trouble that day to finish the scene.

But the real memorable encounter came one afternoon when I went begrudgingly to the set, after having had to practically beg for a special time to take a midterm that was in conflict with a shooting time that I couldn’t miss. My professor was kind enough to give me another opportunity to take the test, so I brought my books to the set, knowing that there would certainly be at least two or three extended periods in between takes that I could use to get away and study. Just after lunch, sure that I wouldn’t be needed for at least another hour, I informed the casting assistant that I was going to go study outside. Since filming was concentrating that day indoors, I found my way to a displaced couch which was sitting out near the front steps of the house. And no one but the occasional grip was anywhere near, a great chance for some peace and quiet. I sat down on the couch and was there for five or ten minutes, I suppose, when out of the corner of my eye I saw someone approach the couch and flop down on the other end of it. I tried to keep my eyes on my book, but eventually I gave in to the primal impulses of social behavior and looked up to acknowledge the person who was taking up some of what I considered my personal space. It was John Belushi. I immediately realized how dry my mouth was when I tried to say something, anything, and only a loud smecking sound came out. Perhaps sensing that I was a bit nervous, he began asking me about my studies, where I came from, how I was enjoying school—small talk, really, but coming from someone whom I already considered a cultural hero of sorts, it sounded plenty big to me. I even mustered up enough composure to ask him what enduring his schedule was like-- during filming, Belushi would be on the set in Eugene Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, then at the end of the third day he would fly back to New York, crash-write and rehearse Saturday Night Live, perform the show that weekend, then be on a flight back to Eugene on Sunday. Naturally, he was pretty exhausted by the whole thing. (Some have suggested that his abuse of cocaine had its roots in trying to keep up with this brutal back-and-forth, but I certainly couldn’t say I saw any evidence of it.) It was clear that Belushi, like me, was looking for a place to get away from the bustle of the day’s shoot, if only for a moment, and he chose to sit next to me to spend that down time.

Before he got up to return to the (barely) controlled chaos, he even told me a dirty joke. I’ll tell it to you (and those who don’t appreciate a filthy, borderline sexist joke can probably skip this last part—it is admittedly in extremely poor taste, but indicative of the uncut Lampoon sensibility from which Belushi and the movie would spring): Guy goes to see a doctor. He says, “Doc, it’s really weird. I’m having very odd symptoms. Don’t get me wrong—I feel great, but look at me—I look awful!” The doctor sizes him up for a second, then gets up from his stool, pulls out a large leather-bound volume from his shelf and begins to page through it. He stops briefly at one entry: “No, that’s ‘feels bad, looks bad.’” He turns a few more pages, stops, considers the text, then says, “No, that’s ‘looks good, feels bad.’ Hmm.” The doctor, determined to get a handle on the patient’s problem, turns a few more pages. Again he stops, and this time his eyes light up: “’Feels good, looks bad’! That’s it!” The patient sits up and asks, “What is it, Doc? You’ve figured out what my problem is?” The doctor happily responds, “Why, yes, Mr. Johnson! According to Grey’s Anatomy, you are a vagina!”

This time it was okay for me to laugh at Belushi’s antics, and I did—they weren’t being filmed, and they were staged just for me. It wasn’t until much later that I gave much thought to how gross the joke really was, but truthfully it didn’t much matter to me at the time, and I don’t think it really does now, as I think back on it. Even though I’ve thought a lot about National Lampoon’s Animal House in the 30 years since it was filmed—how lucky I was to be involved, how incredible it is that it turned out to be something of a comedy classic, and how watching it then and now is for me akin to viewing a college yearbook with picture and sound-- a unique audio-visual of my life as a college freshman captured in a very peculiar and particular amber, a constant reminder of what my own school days were like as filtered through the reminisces and the recreated world of the film’s writers, its director and cast. And on top of all of that, I had a moment to call my own with one of my generation's most revered, and most tragic comedy talents.


My chat with Belushi is nothing compared to meeting the fella who would eventually become my best friend, and who remains so to this day, on the Animal House set—it is for that fortuitous occasion that I am most glad to have been a part of making the movie. But I often think of that afternoon listening to John Belushi’s filthy jokes and marvel at what a different world I was occupying then, separated only by a couple of months from the uneventful days of my high school youth. It was a valuable window for me on the world of how films are made and how difficult it must be for actors of a certain level of profile to maintain their connection to the bedrock influences and experiences of their lives. Of course I had no idea how little time Belushi had left when we sat and chatted that day—only just over four years—but in those moments he truly did seem both larger than life and very much life-sized, confident yet unassuming and even vulnerable. Meeting John Belushi was a major highlight of the two months I spent on the set of Animal House-- he indeed displayed some of the mannerisms of a classic P-I-G pig, but also a soft-spoken lack of self-consciousness that could allow him to go from being just one of the guys to a scene-gobbling toga-clad force of nature armed only with a jar of mustard and a desire to make everyone laugh. A good combination, as the world was about to find out.

(Portions of this article have appeared previously on this blog in a different form.)

ODES TO JOY

Sometimes you realize they really don’t make ‘em like that anymore (though in Bollywood maybe they still do...)

Thanks to pal Colin Walker for the YouTube tip on Mohammed Rafi’s ultra-exuberant “Jaan Pehechaan Ho,” taken from the 1966 Bollywood picture Gumnaam-- which is not strictly a musical, believe it or not, but instead a loose adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians! If this little bit of craziness rings a bell with you, it may be because you’ve seen the movie Ghost World (2001), in which the clip was featured:



But as I listened to Mohammed Rafi, a popular artist and playback singer on a staggering 712 Bollywood productions dating from 1944, and watched the singers and dancers on film getting down with their bad selves, it reminded me of another similar scene featuring an equally exuberant and jiggly dancer paired with a similarly suave and sexy singer, and I began to wonder how many times director Raja Nawathe had seen Ann-Margret and Elvis Presley do their thing in Viva Las Vegas (1964), directed by George Sidney:



Whoever saw who first, whether it was George Sidney grokking Bollywood, or Nawathe and Rafi getting their Ann and Elvis on, I’m glad both of these cinematic moments exist, if for no other reason than to spread a smile over the appearance of apparent giddy and joyful innocence mixed with the only slightly subterranean sexuality with which these moments are infused. (Thankfully, in the case of Ms. Ann-Margret, the thin layer covering that sexuality gets thrown off pretty much right away, long before Elvis takes the stage.) Nice way to kick off a weekend, I’d say. Thanks, Colin! And a tip of the hat to Mohammed and Ann and Elvis too.

ANSWERS TO O’BLIVION PART 3: PROPRIETARY PICTURES, DIRTY SECRETS, FILM CRITICISM, more DIFFICULT-TO-IMPOSSIBLE CHOICES and THE FILIPINO PERSPECTIVE

(This is Part Three, the final segment of a three-part digest of the best answers from Professor Brian O'Blivion's All-New Flesh for Memorial Day Movie (and TV) Quiz. Part one can be seen here. Part two can be seen here. My own answers are on the way in the next few days. Patience, Ma!)

25) Bulle Ogier or Charlotte Rampling

Ms. Rampling continues to impress and is still quite attractive for what the French describe as a "woman of a certain age" (Peter Nellhaus)

Rampling. Did Ogier ever fight a killer whale? I didn’t think so. (Dave S.)

I always thought that Charlotte looked like John Hurt with tits. I fell in love with Bulle about 32 years ago, and the flame still burns. (Flickhead)

Going back to blonde for this one, cuz she's a Rivette girl -- Bulle Ogier (Ryland Walker Knight)

I have a huge crush on Rampling. She is, perhaps, at her most beautiful in Zardoz, which is good because otherwise you might realize you’re watching Zardoz. (John P.)

Charlotte Rampling, who is in the Bone Structure Hall of Fame with Lauren Bacall, Audrey Hepburn and Catherine Deneuve. (Robert Fiore)

At work I fielded a phone call from Charlotte Rampling once, and she was every bit as snooty as her Georgy Girl character. I loved it, finding out she was exactly as I wanted her to be. Charlotte all the way. (Campaspe)

Charlotte was in Swimming Pool and Orca, she goes well with water.
(Adam Ross)

My friend was watching the Academy Awards with his then-girlfriend when she observed, "Helen Mirren is really sexy for her age." To which he corrected, "Helen Mirren is sexy, period." That's how I feel about Charlotte Rampling. (Bemis)

Ogier was a doll when she was younger, but Rampling has aged much, much better. Also, Rampling didn’t attempt to follow in Deneuve’s iconic role as Severine, so Rampling wins hands down with me. (Paul Clark)

26) In the Realm of the Senses— yes or no?

Have not seen it. But I did finally see Salo, the 120 Days of Sodom which you asked about last year. It bored me stiff. (Jonathan Lapper)

Yes, but not my favorite Oshima. That would be The Ceremony. (Peter Nellhaus)

Sure, if I ever make it through the whole damn thing. (Dave S.)

No, but only because I'm an ignorant bastard and don't know what this is. (Flower)

It's been eons since I saw it (at home on VHS, must have been early 90s) but I remember thinking it was interesting but quite anti-erotic; the guy I was dating fell asleep. As a seduction ploy I got much better results with 8 ½. So I'm going with no. (Campaspe)

Absolutely. Great film. (Weeping Sam)

27) Name a movie you think of as your own (Thanks, Jim!)


They're all big productions but due to eerie similarities in my life and relationships I have always taken Dodsworth, Brief Encounter & Manhattan very personally and I don't care to watch them with anyone else who won't understand why they get it all so exactly right and how extraordinarily dead-on they all three are. (Jonathan Lapper)

If I told you, it wouldn't be my own, you sneaky so-and-so! (Peter Nellhaus)

I’m probably starting to sound like a broken record on this one, but I’m going to go with The Life Aquatic. I really feel all alone on this one. Not only that, but when I watch it, it feels like Wes Anderson said, “Hey, you know what we should do? We should make a movie just for Bill.” And then he did. (Bill)

Years ago I would’ve said La Vallée (1972). But I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now. (Flickhead)

Casablanca. But I have to share it with my father. (Chris)

Riffing on what Emerson wrote, I would have to say the overall body of work of Vincente Minnelli. Casablanca and Rules of the Game are my favorite films, but I feel protective of Minnelli because students sometimes don't know what to do with his inimitable blend of color, lushness, melodrama, humor and passion. That doesn't mean they are 'wrong' in their responses, but that, when they laugh at the heightened emotions during the climactic fair scene in Some Came Running, I feel like Michael talking to Fredo in The Godfather, Part II: "You broke my heart...You broke my heart!!" And that's true of The Band Wagon, Meet Me In St. Louis, Father of the Bride, The Bad and the Beautiful...some of these movies get good responses, some bad, but they are immensely dear to me, and even if I hate the feeling of disappointment when folks reject their pleasures, I love the feeling when they connect with a student, and those passions get translated from screen to audience. (Brian Doan)


Although it is critically acclaimed, canonical material and I have no business making personal a film that belongs to so many, Breathless. I often hear people ask “what is the use of Breathless nowadays, when all it's techniques have become commonplace?” well I don't know what movies they are watching, but my 15 year old self was swept up in how different this was from anything I had ever seen before. I remember every shot of Belmondo killing the police officer, and think of it as the moment when my definition of movies broke, and I was forced to come up with a new way of watching film. Breathless has lost none of its impact, it redefines cinema every time it is played. And I take every insult leveled at it as a personal sting. It's mine now, and I'll never let it go. (Krauthammer)

Father Goose with Cary Grant & Leslie Caron. I feel like I stumbled upon a little known secret. (John P.)

I can't imagine showing Gus Van Sant's Last Days to anyone and expecting them to get it, except Manohla Dargis.... (W. Australopithecus)

Risky Business, (came out the summer after I graduated high school); The Right Stuff, (unseated Star Wars as my favorite movie [even though it took a few years for me to acknowledge]. A perfect synthesis of my boyhood passions—the space age and the movies. Raising Arizona, A Room with a View (apparently, any movie from the ‘80s that begins with the letter R.) (Mr. Middlebrow)

For this question we turn to our guest respondent, Beatrice Welles: "Every movie my daddy ever made! You can't see them unless you GIVE ME MONEY!" (Robert Fiore)

Letter from an Unknown Woman. I will probably never see this in a theater with an audience simply because, like Jim, I cannot bear the thought of the morons tittering over anything that doesn't seem sufficiently "realistic." (Campaspe)

Shock Treatment (1981) - it's finally gotten a little bit of love recently, but it was a hard 25 years being an unrepentant fan of this movie. (Robert H.)

I Love Trouble. Because I’m the only person I know who loves, loves, loves it! (Larry Aydlette)

The Coen Brothers’O Brother, Where Art Thou? The movie was shot entirely in my adopted state of Mississippi, and large chunks were shot in and around Jackson. On each of the three times that I saw the movie in the theater, the theater was jam-packed with people who would hoot and holler whenever they recognized an onscreen extra or a location. “Look, look, look, there’s Jethro, mama! There he is!” “Yessir, that’s him. What on Earth did he do to his hair?” I now do volunteer work for the local film society, members of which include people who worked on O Brother, so the movie feels like a family affair in some small way. Also, as must be obvious by the number of times that I saw it live, it’s my favorite Coen Brothers feature, and I can quote most of the movie, accents and all, at any point. In fact, my brother’s fiancé and I bonded, initially, by recreating stretches of the movie. (Walter Biggins)

I'm not feeling terribly proprietary these days, but I have to say that after heavily researching and writing an essay on William C. de Mille's terrific proto-feminist drama Miss Lulu Bett for the Silent Film Festival last year, I feel very connected to the film and to the personnel involved. (Brian Darr)

Galaxy Quest. No one understands our love. (Stennie)

Whenever I've shown someone Soderbergh's The Limey and tried to explain why it's so good, and the editing is brilliant, and the soundtrack so well done, and the whole thing is an exercise in postmodernism, all I've gotten are pitying stares. Fine, that just means there's more for me. (California)

#28) Winged Migration or Microcosmos


Neither. To me, they both seem like commercials for documentaries rather than actual documentaries. (Dave S.)

I didn't care for the latter, so I never saw the former. (Brian Doan)

Winged Migration is pretty enough, but Microcosmos is kinda mindblowing. (Krauthammer)

Microcosmos, for the lesson of its intense sex scene. Snails know that it's important to slow it down. (Patrick)

Impressive aerial photography in Winged Migration, but as any little boy can tell you, bugs beat birds every time. (Paul Clark)

29) Your favorite football game featured in a movie

Favorite game is probably MASH, but I love the final game in North Dallas Forty because of the uncanny way it mirrored the actual Dallas playoff game of the season before last when Romo dropped the snap at the end. (Jonathan Lapper)

I liked the uniform Christina Ricci was wearing in Black Snake Moan. (Peter Nellhaus)

Black Sunday… terrorist blimp versus stadium! Rah! (Dave S.)

Harold Lloyd in The Freshman. (John P.)

"Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, this time I think we go up-a da middle." Horsefeathers. This is what Oliver Stone should have watched before making Any Given Sunday. Or maybe he did. (Campaspe)

Son of Flubber (Bemis)

Robert Aldrich made The Longest Yard hilarious. (Anne Thompson)

All I can think of is that football games never work as well on film as baseball games do. I wonder why that is? Is it something about the pace, about the rhythm of the games? (Lucas McNelly)

OK, not actually a football game (and arguable the worst part of the movie), but when Flash Gordon is running around Ming's throne room with a metal egg doing football maneuvers all around the Imperial Guard, that's kinda fun. (Chris Oliver)

30) Wendy Hiller or Deborah Kerr

A Powell question. Wendy Hiller some days, Deborah Kerr others. Depends on which Powell I'm watching. (Jonathan Lapper)

I disliked the film they were both in, Separate Tables. I would have to choose Kerr because of Black Narcissus, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, and Bonjour Tristesse on the top of the list. (Peter Nellhaus)

Deborah Kerr. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. That is all. (Bill)

Deborah Kerr--I absolutely love Black Narcissus and Bonjour Tristesse and The Innocents. Hiller's all right, but I found I Know Where I'm Going! really disappointing, aside from a few scenes, and she was in A Man for All Seasons, which might be the most boring movie ever (and, yes, it appears I have a double standard, since that doesn't much affect my opinion of Robert Shaw). (Schuyler Chapman)

They're both quite wonderful, but the edge goes to Kerr, great in nunneries, musicals, wheelchairs, and military uniforms. Plus, you can't beat starring in Otto Preminger's best film. (Brian Doan)

Deborah Kerr. To put Wendy Hiller ahead you have to put an awful lot of weight on I Know Where I'm Going!, because of the disparity in volume of work. Kerr even did more pictures for the Archers. (Robert Fiore)

Kerr, for having the guts to get down and dirty in The Gypsy Moths. (Aaron)

31) Dirtiest secret you have that is related to the movies


I have never seen Kazaam. Never. Don't tell anyone. As for a real dirty secret I'm not sure I have one. I love movies and watch what I can. Plenty of big ones I still haven't seen but I'm not keeping it a secret so I'm coming up empty on this one. (Jonathan Lapper)

Little Mike (Twin Peaks) Anderson bangs statuesque blonde hookers. (It’s true! It’s true!) (Flickhead)

I purposefully and excitedly watched Striking Distance when I was a teenager. (Schuyler Chapman)

I was 30 before I saw Gone with the Wind. And I didn't like it. (Chris)

According to Theyshootpictures.com, these are the top ten greatest films that I haven't seen yet: Persona, Ordet, Andrei Rublev, Panther Panchali, Au hasard Balthazar, The Mirror, Greed, The Conformist, Pickpocket, The Leopard. I also think that Mel Gibson is one of the most interesting and talented directors to appear in the last ten years. I win. (Krauthammer)

I still haven't seen Pink Flamingos. (Peter Nellhaus)

Other than having sex while watching a non-porn movie or being turned on by a flick, I guess my dirtiest secret related to the movies is the fact that I don’t get Audrey Hepburn. At all. (Dave S.)

