And now, part two of our peek into Miss Brodie's score book for her most recent SLIFR Movie Quiz, in which she (and we) begin by contemplating a studio director probably less loved than the breakfast meat which shares his name.
9)
Second Favorite Lloyd Bacon film
As
of last week's James Cagney triple feature at the Film Forum, without
hesitation the Siren cites Picture Snatcher. (Favorite is 42nd Street,
bien sûr.) (Self-Styled Siren)
He has so many
to choose from! But actually, I haven't seen any. (Thom McGregor)
Footlight
Parade,
although it's a testament to Bacon's skill that I enjoy Knute Rockne
despite my Notre Dame antipathy, and I've always meant to see Marked Woman.
(Brian Doan)
Whew. Marked Woman is my favorite, this I know
for sure. Much as I love 42nd Street
and Footlight Parade, I’ll go with Wonder Bar—a great showcase for Jolson
and it has that hot S&M dance with Del Rio and Cortez. (Tom Block)
Never knowingly
seen one, let alone two. (estienne64)
Brother Orchid, after Boy Meets Girl. Wasn't really much more of an artist than the key
grip was, though, was he? More of a technician. (Robert Fiore)
The one he made
in 1952. (Patrick)
I have a sad childhood attachment to The
Good Humor Man. (Matthew David Wilder)
So many
films I haven’t seen. But Boy Meets Girl takes the second spot of the ones I
have seen. Gotta go with Here Comes the Navy as #1. (Marilyn
Ferdinand)
Seriously? He
directed 130 pictures! Oh, very well: Larceny
Inc. (Mike Schlesinger)
Picture
Snatcher (1933) (Jeff Gee)
Footlight Parade (after 42nd Street, of course). (weepingsam)
Why are you
doing this to me? I’m not sure I’ve seen any other than 42nd Street, so what can I tell you. (Mr. Peel)
You Were Meant For Me, from 1948, with Jean Crain as a girl
who marries bandleader Dan Dailey. The feel for place (pre-War smalltown
America and the hotels and ballrooms where the band spends its time) and time
(Roaring Twenties heading into the Great Depression) are both evocative. Most
memorable is Crain’s surprisingly open expression of sexual yearning in her
early scenes. (wwolfe)
10) Richard Burton or Roger Livesey?
Roger Livesey,
hands down. He's just better company. Plus he knows where he's going. (Sean Axmaker)
Burton, for his
mocking laughter on the lawn in Virginia
Woolf and his many shades of gray in Spy
Who Came In from the Cold. (Tom
Block)
Burton. No star was more daring than Burton in that
string of incredibly weird allegedly bad movies he did from the late sixties
well into the seventies. Imagine Brad Pitt jumping on board Doctor Faustus, Hammersmith is Out and The Medusa Touch. Or any of those Dick
Movies. (Matthew David Wilder)
Roger Livesey
was in some of my favorite movies, while I don't think Burton was ever in a
movie I actually liked. Burton was the more interesting personality, and a
better actor.
(Robert Fiore)
Livesey is one
of the most romantic leading men ever. See Michael Powell's I Know Where I'm Going. (Anne Thompson)
"Roger... I
have some terrible news..." (Patrick)
Burton in Night
of the Iguana & Virginia Woolf just barely edge out Livesey in the Archers
movies. (Jeff Gee)
Livesey. Burton never made a
Powell-Pressburger movie. (Larry
Aydlette)
The most painful answer in the bunch, because the Siren has
been immersed in Burton's diaries, and they are nonstop joy, fascination and
delight. But the Siren cannot live without I Know Where I'm Going!.
Livesey. (Self-Styled Siren)
I’d take Richard
Harris over either one. (Weigard)
I’ll go against the expected go-against-the-expected here, and
say Burton. Livesey was great but within a fairly narrow range. Burton
was spectacularly reckless with his talent and could be downright awful, but
occasional hit extraordinary heights. (Roderick
Heath)
11) Is there a movie you staunchly refuse to
consider seeing? If so, why?
Thousands!
Because life is too short. (David
Cairns)
I have no desire
to see Natural Born Killers again. In
college we took an exchange student who claimed he had never seen a theatrical
film before and he threw up halfway through and had to leave. The guilt is
still with me. (Steve Rust)
Anything that
insults my intelligence and/or is depressing. Or both. Identity Thief would be a current choice. (Mike Schlesinger)
A Serbian Film (2010)
because, metaphor or not, I find the violent and pornographic exploitation of
children reprehensible. (Tony Dayoub)
Ken Loach’s Kes. I know the movie is highly praised.
I was curious when I first heard about it and, [spoiler alert] unfortunately,
could not avoid reading about the horrible ending. I just don’t think I could
bear watching the film now knowing that something that tragic and maddeningly
cruel was awaiting a child. (Robert T.