Eek! Er, um…no, you probably don’t mean it like that. Well, not having seen Dracula yet is pretty bad, right? So is not having seen 8 ½, which I haven’t. (Bill)

I like surfing movies, and Fassbinder bores me silly. (Brian Doan)

John Ford's The Searchers puts me to sleep, but Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break is a work of insane genius (as also noted in Hot Fuzz). And I don't care if you think less of me for feeling that way! (Steven Santos)

I don't really like Citizen Kane or Casablanca or Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday or Nashville or Katherine Hepburn or John Wayne or Humphrey Bogart or... oh, just one secret? (Brian)

I love, love, love Cabin Boy. (John P.) (Try the London broil, John!—Dennis)

I have no movie secrets. If I love Yolanda and the Thief and the world does not, then the world is WRONG, wrong, wrong. (Campaspe)

I was a silent financier of Leprechaun 2. (Adam Ross)

I like to watch. (Larry Aydlette)

I love The Stupids. (Weigard)

I guess this isn’t very dirty, but here goes- in the past twenty years, the only times I’ve cried have been while watching movies. (Paul Clark)


I recently admitted it on another blog comment, so I might as well do it here too: I went with a young woman I was dating to a nearly-empty late evening screening of Chicken Little and we made out the entire movie. Yeah, 32 is a little old for that, I know. (Brian Darr)

When I saw Independence Day on opening weekend with a packed house, I enjoyed it, and even convinced myself that it was a good movie. (Chris Oliver)

I'm a film major a few weeks away from getting my Bachelor's and I haven't seen a single Bergman. (California)

32) Name a favorite film and describe how it is illuminated and enriched by another favorite film.

Contempt. I understood what Godard was doing in filming the statues when I finally saw Voyage in Italy. (Peter Nellhaus)

Groan-inducing as it may sound, I really love Showgirls for its humour and bad taste. The film that illuminates Showgirls for me is Starship Troopers, also directed by Paul Verhoeven. Because the humour in Starship Troopers was missed by so many people upon first viewing, it makes me question Verhoeven’s intent with Showgirls… (Dave S.)

I wish I could be more original with this answer, but after watching There Will Be Blood again recently, I really appreciated how it builds off of both The Shining and Barry Lyndon. (Bill)

Phantom of the Paradise is the Rosetta Stone that unlocked the secret behind Brian De Palma's movies: They're all comedies. (Schuyler Chapman) (Okay, Scarface, but Casualties of War?—Dennis)

Lost Highway is one of my favorite movies of all time, I love how it was basically a remake of Detour filtered through the O.J. Simpson trial. (Erin)

Again, Casablanca. For me it's the distillation of everything I love about Bogart. And every other film I see with him serves to open up or accentuate another facet of his performance. (Chris)

Prince of the City, which is illuminated by The Last Temptation of Christ because the road to salvation is often a messy and destructive one in which you will suffer for trying to do the right thing and your own imperfections make it that much harder. (Steven Santos)

Having seen Titus and adored it, I appreciated Ran on a number of levels when I worked pretty extensively with it the following year in a course I took. It wasn't just the idea of Shakespearean adaptation, but the attention to adapting the material to such diverse media stuck with me quite a bit. (Brian)

I think the two Imitation of Life versions really form a dialogue about race, caste, class, and women's issues in the U.S. over the course of 25 years. (Campaspe)

Seeing Marion Davies films after viewing Citizen Kane and realizing that for all "Kane's" greatness, its one major flaw is that it destroyed Davies' acting reputation for several decades; even Welles admitted as such. (The bio Citizen Hearst, issued in the early sixties, also did a hatchet job on Davies' work.) (VP81955)


My appreciation of Popeye deepened when I realized it's essentially McCabe and Mrs. Miller for kids. (Bemis)

See question #27 for the favorite film. Along with being an intentional mishmash of mythologies ancient (The Odyssey) and more recent (Mississippi blues/folk culture), O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a farce that provides multiple laughs with every minute, and offers a warmhearted and complex understanding of the region that I call home. Set during the Depression, it’s also an extended riff on Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels. In that film, socially conscious filmmaker John Sullivan (think Frank Capra, but with less wit) wants to make a politically relevant movie about the working class. Never mind that he doesn’t know, or even want to know, anyone who’s actually poor. His film is entitled O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Sturges spends the next 90 minutes poking fun at the distance between Sullivan’s film and poverty as it’s actually lived. The Coens, by consciously stealing that title and setting their film in the same era as Sturges’s classic, one-up Sullivan by creating a farce with flat characters that’s nevertheless truer to human experience than anything Sullivan could have created. In fact, in some ways, I think the Coens’s masterpiece is precisely the crackpot comedy Sullivan might have made after his comeuppance and revitalization via a Disney cartoon at the end. O Brother, Where Art Thou? has the anarchic, anything-goes spirit and aesthetic daring of a great 1940s cartoon but, unlike Sturges, the Coens are submersed in history all the same and address the ugly racial and class politics that Sturges elides and in fact lampoons in his Sullivan caricature. O Brother updates Sullivan’s Travels while also mimicking it. It’s not the first time they’ve flirted with Sturges—see the great, horribly underrated Hudsucker Proxy—but O Brother is the most potent, direct distillation of their love affair/argument with the great 1940s filmmaker. (Walter Biggins)


I think I’ve mentioned this before too, but it’s the best example I can come up with. After reading some of the things Jim Emerson had mentioned about Cutter’s Way, I watched it last fall. Great movie, but I couldn’t help feeling that I was watching the priomordial soup out of which The Big Lebowski was born. Amateur detectives, slackers perhaps, and I about lost it when one of the characters starts filling up a suitcase with underwear. (Weigard)

Autumn Sonata, Stella Dallas, The Rapture and High Tide are three mother-daughter dramas that resonate with my own mother abandonment issues. When I saw Kieslowski's The Decalogue, Thou Shalt Not Steal, I finally understood why my mother left me and my younger brother. She felt incompetent. (Anne Thompson)

All I can think of now is that scene in Band of Outsiders where Anna Karina walks into the poolroom and they’re playing the big love theme from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Knowing the Demy film, it’s clear that the song has no place in that context- the two movies could hardly be further apart and still be speaking the same language- yet there it is. In Umbrellas, the song is almost unbearably sad, certainly enough to bring tears to my eyes as it swells during the climactic scene and we reflect on what the characters have lost, and gained, during the film. But out of context, all that significance is lost and it’s just a popular song, to be listened to and tune out like any other. Movies are nothing but commodities, Godard is saying, to be taken apart and picked over willy-nilly. Yet I also can’t help but reflect on the difference between the standalone song and the way it works in Umbrellas, which in turn makes me think of the importance of all the elements of a film to its ultimate effect. In the end, a movie is much more than the sum of its component parts- take one on its own and it’s just not the same. This may not even be the idea Godard is going for here, but that’s the idea I take away, and that’s enough for me. (Paul Clark)

You know, I could ruminate on this question for several more hours, thus delaying even further my responses to this quiz, or I could simply admit that I don't have a clue what this question means and leave it at that. I choose the latter. (Stennie)

Another question that's too good to answer: this one, especially, is something I want to think about, turn over in my head, all by itself, until I have a good answer. If I don't complete wimp out, this quiz could give me half a summer's worth of blogging material... (Weeping Sam)

It took me years to get one of the best (and nastiest) jokes in Life of Brian--the Spartacus reference, which now seems so obvious that I don't know how I could have missed it. The chorus of crucifixion victims crying out "I'm Brian!" is a wicked inversion of the "I'm Spartacus" scene, in fact an answer to the latter, as if the Pythons were saying "that's a great story, but from everything we've experienced in human nature, and read about for 4,000 of human history, that's just not how it works." (Chris Oliver)

The Limey isn't the same if you haven't seen Poor Cow, Teorema, Easy Rider or Vanishing Point. (California)

Probably an obvious example, but the way Unforgiven comments on and expands upon Clint's entire screen person... it'd be an excellent story and piece of filmmaking by any standard, but familiarity with everything from Dirty Harry to Eiger Sanction really brings it home in that movie. Curiously, that shot of him in the rain like a total sap in Bridges of Madison Country is enriched in much the same way. (The Bandit)

I've always seen Kirk Douglas in Ace in the Hole as character and real life father to Michael Douglas' character in Wall Street (Jamie)

33) It’s a Gift or Horsefeathers


The eternal Norman Z. McLeod question. It's a Gift primarily for the scene of Mr. Muckle. (Peter Nellhaus)

Horsefeathers, because the Marx Brothers are a gift! (Dave S.)

Horsefeathers, not so much because I love the Marx Brothers (though I do), but because I sheepishly admit to not having known It’s a Gift existed. (Chris)

I have a theory that Norman Z. McLeod sucks the funny out of movies. I feel that It's a Gift is one tenth of the movie it could have been, especially when you consider other Fields films like The Bank Dick, and the two he did with the Marx Brothers, while still amazing, are my least favorite of their golden period. Horsefeathers still wins, because I'm a dedicated Marxist, but it could have been their best without McLeod. (Krauthammer)

It's a Gift. This is an interesting contrast. In the general scheme of things, the Marx Brothers rank well ahead of W.C. Fields. However, like the novels of Raymond Chandler, all of them (up to Day at the Races, anyway) are cherished but none particularly sticks out. Duck Soup sticks out a little the way Farewell My Lovely does for Chandler, but the whole gestalt is what counts, not any given movie/novel as a work of art. It's a Gift on the other hand is a movie that rises above the level of the comedian's work, and seems to portray the genuine travails of a human being. (Robert Fiore)


This is a little confusing. There are silent slapstick shorts (say that three times fast) by both of these titles, made, respectively, in 1923 and 1928. I suspect that Dennis means the 1934 version of It’s a Gift, starring W.C. Fields, and the 1932 version of Horse Feathers (note the difference in title), starring my beloved Marx Brothers. These two are both features, and the connection is that they’re both directed by Norman MacLeod, which is why I think Dennis links these two and not the two otherwise unrelated shorts. So, if we’re comparing the features, Horse Feathers wins in a walk, because the idea of Groucho Marx as president of a university is the most inspired idea for a slapstick comedy ever, and it’s one of the few Marx Brothers in which Zeppo is a) present, and b) funny. (Walter Biggins)

Horsefeathers. My father often took me and my brother to see the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields at The New Yorker. We never cared for Fields. We recognized how he felt about Baby LeRoy. (Anne Thompson)

I await the day in which I see It's a Gift with a theatre full of appreciative moviegoers. I've seen Horse Feathers that way, and it'll be hard to beat. (Brian Darr)

34) Your best story about seeing a movie at a drive-in


I was in the back seat with my girl friend of the time. For a Few Dollars More was playing on the screen. I never got to see the Leone film until a few years later. (Peter Nellhaus)

As a 9-year-old horror fan, I begged my father to take to see The Exorcist when it was released. Being sane, he refused. By the time I was 12, The Exorcist came back to our town at the drive-in on a double bill with John Wayne’s McQ. This time, my father took me. After watching the Wayne first feature, The Exorcist began. I don’t remember when it happened, though I know it built up gradually… I began to formulate the thought (though not in these words) that this was adult horror and it was about things my little brain couldn’t comprehend. In other words, it was freaking me out, and I was going to have nightmares forever if we didn’t leave NOW! My father, again being sane, dutifully prepared to leave the drive-in at my request. Though sane, my father is a little cruel, and he suggested I look at the screen as we drove away. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Regan McNeil vomit all over Father Karras. Image. Stuck. In. My. Head. Forever. (Dave S.)


Okay, so, I’m at this drive-in, right? And there’s this sniper there, too, right, but get this, BORIS KARLOFF shows up and…wait, that wasn’t me. Never mind. I’ve never been to a drive-in. (Bill)

I could relate the old chestnut about tripping during Giant Spider Invasion plus Night of the Cobra Woman, but no need to incriminate anyone here. (Flickhead)

Seeing Jurassic Park in the summer of '93, my mom and me running from our car to the bathroom, terrified that the raptors were going to jump off the screen and eat us. Well, that's how I felt anyway. It's possible my mom was just humoring me, but it was still a blast. (Flower)

What's a drive-in? (Erin)

Drive-ins were on their way out as I was growing up, and so many of my "memories" of them come from seeing them in other films: the hilariously campy projections in The Thin Blue Line, the re-creations of 50s teen lust in Grease, the assassin's bullet cutting through the night sky in Targets. My own drive-in memory is connected to The Empire Strikes Back, and seeing it on a warm summer night's re-release, and enjoying the serendipity of night falling just as the Millenium Falcon roared into space: sky and screen blending into one glittering, star-ridden space. (Brian Doan)


No specific time, but any chance my wife and I have to visit the Parma Motor-Vu in Parma, ID. It's the oldest business in town, their 1955 popcorn popper still works great, they serve grape soda, the parking area is often flanked by corn stalks, and the old highway is right behind the screen so sometimes you can see truckers passing by.
(Adam Ross)

I saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit at a drive-in in Maine while my family was on vacation. My dad fell asleep halfway through, so my mom decided to let him sleep and find her way back to our room. We were nearly at the Canadian border before she realized she must have made a wrong turn somewhere. (Bemis)

I have fond memories of attending the 1987 premiere of Alex Cox's Straight to Hell at the Pickwick Drive-In in Burbank, sitting in my pal Sam Kitt's vintage convertible. It was quite a scene. (Anne Thompson)

Not a story per se, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in the world who can cop to seeing Cop and a Half five times at a drive-in (it ended up being the second feature time and time again). (Aaron)

1976 - The Bad News Bears. Whole family went, all packed into the family station wagon -- Mom, Stepdad, Grandma, and us three kids. When the movie was over, Grandma said "Little boys don't really talk like that." Three kids replied in unison: "Yes they do, Grandma." Also: in college in Bellingham, WA, I recall being buried under lots of blankets and so forth to get snuck into the Samish Twin Drive-In. For years, the first S was missing from their sign, so from the freeway you could see their sign loudly advertising: "AMISH TWIN DRIVE-IN THEATRE." Of course, meeting up with Sal and Dennis at the SoCal Drive-In Society was a fun time too, and one I hope to repeat this summer! (Stennie)


Oh, Dennis, you’re gonna love this! It’s gotta be seeing Grindhouse last year at the Mission Tiki. I know I went to the drive-in with the family when I was a kid, but I really can’t remember any of the details. So last year’s experience is all I really have to go on. What fun! Great company (the Captions, Inc. gang is the best, bar none) and interesting movie, to say the least. I really had no idea what I was in for when I decided to go. As per usual for me, I avoided any and all info about Grindhouse once I decided to go. So the gore and violence came as something of a surprise. Yes, I knew that Tarantino was involved, but I had no idea about the zombies. And how sweet were Paul and Steve – knowing that I hate that kind of stuff, I heard them checking with Dennis occasionally to make sure I was okay. Thanks, guys! (Sharon)

The first movie I ever saw was Song of the South at the drive-in, complete with one of those "Ant and Aardvark" cartoons at the beginning. I've still never had a chance to see it again. Years later, I did mushrooms in the abandoned lot of the same Drive-In, underneath the dilapidated screen. I also went to see an all-night women's prison movie marathon at the drive-in once, but it was really boring, so not a good story. (Chris Oliver)

Freebie and the Bean. God knows what it was double-billed with some four to six years after its release, but somehow one of my earliest filmgoing memories was this Rushian slice of '70s awesomeness. (The Bandit)

35) Victor Mature or Tyrone Power

Uh, Tyrone Power. Is this a trick question or something? (Jonathan Lapper)

Mature fought prehistoric creature on screen once, didn’t he? Yeah, him. (Dave S.)

Or, Cry of the City versus Nightmare Alley. Ty’s the one. Victor, on the other hand, carries the look of a man suffering unending heartburn. (Flickhead)

Tyrone Power: maturity is overrated and power is an often hilarious delusion. (Ryland Walker Knight)

How old do you have to be to take this quiz? (Brian)

Man, I really need to get my TCM back. (Mr. Middlebrow)

I think of Tyrone Power as the star of adventure movies I deem too boring to watch because Tyrone Power is in them. Victor Mature is a subject I have to look into further, based on My Darling Clementine. (Robert Fiore)

We all want Power, but being Mature does us all more good in the long run. As for the actors, I guess I’d have to research some more. (Paul Clark)

36) What does film criticism mean to you? Where do you think it’s headed?


(First Post) Aaaaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!! Nooooooo!!!!!!! No more questions about film criticism and where it's going. My god, thousands of children have perished in China, more lay dead in Burma, Iraq is in complete disrepair, people are living in their cars because they've lost their homes... Okay, sorry. But really, for the time being at least, I'm afraid I have had my fill of this question. Sorry. Hate to end my quiz on a sour note. Sorry.

(Second Post) Ah, I don't want to end my answer on a sour note. Here goes:
I think film criticism is moving in better directions despite what so many seem to think. Print critics losing their jobs is not a good thing but many immediately find a home online where they can be even more analytical and thought provoking without deadlines and an editor breathing down their neck or looking over their shoulder.

Bloggers like Girish and Jim Emerson allow film criticism to become a group discussion in which differing points of view are celebrated and help to bring the films in question to a richer understanding for all.

I think the days of deeper, richer more profound analysis of film and what film means lay ahead of us. With the freedom to exchange ideas and the access of the great films of cinema history I think film criticism is on an upward slant. It's just that the technology, the modes of its transport are changing. But the criticism itself is evolving into something that I never had growing up, reading the opinions of hallowed authors and historians who left no room for dissent. (Jonathan Lapper)

Film criticism means pointing out films that are of interest for a variety of reasons, even if the goal is to entertain. Based on current evidence, film criticism is headed to the blogosphere while a handful of print critics get syndicated. (Peter Nellhaus)

Having recently developed an obsession with Italian gialli, I can tell you that I think the way a film is perceived is very much a product of the time it is being reviewed. Today, so many films that were ignored or maligned in the 70’s are being rediscovered as classics. It’s just another way that film criticism is subjective. Unfortunately, “professional” film criticism has been heading to blurb-ville for a long time now, and it shows no sign of letting up. You know, comments like “The feel good movie of the year” splashed across a movie poster or ad…? All this seems to have more to do with the critic than it does the film. The good news is that fan-based reviews are all over the Internet in blogs and websites, and that’s where you can get the real goods about movies. (Dave S.)

Film criticism, as the phrase is generally used, doesn’t mean all that much to me, unless it’s found on a blog where the film in question can be discussed. So, I guess, “film criticism”, to me, is the “opening argument”. (Bill)

At this point, nothing, nowhere. (Flickhead)

Film criticism is my chance to read what others are thinking about the movies I'm seeing. It's an opportunity to understand how others are processing the same information. If I like a movie, I want to know why others liked it or why they didn't, and, if I disliked a movie, I want to know why others did or didn't. It helps me, I think, get a more nuanced perspective on a film I've just watched. I'm not sure where it's going. I've never been terribly good at predicting outcomes. (Schuyler Chapman)

At its best, when taken seriously, film criticism is a prime opportunity for some (to put it plainly) philosophy. However, such a posture takes a lot of time, and effort. The weekly criticism rarely achieves this in any explicit fashion, but if you pay attention you can understand what some of the great critics do as something akin to hermeneutics: a balance between interpretation and examination that reflects the critic as well as the picture in as honest and thorough a manner as possible. What I want more of is holding one's experience accountable. Why is it that Armond White cannot find fault in Spielberg? Why can't Walter Chaw see that Iron Man affords him the same reading that he gave of The Darjeeling Limited? I really dig reading those guys, even when I think they're off base, but as much as they do attempt to account for their personal taste in reviews, there's still that posture of superiority that irks me. It's what I try to cede. I try to assume most movies are smarter than me. I try to be generous. Clearly, I've failed myself as often as I think those two fine writers have failed other films but what I don't sense in their writing is a true curiosity... One of the reasons I think Matt's criticism will be missed is because he always seemed curious about the object at hand. But such curiosity takes time, and effort, and diligence, and it's rare. Hell, I'm quick to turn against movies. I didn't care for Gone Baby Gone, but a little last fall simply because I turned away from it inside five minutes; I tried again recently and found myself no less turned off; I think it apt and rote and at worst plain boring and stupid. Still, I value that Cumbow essay that got me looking again. I'm always willing to look again. The thing that won me over to Walter Chaw was his giveaway introduction to a review of Inside Man where he said he was wrong about 25th Hour. After a long uneasiness with Armond White I finally understood him a little better after my buddy Steve's interview with him and his defense of The Darjeeling Limited boiled down to the brilliant, obvious, contrarian statement that "films don't have acts." (Of course, I simply don't believe in acts as a structure; plenty of others do; that's a big argument to get into, which I plan to avoid, here.) So, I think criticism, as a practice, will always be lively, even if its financing continues to die -- or just dry up. As long as people take it seriously, as its own art, as an opportunity for all kinds of cool thought, then I think it will be fine. It's not some giant living in the hills; it's this. This is what I do and, to a certain extent, this is film criticism, too. Like Bordwell said a couple weeks ago, maybe if blogs slow down a bit they can be better, and more thoughtful, and afford more conversations instead of shouting matches. Because I think that blogs are the future of this art, this practice. I mean, here I am, commenting on a blog. A blog I read and enjoy, a blog most worthy of that list, because its owner and proprietor is so invested in the worth and continued, thoughtful practice of criticism -- and fandom, let's be honest. Cuz, why write about this -- why write this -- if you aren't a fan, if you don't enjoy it? (Ryland Walker Knight)

I hope it's headed towards the death of the blurb and star ratings, and more attention to the mutual significance of form and content. And more attention to foreign film at the cost of the summer blockbuster. (Brian)

I'm running low on time so this will be shorter then I would have liked. Film criticism, like any criticism, is vital for keeping the art alive. Without writers, lectures, or video essays on film we would not be able to better collect our thoughts on film, we would never learn how to think critically and understand film on a deep level without criticism. I think Jim Emerson says that he likes the critisism as much as the movies, I wouldn't go that far, but I do believe that film would be in a sorry state without people thinking about it. I'm optimistic about the future, I don't think that paid criticism is dead by any means (although print criticism may be soon) and these blogs can be as vital as those by paid critics sometimes, your recent essay on Speed Racer being one out of countless examples. There will always be the need for a full time critic, who can watch much more than I could, and who is not bogged down with things like “school” or “work” which can severely cut into online publications. It's definitely is going to change in the next ten years, and I hope for the better. (Krauthammer)

Right now, it doesn’t mean much. I’m pretty ambivalent about where it might be headed, though I’m thankful for the role that blogging generally, and this blog especially, has played in letting regular Joe movie lovers participate in the conversation. (Mr. Middlebrow)

It means making sure people are aware that film is more than entertainment. It's headed, on one level, down the crapper. That's the argument you hear all the time. But on another level, and this is where these blogs come in, film criticism is headed in exactly the right direction, towards a pure discussion of art. (El Gringo)<

I don't know where it's headed, but I do think the recent turbulence in the profession is the result of film criticism moving away from monologue and towards discussion. I know that my aforementioned small group of readers motivates me to examine my ideas with greater clarity and consideration than before. If anything's going to keep film criticism going, it's the need to resist experiencing art in a vacuum. Either way, I'll keep writing as long as people keep reading. (Bemis)

At its best, film criticism offers an exchange of ideas about art, and how art reflects human experience and longings, and provides an opportunity for me to crystallize thinking about both. In the past, the exchange has been mostly one-sided—the critic writes, I read and reflect, and that’s that. With the spreading influence of blogs, the back-and-forth exchange has become more immediate and conversational; fact-checking and corrections occur in real-time; writers actually see how their readers respond to their work. I’ve said before that the collective blogs like The House Next Door—where multiple writers are corralled together under the influence of an overriding editor—are where online criticism is headed, simply because it’s a model that allows room for a lot of writing styles and genres to be discussed under a single rubric. (It’s also the format closest to print journalism, which is something the Web 2.0 embracers should keep in mind in case they get too smug.) The biggest issue that’s always faced film criticism is that criticism is writing, which means that it’s at least one step removed from the medium it’s discussing. Online, however, that gap can be bridged to some degree, because an online essay can include screen grabs, sound files, and movie clips in a way that’s not available to print. Three recent articles—one on Spielberg’s editing style, one an elaborate defense of Tony Scott’s filmmaking, one on Jia Zhangke’s compositions and editing in Platform—use screen grabs not as mere eye candy but as contextual illustrations that bolster their points. I hope that, as early cinema’s works fall increasingly under public domain, we see more essays illuminated by extensive clips as well as stills. (Walter Biggins)


Film criticism is a way to educate an audience about a film and why it needs to be seen in order to better understand yourself and the world around you. With the advent of website and blog reviews, there are now more educators than ever before. Strangely, I don’t think the number of listeners has increased proportionately. I also fear that the whole milk of criticism has become two percent and is fast headed toward skim. May the cream continue to rise and be consumed. (Patrick)

I grew up reading the greats: Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Richard Corliss, Molly Haskell, Vincent Canby, Dave Kehr, David Ansen, David Edelstein, Stanley Kaufmann, David Chute, David Denby, John Powers, Jim Hoberman, Richard Jameson, David Thomson, Michael Wilmington, Joanthan Rosenbaum, Todd McCarthy, Roger Ebert, Stephen Schiff. They helped to define what movies are, they grew up as the medium did, and wrote and set the tone for cultural debate during the 70s and 80s when the cinema was most exciting. Those days will never come again. Where do you think it’s headed? The truth is: our generation of moviegoers raised on newspapers and reading will not be replaced by more of same. We know that our children love movies and see them in theaters, on TV, on DVD, on laptops and mobile phones. They also learn about movies and discuss them in different ways, on Facebook, on Yahoo, on blogs. As the medium and the media evolve, so too film criticism, which will be more responsive and more narrow-focused to the individual. And it will be on video, too. (Anne Thompson)

The more film criticism I read, the more I value insight over opinion. It’s one thing to say why you like something, but it takes a deeper appreciation for film in general to be able to pull ideas from movies, especially ones that don’t wear those ideas on their sleeve. And this only really comes from experience and the guidance of others who’ve come before you. The more you open yourself up to ideas that may be eccentric at first glance, the more confident you can be in your own, provided you’re able to back them up. I think that the proliferation of Internet criticism can only help this, because rather than continuing the old-guard notion of criticism as a monologue, it instead promotes a great exchange of ideas. The critic no longer resides in his ivory tower, but instead uses his work to open a dialogue with his readers. Ultimately, I think this will be a good thing, especially once Web criticism can shake off the stigma of being the smelly stepcousin of the printed variety and achieve the equal status that the best online criticism (this blog included) already deserves. (Paul Clark)

What it means to me is that ability to find and avoid films based on a consensus of voices I trust, of being able to scan Metacritic and see what films are worth seeing and what are not. Also, the ability only a critic has to dig deeper into a film, into themes and motifs and all that juicy goodness. What scares me is that as more and more film criticism moves from the newspaper to the internet, it gets harder and harder to know what voices you can trust and what voices are full of shit. At the same time, there are now more voices than ever that I trust. So...I guess I'm torn. Cautiously optimistic, you might say. (Lucas McNelly)

I'm more interested in film than I am in film criticism. Whenever I see these questions about film criticism I'm reminded of Whit Stillman's movie Metropolitan and its character Tom, who wasn't into fine literature but enjoyed reading literary criticism. He held his own at intellectual parties by quoting what essayists had to say about great literary works, even though he'd never read the literary works themselves. I don't find fault any with film criticism, but I'd rather watch another movie than read a review of one I've just seen. I'd also rather watch one than write about one, which is probably why my own review blog has been so meager in recent months. (Stennie)


Where it's headed? I don't know - I imagine it will continue roughly as it is. Academic critics will keep rolling along, someone somewhere will be reviewing new releases every week, giving them stars and trying to steer the public toward better films - probably all of us, though, rather than trained professionals - either way - I am going to end with thought from yesterday, that last movie I ended up seeing, in fact: The Awful Truth. Which, as it happened, was shown with an introduction from Stanley Cavell, who wrote about it in Pursuits of Happiness. Two things came to mind - first, I was thinking about why Cavell is so good (for I think his film writing is among the very best there is): it's that he shows us things that are in the films, and in the world, that we might not have thought of. That's what critics should do - make us see things we didn't see - in the film, or in the world, related to the film. And the other - a reference to his description of what marriage is, what a good marriage is, what the comedies of remarriage show: a "deepening of the conversation." That is what criticism should be - a conversation about films, and about life, through films... This might be the answer to the "important comedies" question too - because this is what the contenders do. Rushmore - Groundhog Day - O Brother Where Art Thou - Life of Brian - Fallen Angels (the Kinoshiro half anyway) - White: they tell us about life, they give us life as conversation, and a way of talking about the world, of inventing ourselves and taking responsibility for ourselves in the world... So - if we keep talking about films, criticism should make it, in the end. (Weeping Sam)

Bonus:

AND THE ENTIRETY of NOEL VERA’S QUIZ RESPONSES, all answers derived from THE CINEMA OF THE PHILIPPINES! Hands-down the most unique and informative of another cinematic culture answers ever offered on an SLIFR quiz! Thanks, Noel!

DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION MONTH: ANIMAL HOUSE 30 YEARS LATER

(Photo courtesy of David J. Fowlie)

In February 2008 select members of the cast of National Lampoon’s Animal House gathered for probably the year’s first official celebration of the film’s 30th anniversary at the Hollywood Blvd. Theater in Woodbridge, Illinois and blogger David J. Fowlie was there. His post features lots of excellent pictures and a nice write-up on the screening and subsequent Q&A. Accompanying Fowlie’s piece is this video interview with those same cast members in the WGN studios. This should get everyone in the mood for revisiting the movie throughout the month here at SLIFR.

ANSWERS TO O'BLIVION PART 2: IMPORTANT FILM COMEDIES, WORST TITLE EVER, REASONS TO BLOG, BLASPHEMY, DEATH and MORE DIFFICULT-TO-IMPOSSIBLE CHOICES

(This is Part Two of a three-part digest of the best answers from Professor Brian O'Blivion's All-New Flesh for Memorial Day Movie (and TV) Quiz. Part one can be seen here. Part three is on its way-- untwist them knickers!)

13) Using our best reviewer-speak, what is an “important” film comedy? And what is to you the most important film comedy of the last 35 years?


The most important film comedy of the last 35 years is Kirby Dick's This Film is not yet Rated. (Peter Nellhaus)

It Happened One Night pretty much invented the road trip movie which is still so popular today so I'll go with that one. Last 35 years takes us to 73. Let's see. Both Blazing Saddles and Animal House took comedy into the landscape of the vulgar that had previously only been hinted at. The hits of the nineties and 2000's wouldn't exist without them. Animal House did it better so I'm going with that one. (Jonathan Lapper)

To me, an important comedy is one that makes people laugh and has an impact on how audiences look at comedy. It’s also nice if it manages to cast a reflection (however distorted or amplified) of ourselves. John Waters’ Female Trouble fits that bill. (Dave S.)

An important filmed comedy, you see, must contain three elements: a sneering, even anarchic, disregard for societal mores and values; a political consciousness that includes feminist epistemology; and a laser focus in regards to its bourgeois and authoritarian targets. An actually important comedy would be something like This is Spinal Tap, because at the time it was brand new, and was, and still is, funny as all shit.
I may have misunderstood this question. (Bill)

Wes Anderson is really after the right things. I'd argue his last two pictures are pretty important to me as they play witness to a certain idea of America (as a myth of perfectionism; ahem, Emerson) I find appealing. Also, any number of the Coen Brothers' pictures are worthy, or "important" film comedies. The Big Lebowski and The Hudsucker Proxy really are pretty great. Let me throw in Brad Bird's films, too, while we're at it. To get outside of America, I think Bruce Robinson's How To Get Ahead In Advertising is some kind of special. But more and more I think Kung Fu Hustle is one of the great films of the last decade. (Ryland Walker Knight)


"Hey LAAY-DIEEEE!": Foucaultian Repression and Freudian Desire in the Le Cinema du Hilary Duff, or, When Is Hair Gel Just Hair Gel?." Movie Journal, vol.6, issue #4, May 2008. 35-55.

Abstract: Why...laughter? Thinking through the gendered problematics inherent in the capitalist construction of "tween" (and its relations to a Butlerian conception of the body as performance), this paper seeks to understand the intertwined notions of humor, femininity and "masked" identity in the works of Hilary Duff, in particular the plays with fairy tale imagery in A Cinderella Story, the "policed" notions of "cool" and "nerd" in The Lizzie McGuire Movie and the role of cyberspace avatars in A Perfect Man. Related topics will include The Mickey Mouse Club, the marketing of Disney Channel programming and the Barthesian mythologies of "Come Clean (Let The Rain Come Down)." (Just out of curiosity, Dennis, what caused you to choose the 35-year limit?) (Brian Doan) (Brian, No good reason at all. This question started out as something else to which I attached that 35-year limit. But when the question became this one, it just seemed better top narrow the field down so it became less than asking “What is the most important film comedy of all time?” which is probably not a question that can be answered, at least not by me.—Dennis)

I don't think "important" is really the frame of reference for comedies. Comedies are supposed to be funny, and the deeper ones are funnier in a deeper way. I would say that the overall comic vision of Preston Sturges and Ernst Lubitsch is as much a part of my inner life as anything, but I wouldn't describe Sullivan's Travels or The Merry Widow as "important." Fail Safe is more important than Dr. Strangelove in bringing the issues of nuclear brinksmanship into the public mind, even though the former is crapola and the latter is the best satirical movie ever made. What Dr. Strangelove tells the audience essentially is that our rulers are too foolish not to destroy us all with nuclear weapons. (It is presumably a case for nuclear disarmament, but why would rulers foolish in the way depicted disarm?) I guess you could call City Lights an important comedy in the sense of illustrating what it means to be human in an unfeeling world. Maybe Miracle in Milan as well. The let's say most significant comedy in the last 35 years is Pulp Fiction, to the extent that it's a comedy. (Robert Fiore)

If it's funny, a comedy eschews the very notion of importance, as Groucho said: "What significance? We were just four Jews trying to get a laugh." With apologies to George S. Kaufman, an "important" comedy is what closes Saturday night. By that yardstick, the most important comedy is 1941, I guess. (Campaspe)

An important film comedy is one that inspires imitators, and I think we're still seeing the effects of This is Spinal Tap, with its style of parody still common in movies and television. (Adam Ross)

As a reviewer, no, critic, nay, film scholar, I have to say that comedies can't be important, only frothy and forgettable. That's why only serious films win Oscars. The most important comedy in the last 35 years is probably Bio-Dome, because it insured that Pauley Shore would never work again. (Beveridge D. Spenser)

An "important" comedy may contain insights into its social moment that few other works of art or entertainment do; or it may mark a shift in mores or perspective by the mainstream culture, as one of the functions of comedy is to relieve the tensions of conflict and change; or it may simply redefine the way in which cinema is funny. Chaplin's later comedies strove to be "important" and were welcomed as such by critics and audiences, and at their best they deserve that. But Keaton's comedies are at least as important for the way they explored the implicit surreality of film and shattered narrative expectations. (How's that for critic-speak? Ha!) Most important of the last 35 years? Geez. Make it 50 years and I'll give you Some Like It Hot. Definitely the most socially important final line in movie comedy history! But since 1973? Annie Hall for the way it changed comic tone. Animal House for changing it in a different way. And There's Something about Mary because...I don't know why. I just knew it was important when I saw it. (Gerard Jones)

"Important" film comedies are very rarely funny, IMO. The ones that ARE important usually aren't recognized as such until years after the fact. Most important film comedy - Blazing Saddles. Makes its point sharply, sustains it through the entire picture, and still manages to be thoroughly silly and enjoyable... and it couldn't be reproduced in today's culture. (Robert H.)