Daniel)
Gus Van Sant's
Psycho. It's offensive to me on so many levels and, really, what's the point? (Edward Copeland)
I’ve always kind
of avoided seeing Salo, but I don’t
know if that falls under ‘staunchly refuses’. Mostly I just don’t think about
what I don’t want to see. I’m not even sure that my not seeing any of the Saw series has to do with anything other
than mild apathy. How about any movie that stars Gerard Butler? (Mr. Peel)
Only one. Harold
and Maude. I refuse to see Harold and
Maude and I refuse to read The
Catcher in the Rye.. I passed on this as a youth and I intend to keep it
that way for obvious reasons. (Matthew David Wilder)
I'm not a horror movie guy generally, and I
would say I pointedly avoid horror movies where characters get mutilated. But,
here's my perversity: I will watch an action picture like 13 Assassins, which might have been better titled Total Massacre, and be happy as a clam,
but the far less violent Audition I
found distasteful. (Robert Fiore)
Titanic. Just
because enough people already have seen it. (Thom McGregor)
Lots,
but first thought is A Serbian Film. (The Siren strongly advises
her gentlest readers not even to Google that one if they don't know it.)
Because why would I? The people who boast about how they can sit through
anything, do they believe someone greets you at the Pearly Gates to say
"Dude, you made it through Cannibal Holocaust! Here's your door
prize!" The Siren considers hard-core images of degradation and sadism to
be brain pollution. Not to mention a colossal waste of her precious time on
earth, considering she just looked at Lloyd Bacon's filmography and realized
she's got dozens left. (Self-Styled
Siren)
I think I've
survived just fine all this time without seeing Salo, so that's a film I think is best left that way. (Sean Axmaker)
Antichrist. And you KNOW why. (Jeff Gee)
I don’t think
I’ll ever watch the opening scene to Saving
Private Ryan. I don’t want those images in my head, and I think I might get
sick to my stomach. (wwolfe)
“Staunchly
refuse” makes it sound like a large, conscious moral decision, but between my
disinterest in the director, my unwillingness to support such a project, and
the descriptions of it being such a turn-off, I won’t be seeing The Passion of the Christ any time soon.
Frankly, I wasn’t crazy about The Last
Temptation of Christ either, but the idea of Christians protesting it while
turning out in record numbers for Passion
sums up a lot of what’s sorry about America. (Tom Block)
So many. Lately, Les Miserables. I don't like the material and I don't like Tom
Hooper's previous movie. (Larry
Aydlette)
Sure-- I'll never see
The Passion of the Christ, a film whose existence bothered me so much that I
openly mocked it to folks standing in line for tickets as I left the multiplex
(I'm both ashamed and unashamed of that). Otherwise, I think there are films I probably
won't see, for a variety of reasons, but that I'm not staunchly against ever
seeing. For instance, my difficulty with films about mental illness means I've
never seen Shock Corridor, despite my admiration for Samuel Fuller. I
have trouble watching films about the suffering of the elderly (especially
after Umberto D. just destroyed me-- god, that scene with the dog
and the train! I get shudders and a lump in the throat just typing
this). This means it will probably be awhile before I get around to Amour
or Make Way for Tomorrow. And then there are those films I've skipped
out of sheer cussedness, just because I got sick of people telling me "YOU
HAVE TO SEE THIS!!" Or worse, the various internet discussions around
various films that make you sound like a bad cinephile if you haven't seen
fill-in-the-blank (be patient and I'll get to you eventually, Holy Motors).
(Brian Doan)Pink Flamingos. Saw a few scenes in a class that nearly made me vomit. Which, I know, might be the point, but I’m good. (Scott Nye)
Gruesome horror
flicks-- Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th,Saw, Hostel. That said, I can
handle gross and scary, from Halloween
and Dawn of the Dead to They Came from Within and Walking Dead. They just have to be
well-written and directed. (Anne
Thompson)
The Passion of
the Christ. One, I know how
it ends. Two, the hypocrisy over the violent and bloody content that is nothing
less than torture porn getting a pass as long as it's "educational."
And third, despite all the props for historical accuracy and being in the original
Aramaic, our Lord and Savior was still played by a white guy. (W.B. Kelso)
Oh, I
reckon it’s probably now A Serbian Film. I guess being on the second half of life, and being
cursed with a long memory, I’ve come to a point where there’s some things I
don’t wish to see. Mainly, because I can’t un-see them (at least while
I’m still walking the planet). Much like “Life
is too short to read bad books,” knowing I’m not going to enjoy
something that crosses a line for me is just not worth the screen time. There
are too many other good and varied film I’ve yet to see that I’d rather give
the limited time I have toward. I’m sure others will disagree (which is okay),
but there it is. (Michael Alatorre)
12)
Favorite filmmaker collaboration
Director Chuck
Jones, writer Michael Maltese, voice actor Mel Black. Screwball surrealism
meets vaudeville existentialism in on 7-minute cartoon after another. (Sean Axmaker)
RoBurt
productions (Robert Aldrich and Burt Reynolds) (Larry Aydlette)
John Williams and Spielberg in E.T. People forget how avant-garde this
movie is. No movie so small was composed entirely in such a massive, whamming,
Wagnerian way. The ratio of size-of-score to size-of-movie is unique in
cinema--and it works. The movie is druglike, a dream. It is as if the images
and music are flowing out of one mind. (Matthew David Wilder)
Michael Winterbottom and Steve Coogan?