An “important” film comedy is one that’s both funny and visually enriching—i.e., one that uses the techniques and tricks of cinema to enhance and create its humor, instead of relying primarily on writing, facial gestures, and good line reading to carry the jokes. For this reason and more, my favorite comedies tend to be 1930s and 1940s screwball, or Buster Keaton shorts, in which common sense is flipped on its head in terms of action and technical derring-do, and in which the absurd is often present in the design and setpieces. Even here, though, screwball—unless in the hands of Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, or (to a limited degree) Leo McCarey—often seems like fast and furious radio plays that happened to be filmed. They’re stagy and still. It’s not that often that a comedy heralds in major stylistic change and influence, at least not in America, which is why Wes Anderson’s movies are so refreshing, in that the wit comes as much from the mise-en-scene and camera movement as from the deadpan acting and terrific dialogue. These elements move in tandem. Now, as for the most “important” film comedy since 1973… that’s tricky. From a commercial standpoint, I’d have to say There’s Something about Mary (1998), in that the success of its outré gags, upfront sexual humor, potty mouth, and gross-outs paved the way for the last decade of male anxietyfests—from the career of Ben Stiller to Judd Apatow and his foul-mouthed minions. Mary has filtered down to TV so that much of what seemed risqué about the movie in 1998 now seems passé on Comedy Central. (South Park, of course, helped there as well.) The movie has popularized the use of bodily fluids in embarrassing situations in even kids’ animated features. Certainly, it upped the ante on what was acceptable to laugh at. Plus, it’s funny. From an aesthetic standpoint, however, I’ll go with 1999’s Three Kings. Here’s what I wrote about it in 2006: “I’d seen plenty of genre-hopping movies before—movies that change tone and pacing from one scene to the next—but Russell’s masterpiece is another beast altogether. It’s not so much that it’s the funniest movie of 1999, but it’s one of the most nerve-wracking action thrillers ever made, and a ferociously incisive (and unfortunately prescient) political movie, and a dark, vicious satire on race relations, too. But it doesn’t hop from one genre to the next. Rather, it’s somehow all of these things at once. It’s not a genre-hopper but instead a genre-blender. I never imagined that all these genres could fused together and maintain a consistent, world-weary, wise-ass but righteous tone. Russell does it. And, as if experimenting with genre conventions just wasn’t enough, its visual aesthetic—the use of a silver film stock that made the blacks super-inky and the colors lurid and almost flat; shutter speeds and consciously grainy footage that make the moving images look like they’re moving in staccato, almost silent-screen-era fashion; the long takes during moments of war chaos and intensity; following a bullet at extreme close-up as it travels from gun nozzle to (and through) flesh—is avant-garde, too. I’ve got no idea how Russell and company got away with a big-budget, mega-star, deeply political and personal war film. But I’m glad they did.” (Walter Biggins)

An important film comedy is one that shows us something about ourselves not only in a specific moment in time but forever. In other words, it lasts: It Happened One Night, His Girl Friday, The Lady Eve, Trouble in Paradise, Ninotchka, Some Like It Hot, The General, The Gold Rush, Modern Times, Sherlock, Jr., Tootsie, Annie Hall, Manhattan, The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, The Philadelphia Story... And what is to you the most important film comedy of the last 35 years? I'll hand it to Paddy Chayefsky's Network. How true it is! (Anne Thompson)

Personally, I don’t put a whole lot of stock in the idea of “important” movies, regardless of genre. So I guess I’d define an important film comedy as one that ages well and has exerted a wide influence. In that respect, I would nominate Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Has it aged well? Hell yes. But more than that, the ramshackle aesthetic of Holy Grail has become more and more pervasive in the genre in the ensuing years. After the bloated sixties comedy spectaculars, the Python boys proved once again that big budgets almost always serve to get in the way of big laughs, and that lean and mean was the way to go. Likewise, the sketch-comedy storytelling (cribbed, of course, from the series) pointed the way toward the comedy-over-coherence narratives of many of the subsequent decades’ most memorable laffers. Finally, let’s not underestimate the Dork Factor. To look at much of the best comedy of the eighties and nineties- Airplane!, This Is Spinal Tap, The Big Lebowski, even The Simpsons- is to realize that comedy has gotten pretty darn dorky lately. As much as any movie of its time, Holy Grail helped to get the ball rolling in this direction. To quote Holy Grail is to basically mark yourself as a dork, and it’s a testament to how enduring (and yes, “important”) the film is that there’s no longer anything wrong with that. (Paul Clark)

An "important" film comedy is one that expands the way we perceive humor, one that challenges the comedic formula. And under that criteria, the most important film comedy of the last 10 years is most definitely Borat, or maybe the collected work of Charlie Kaufman . If you stretch back 35 years, it very well could be Annie Hall (plus Woody Allen's other early work), which added the intellectual to the romantic comedy and changed the idea that all leading men had to look like Cary Grant. (Lucas McNelly)

I balk at applying words like "important" towards any films, because in the grand scheme of things, movies aren't as important as issues like health care and global warming (and movies about those topics like Sicko and An Inconvenient Truth aren't as important as the issues themselves, and anyway they tend to preach to the choir. That being said, I can only judge the importance of comedies vs. the importance of any other genre. Primarily movies exist for entertainment, and entertainment itself is pretty important -- people need escapism. To quote Preston Sturges's great Sullivan's Travels, "Did you know that's all some people have?" And on that scale, I'd say comedies are more important than other genres for their ability to educate while entertaining. Which leads me to the most important film comedy of the last 35 years: Hal Ashby's Being There (1979), another one I need to revisit. (Stennie)

14) Describe the ideal environment for watching a movie.


A large movie theatre, with three-quarters of the seats filled with an appreciative audience. (Dave S.)

In a hot tub, stone naked with Eva Mendes. (Flickhead)

With a purse full of Taco Bell. (Erin)

That depends on the movie, to a certain extent, but the last two movie-going experiences I had were pretty awesome: Speed Racer with my sister and four other random people; Indy 4 with my friend Jen and about 30 other people. Call me neurotic, or selfish, but more and more I'm valuing the illusion of privacy that film-watching affords. That said, it was nice to see all those Costa films with relatively the same (relatively large) audience each day at the PFA. (Ryland Walker Knight)

Early matinee, only a few people there. I have a small Diet Coke and a package of Twizzlers I will inevitably eat before the movie starts. My wife is next to me, the sound is great, the bulb is bright, and we're seated square in the middle mid-way between the front and the middle, in those chairs that recline a little bit. And afterwards I'm squinting from the sun and the smile on my face. (Chris)

This is such a cliche-- sorry!--but it really depends on the movie. For a big blockbuster, or even a cult film (like Pulp Fiction) that's eagerly awaited, it's hard to beat a packed multiplex on opening weekend, as the anticipation spills over onto the screen, and the screen fulfills or shatters it. On the other hand, one of my fondest cinema-going memories was watching Jules and Jim, L'Atalante, and The Bicycle Thief on back-to-back weekends at The Music Box, a gorgeous art deco theater in Chicago; unreeled in pristine 35mm prints in a tinier screening space, the smell of popcorn mixing with the smell of espressos, it was the perfect place to get caught up in the movies, and to not only see but feel the links between the films. There are some movies I can't watch with an audience, because I don't want to deal with the possibility that they might not like it (Some Came Running, for example, which I showed to a derisive cinema class one year), and some (like mediocre action films or B comedies) which find their ideal home on my TV screen on a free, rainy weekend day. (Brian Doan)

Not to get too curmudgeony, but it’s really not fun to go to the movies nowadays. Between the general discourtesy that pervades and the fact that my home theatre 5.1 system is pound-for-pound as good or better than the average multiplex, the answer is: My sofa with my wife, some really great cheeses and pâtés, and a glass of Italian red (that, ironically, probably costs less than a coke at the theatre). (Mr. Middlebrow)



The décor of a movie palace like the Pantages combined with the seating and projection quality of the Arclight. (Robert Fiore)

Big screen, good sight lines for the vertically challenged (like me), a sound system that is enveloping without being deafening and, most important of all, an audience that doesn't think any type of big emotion is automatically "camp." (Campaspe)

As Max Cherry would say, as long as it starts soon and looks good, I'm all set. (Bemis)

In Ed Inman’s backyard, on his big screen, with the movie being projected from his kitchen window, on a breezy night, with twenty or so in the audience, with the crickets chirping quietly and the occasional hum of car wheels on asphalt and plane engines in the stratosphere. (Walter Biggins)

No lights, a bowl of popcorn, just-as-interested viewing companions. And just about every characteristic of the drive-in. (Aaron)

Depends upon the movie. For instance, I wish that Iron Man had opened at Mann’s Chinese Theatre. It’s my favorite theater in LA and there’s nothing like seeing a great action movie there with all the fanboys (and fangirls!). Otherwise, I’d love to see just about anything in a stadium-seating theater all by my lonesome. You see, the talking and chair-kicking people seem to find it necessary to sit behind me whenever I go to the cinema. I’m cursed! (Sharon)

1. With a packed crowd at The Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.
2. My living room with a tub of ice cream.
OK, that's a lame answer. Let's see if we can do a little better. The ideal environment would be one of those Grand Old Movie Palaces, with a gigantic screen and lavish decor, but well-restored with comfortable seats, modern amenities and a state-of-the-art sound system. The audience is composed of passionate, intelligent moviegoers who are excitable enough to cheer, laugh or otherwise react when appropriate, but restrained enough not to be annoying. So far, sounds like The Egyptian, but I'd add one more thing: a full bar. And maybe a tropical/tiki theme for the decor (and matching tropical cocktails). (Chris Oliver)

15) Michelle Williams or Eva Mendes

At this point I don't care. Maybe in a couple of decades. (Jonathan Lapper)

Eva Mendes. She satisfies two separate but occasionally related fetishes. (Bill)

As great looking as Eva Mendes is, I love Michelle Williams and her nose. (Ryland Walker Knight)

Michelle Williams. Put her up as a candidate for Question #7 as well. She's a great actress. (Chris)

I’ve been a sucker for Mendes since Out of Time—I can’t even think straight when she’s onscreen. So, Mendes. (Walter Biggins)

On sex appeal alone, Eva Mendes (and I find her genuinely funny and adept in Stuck On You– which very well could have been an answer to number thirteen, now that I think about it!) (Aaron)

16) What’s the worst movie title of all time?


Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title (1966) But, man, what a cast! (Peter Nellhaus)

Beverly Hills Chihuahua. It doesn’t even have the tiny cleverness of a title like Most Valuable Primate. (Dave S.)

Made of Honor. Because, you see, not only is a MAN going to be the MAID OF HONOR at the wedding, but he’s such a good person that he’s actually MADE of HONOR! (Bill)

The Goonies is certainly up there. But that’s the 80s for you… (Flickhead)

Always thought Gothika was just really a horrible title. That's like a bad, bad title. If we're doing good bad titles, then definitely Hawmps! (Schuyler Chapman)

A Million to Juan. Yes, it's real, and when I worked in a video store, its crappy punning was a constant target of our snark. Also, Signs. (Brian Doan)

Tough one, so I offer a few clunkers that abuse the colon: Highlander 2: The Quickening, Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, Speed 2: Cruise Control, and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. The upcoming The Happening may be the vaguest title of all time. (Steven Santos)

Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (John P.)

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever comes to mind. (W. Australopithecus)

C.H.U.D. (Mr. Middlebrow) (For completists, that’s C.H.U.D.: Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers-- Dennis)

Curse of the Cat People, because to this day it misleads people about the content of that jewel of a movie. (Campaspe)

The most vile effort in Hollywood history (or one of the most, anyway) was trying to extend the coy, titillating '50s sex comedy into the Swinging Sixties, and to make them sound fresh and snappy and in-the-know they used what sounded like bits of dialogue for titles. So you got What's New Pussycat?, Boy Did I Get a Wrong Number, You Must Be Joking, and the most embarrassing of all: Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding! (Gerard Jones)

Perfect (1985). With a title like that, you're setting yourself up for a fall. (VP81955)

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Somebody should slap Lucas for that. (Larry Aydlette)

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. (Walter Biggins)

[Insert name of locally-produced zombie film here] (Lucas McNelly)

The worst movie titles are the hopelessly bland ones that tell you next-to-nothing about the film, like Rendition or Fracture (no wonder New Line went bust!), and by definition they're so interchangeable that there cannot be a single winner of the "worst title" crown. (Brian Darr)

I always thought Smilla's Sense of Snow was a rotten title, like, bad enough to be distracting. A bad title can really make me avoid a movie -- case in point: One reason I still haven't seen There Will Be Blood is the title. It's not the only reason I'm avoiding it, but it's a big reason. (Stennie)

If translation counts, can anything beat Tough Beauty and the Sloppy Slop? In English - Lucky Number Slevin? I Heart Huckabees? Dumb and Dumberer?. There are probably worse, but that's enough to think about for now... (Weeping Sam)

Mother May I Sleep With Danger? (Chris Oliver)

According to IMDb, David Mamet has been writing Joan of Bark: The Dog that Saved France for years now. I'm still hoping it's a prank. (California)

17) Best movie about teaching and/or learning


Literal teaching? I don't know. Never cared much for academic settings movies. Or where someone is taught by a mentor (i.e. The Karate Kid). I'll say Wild Strawberries. He gets to the end of his life and finally figures it all out. I hope I do too one day. (Jonathan Lapper)

The Last Picture Show. (Dave S.)

Oleanna (Bill)

House of Games (Flickhead)

You mean explicitly? Like, in a class room? Cuz I could probably argue any number of my favorites are about education. For instance, on that silly Facebook thing I made a list of favorites, each is "about" education (as understanding) in one way or another.
1. The Thin Red Line -- learning how to live WITH the world as much as in it.
2. Mirror -- this movie IS hermeneutics
3. The Awful Truth -- finding the right way to be with the other, which, here, is one's mate
4. In Vanda's Room -- where do we find ourselves? how do we carve our space in the world? what matters most? who do you prize? it's a film of values, which means it's a work of evaluation as well. plus, it holds lessons for us outside the frame: here's what this world does. how do you respond?
5. Rules of the Game -- homie pays the biggest price (death) for his failure to understand those rules.
What's odd, or cool, is that all of my favorites are more about questions than answers and my favorite teachers are the ones that give me the best questions, not the most answers; learning is choosing an answer for one's self, forming criteria, and values, and then putting those into action.
(Rounding out that ten, for fun, to further incriminate myself by disclosing my narrow, short-term memory for enthusiasms: 6. 2001 / 7. Beau Travail / 8. The New World / 9. Miami Vice / 10. Inland Empire) (Ryland Walker Knight)

My single favorite scene about teaching would have to be the one in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly where Tuco, having survived Blondie's attempt to dump him in the desert forever, shows the shopkeeper how to put together a proper firearm. I don't know whether anything he's doing in this scene makes any sense technically or if applied to the hardware of the times, but I always find Wallach's performance utterly mesmerizing. His confidence and expertise also mark the first time we take Tuco seriously as a deadly force, where until now he has been only comic relief. (W. Australopithecus)

Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Talk about “everything I need to know I life I learned . . . “ Now that I think about it, this might be a contender for #13. (Mr. Middlebrow)

The Miracle Worker. That last scene, when Helen Keller at last understands the basis of language, gets me every time. There's no more beautiful depiction of unlocking a mind than seeing Patty Duke fly around the backyard, pounding each object and begging to be told its name. (Campaspe)

If..., because there is something violent and invasive about knowledge, and also something absurdly freeing--to learn is to engage in a political and social act. (Anthony)

Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s The Son. All the better because its teaching is done almost entirely by example rather than through lessons. Olivier lives his life in a way that encourages his students to follow his lead, which already makes him a better teacher than those who only talk the talk, no matter how good their talk might be. (Paul Clark)

Paul scooped my original answer of The Son, so I'm going to throw a shout-out to Aparajito. (Brian Darr)

18) Dracula (1931) or Horror of Dracula (1958)


Dracula is based on a poorly written play that gets practically everything about the story wrong. And the direction is leaden to say the least. Horror of Dracula (Jonathan Lapper)

I like the Latina cuties in George Melford's version. (Peter Nellhaus)

I…um…I haven’t actually SEEN the 1931 Dracula yet. Because, you know, you grow up with bits and pieces of it everywhere, and you get kind of bored of it without ever actually seeing it. I do plan on remedying this, however. In the meantime, I HAVE seen Horror of Dracula, and I love it. (Bill)

Horror of Dracula may be the best Dracula movie of all. Bela’s is good for the first twenty minutes, but then it slides into tedium. (Flickhead)

I grew up with the original Dracula, and will hear no bad words about it. Horror of Dracula has a great Christopher Lee performance but he's on screen what? Like five minutes? (Krauthammer)

Horror of Dracula. I think the older one is just too creaky and, at this point, too familiar. It's as impossible to watch now as it is to look at the Mona Lisa with eyes unshaded by the gazillion dreary misuses she's been put to. (Campaspe)

It's close but I'm sticking with the original: "I don't drink...wine." (Anne Thompson)

Stylish and sexy, the 1931 Spanish-language version of Dracula beats both of these in my opinion. As far as Dracs go, Carlos Villarias is no Christopher Lee, but he’s less hammy than Lugosi. Also, Lupita Tovar has it all over her Anglo-Saxon counterparts. (Paul Clark)

It's embarrassing to admit it but I'm so woefully unversed in Hammer horror that I haven't even started in on their Dracula films. Call me Brian Oblivious. (Brian Darr)

None of the above. I don’t ‘do’ vampire movies. (Sharon) (But you sure did Planet Terror! See #34—Dennis)

You know, I never really got into the Hammer movies. They're alright, but I guess they seem like a sort of mushy middle ground between the classic Universal movies and the gory 70's. I love Peter Cushing, but never really thought Christopher Lee was that great, and I don't like the hissing. Whereas Bela Lugosi is obviously great, and then you have Dwight Frye and whoever it was playing Van Helsing, so I'll take The Browning Version. (Chris Oliver)

19) Why do you blog? Or if you don’t, why do you read blogs? (Thanks, Girish)


Because I wanted to engage with fellow cinephiles and movie lovers. I like posting my thoughts as a means of engaging in a discussion. And sometimes I like it because I just want to trade jokes or quips with someone to brighten my day. (Jonathan Lapper)

I blog, therefore I am. (Peter Nellhaus)

Blogging allows me to let off steam, solidify my thoughts, practice my writing, engage with a community of like-minded people, find things out I wouldn't find on my own, and finally, answer questions like the above. (Chris)

I've actually been thinking about this question a lot lately, as I've started to ponder blog comments, and why I do or don't get them on certain posts, why some folks seem to post a lot and some hardly at all, and how that affects what I write. I guess that means there are two, intertwined answers to the question: one, I like the sense of community and sharing that exists in the film blogosphere (so different and less hostile than, say, political blogging) and the chance to connect my passions and obsessions with someone else's. Two, in the end, no matter what connections are made, I really do this to sort out the ideas and contradictions and weird nagging questions that rumble about in my brain (I once joked in a post that an alternate name for my blog could be "An X-Ray of My Head", and I think that's still basically true) (or, to put it another way, and to paraphrase Pauline Kael, I write because no one else is saying the things about movies I want to say). If that stuff touches other people, that's fantastic, and I love that sense of feeling like I'm not alone (and that I might be telling someone else that they aren't either) in my sometimes counter-intuitve tastes, but if not, I'm still having fun, and getting to do lots of different kinds of plays with writing and imagery. (Brian Doan)

I like to think of my blog as a virtual water cooler, around which I and anyone who cares to join me can hold forth on whatever pop-culture ephemera seems noteworthy. I read blogs for mostly the same reasons, though many of my regular blogs have more of a political bent to them. I wish that I spent more time blogging and less time reading blogs, but I have reconciled myself to the reality that I’m a deficit blogger—I will always consume more than I produce. (Mr. Middlebrow)

I started blogging to stave off insanity while adjusting to a new, much quieter city. I continued blogging for all the freebies from high-end retailers. What, you mean YOU'RE not getting those? No, actually I blog so I can revenge myself on ex-lovers on the front cover of the New York Times Magazine... (Campaspe)


Because I’m in love with me, me, me! To see if anybody says anything about me, me, me! (Larry Aydlette)

I started blogging about movies because I suspected my single-mindedness was starting to tire my friends out. I was hoping to connect with a few like-minded people, and was pleasantly surprised to develop a small base of readers. I'm greatful for anyone who stops by Cinevistaramascope and leaves a comment, so I write now to keep the conversation going. (Bemis)

If we're being honest here, a lot of times I blog to impress people. I want people to enjoy my reviews and tell me so. I mean, I love cinema and I love pursuing it. I have ideas or observations that are unique and that I want to share. I love reading other blogs and being provoked to thought. I want to do that for other people. But I don't see myself as being "philanthropic" in that sense, I think it's a lot more selfish. I want to spark conversation and thought, but not necessarily "for the betterment of mankind." In all honesty. (Pacheco)

A great question, which requires an equally great answer that I’m perhaps incapable of giving. I started this blog because I noticed a dearth, in print, of the sort of nonfiction writing that I most like—a fusion of close critical reading, large-scale cultural/political commentary, reportage, and memoir. This lack was understandable. A standard newspaper arts review just doesn’t have the place for this sort of interlaced commentary, which means that the critic’s sensibility is necessarily subsumed by a strict (and small) word count allocated. (Robert Christgau manages to flourish with extreme concision, but he’s a rare exception.) Magazine writers do better—The New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly are the gold standards in developing and fostering writers of this ilk. But I saw it disappearing in print, and flourishing on blogs. I thought I’d give it a try but not for the reason you may think. My nonfiction’s always had trouble staying in one place, and I figured that forcing my writing to be seen and judged regularly would rein in my “worst” impulses, and would make me focus instead of skipping from mode to mode, from art form to art form. That way, I would eventually make myself marketable as a film critic. he blog was intended as little more than an open-faced sketchbook of ideas, idiosyncrasies, and passions; making it public would keep me honest. Well, these aren’t boom times to be looking for work as a paid critic of any kind, and I soon discovered—much to my initial chagrin—that the posts that garnered the most hits were precisely the pieces that combined elements of my life and views with criticism and larger commentary. Worse, I discovered that I didn’t want to write solely on film at all, but about all the culture in which I was interested. I was encouraged by cinema itself, which is necessarily a concatenation of a variety of art disciplines; I get tickled by critics who insist upon the notion of “pure” cinema because there’s no such thing and never can be. (Even Stan Brakhage’s films in which he painted directly onto celluloid involves two arts—painting and photography.) A great film critic is one whose eyes, ears, and heart are attuned to all the arts—theatre, music, writing, choreography, etc.—that go into producing a movie. (Academic film writing sometimes irritates me because it places films in the contexts of other films, but not often the other arts going on around it at the time of creation.) I love cinema, in other words, because it forces engagement with art that’s not cinema; to pretend otherwise is to miss the point of the art form. Anyway, I quickly lost the sketchbook idea—though I kept the quotes and snippets that I collected—and instead began trying to make connections between forms and the loose-firing synapses in my head. The pieces became longer. I slowly built an audience and began to look at the blog as a sort of résumé. That, too, was silly—the blog hasn’t led to any jobs. It has led, however, to a sense of community that I cherish. I haven’t been as diligent in responding to comments or in building a readership “neighborhood” of regulars as has Girish Shambu, but the blog has led directly to my attending last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and sharing meals and conversations with film bloggers. Knowing that my ideas, good or bad, are out there being discussed among a community of peers is central to why I blog. So, this place has gone from a sketchpad to a CV to ultimately a flower in an ever-growing, ever-evolving garden. I’m proud to be a part of that, no matter how small that part is. (Walter Biggins)

I like to share. I like attention. I'm good at it. And I get paid for it. (Anne Thompson)

I’ll repeat what I wrote on Girish’s post: “Back in my college days, all of my friends knew me as ‘the movie guy.’ They knew I spent much of my free time (and too much of my alleged study time) watching movies, and that I'd have a thought on just about every movie they could throw at me. Admittedly, they threw mostly blockbusters and new releases at me, but what are you gonna do. As the years went by, I saw less and less of my friends, but I sometimes got e-Mails from them asking about movies that had just gotten released. After a while, rather than waiting on their requests, I started writing short reviews and e-Mailing them. This turned into a Web site, and this eventually led to my current blogs. The big difference for me now is that the friends I write for have changed. Rather than being people who know me from real life, my blog-friends are almost entirely comprised of people I haven't met. Rather than being thrown together by circumstance and proximity, it's our shared love of film that unites us and makes us a community. The nature of the friendship is different, but we're friends all the same. So why do I blog? Because it's there. And thank goodness for that.” (Paul Clark)


I blog (when I actually get around to it) because it makes me think more deeply about film and that, in turn, makes me a better filmmaker, as it teaches me how to do that with my own work. As for reading blogs, it's partly out of interest in the subject matter and partly because I've gained so many people I consider friends in the film blog world, and I'd like to see what they're up to. (Lucas McNelly)

I don't think I've ever mentioned that though I'd thought of starting a website or blog for years, the impetus to actually do it came from a low moment in mid-2005. Not nearly as low as some of the others mentioned here, but I still find it interesting that this is a recurring story arc. My low moment was a rough week that culminated in my being let go from my job on my birthday, just before I was supposed to start accruing benefits. I had another part-time job, but I was seriously underemployed for the first eight or nine months of writing Hell On Frisco Bay. By the time I found a new job, I'd found myself in this community of bloggers that was encouraging me to continue. That kind of encouragement, coupled with e-mails from readers who don't themselves blog, has turned me around from a moment of disgruntlement a number of times. So, I blog for myself, in the hopes of improving my writing and increasing my understanding of film. I blog for the films and the programmers who spend such great effort selecting and presenting them, and whose efforts I do not want gone under-noticed. And I blog for my readers who have expressed appreciation for the way I carry out my project. (Brian Darr)

I really only blog about movies to remind me of what I've seen, what I've liked, why I liked it, who was in it, etc. I don't suppose I need to do that in a public forum such as a blog, I could just keep a list on my desk -- and about the same number of people would read it if I did. (Stennie)

20) Most memorable/disturbing death scene

For me it's the family in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (Jonathan Lapper)

Janet Leigh's death in Psycho may be the most memorable. (Peter Nellhaus)


Most memorable: Cassavetes in The Fury (ka-powww!) Most disturbing: that dude in Robocop who gets dunked in toxic waste and then hit by a van. Scarred me for LIFE (saw it when I was 7 years old). (Flower)

Now you’re talking my language! The murder in Michael Clayton would have been far less disturbing if it had been any more graphic. But probably the recent winner for me is the first of two long, drawn-out murders in Trouble Every Day. I watched the film alone, and during that scene I actually said, out loud, “Stop doing that.” The second one is no barrel of laughs, either. (Bill)

Well, Psycho, of course, and Citizen Kane's opening, and the "I'm not dead yet!" chopping of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and Kong's death (both versions). But I was always kind of struck by the quiet and absolute stillness of Kevin Spacey's expression, after he's shot, in L.A. Confidential. (Brian Doan)

Adam Goldberg in Saving Private Ryan. Close second: Marie Josee-Croze in Munich. Spielberg sure knows how to kill off characters in gruesome fashion. (Steven Santos)

Last Holiday. The original of course; I doubt they let the character die in the remake. (Robert Fiore)

The execution in Paths of Glory--the one soldier openly sobbing, no grace or courage, dying for nothing at all, dying because that is all their leaders know how to do any more, send young men to die. (Campaspe)

Carrie White's mom moaning and writhing in a state of religious/sexual ecstasy post-impalement. (Bemis)

Most memorable- John Cassavetes in The Fury. Kaboom! Sorry, haters.
Most disturbing- the entirety of The Passion of the Christ. Whether this is a good thing I’m still trying to decide. (Paul Clark)

Gotta be the death of Brundlefly on both counts. (Brian Darr)

One that always bites me - the end of Tabu, when the boy reaches the priest's boat and the priest reaches out and cuts the rope he's hanging too, as casually and easily as that... (Weeping Sam)

The murder in Heavenly Creatures really gets me, because you can see in the girls' eyes once it starts that it's much more difficult and messy to kill someone than they had imagined it. (Chris Oliver)

Norton. Teeth. Curb. Blecch. (The Bandit)

21) Jason Robards or Robert Shaw


That question sucks because both are so completely wonderful, you bastard. Okay, you're not a bastard I just hate choosing. Hmmm... For now... Robert Shaw. (Jonathan Lapper)

Ahhh… both so good. But Shaw by a shark’s tooth. (Dave S.)

I don’t think I can pick between the two. Robards has that great speech about how important it is to have regrets in Magnolia, and Shaw has some speech about a boat or something from a movie I saw once. (Bill)

When the hell is somebody gonna go on the goddamn record here?!? Well, I will-- from my first glimpse of him as the magical uncle in Max Dugan Returns to that creepy deathbed scene in Magnolia, Robards' gravelly cool was one of my favorite cinephiliac pleasures, which takes nothing away from my love of Red Grant. (Brian Doan)

I can usually figure out the connections between these, but after poring over both their IMDB profiles, I'm at a loss. Anyhoo, I refuse to pick one, because that's just crazy. (W. Australopithecus)


Robert Shaw. Robards is great and all, but was he Quint and a Bond baddie? Didn’t think so. Oh, and Doyle Loneghan. And The Taking of Pelham 123. Shaw was a total badass. (Mr. Middlebrow)

This is cruel and unusual! I love them both. Well, if forced to choose, I’d probably say Robert Shaw – it seems like he elevates the quality of everything he’s in. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three would have been pretty plain without him and Walter Matthau (and probably will be soon – argh). Same with Force 10 from Navarone – well, actually it is pretty plain, except for his scenes. : ) (Weigard)

Damn. It took me long enough to remember that what links Robards with Shaw is STELLA! (Peter Nellhaus)

Robards was lucky to live a lot longer; if he'd died at Shaw's age we would have been deprived of the performances that, for me, put him at a level of appreciation above that of Shaw. (Brian Darr)

22) A good candidate for Most Blasphemous Movie Ever


I suppose I should say Bunuel or Allen. That's too easy. I'll say Time Bandits. No, seriously, Time Bandits. (Jonathan Lapper)

The Devils. Thank the deities for giving us Ken Russell. (Peter Nellhaus)

Last Cross on the Left… I mean, The Passion of the Christ. (Dave S.)

Oh god… (Flickhead) (Or should that be Oh, God!, Ray?—Dennis)

Dudes, clearly the answer is Dogma. Alanis Morrissette as God? (Erin)

Shakes the Clown: As Michael Powell once said of Forty Guns, "I don't wish to see my religion treated that way." (Brian Doan)

Pearl Harbor. Get thee behind me, Bruckheimer and Bay. (Mr. Middlebrow)

Viridiana, for sure. Not just blasphemy, but layered, complex, endlessly funny blasphemy. When I posted about it one of my regular commenters, Gloria, pointed out that the infamous "Last Supper" also contains a visual pun on a Spanish idiom, with the one beggar woman "taking a picture"--which is slang for flashing your undies. (Campaspe)

It depends upon your faith, I guess. I'm sure some folks hated John Goldfarb, Please Come Home because it satirized the University of Notre Dame (others hated the film for different reasons). (VP81955)

I'm not sure that it's even a relevant niche anymore... but to choose, Viridiana (Robert H.)

The Cat in the Hat. (Pacheco)

Lucifer Rising (because to be a Satanist is to reject the standard views of G-d, and because of its conflation of thantos/eros as opposed to the xian one) (Anthony)

The Last Temptation of Christ. Has to be. Jesus has lust in his heart. (Anne Thompson)

The more I see 2001: A Space Odyssey, the more I think it’s a movie that imagines God as an alien intelligence so superior to ours that we can’t tell the difference. So I guess that’ll work. (Paul Clark)

Fever Pitch, the American version, is a rare adaptation that’s blasphemous to 1) The original book, which is completely perverted by the script that changes the dynamic from how to fit a girl into a love affair with a team to how to fit a team into a love affair with a girl. And all those extra scenes of Drew Barrymore with her friends....ugh. 2) Arsenal football, the original team, and 3) The Boston Red Sox, the new team, which gets a half-hearted look at the obsession of it's fans and the injustice of Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore celebrating on the field during a World Championship few thought they'd see in their lifetimes. On the fucking field. Oh, it makes me so mad.
And don't even get me started on how badly the damn thing is made....grrr.... (Lucas McNelly)

What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?. On so many #$+!-ing levels. (Brian Darr)

Life of Brian seems like an obvious pick, but Meaning of Life probably has more blasphemy in it. (Stennie)

Goldfinger--James Bond disses The Beatles! (Chris Oliver)

I'm still not sure what Luc Besson's point was in The Messenger, his Joan of Arc retelling. It may have been that God had nothing to do with it, but it was mostly aimed at the church, as was Life of Brian. So I'll go with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (California)

23) Rio Bravo or Red River


If only for Angie, and a lot more too of course, Rio Bravo. (Jonathan Lapper)

Rio Bravo has Dino and Angie. (Peter Nellhaus)

Rio Bravo. Red River chickened out at the end, and it really ticked me off. (Bill)

Oh, John Wayne? Couldn't care less. (Brian)

Red River by a mile. Rio Bravo is fun and all, but Red River has the depth, plus John Wayne's best performance ever. I don't have to sit through any ersatz Gene Autry singalongs in Red River. And while Dino could have drunk Monty under the table any day, I think he would have been the last person to try and out-act him.
(Campaspe)

Here’s something blasphemous: I find both of these movies to be sort of overrated, especially Red River. Hawks did a lot of great genres, but he was no John Ford when it came to Westerns. And does anybody think for a second that Wayne couldn’t have kicked Monty’s ass all around that cattle pen? (Larry Aydlette)

Red River-- no contest. As fond as I am of Rio Bravo, I have to applaud the timeless Hawks movie, which also boasts a better performance from Wayne and a real battle between him and Montgomery Clift. The father-son drama is more dramatic and intense. Rio Bravo is more dated by its contemporary comedy. (Anne Thompson)

Rio Bravo, for the sheer fact that it should be downright criminal to be so damned enjoyable. (Aaron)

Rio Bravo, in a walk. Dino! Ricky Nelson! "My Rifle, My Pony & Me"! Awesome movie. (Stennie)

OK, here's where I'm going to get into trouble. Never seen either one (but I do have a Rio Bravo/The Searchers double feature coming up in my Netflix in a few months). Truth is (and I know nothing says "rube" like admitting to this), I don't really like Westerns. I don't dislike them--there are a lot of movies I love that happen to be westerns--but it's not a genre I've ever really cared for. Even when I was a kid. Maybe it was all those dull earthtones, everything gray and tan, or maybe it's the earnest "A Man's Gotta Do" masculinity (I have a hard time relating to authoritarian John Wayne), but I just don't care for 'em. (Chris Oliver)

24) Werner Herzog is remaking Bad Lieutenant with Nicolas Cage—that’s reality. Try to outdo reality by concocting a match-up of director and title for a really strange imaginary remake.


(Hands-down, the patron saint of this question: Michael Bay figured in more answers than any one other filmmaker, and his spirit hovered amongst those in which he wasn't mentioned-- Dennis)

My Dinner With Andre directed by Michael Bay and starring Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson. (Jonathan Lapper)

I'm not about to give anyone any ideas. (Peter Nellhaus)

Russ Meyer’s That Darn Cat! (Dave S.)

Frank Capra's Santa Sangre. (Bill)

How about Ron Howard’s Salo? (Flickhead)

Raiders of the Lost Ark by Bruno Dumont. (Flower)

Well, I for one would love to see Michael Bay remake Faces, and I know I'm not alone. (Schuyler Chapman)

David Mamet remaking a non-musical The Wizard of Oz with Alec Baldwin as the Wizard and Rebecca Pidgeon as the Wicked Witch of the West and the discovery at the end that Oz was just a elaborate con played on the gullible Dorothy. Or Orson Welles' original vision for The Magnificent Ambersons directed by Brett Ratner. Or Andy Warhol's Empire remade by Michael Bay. (Steven Santos)

Red River directed by Emile de Antonio and starring Tobey Maguire as the Duke and Werner Herzog as Clift. I would watch the hell out of it. (Krauthammer)

I know I'm supposed to be funny here but I'm inclined to try this experiment for real. John Huston said in his memoirs that Hollywood took the wrong approach to remakes--they re-did something that was perfect the first time around. He said they should take movies that had good elements but somehow didn't come off, and cited his own Roots of Heaven as an example. So, to be serious AND weird--Claude Chabrol could handle The Sound and the Fury, which was butchered so badly the first time around. He has the intellect but also the skepticism necessary to approach the Faulknerian South without wanting to remind us constantly how damn colorful and Gothic and meaningful everything is. Quentin Compson--continue the old, odd tradition of Brits playing Southerners and get Jamie Bell, just because he could do it and because Quentin should NOT be a heartthrob. (Campaspe)

Tony Scott's Barry Lyndon. (Bemis)

Baz Luhrmann’s Casa+Blanca. Play it again, Elton! (Weigard)

Bela Tarr directing Tilda Swinton and Harvey Keitel in a remake of Face/Off (Brian Darr)

I'm very glad this movie is happening. Not that I want to see it, but already, it has Abel Ferrera and Werner Herzog taking shots at each other like Coco Crisp and Carl Crawford. [That reference is already a week out of date! alas!] As for an equally absurd remake - the next two questions suggest a Judd Apatow remake of Max on Amour with Julia Roberts in the lead. Though I wish they didn't. (Weeping Sam)

(Up next, part three: Proprietary pictures, bugs vs. birds, football, dirty secrets, drive-ins, the fate of film criticism and a few more difficult-to-impossible choices.)

ANSWERS TO O’BLIVION PART 1: MISSING DIRECTORS, SHOULD-BE STARS, MOVIES TO REVISIT and SEVERAL DIFFICULT-TO-IMPOSSIBLE CHOICES

So begins one of the great lengthy, recurring projects on this blog that cannot be blamed on my own uncontrollable logorrhea—it’s time once again to gather up in digest form my favorite answers from the most recent quiz, Professor Brian O’Blivion’s All-New Flesh for Memorial Day Movie (and TV) Quiz. This is the portion of our program where I get to highlight my favorite answers from you, Dear Readers, in the hopes that not too many of my own answers (hopefully coming this week) were trumped by your sharp and funny observations (It happened a couple of times, I can tell you.) There were so many great, detailed answers this time around, in fact, that I’ve divided the answers into three parts, so you’ll have three separate long posts to read and enjoy, rather than one gigantically looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong one to test your stamina and attention span. Everybody who participated is blurbed here at least once, some more than that, and the answers are posted here in roughly the order they were received. And all your answers were appreciated. I just think it’s fun to revisit them a little over a month later in a somewhat compressed format and remind you and me both of the great, thoughtful, funny readership this blog has. And why wouldn’t I want to share that? (Sometimes I couldn’t resist just a tiny comment of my own on your comments, though.) Here then are the first 12 questions followed by some of my favorite responses. Enjoy! And if you still have responses burning inside you and haven’t yet filled out the professor’s quiz for yourself yet, please don’t consider the thread dead and buried. There are still a few of the usual respondents who haven’t checked in this time. (You know who you are!) So please post ‘em, and I’ll respond to them as well! Here we go!