(Better together than apart, anyway.) (estienne64)
Samuel Peckinpah
and Warren Oates. (Katherine Wilson)
Cary Grant is the only actor I ever loved in my
whole life. --Alfred Hitchcock (Brian Doan)
Rudy Wurlitzer and Robert Frank’s codirection
of Candy Mountain. (Josh K.)
Lucky McKee and
Trygve Allister Diesen’s Red. Unless
anthology films count, in which case it’s edged out by Rampo Noir. (xterminal)
John McTiernan
and Jan DeBont were never as good apart as they were together (The Hunt for Red October,Die Hard). Same
with Peter Bogdanovich and Polly Platt (The
Last Picture Show, Paper Moon). (Anne
Thompson)
Ernst Lubitsch and Samson Raphelson. (Robert Fiore)
Paul Thomas
Anderson and Jonny Greenwood. (Thom
McGregor)
13) Most recently viewed movie on
DVD/Blu-ray/theatrical?
Sam Raimi's Oz the Great and Powerful at El Capitan
on Hollywood Boulevard, complete with organ player. (Anne Thompson)
John Milius’ The Wind and the Lion on DVD. It was all
right. Milius in interviews is often much more interesting than his films. The Master on Blu-ray. I’m pretty much
watching sections of it every day now. Skin
Game at the New Beverly. As for new movies, Oz the Great and Powerful at the Vista. I’m not seeing many new
films these days. Lousy digital projection. (Mr. Peel)
DVD - Simon, starring Alan Arkin. Theatrical -
Django Unchained. (Patrick)
The Sting. I still love it. (Thom McGregor)
Watched Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence on DVD
from the 20th Century Fox Cinema archives last night. But if you include
streaming, I just signed up for a free Hulu Plus trial and saw The Murderer Lives at Number 21 via
Roku. (Sean Axmaker)
I introduced my
fiancé to No Country for Old Men last
weekend. Like most people, she was puzzled by the ending at first, but she
appreciated it overall. (Robert T.
Daniel)
DVD – Robert Benton’s Bad Company Theatrical –
Werner Herzog and Dmitry Vasyukov’s Happy
People (Josh K.)
DVD - A Celtic Pilgrimage with John O'Donahue.
(Steven Rust)
DVD: Hollywood Hotel (1937). More Busby Berkeley mayhem
with an incredible jam-session in the middle, where Benny Goodman and Gene
Krupa really cut loose and wail. BluRay: Forbidden
Planet (1956). Theatrical: Skyfall (2012). Streaming: Violence(1947). And yes,
dammit, VHS: Gold Diggers of
1933 (1933). (Note to self:
watch more Joan Blondell musicals.) (W.B. Kelso)
DVD is Creation, the Paul Bettany Darwin movie,
of all things. Theatrically, it’s been a Chilean weekend, as I saw Night Across the Street yesterday and No today. (weepingsam)
DVD: Heaven's Gate. Haven't seen a movie in a
theater since...I can't remember. (Larry
Aydlette)
Holy Motors/Arnold’s Wuthering Heights/some noir thing. (Tom Block)
On DVD, The Detective (Alec Guinness as Father
Brown), on Blu-ray Jour de Fete, in the
theater Silver Linings Playbook, and
just before that Tristana. (Robert Fiore
14) Favorite line of dialogue from a horror movie
“Speak. I
know you have a civil tongue in your head because I sewed it back
myself." (W.B. Kelso)
"Yeah,
they're dead. They're... all messed up." - Sheriff McClelland, Night of the Living Dead (Patrick)
"I
never drink...wine." (Self-Styled
Siren)
"I live in the weak and the wounded,
Doc." from Session 9, but it
needs to be in context. (Dave Stewart)
Willie Best inThe Ghost Breakers: "If you IS a
ghost, this ain't gonna do me no good. If you AIN'T a ghost this ain't gonna do
YOU no good." (leo86)
My favorite line
is actually misremembered, and I like it best the way I misremember it, which
is "Any man would be proud to be buried in that coffin!", spoken by
Peter Lorre in Comedy of Terrors. (Robert Fiore)
"I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have
my sympathies." - Ash (Ian Holm), Alien (1979) (Tony Dayoub)
"Why do so
many online friends write about horror movies all the time?" Oh, sorry,
that's MY favorite line of dialogue about horror movies. (Larry Aydlette)
“Was the smudge
trying to warn Clive of danger?" a true WTF moment from The Asphyx.