1) Best transition from movies to TV (actor, actress, producer/director, movie/show)


The transition is easy nowadays as TV writers, directors and actors go back and forth with no stigma attached. It was a lot harder in the seventies and before because TV was considered such an ugly stepchild. I personally can't stand him as an actor but I've always been impressed that John Travolta was able to go from playing a sweathog on Welcome Back Kotter to garnering an Oscar Nomination for Saturday Night Fever in less than a year. But that's TV to movies. Movies to TV? I'll say MASH or Buffy. Buffy in fact took a less than acclaimed movie and became a TV show that was much more acclaimed than the source. (Jonathan Lapper)

Director - John Brahm. See his Fox DVD set, and then, if you can, check out his work on the horror TV series, Thriller. (Peter Nellhaus)

Alfred Hitchcock with Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I kinda wish William Castle had tried that type of transition too. (Dave S.)

Candice (Day the Fish Came Out) Bergen and Cybill (Texasville) Shepherd fared far better after retreating to the tube. (Flickhead)

...and back again? How about David Lynch? Brilliant early in his film career and then went on to Twin Peaks. And although it's kind of a reversal, Mulholland Drive started as a television pickup ABC failed to capitalize on. (Chris)

House is the best thing Brian Singer has ever been involved with. (Krauthammer)

Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock. It’s like everything he’s done up to this point has been in service to this. (Mr. Middlebrow)

Though it actually started on stage, my vote is for The Odd Couple In the movie Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon are really too much actor for the roles, and Jack Lemmon is the wrong kind of neurotic -- anxious, not a fussbudget. On TV, Jack Klugman is just enough actor for Oscar and Tony Randall was just born to play Felix.
(Robert Fiore)

By any sort of objective professional standard, it has to be Lucille Ball. Pre-TV she was doing bad comedies for Columbia with guys like John Agar and heading back toward second-billing land. After a decade in TV she was able to buy RKO Studios. No other actor ever reached her level of success and power as a producer. (Along with Desi, of course, who qualifies for the best transition from Latin dance bands to TV.)
(Gerard Jones)

I guess I should say Alec Baldwin, but how about Jim Belushi? I love, love, love According to Jim, one of the most underrated comedies on TV. Who would have thought he’d survive Blues Brothers 2000 and Traces Of Red. (Larry Aydlette)

Ernest Dickerson. As director of photography for Spike Lee’s first few features, he brought a highly stylized color palette, beautiful compositions, crisp lighting, and a seamy and sweaty undercurrent to everything from Do the Right Thing to Jungle Fever. His own directorial efforts—including Juice and the truly awful Bulletproof (I paid money for this one, on a date, and I’ve still got an axe to grind a decade later)—are dicier propositions. Lately, though, he’s been on a roll, directing stellar episodes of superb shows—six or seven for The Wire, a couple for Weeds, a few hothouse episodes of ER, and Heroes apiece. So, his choice in TV shows is generally better than that of full-length screenplays. Perhaps he’s found his niche. (Walter Biggins)

I think I'll go with Carroll O'Connor. He was in some pretty decent movie fare (Point Blank, Kelly's Heroes), but it wasn't until he became Archie Bunker that his talents were truly allowed to flower. (Patrick)

Kathryn Harrold. She made several rather forgettable films in the 80s, but became a regular, and regularly wonderful, on TV, if usually only in small roles. I’ll Fly Away was one of my favorite shows in the early 90s, in part because of her role as the district attorney. She also had a great but small role in the short-lived Mister Sterling with Josh Brolin. (Weigard)

Krzystzof Kieslowski. Regardless of what medium we’re talking, The Decalogue is one of the defining works of the twentieth century. (Paul Clark)

This isn't easy - I don't watch much TV anymore - what I've seen in the last 20 years I've caught up with after the fact... since it should be someone I've actually seen - I'm tempted to say Fred MacMurray - a fine film career, and then a big TV career - though he's bland on TV. William Demerast then? though I'm tempted to go to something more basic - Edward Everett Horton, whose voice is utterly engrained in my head... (Weeping Sam)

Everyone who knows me knows I'm going to say Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so just to be different I'll say Eiji Tsuburaya. His rubber suits probably work better on the small screen in Ultraman than on the big screen in most Godzilla movies. (Chris Oliver)

Chevy Chase. That talk show was the most awesome thing I've ever seen. (The Bandit)

2) Living film director you most missing seeing on the cultural landscape regularly


Martin Brest. Seriously. Gigli was bad, but not that bad. (Peter Nellhaus)

Ken Russell. (Dave S.)

Hrm. That’s a good one. Oh, wait, I know. Peter Weir. Master and Commander is one of the most underrated films of the past couple of decades, as far as I’m concerned, and I think he’s only made a couple of movies that can be ignored outright. Everything else seems to me, to range between “interesting” and “phenomenal”. (Bill)

Richard Lester (Flower)

Samuel Fuller (I wish he could get the years back that were wasted trying to convince people he wasn't crazy or evil). Also, Alison Anders. (Erin)

Francis Ford Coppola. I think Youth Without Youth is a messy burst of exuberance and passion, and he needs to take that and run with it. Preferably more often than once a decade. (Chris)

This one stumped me for a couple of days, as I pondered the questions Dennis had offered up this time, and while I was tempted to list Francis Ford Coppola, I finally settled on Whit Stillman. Stillman has made two perfect comedies (Metropolitan and Barcelona) and one mixed success (Last Days of Disco, but in Stilman's defense, it's hard to make a good movie when Chloe Sevigny plays your heroine). And then he's disappeared for the last decade. The recent Criterion disc reveals a man still in full command of his verbal gifts and still passionately interested in the mechanics of cinematic storytelling-- so what gives? In an age of Ashton Kutcher, Stillman's graceful, Austen-like observations make him a crucial national resource, one which should be tapped far more often. (Brian Doan)

Francis Coppola, even if many of his movies admittedly fail, they fail in interesting ways. (Steven Santos)

I keep hoping that Peter Greenaway would seem more relevant to the greater public so that more of his films would be released either theatrically or on DVD around here. (Brian)

I wish that Stanley Tucci was more prominent and I was a fan of Whit Stillman, who seems to have dropped off the map. But mostly, I wish Michael Cimino’s career had not tanked so early. I see on Imdb that he has a film in production for 2009. To be honest, I would also welcome another Penny Marshall film. (John P.)

I would love to have seen more from Paul Brickman. (Mr. Middlebrow)

This will seem strange for someone who never seems to go away, but Quentin Tarantino. I think it's a shame that he takes so long to make a picture, and a shame that he lost his nerve after Jackie Brown tanked.(Robert Fiore)


Bill Forsyth most of all. Gregory's Girl, Local Hero and Comfort and Joy helped make the 1980s worthwhile. Bill, come back! Also Victor Erice, although he has never been a very public figure. I also agree with Bubblegum Cinephile about Whit Stillman. (Campaspe)

John Landis, he hasn't helmed a real movie since Blues Brothers 2000. Come on John, let's not have that be your coda. (Adam Ross)

Clare Peploe. She’s made three gems—High Season, Rough Magic, and Triumph of Love—over 18 years. Each one is radically different in time period, and they’re equally unclassifiable beyond that they’re all comic to some degree. She’s created her own genre—fancy-free, languid, gently sliding from one genre convention to the next without us being able to clearly identify the transition, and very, very sexy. (Walter Biggins)

Whatever happened to Lawrence Kasdan? Did he lose it? Or are we missing something wonderful? (Anne Thompson)

Elaine May, surely one of the prickliest and most original voices in American comedy. None of her films is easy to take, which probably explains why they’re not as popular as they really should be, but few directors have a more acerbic sensibility when it comes to portraying relationships onscreen, be they marriage or platonic friendship. May’s ramshackle style works perfectly in her seventies work- you can see the boom in several shots of Mikey and Nicky, fer chrissakes- but didn’t mesh nearly so well with the larger scope of Ishtar. But really, Hollywood bigwigs, it’s been twenty years. I don’t care how difficult May is or how big a flop Ishtar supposedly was, the world is better off with more May films than without them. (Paul Clark) (Paul, I love A New Leaf too!—Dennis)

I already miss Sydney Pollack...and yes, he's no longer living, but he was when you posted the quiz, so that's my answer...There's a part of me that has such a great affinity for his acting over his directing. He commanded the screen so well. And that cell phone ad of his that plays in cinemas was awesome. That might be how I always remember him. (Lucas McNelly)

Maybe he's not someone I "miss seeing on the cultural landscape," but I'm certainly looking forward to whatever Edgar Wright has to offer next, and particularly his next collaboration with Simon Pegg. (Stennie)

He's made some lousy films, but I can't believe that there's no room on the cultural landscape for Ralph Bakshi today. (Chris Oliver)

John Carpenter; sure, he still phones in some TV work now, but he hasn't directed a movie in seven long years; He still seems so cynical and funny and anarchic in interviews... but his MIA streak on the big screen and the seeming lack of inspiration in his post-1995 work suggests maybe he doesn't care anymore. (The Bandit)

3) Eugene Pallette or Charles Coburn


Pallette because of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington… though Coburn worked with Hitchcock. (Dave S.)

Eugene Pallette has a great face and an even better voice. (Schuyler Chapman)

"Let us be crooked, Jane, but never common." (Brian Doan)

Wow, that's a long time ago. (Brian)

Pallette purely on the strength of his addled patriarch in My Man Godfrey. (Mr. Middlebrow)

Eugene Pallette. Coburn always plays his particular type of character effectively, but you truly relish Pallette's performances. (Robert Fiore)

I want to say Coburn just to see how Karen reacts (and he was so great in The Lady Eve, The More the Merrier and The Green Years). But it's Pallette, for his voice, Friar Tuck and because he wins the Heaven Can Wait smackdown with that scene over the funny papers. Plus, he has me howling with laughter every time I see My Man Godfrey: "Take a look at the dizzy old gal with the goat." "I've had to look at her for 20 years. That's MRS. Bullock." "I'm terribly sorry!" "How do you think I feel?" (Campaspe)

Oh, Pallette for sure. I like Charles Coburn--no one has ever been better at being Charles Coburn, in fact. But Eugene is just so goofy. The final sequence of Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here includes one of the most surreal images in cinema history: the disembodied, luridly greenish head of Eugene Pallette flying toward us, singing. Beats the hell out of that slashed eyeball in Un Chien Andalou (Gerard Jones)

So I wrote this long missive on how wonderful James Coburn was – and then I reread the question. Dang. No comment. (Weigard) (You and the guy who used to do the marquee for my hometown movie theater! It was routine to see up there every so often something like “Charles Coburn in The President’s Analyst” or “Charles Coburn in Cross of Iron.” Of course, this is how I found out who Charles Coburn was!—Dennis)

Coburn was a serious talent, capable of a wide variety of roles, but just seeing Pallette (or especially hearing that croak of a voice) is enough to guarantee that “tonight, I’ll merry, merry be.” So Pallette by a nose. Sorry, Piggy. (Paul Clark)

4) Fill in the blank: “I pray that no one ever turns _____________ into a movie.”


Catcher in the Rye (Jonathan Lapper)

My life (Peter Nellhaus)

Pong (Dave S.)

If we’re talking about books, or something like that, then I’m open to somebody taking a shot at just about anything. The books are still the books, so even if the movie really chews on it hard, there’s really no harm done. Outside of that, I guess I would say “whatever new horseshit idea Ashton Kutcher just came up with”. (Bill)

The Family Guy because I f*****g hate that show and the publicity campaign accompanying the film version would probably give me fits. (Schuyler Chapman)

Any Salinger story (I just re-read Franny & Zooey) (Ryland Walker Knight)

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. "Who is John Galt?" Freddie Prinze Jr. (Chris)

The Catcher in the Rye, Aquaman, another Stephen King short story, My Mother the Car, Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut, Lost, or anything that George Lucas might be tempted to write and/or direct. (all for different reasons) (John P.)

If I were a praying man (and I'm not), I would pray that Ridley Scott never turns Blood Meridian into a movie, unless he were able to completely reinvent himself as a filmmaker. But I guess this is why I don't pray. (W. Australopithecus)

Star Wars, ever again. (Robert Fiore)

Gravity's Rainbow. (Anthony)

Spamalot, the musical version of Young Frankenstein, or any other Broadway shows based on classic films. It’s bad enough the Broadway draws on old movies to bring in the tourist crowd, but turning them back into movies again is just bizarre. Honestly, how many times will do they think they can get lucky like they did with Hairspray? (Paul Clark)

My deep, dark secrets? My sex life? Oh, who am I kidding? I'll probably do that myself. (Lucas McNelly)

Eh, I'm usually pretty down with anything, so nothing's too sacred to make or remake... though I do dread most boomer musical biopics. So I'll say The Gordon Lightfoot Story. (The Bandit)

5) Jane Greer or Veronica Lake

Veronica. She's responsible for 10% of my hits daily. People always want to see her naked. (Jonathan Lapper)

I like them both, but am more partial to taking Veronica out for a cup of joe. (Peter Nellhaus)

Lake, by a bang over an eye. (Dave S.)

Ooh, that's a tough choice-- how can one decide between Sullivan's Travels and Out of the Past? I'm giving the edge to Greer, but only because her introductory walk through that Mexican bar is so alluring, and the single shot I would choose if I had to define film noir. (Brian Doan)

Veronica Lake. To quote Greil Marcus (as well as I can remember), "Raymond Chandler called her 'Moronica' but who cares?" (Robert Fiore)

Oh, please! Jane Greer was an actress. Veronica Lake was a hairstyle. Greer in Out of the Past is the great Bad Girl in Hollywood history. But I will say that Veronica did not hurt Sullivan's Travels one little bit. In fact, her very blankness probably worked better for the character than any actress with personality could have. (Gerard Jones)

Lake left me so woozy in Sullivan’s Travels that I couldn’t think straight even when I was desperately trying to stay focused and catch all the jokes. Greer never left me punch-drunk, not even in Out of the Past. So, Lake. (Walter Biggins)

Greer. God, I hate Veronica Lake. (Stennie)

6) What was the last movie you saw in a theater? On DVD? And why?


I saw Opera Jawa in a theater, because films like that need to be supported. I saw Day of Wrath, not the Dreyer film, on DVD, because I was curious, and an incurable smartass. (Peter Nellhaus)

In the theatre, Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, because a friend wanted to go, and on DVD, Two-Lane Blacktop. I rented it because I liked what I’d read about it. It’s now one of my favourite movies. (Dave S.)

In the theater, it was Iron Man, and I saw it for the same reason everybody else saw it: Robert Downey, Jr. in a flying metal suit blowing up bad guys. And I loved it. On DVD, it was Ball of Fire. I saw that one because of how much good press it gets on this here website, and because of my growing love of Barbara Stanwyck, fostered in no small part, again, by this here website. And it’s a curious thing: I didn’t know before I saw the movie that it was co-written by Billy Wilder, and I’m starting to come to the conclusion that I don’t actually find Billy Wilder comedies very funny. I love his dramas, but not his comedies. However, while Ball of Fire didn’t make me laugh very often, I did SMILE an awful lot. And my love for Barbara Stanwyck ever increases. AND, out of the blue, the movie gives me one of the most genuinely and honestly touching moments I’ve ever seen. “Sweet Genevieve.” You didn’t ask about cable, but I also recently watched Count Yorga, Vampire, which I enjoyed immensely for all the wrong reasons. (Bill) (Let’s talk Count Yorga, Vampire sometime, Bill!—Dennis)

Thanks to a tip-off by Peter Nellhaus, 19-year-old Sophia Loren, smiling, singing, braless, bouncy and generally magnificent in the otherwise forgettable Too Bad She’s Bad (1954). Blowing Marilyn off the map, even her armpit hair was sexy. (Flickhead)

Theater - Speed Racer DVD - House of Games. Watched both in direct response to this blog's “Days of Speed Racer” post and comments thread. I loved Speed Racer and thought House of Games, which I last saw maybe eight or nine years ago, held up just fine, thanks. (Flower)

I think the last movie I saw in a theater was Southland Tales. I hated Donnie Darko, and everyone who liked that movie hated this one, so I figured that maybe I would like Southland. I was wrong. I watched The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant last night on DVD because, well, Fassbinder's amazing and I'd not seen that one yet. (Schuyler Chapman)

In theaters: Then She Found Me. On DVD: Daisy Miller (the 1974 Peter Bogdanovich version). Why? Two weeks ago, my girlfriend and I were supposed to go see Radney Foster in concert. We drove into Cleveland on a sunny afternoon and arrived at the Beachland Theater (the newspaper article said tickets would be available at the door). It was still a few hours until the show, but we thought we could get our tix early and then maybe grab a bite to eat. There was no one at the box office, so we decided to head to the basement record store that was also housed in the club. It was a very cool atmosphere, with stacks of vinyl, lots of vintage t-shirts, and a new wave/hipster ambience that felt inviting, rather than closed off. We asked the young man behind the counter how we might get tickets, and found out that the show had been cancelled, due to the sudden death of Foster's father. Shaken by the news, we decided to stay in the Cleveland area for the night, anyway, and maybe catch a movie. The Cedar Lee, Cleveland Heights' fabulous old (circa 1926) theater, which now shows indie and foreign films, was only about 20 minutes away, so we headed over to see what was playing. A number of good films were there, and we finally settled on Then She Found Me as one to see. It's very good, by the way, especially if you like your romcoms to be a bit prickly and uncertain.


As for Daisy Miller...That had been sitting on my TV table for a couple of months (thank god Netflix doesn't have late fees!), and I finally got around to it the other day. The film has a bad reputation, since it was a commercial flop, and since some folks can't imagine Cybill Shepherd in the title role. But I love Bogdanovich's 70s/early 80s work (They All Laughed is a lost masterpiece), and have been fascinated by Henry James ever since I read Rachel Cohen's brilliant anecdotal study A Chance Meeting (in which James plays a central role) and I was curious. It's not bad, actually-- it's full of beautiful long takes and lush location work in Switzerland and Italy, and Shepherd isn't terrible in the role, although I think she's miscast. The rest of the cast is excellent, especially the quietly controlling Eileen Brennan. (Brian Doan)

In the theatre: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull because it was inevitable. On DVD: Spartan, because I went to see Redbelt in the theatre and it was good, but I wanted to remember why Mamet is great. I think he directed Spartan pitch perfectly. (John P.)

Last movies I saw in the theater was a double bill of The Man I Killed, Ernst Lubitsch's only Hollywood drama, and The Scoundrel, one of the pictures Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur made in their short-lived New York outpost of Paramount, at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Though a drama, The Man I Killed has some great Lubitsch Touches. Early in the picture is a mass in celebration of the first anniversary of the French victory in World War I, and there's a shot along a row of pews with a sword scabbard trailing out of every one. Later in the movie when the erstwhile French soldier is out walking in the little German town with the fiancé of the German soldier he killed, the door chimes of the shops play a chorus wherever they go as the shopkeepers open their doors offscreen to look at the couple. The Scoundrel brings to mind how appallingly irresponsible Hecht and MacArthur were to allow their cynicism and contempt for Hollywood lead them to fritter away their chance to work outside it. Based on The Scoundrel it doesn't appear that much was lost. What Hecht and MacArthur saw as making movies for adults was transporting the values of commercial theater onscreen: Artificial characters proclaiming artificial dialog in artificial settings, with a visual style that amounts to "point the camera at the actors," wrapped in a fantasy redemption plot that would make Louis B. Mayer blush (it involves divine intervention). The ambitions of the Astoria project would actually be realized in Hollywood by Orson Welles, and again frittered away through self-indulgence. The strategy of finding a creative modus vivendi with the commercial film industry has over the years been far more successful than the strategy of trying to work outside of it, if only for the reason that the commercial industry gives a filmmaker access to collaborators just as talented as himself.

The last movie I saw on DVD was Left, Right and Centre, a political satire starring Ian Carmichael and Alistair Sim, from a Region 2 collection of Alistair Sim pictures. Back during the golden age of British movie comedy spearheaded by Ealing Studios comedies often starring Alec Guinness, there was a second string from other studios often starring or featuring Sim. This was definitely second stringy, but with moments, mostly thanks to Sim. I watched it because Sim was in it. (Robert Fiore)

The baby makes it pretty hard to get out to a movie, all I've seen this year is In Bruges. I'm watching The Day the Earth Stood Still right now, just had to hear Bernard Herrman's Gort theme. (Adam Ross)


In a theater: I (Heart) Huckabees. I wanted to see what all the furor was about, but sadly the most memorable thing about it was Naomi Watts in a swimsuit. I work nights, so it's difficult for me to see movies in a theater, and they really aren't designed for my age group (I'm 52) anymore. On DVD: Hands Across The Table. Carole Lombard is my all-time favorite actress. (VP81955)

Today saw a double billing of Baby Mama and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Why? Because I've been sick for a week and I was going stir crazy. Off to the theater. We'd already seen everything good so it came down to these two flops. (El Gringo)

Theater: Iron Man. I wanted to take my nephew to see something that I myself wanted to see. Robert Downey Jr. and Jeff Bridges made sure neither of us was disappointed. DVD: Once Upon a Time in the West. My father likes westerns, and he likes Leone, but he'd somehow never seen this before. That opening ten minutes never gets old. And I'll take any excuse I can to watch Claudia Cardinale at her most beautiful. (Patrick)

In theater: The Strangers, two evenings ago. The marketing campaign (with that great one-sheet hooked me in, I must admit. On DVD: Pirates of Blood Island (John Gilling, 1962) -- as a palate cleanser for The Strangers, and for the simple reason that I wanted to see a Hammer-mounted pirate action film. It didn’t disappoint. (Aaron)

In a theatre: Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? because it was playing in a beautiful 16mm print as the second half of a double-bill also featuring a personal favorite film maudit The Last Movie. A truly bizarre night at the cinema. How can I pass that up? On DVD: Ozu's Passing Fancy because I love Ozu and it's the last of his four silents available on R1 DVD I hadn't seen before. In fact, it's the last of the four Japanese silents available on R1 DVD I hadn't seen before! (Brian Darr)

In the theatre, I'd have to go all the way back to No Country for Old Men. On DVD, Lars and the Real Girl. Hmmm... and you ask why? I can tell you this much: since getting my big screen HDTV in January, I haven't felt much of a need go back to a theatre. (Stennie)

Theater-- Baby Mama, because Iron Man wasn't playing in Glendale (where I was doing other things Saturday), and because my wife wanted to support a comedy with two female leads, and because I generally think Tina Fey is great and 30 Rock is the best sitcom on TV right now. DVD-- Female Prisoner 701 Scorpion, as the climax of a 70's women-who-kick-ass triple feature (Switchblade Sisters and Sugar Hill started it off) for Memorial Day/My Birthday. (Actually, since I wrote this, I've seen the amazing Blast of Silence on DVD) (Chris Oliver)

7) Name an actor you think should be a star

Fairuza Balk. No, seriously, Fairuza Balk. I'm sure I'll catch hell for that answer. Jonathan Lapper)

Maggie Q is a star in Asia, damn it! (Peter Nellhaus)

I don’t know…there are so many. I’ve recently become incredibly impressed with Robert Sean Leonard’s work on the TV show House. His performance in the most recent season finale was devastating. (Bill)

Ciaran Hinds (Flower)

Chiwetel Ejiofor. And I predict an Oscar nomination within the next five years. (John P.)

Having seen Shotgun Stories just a couple of weeks ago, I will have to say Michael Shannon. (W. Australopithecus)

I guess I am supposed to name someone contemporary, so I pick the gorgeous, mesmerizing but underutilized Maria Bello. I also think Benoit Magimel should be a worldwide big name, although I have no idea if his English is up to Hollywood. As for neglected names from the old days, I'm working on a whole list of those. (Campaspe)

Bruno S. (Bemis)

David Tennant, the star of Dr. Who and Viva Blackpool, is intense, sexy, smart, lovable. He just needs the right breakthrough part. (Anne Thompson)

I remember a few years ago when I watched The Prestige for the first time, I found myself really enjoying the performance by the actress playing Hugh Jackman’s wife at the beginning of the film. I recognized the face, but it took me a while to place who it was. Finally, it came to me- Piper Perabo, who I don’t think I’d seen in a movie since her awesome turn in Lost and Delirious. Had it really been five years? And after her character exits the film, I began to miss her, wishing maybe she’d been cast in Scarlett Johansson’s role instead. Anyway, seeing her again onscreen made me think about her career, which never quite panned out as it should have. I considered the films she’s made- Prestige and Lost aside, a long string of forgettable roles in subpar movies. Gorgeous, talented, and charismatic, with a natural and engaging screen presence, she deserves much better than she’s gotten so far. Perhaps her name is a problem? Doesn’t seem to be an issue for Shia LaBeouf. (Paul Clark)

Should - it's not something I particularly wish on anyone, doesn't look like fun to me. Deserves to be, when it comes to talent: Sam Rockwell. At first I thought he was just a goofball, but he turns out to be quite versatile, he's done well in supporting and leads, comedy and drama.The same (minus the goofball thing) goes for Peter Sarsgaard. (California)

8) Foxy Brown or Coffy

Foxy Brown has the always delightful Sid Haig. Did I tell you that Pam Grier and I went to the same high school? (Peter Nellhaus) (Peter, you had a golden opportunity here, man…!- Dennis)

Coffy, because she was the Godmother of them all! (Dave S.)

Coffy! Can't beat the knives in the hair. Also a woman walking alone on the beach is my favorite way to end a film, see also: Under the Sand! (Erin)

Only Coffy will put razor blades in her 'fro! (Chris)

(*Hangs head in shame*) I've never seen either, but can either be bad if they both star Pam Grier? (Brian Doan) (Brian, the answer is no—Dennis)

I've only watched the male-dominated blaxpoitation flicks for some reason. (Krauthammer)

“You pink-ass corrupt honky judge, take your little wet noodle outta here and if you see a man anywhere send him in because I do need a MAN!” Foxy! (John P.)

Jackie Brown (Mr. Middlebrow)

Foxy, because she's a whole lotta woman. (Campaspe)

I'm pretty sure Coffy has more nudity. (Adam Ross)

Whichever one shows more of Ms. Grier, which I believe from exacting scientific research would be Coffy. (Larry Aydlette)

Coffy, Coffy, and more Coffy (Pacheco)

Aaarrrrgghh!!! Pacheco beat me to it. (Coffy, Coffy and more Coffy) My fault for being so slow. (Peter Nellhaus)

Neither. Go with Friday Foster (Walter Biggins)

I have signed one-sheets for both, but I’m of the same mindset as Jack Hill when he claims that Pam Grier films progressively got worse as she got more glamorous. So, Coffy. (Aaron)

I never, ever pick against someone named Foxy. Then again, there's the one name thing. How to choose? Damn you, Dennis! (Lucas McNelly)

9) Favorite TV show still without its own DVD box set


As sure as my name is Boris Karloff, this is a Thriller. (Peter Nellhaus)

The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley. Also, Get a Life. At least there were about six episodes of the latter released, but I need the complete series. (Bill)

Spaced, which I hear is being rectified. (Chris)

The Six Million Dollar Man. If the glimpses of similar childhood faves that I’ve gotten from Hulu are any indication (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) I’m probably much better off with my memories of the show as seen through the uncritical eyes of a ten-year-old. (Mr. Middlebrow)

My favorite TV show without its own DVD box set, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's Not Only But Also, will never get a DVD box set because of the ghastly British practice of erasing "light entertainment" programming in order to re-use the videotape. Most of Cook and Moore is gone, and a lot of groundbreaking work by Spike Milligan, and it's a stroke of luck that Monty Python escaped. It was the most appalling combination of stupidity, snobbery and penny wise/pound foolish (denominations appropriate in this case) thinking imaginable. Actually it's unimaginable that people would be so foolish as to throw away the money they spent on talent to save a much smaller amount on raw materials. (Robert Fiore)

This one’s a tossup. Max Headroom has still not been released on DVD. I haven’t seen this sci-fi show since I was a kid and I’m not sure its ideas would hold water 20 years later, but I’d like to find out. On the flipside of the same coin, I’m pretty sure the humor in Ralph Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures would be much hipper, stranger, and more subversive to me now than it did as a 12-year-old. (Walter Biggins)

10) Jack Elam or Neville Brand

I was a kid in the seventies - Jack Elam. (Jonathan Lapper)

Elam ‘cause of Kiss Me Deadly, though both of these guys could stare down just about anybody. (Why do I always feel guilty about answering these “A or B” questions? Is it because I’m Canadian?) (Dave S.)

Jack Elam. He looks like both of his eyes want to kill you, but for different reasons. (Bill)

Jack Elam, especially if he’s rocking the beard. (Schuyler Chapman)

Aside from Stalag 17, I'm honestly pretty unfamiliar with both, which says something about me, I guess, and also about the generational gaps that sometimes exist in the film blogosphere. (Brian Doan)

Although Neville Brand was in an Anthony Mann movie, Elvis Presley movie, and Tobe Hooper movie, Jack Elam was in Once Upon a Time in the West. Jack Elam wins. (Krauthammer)

Jack Elam, if only for his summary of the stages of a Hollywood career: "Who's Jack Elam?" "We could do this cheaper if we got Jack Elam." "Get me Jack Elam!" "Get me a Jack Elam type!" "Who's Jack Elam?" (Robert Fiore)

Neville, for Stalag 17 and DOA (Campaspe)

I admit I have no idea what you're talking about. I like Edam cheese, though (Middento)

Neville Brand, for Eaten Alive, That Darn Cat!, and The Ninth Configuration, and countless others (and for not appearing on Home Improvement as Elam did). (Aaron)

Elam. Though sadly, like many thirtysomethings, this great Western character actor is known almost exclusively to me (beyond the Leone movie) as the fake doctor in The Cannonball Run. (The Bandit)

11) What movies would top your list of movies you need to revisit, for whatever reason?

Zazie dans la Metro, Omicron, Convicts 4, and anything that Albert Zugsmith had anything to do with. (Peter Nellhaus)

Pretentious as it sounds, its mostly foreign films that come to mind when thinking of an answer to this question… Films like Rashomon, The 400 Blows, Breathless, Umberto D… And the reason I would want to revisit classics foreign films is to remind myself of how great they are. (Dave S.)


Is this the question about movies you didn’t like, but everyone else seemed to love, so you want to check them out again to see if you missed something the first time around? If so, then my answer is Being John Malkovich and Fight Club. If the question is more general, than my answer is Lawrence of Arabia, Barry Lyndon and Picnic at Hanging Rock. (Bill)

A Perfect World, Sid and Nancy, I'm Not There, Alphaville, Psycho (the Van Sant version) and Happy Together and Kiss Me Deadly (Schuyler Chapman)

Nashville, Goodbye South, Goodbye, Chimes at Midnight, Millennium Actress, Fight Club, My Darling Clementine, Rohmer, Ozu, Chaplin, all those Costa films I saw a couple months ago, but I think Casa de Lava may be a lot better than I originally thought upon a first viewing... and on and on and on.... (Ryland Walker Knight)


The Rules of the Game, the richest movie ever made; Breathless, the one which most radically re-shaped my cinematic imagination; anything from Errol Flynn's late 30s period; nearly anything by Howard Hawks and Francois Truffaut; and The Godfather films, which stop me cold and force me to watch them whenever they appear on TV. (Brian Doan)

My problem isn't needing to revisit movies, it's revisiting ones I love too often, thus leaving less time to for the ones on my "drat, I still need to see that" list. If I loved it, I want to see it again. (Campaspe)

My one and only viewing of The Magnificent Ambersons left a sour taste in my mouth, I probably need to see it again before writing it off for good. (Adam Ross)

The Court Jester, because the people who are appalled when I say I can't stand Danny Kaye tell me it's The One. All the Ernst Lubitsches with Jeanette MacDonald because I've only seen a couple and that was before I kept reading how great Lubitsch (and his fans) thought she was.Mulholland Drive, because my wife and I felt we'd finally made sense of its overlapping realities after a couple of hours of post-movie dissection, and now I'd like to see if our ideas hold up to actually seeing it. (Gerard Jones)

The 400 Blows, because I really didn't like it. Blue Velvet, because I hated it. Radio Flyer, because I'm trying to remember if the story is supposed to be realistic, or if it's all actually an "imaginary situation" that allows the kids to escape from the trauma of an abusive parent. (Pacheco)

The Puppetmaster>, because was too ignorant first time I saw it. Ditto for Alphaville and many others. (Marc Raymond)

The Far Country and Bend of the River top the list because I've never seen them on the big screen and they're scheduled to play the Stanford Theatre next week. Though since they're Universal titles I'm going to call the theatre ahead of time to make sure the prints booked weren't destroyed in the fire. (Brian Darr)

Among older films - Kurosawa's The Idiot, which I saw on VHS many years back and didn't get much out of... Dreyer's Joan of Arc, just because it's been too long since I've seen it.... Rio Bravo, ditto.... more recently: The Ice Storm comes to mind... I need to rewatch some Cronenberg's - I might like them better. There are filmmakers I've seen once and want to see again - Olmi, Ichikawa, etc... And - RC reminds me - a couple Coen Brothers films - actually, about half of them, but especially The Man Who Wasn't There... (Weeping Sam)

Point Blank. This should be right up my alley, I love Boorman, I love Marvin... hell, I love the eight billion movies it inspired. For some odd, odd reason, the one and only time I saw it, on badly panned and scanned ancient VHS, it left me cold. (The Bandit)

12) Zodiac or All the President’s Men


Brian Doan's answer will be All The President's Men - just wanted to put that out there. Mine is Zodiac. (Jonathan Lapper)

Zodiac, ‘cause it’s fresher in my memory, and it’s about obsession with no definite resolution… (Dave S.)

Zodiac. I’m a fan of both, but Zodiac is one of those unexpected masterpieces we rarely see. At least, it was unexpected for me, given that, previously, I was at best ambivalent about David Fincher. Along with everything else that Zodiac does well, it is, with the possible exception of High and Low, the greatest police procedural I have ever seen. (Bill)

It’s a sign of changing generations that bloggers generally prefer Zodiac, a good, not great, work…but filled with that sense of ambiguity championed by those with abbreviated attention spans. I’m sure they see the Redford/Pakula film as hopelessly dated, when, in fact, it’s still fresh provided one is capable of appreciating its many qualities. It’s 2008 and here we are talking about All the President’s Men (1976). Thirty years from now, will anyone give a hoot in hell about Zodiac? (Flickhead)

Oh, All The President's Men, no question! Zodiac is okay, but Men is one of the three best American films of the 70s, and one of the most inexhaustible suspense films ever made. (It's also a great teaching tool). (Brian Doan)


All The President’s Men. But these kind of choices should get Cozzalio put on double-secret probation. (Larry Aydlette)

Zodiac. The Watergate case probably had more obvious far-reaching effects than the Zodiac murders, but we’re not talking about real life, but rather its cinematic reflection. And in that respect, Fincher’s movie wins hands down. All the President’s Men is a fine film, but it’s a fairly straightforward story of men whose intelligence and dogged perseverance gets them what they want. Zodiac isn’t so simple. Graysmith, Toschi, Avery, and the others work just as hard on their case as Woodward and Bernstein, but real life gets in the way of them tracking down the killer. Their best simply isn’t good enough, for many small reasons and a few big ones as well. It’s a more haunting variation on the theme, and a more mature one as well. (Paul Clark)

All the President’s Men. Zodiac was only okay, despite the presence of the sublime Robert Downey, Jr., but President was riveting. (Sharon)

So, so close. If only because I've seen it a billion times and it's stood the test of time, and was a legit product of its time rather than a flawless approximation of that era, I'll go with President’s. (The Bandit)

(Next up, part 2: Important film comedies, the Worst Movie Title Ever, reasons to blog, blasphemy, death and more difficult-to-impossible choices.)

CHRISTMAS IN JULY, HOLLYWOOD STYLE

First of all, here’s wishing everyone a safe and sane 4th of July weekend as well as a reminder straight off the labels of many small and large-scale fireworks I detonated on the holiday as a kid: DO NOT PUT IN MOUTH! (This applies to searing hot explosives and not, of course, to your favorite nitrate-infused and lovingly grilled Farmer John product.)

My friend Tom Sutpen, proprietor of that visually splendiferous oasis in the blogsphere known as If Charlie Parker Was A Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats (where an image from the lost Metropolis footage can be seen), has ensured that my own three-dayer gets off to a wonderful start. Tom has unearthed the magical picture of Sergio Leone you see above, I’m guessing taken on the set of Once Upon a Time in the West (#382 in his “Artists in Action” series) and kindly bequeathed it to this blog. Since opening the saloon doors to this site nearly four years ago I’ve searched for an image like this but never found one. Thanks to Tom (and Stephen and Richard and old friend Kimberly) the search is over. In addition to getting the spotlight here, it’s going to take up permanent residence on my sidebar as well. My ceramic Buddha, my St. Christopher medal, my good luck charm has finally arrived.