(David Cairns)
"Supernatural,
perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not."— The
Black Cat (Mike Schlesinger)
"They're
coming to get you, Barbara!" from George Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead. Indeed. (Anne Thompson)
As a line - “are
we not men?” - takes the prize - the whole sequence maybe. “What is the law?”
I’m afraid a lot of the things that come to mind for horror films are really
comedy lines - Herbert West’s “You’re not even a second rate scientist!” or
Dwight Frye’s delivery of “It’s a very fresh one!” Though I suppose Karloff’s
“We belong dead!” would be another strong contender. (weepingsam)
I’ve never been a very big fan of horror
movies, so I’m going to fudge a little bit here – “Blücher!” (Weigard)
" "We
all go a little mad sometimes." (Steven
Rust)
15) Second
favorite Oliver Stone film
I'm very hard-pressed to think of one, because everything else falls apart under Stone's endless posturing to be the Biggest Guy In The Room. Weirdly (because I find his conspiracy theories sophomoric), I guess it's JFK-- it's a remarkably stupid film, but one with a feverish desire to slide, skid and surf across the surface of cinema, to get high on the images and try to get us movie-drunk, too. Ignore Stone's tenuous grasp of history-- I suspect his obsession with the Zapruder film has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with the garish, Roger Cormanesque qualities of the bullet smashing the President's head back. It's Stone's ultimate found object. (Brian Doan)
Savages (Larry Aydlette)
Heaven and Earth. (leo86)
Any Given Sunday. Looking down the list I realize I've
hardly actually sat all the way through any of his films. (Robert Fiore)
JFK.
A long way behind Salvador, but it
does at least have Donald Sutherland's monologue and Kevin Bacon's killer line:
'You don't know shit, 'cause you've never been fucked in the ass.' (estienne64)
After Salvador, it's all just a quagmire. (David Cairns)
There’s no real answer since Salvador is the only one I’d willingly
sit through again. I’m interested in Savages,
though. (Tom Block)
Talk Radio is the only Stone film I can stand, so I
guess all the others are tied for second. (Josh
K.)
Nixon (1995). It's
really the most involving of his political pictures because it promotes Stone's
personal agenda the least. Or at least it feels that way because most folks
feel the same way towards Nixon as Stone does. That being said, Stone does
surprise by looking for the humanity in the man. (My favorite Stone film is U-Turn (1997).) (Tony Dayoub)
W.,
believe it or not. I think it's a brilliant black comedy. (Craig)
16) Eva
Mendes or Raquel Welch?
Mendes, with the
understanding that I haven’t seen a lot of the “you were thinking what when you
accepted that role?” stuff of hers. (xterminal)
Raquel Welch for
One Million Years B.C., Kansas City
Bomber, and Myra Breckinridge. (Dave Stewart)
Raquel all the way. But I like your thinking. (estienne64)
Back in the day,
just saying her name conjured up an image, even to people who'd never seen her
act. Say Mendes's name, and millions will say, "Which one is she
again?" (Patrick)
Raquel. Anybody
my age saying different is unfathomable to me. (Jeff Gee)
Welch, but she
never did much for me beyond the obvious. Fonda, Bardot, Christie,
MacLaine—these were the ones that drove me wild in the ’60s. Unfortunately,
most of them are crazy today. (Tom
Block)
You know what?
Eva Mendes is a really good actor. Give it to her. (Mr. Peel)
Raquel never
seemed at ease in front of the movie camera. Eva was fun in The Other Guys – or, more accurately,
Mark Wahlberg’s disbelief at the sight of Will Ferrell married to Eva Mendes
was fun – so I could lean her direction. However, The Three Musketeers was a really good movie, where Richard Lester
managed to find a way to use Raquel’s awkwardness as a comic asset. So I’ll go
with Raquel. (Plus, the poster from One
Million Years, B.C. was iconic, even if the movie was not.) (wwolfe)
Oh, come on now.
Raquel Welch. The thing is, Raquel Welch was frustrating because you knew she
was never actually going to get naked, and it's not like you'd watch her for
her acting. (Robert Fiore)
Eva Mendes -
worked with Werner Herzog and Leos Carax. End of argument. (Sean Axmaker)
The only Raquel Welch movie I’ve seen is Legally Blonde? Oh dear. I’ll accept my
F and move on. (Weigard)
Eva Mendes, because she's a better actress. And because, like
me, she's Cuban-American. (Tony Dayoub)
UP NEXT: GOD, SPATS, GRANITE, COWBOY TALK and OTHER INDULGENCES
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