The image arrives just in time to help highlight another Leone series coming up here in Los Angeles, yet another chance to see the director’s major works on the big screen. The Aero Theater, in conjunction with the American Cinematheque, will be screening the great Leone films near the end of this month, and as obvious as it sounds, if you’re in this city and have never seen them bigger and wider than a 60” plasma screen this is an opportunity of which you must avail yourself. The Dollars movies are screening out of order, for some reason, but that’s no reason to grumble. Thursday, July 24, is the night to see The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1966). Then the next night you can make your way back to Montana Avenue and 19th in Santa Monica for a double feature of A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965)—this is one of the two nights I’ll be at the Aero (though there is a crucial conflict, which I’ll mention in a minute). Saturday night, July 26, the 165-minute director’s cut of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) screens—get there early, know what I mean? And on Sunday night, July 27, the director’s swansong, the original 226-minute version of Once Upon a Time in America (1984) gets another showing. But the engagement I’m most looking forward to comes Wednesday night—it’s Leone’s rarely screened Duck, You Sucker (A Fistful of Dynamite) (1971), a movie which I have never seen theatrically—this is the big treat of July, to be sure.

The trouble is, as good as repertory and revival cinema is in Los Angeles at this moment in time, there’s certain to be conflicts when planning to attend one-time-only screenings of this sort, and the last weekend of July has a couple of doozies in store, for me at least. Saturday night, July 26, the Alex Film Society is showing Lawrence of Arabia, which should be spectacular indeed in the palatial confines of this magnificent Glendale theater. But there’s an out here-- Lawrence screens at 1:00 p.m. as well as 7:00 p.m. that day, so it’s entirely possible that one could be witness to the greatest of Lean and Leone on a single day in July (and presumably live to tell the tale). Not so the night before, when the Dollars double bill is in direct conflict with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art screening of Ernst Lubitsch’s final film, the delightful Cluny Brown (1945), starring Jennifer Jones in the title role and Charles Boyer. Cluny Brown is part of LACMA’s July tribute to Boyer, and as such will be making Saturday, July 26 an even more impossibly bountiful evening for cineastes with its screening of Max Ophuls’ sublime masterpiece The Earrings of Madame de… (1953). On one night, the masterpieces of Lean, Leone and Ophuls. Remember back in the days before the invention of the Betamax when a standard complaint was that there would be nothing on TV to watch, and then on one night, all scheduled at the same time, three must-see shows? Marvelous as it is, TiVo can’t possibly solve this dilemma!

Just to add fuel to the fire, the Cinematheque will be celebrating Blake Edwards’ 86th birthday that day with a 3:00 pm screening of The Great Race (1965), Edward’s loving tribute to silent comedy starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon and featuring perhaps the largest-scale pie fight in movie history. (Another part of their family matinee series, a compilation of great shorts by the likes of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Laurel & Hardy, called Silent Clowns, screens July 12.) The Cinematheque’s Blake Edwards Retrospective runs July 10-17 and will feature Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961; July 10); a double bill of The Pink Panther (1964) and Return of the Pink Panther (1975) on July 11; two more from the Clouseau series on July 12-- The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) and Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978); two with Julie Andrews on July 13-- Victor/Victoria (1982) and Darling Lili (1970); the great Hollywood poison-pen letters S.O.B. (1981) and The Party (1968); and on July 17 Days of Wine and Roses (1962) along with Experiment in Terror (1962). This last double bill will be introduced by Los Angeles Times film critic Kevin Thomas.

And as if life at the Aero weren’t already interesting enough in July, how about four great Jean-Luc Godard double features? They’re all on DVD, and mostly good quality (except maybe La Chinoise), but that’s still no substitute for a darkened theater. Friday, July 18, the Aero features Breathless (1960) along with A Woman is a Woman (1961); see Pierrot le Fou (1965) alongside Masculine Feminine (1966) on July 19; a rare screening of Alphaville (1965) on the same bill with La Chinoise (1967); and finally, on Wednesday, July 23, Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967) along with Band of Outsiders (1964).


This should get you out to see Pierrot le Fou on the big screen…

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I just got back from ogling a great print of Kenji Mizoguchi’s stunning Sansho the Bailiff (1954) at the New Beverly Cinema, which I was so glad to see on the big screen, even though Criterion’s DVD is just about perfect. I was also glad to be able to say hi to owner Michael Torgan and thank him personally for bringing this one back-- it shared the bill with Ugetsu monogatari (1953), one of my favorites which I had to miss. Michael is doing his part to make sure the Independence Day weekend is special on Los Angeles movie screens with a terrific Friday-Saturday (July 4-5) double bill of Joseph von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1930) featuring the incomparable Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings, up next to Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s personal response to that film, 1981’s Lola (1981) starring Barbara Sukowa. Then the holiday weekend concludes with the beginning of a five-day engagement of perhaps Ridley Scott’s finest four-and-a-half hours—the “final cut” of Blade Runner (1981) paired with the “director’s cut” of Alien (1979). Later in the month the New Beverly showcases classic Monty Python-- Life of Brian (1979) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974) on July 25-26; James Toback’s Fingers (1978) and Exposed (1983) on July 27-28, with the writer-director in attendance for Sunday night’s screening; a Grindhouse Film festival tribute to Ted. V. Mikels on Tuesday, July 29; and finally, Enzo Castellari’s Inglorious Bastards (1978) with surprise second feature on July 30 and 31. Castellari will appear in person on July 30, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a certain other director with a distinctly Italian surname showed up as well.

But the New Beverly’s July showcase is Mondo Diablo, the two-week festival programmed by screenwriter Diablo Cody that begins on July 11. As will come as no great surprise to regular readers of this blog I have no love whatsoever for Juno, and I find that I’m either a little too old or a little too little enamored of the ’80s to appreciate most of Cody's festival picks. But lovers of ‘80s kitsch will groove on her double bills of Xanadu (1980) starring Olivia-Newton John and Gene Kelly with Labyrinth (1985) starring David Bowie (July 13-15); Fright Night (1985) alongside A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)—okay, I might come out for that one July 18-19; Midnight Madness (1980) with co-hit Wet Hot American Summer (2001), the postmodern Meatballs, slated for July 20-22; and Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) paired up with Pretty in Pink (1986), the most revered of the non-John Hughes-directed John Hughes movies on July 23-24. Cody kicks off the fest July 11-12 with a nod to the Reitmans in her life-- elder statesman Ivan (Stripes, 1981) and whippersnapper Jason (Thank You for Smoking, 2005), who just happens to have directed that movie she won an Oscar for writing. The cream of the Mondo Diablo fest has to be, however, her one nod to pre-Reagan-era life, a compelling Maysles Brothers documentary doubling of Grey Gardens (1975) and the notorious Gimme Shelter (1970). I can’t feign too much enthusiasm for Cody’s slate of movies, but I bet there’s a whole passel of Los Angeles SLIFR readers who will dig ‘em just fine, and to them I say support your only locally owned and operated full-time repertory cinema, head to the New Beverly in July and enjoy he hell out of ‘em! Me, I’m just thanking my lucky stars Inglorious Bastards isn’t playing on July 26!

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Finally, it’s getting late and I haven’t had time to peruse the July schedule for The Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles, but that doesn’t mean you can’t. Click on the links for their Silent Wednesdays series ”Silent Sirens”; Music Thursdays ”Don’t Knock the Rock ‘08”; Early Fridays “The Female Gaze” (this one sounds great!); Late Fridays “Summer Camp”; Early Saturdays ”John Huston’s Beautiful Losers”; and Late Saturdays Holyfuckingshit Series, this month featuring ”Gore Comedies” (not only is July good in the series, but the August theme—“When Animals Attack”—is pretty damned special too!). And when you click on these links, be sure to check in and tell me what I’ve missed by not doing a full and proper write-up! I need as many heads-up as I can get!

Dammit, I didn’t mean to stay up this late. But this is what happens when there’s so much good stuff on L.A. screens to talk about—and on top of that, my shorts are on fire to see Hellboy II: The Golden Army and The X-Files: I Want to Believe as well, both coming out this month. Okay, well, I’d better get to bed soon. The missus and I are taking our daughters out to see the Werner Herzog documentary Encounters at the End of the World tomorrow morning—might as well get ‘em started on their apocalyptic beauty kick early, right?



And then there’s fireworks tomorrow night too. Again, I hope everyone has a ripping good holiday and makes it out the other end happy and safe and ready for another great month of movies and of life, wherever you live. All the best from me and mine to you and yours, and I’ll talk to you next week when “Double Secret Probation” month continues!

SYMPATHY FOR THE BEDEVILED

I have always had an extreme aversion to the portrayal of rape on the screen. I’ve certainly seen enough graphic depictions of it, in films like Death Wish (1974), Lipstick (1976), Man Bites Dog (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Rob Roy (1995), Showgirls (1995) and even The Sopranos, and each time I do I feel like crawling as far out of my own skin as might be possible. (After hearing enough sane and rational voices talk about its virtues or lack thereof, I could not bring myself to see Irreversible, and I have not seen it to this day.) This aversion has a lot to do with natural empathy for the victim of a violent crime, I think. But it also has something to do, at least for me, with the agonizing realization I often have as a viewer that, given my status as a relatively strong male, it is perfectly within my physical capability to enact this kind of violence myself. I don’t ever worry that I ever would commit such heinous acts—the requisite hatred and/or fear of women does not, thank God, reside within me. But the ability to identify with rage, to understand it to some degree in such a gender-specific crime is a source of profound unsettlement for me that gets stirred up quite a bit whenever I see a film that puts rape at the forefront of its themes or of individual scenes. I cannot help but be repelled at what I’m seeing, and even in a relative innocuous scene like Candice Rialson’s nasty encounter with a customer in the projection booth of a drive-in in Hollywood Boulevard (1976) my fear for and, yes, identification with the victim is often too much to bear. But such scenes raise a lot of questions for me about what men are capable of, and how far away some of us are from venting those fears and frustrations and acting on such violent impulses. I know I’m not capable of such violence, but the fact of my maleness allows me to understand that I could be, even if I didn’t want to be, if I were subject to the kind of predatory impulses that separate rape and rapists from the perpetration of benign, consensual sexual contact.

This willingness to access understanding of the unspeakable lashings out of a destroyed soul is at the heart of Matthias Glasner’s grueling character study The Free Will (Der Freie Wille) (2006). Created in collaboration with lead actor and co-writer Jurgen Vogel, who won the Best Actor awards at the Chicago and Tribeca film festivals for his performance as Theo, a brutal, haunted rapist, The Free Will is not so much a critique of a sexualized society, as critic Ian Johnston suggests on the back cover of the gorgeous new DVD package from Benten Films, but instead a terrifyingly intimate glimpse onto the hardships of a convicted sexual predator’s attempt to reconcile his profound need to meaningfully connect with women and the vile impulses that make his attempt to re-enter society after nine years away in prison so awfully difficult.


One thing that characterizes Glasner’s intelligent approach, an approach that hands over a huge parcel of trust to his audience, is the degree to which he is unwilling to sentimentalize Theo or his plight. Our first glimpse of Theo is one in which we, as viewers, are thrust uncomfortably close to him—a close-up in which heretofore undiscovered subterranean disturbances are reflected in his mournful eyes and restless manner. We see him fly into a rage over a perceived slight by some teenage kitchen coworkers and hit the road, leaving presumably yet another menial, dead-end job in the dust of his uncontrolled anger. As he flies down the road, seething behind the wheel of his car, he passes a young woman riding a bicycle. Theo then circles back around, pulls off to the side of the road and waits for her to pass. Had I availed myself of information about The Free Will and what comes next, including David Fear’s excellent essay in the DVD booklet, I may have opted out of seeing it. But even given the intense level of pain involved in watching the film I’m glad I endured it. Theo grabs the woman and submits her to a ghastly beating, humiliation and animalistic penetration, played out with cuts but otherwise in agonizing real time—the scene takes nearly 10 minutes as Theo, devoid of any emotion save the sexualized rage he expresses during the penetration itself, toys with her (and himself) before going through with his assault. It is characterized by Theo’s despairing reticence, as well as the agonizing cries of his victim, who lies just off-screen or out of frame awaiting her fate. (After a while I had to shut off the sound.)

The difference, it seems to me, between The Free Will and Irreversible (and I may be getting into hot water, having never seen Noe’s film) is that Noe’s long-take set piece is, by trusted accounts, designed as a grueling audience endurance test whose point of view is that of the victim’s, which is as good a way as any to ensure that the audience feel similarly assaulted. Glasner and Vogel’s achievement is far more daring, in my view, in that they are sparing no ugliness in letting us know exactly what this rapist, the protagonist of the film, is capable of. True, Theo’s attack on the bicyclist is a harrowing scene and we cannot help but identify in some way with the poor woman subjected to these horrors. But the movie is going to go someplace very dark indeed in asking us, after seeing what we’ve seen, to follow this man in his struggle to overcome the unknowable desires within him to act out this perhaps untamable sexual hostility. Our capability for sympathy for this bedeviled bastard will be put to the test as much as his own ability to cope with the brutish dissonance inside his head.

The Free Will doesn’t take easy shots at the ubiquity of sexualized images in advertising and in the mall-culture fashion of young women. Theo is frequently seen framed with these images, but Glasner and Vogel are not so naïve as to suggest that Theo’s rage is an inevitable response to them. They exist simply as part of the fabric of reality with which he must integrate and respond to responsibly if he hopes to survive. A friend at a halfway house where he lands just out of detention suggests that the journey Theo is about to take will be difficult as hell, and he couldn’t be more right; Theo sublimates his energies, sexual and otherwise, into joyless exercise, endless repetitions of movement designed to keep his mind from going places it ought not venture, but he suspects, as do we, that another breakdown is inevitable. The suspense in The Free Will is less artful and more a looming sense of unshakeable dread—it’s just a matter of when and where, not if the rage will be loosed again.

Sabine Timoteo and Jurgen Vogel in The Free Will

When he meets Nettie (Sabine Timoteo), a young woman scarred by a gnarled relationship with her own father, the possibility for redemption is dangled in front of them both. Even as he struggles with the dark impulses which are not staved off by his masturbatory gestures of release, Theo allows himself to get close to this woman, even love her, and for a time it seems their beaten, burdened souls are well-matched. But Vogel has already accessed the wild animal in this man’s soul; that atavistic nature may be put off temporarily but cannot, in the end, be denied. It’s a testament to the grace within Glasner and Vogel’s unflinching but humanistic timbre that following the couple from their tentative tenderness through Theo’s desperate, stabbing rejection of Nettie and their ultimate reunion, which occasions the movie’s only true demonstration of the free will its title alludes to, is as heartening and illuminating of the trials of meaningful human contact as it is difficult to endure.

Timoteo is raw and unadorned in her simplicity as an actress, which is not to say her portrayal isn’t nuanced but rather that it reflects a recognizable realism, a subtle refusal to traffic in melodramatic flourishes that bolsters the conviction of her performance and ultimately gives us access to moments that seem private, intimate, unblemished by pretense. (The movie’s only misstep, however, involves Nettie’s encounter with one of Theo’s previous victims which ends in a ghastly indulgence of just such a melodramatic impulse. Nettie’s questions of the woman are rewarded with a nasty turnabout assault in a restroom borne of Theo’s victim’s suppressed, unarticulated rage. It’s an unexpected moment that rings no less false because of its unexpected brutality; this catharsis for the perpetrator never translates into a meaningful act in terms of Nettie’s character—there is little doubt that Nettie already knows the agony of violation.)

But the movie belongs to Vogel, whose performance approaches heights of physical and emotional bravery the likes of which I’ve rarely witnessed in a movie. He infuses Theo with a haunted sensibility that is simultaneously guarded yet less than forbidding. The transformation from the howling beast of the movie’s opening sequence to well-groomed, sincere ex-convict is about the only gesture Vogel makes to the audience to get us on the character’s side. Instead, he steeps us in the detailed behavior of a man in constant thrall to a very personal evil; each gesture of repetitive exercise, each furtive glance at passing women on the street contains the ingredients for emotional and physical catastrophe, and the actor comports himself with a subtle awareness of this truth even at his most physically confident. The war within Theo is part of his body as well as his mind, and Vogel brings us to a stringent, despairing understanding of the end of hope for beauty in this man’s wounded soul. That we finally see him as a man and not simply as a beast, without untoward, unearned pleas for sympathy, is one of the glories of Vogel’s performance, and of The Free Will itself.

(The Free Will is available on DVD from Benten Films.)

METROPOLIS UNEARTHED!

Leave it to Fritz Lang to steal Animal House’s thunder!

According to reports out of Germany, as related by David Hudson at Green Cine Daily, apparently the original version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, long thought to be lost, is anything but. As Hudson relates, according to ZEITMagazin, "The most important silent film in German history can, from this day forward, be considered rediscovered." The movie was significantly cut down, by as much as one-quarter of the footage, from its original Berlin premiere version by Paramount for U.S. distribution and thought to be lost forever. Hudson relays the rest of the story so far:

"In 1928, Adolfo Z Wilson, head of Terra, a distribution company, secured a copy of what Die Zeit is calling the 'long version'… and took it with him back home to Buenos Aires. Manuel Peña Rodríguez, a film critic, then acquired the film rolls for his private collection, and there they stayed until he sold them to a national museum in Argentina in the 60s. A copy of these rolls then wound up at the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires.

Paula Félix-Didier, who's quietly relayed this sequence of events to Die Zeit journalist Karen Naundorf so that the story would break in Germany, took over direction of the museum this January. Félix-Didier's ex-husband heads the Film Department of the Museum for Latin American Art in Buenos Aires and he heard from a fellow who runs a Cineclub there that when he last screened Metropolis, he was amazed at how long the film ran on. That's when they delved into the archives and discovered the scenes no one believed would ever be seen again.”

The F.W. Murnau Foundation will be heading up efforts in Buenos Aires to restore the rediscovered scenes and present them to the public in the near future. Kind of beats the hell out of a colorized version with Loverboy, Freddie Mercury and Pat Benatar on the soundtrack, doesn’t it? It’s all just a bit on the incredible side, enough to make long-deprived cinephiles believe that now anything is possible. Is Greed really gone, or just hiding someplace especially secure and confounding? And what about The Magnificent Ambersons? Or even London After Midnight or any number of other silent and sound films that have been written off by history? Who knows what's socked away in the attic of that dilapidated house over on Frederic Street in Burbank, or in the basement of that old warehouse in Paris? Given the significance of this story, there should be plenty of interesting stuff to read in the next few weeks, and Green Cine Daily will be as good a place as any, perhaps better, at rounding it all up for us.